Speaker 1: I wake to the grainy hush of distant traffic, the
Speaker 1: blue gray light of a cloudy Sunday melting through our bedroom. Cuttains.
Speaker 1: For five years, almost without fail, this has been my
Speaker 1: favorite time, the one morning of the week. Nothing else
Speaker 1: comes first. No urgent emails, no interviews to prep, no
Speaker 1: endless calama from the gym for Jake, just the ritual
Speaker 1: of our shared Sunday runs, sometimes training together for a
Speaker 1: half marathon, sometimes just pacing the quiet city before detering
Speaker 1: for cinnamon buns and the greasy, comforting sprawl of our
Speaker 1: favorite cornackvey. But today I'm alone. My side of the
Speaker 1: bed is still worn. Jake's already cold. There's no clutter
Speaker 1: from the kitchen, not even the old comforting gurgle from
Speaker 1: the mocha pot. I push off the sheets, ignoring the
Speaker 1: flicker of unease that sizzles up my spine. Maybe he
Speaker 1: wanted to squeeze in a longer, roud I reason. Or
Speaker 1: maybe he's at the gym taking an early call from
Speaker 1: one of his trainers. He has been restless lately about
Speaker 1: the expansion, always a little more wired in than usual,
Speaker 1: but he'd usually leave an elk. Took the river loopy
Speaker 1: back in forty five coffees. Ready something, I pad barefoot
Speaker 1: into the living room, stubbing my toe on one of
Speaker 1: his neon running shoes, and hunt from my phone. A
Speaker 1: thick silence yawns in the apartment. I check our run
Speaker 1: tracker app, the digital ledger of so many Sunday mornings.
Speaker 1: No recent run loader for Jake. Last activity was yesterday,
Speaker 1: a three mile lunch break dash, nothing special. Then flipping
Speaker 1: to his phone, which sets face down on the sideboard
Speaker 1: where he habitually tosses it, I see a single recent location,
Speaker 1: pinged ten minutes ago. Not the river trail or our
Speaker 1: usual park, but plain dart Dale as the crowded coffee
Speaker 1: shop two blocks over. No message, no update. I stand
Speaker 1: in the doorway for a moment, balancing my irritation against
Speaker 1: a kind attentative disbelief. The thought is ridiculous, After all,
Speaker 1: couldn't he just want a solo latte, some quick journal
Speaker 1: scroll time. We live in this neighborhood, these streets are
Speaker 1: woven into our shared memory. And yet the absence of
Speaker 1: a note, the cold coffee pot, this tiny, unexplained break
Speaker 1: and routine, it all leaves me slightly off balance. The
Speaker 1: ground under my feet and perceptibly shifted. I dress in
Speaker 1: quick mechanical motions, tights, Jake's alda might heave here in
Speaker 1: upon a tail. I tell myself it's overthinking the couple's
Speaker 1: drift in and out of sync, that all marriages, especially
Speaker 1: between people as busy as us, require a thousand small
Speaker 1: acts of forgiveness. I tie my shoes, check my watch,
Speaker 1: and by the time I'm on the sidewalk, the city
Speaker 1: is shaking itself, awake, car horns and bus break slicing
Speaker 1: into dawn. When I passed Della's, the windows are steamed
Speaker 1: and full of strangers. No sign of Jake, just a
Speaker 1: rotating cast of boristers and regular scribbling in moles kinds.
Speaker 1: I don't go in. It would seem ridiculous, needy, as
Speaker 1: if I'm searching for evidence where there's none to be found.
Speaker 1: I take the usual rut through the park, pausing at
Speaker 1: the corner where we first started running together, the red
Speaker 1: brick wall we vandalized in so many accidental selfis to
Speaker 1: day it looks dull, even and friendly. By the time
Speaker 1: I get home, Jake's back. He's in the shower door,
Speaker 1: a wide open, steam billowing. No hay, no how is
Speaker 1: he run? It's just a tinny echo of a podcaster
Speaker 1: is foam, verily audible over the spray. I pause, hovering
Speaker 1: in the hall, wanting task where he'd been, but chicken
Speaker 1: out Instead. I pour myself bad coffee and on our emails,
Speaker 1: trying to shake off the sense that I am somehow
Speaker 1: intruding on my own life. That afternoon, as I am
Speaker 1: organizing my gear for a live recording in the studio
Speaker 1: later that week, I heard Jike's voice from his office, quiet, measured,
Speaker 1: then bursting into laughter, low at first turn, then that full, easy,
Speaker 1: tumbling laughter that used to be so natural between us,
Speaker 1: a kind that would tumble out late at night when
Speaker 1: we binge watch mourter docks or told stories about our
Speaker 1: weirder clients. But lately it's been rarer, almost extinct. I
Speaker 1: instinctively move closer, sunlessly, the door just barely ajar and
Speaker 1: a catch, only fragments. It can't believe you said that,
Speaker 1: and well you'll have to prove it. His intonation is
Speaker 1: soft and mistakably intimate, as if he's performing an act
Speaker 1: of care usually reserved for well, for me. This appause
Speaker 1: a sound that might be a sigh or a smile
Speaker 1: before I can knock. The chair scrapes and the coll
Speaker 1: abruptly ends. I have her uncertain, and then push gently
Speaker 1: through the door. Jack staring at his laptop, hands frozen
Speaker 1: on the keyboard, posture closed off. Everything. Okay, I say, casual.
Speaker 1: My voice sounds too light, like a recording from someone
Speaker 1: else's show. He blinks, then smiles, forced. But practice supply
Speaker 1: a call there in Nova Scotia. Didn't realize it was
Speaker 1: so late. Sorry if I was too loud. He's lying,
Speaker 1: or at least I feel it instantly and viscerally, though
Speaker 1: I have no evidence. The air is thick with something
Speaker 1: in sad, a density that makes my head buzz. He
Speaker 1: looks back to his green, dismisses the browser and asks
Speaker 1: about dinner. The details, the supply, the time's own not plausible,
Speaker 1: yet none of it quite lands. Right later, I catch
Speaker 1: myself s crowling through his recent calls, feeling guilty, even
Speaker 1: a little unhinged. But there's nothing out of order. His
Speaker 1: phone is all business, numbers, personal friends, nothing encrypted or suspicious.
Speaker 1: I dismiss the afternoon as tell myself we're both just tired.
Speaker 1: That business is weighing on him and my own podcast
Speaker 1: deadlines are making me sensitive. Marriage means trusting even when
Speaker 1: you're uneasy. Right, That's what I tell myself when I
Speaker 1: drift off. But the silent rift between us only grows wider,
Speaker 1: like the crack of ice on a warming lake. By
Speaker 1: Monday morning, the city humps back to life, all blaring horns,
Speaker 1: steamed windows, shake's katta in the kitchen as he pretch
Speaker 1: brote in shakes and listens to client force mails on speaker.
Speaker 1: I'm prepping a sat for the podcast. Voiceover is echoing
Speaker 1: in my head forms, but my mind keeps circling back
Speaker 1: to that laughter, the oddness of his absence yesterday, and
Speaker 1: the residual static that hums under our exchanges for once.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how to thread the truth into the story.
Speaker 1: I had always told myself about us, that we were
Speaker 1: the couple who shared everything, synchronized by instinct, not just
Speaker 1: by routine. I remember when we first moved to the city,
Speaker 1: making a pact too eminin a key parking lot, swearing
Speaker 1: we would build a world we didn't have to escape from.
Speaker 1: Back then, we were broke and loud and in love.
Speaker 1: We mapped our courtship by running routes and happy hour deals,
Speaker 1: both of us chasing impossible odl Tea with his jam
Speaker 1: me with the audio, starred up that against all sciens
Speaker 1: actually found an audience. Through it all, we clung to
Speaker 1: Sunday mornings as our anchor, even when everything else changed.
Speaker 1: I let myself drift through a montage of memories as
Speaker 1: the weak lutches forward. There we are at our old apartment,
Speaker 1: limbs and twine and the worn out fruit on, arguing
Speaker 1: playfully over whose playlist would fuel our ten k There's
Speaker 1: Jake bashfully slipping into the audience at my life podcast taping,
Speaker 1: beaming so proudly. I actually started through outrow us at
Speaker 1: the wedding August five years ago. Oh him making a
Speaker 1: toast about how he'd never missed a Sunday yet, The
Speaker 1: laughter and applause, the knowing glances from friends who had
Speaker 1: watched us bicker and then circle Genie back always to
Speaker 1: each other. Our world was always wider than just us.
Speaker 1: Our clothes friend Zizzie in Mark, Lucia Tom showed up
Speaker 1: for everything. Mark was a Jake's side during his Jim's
Speaker 1: first chaot here as he hosted our engagement party. Lush
Speaker 1: cried at our wedding. Our calendar was thick with trivia knights, joined,
Speaker 1: marathon entries, even the tradition of the semi annual couple's
Speaker 1: Trepaboozie blissful long weekend where inside Jerk's multiplied and loyalty
Speaker 1: felt inevitable. There were wounds and faults, sure Jake's old
Speaker 1: row and security when my podcast won a city wide award,
Speaker 1: my own guilt of vanishing into weeks of interviews and editing.
Speaker 1: But we'd always manage to steer back. Our conversations elastic, stretched,
Speaker 1: sometimes thin, but never snapping. Were a team, we said
Speaker 1: so often the refrain felt like a blessing or a spell.
Speaker 1: Every relationship has secret, small ones, aidable and easily absorbed.
Speaker 1: How many coffees have really had? How often his skids
Speaker 1: or work out and pretends otherwise, But never ones that
Speaker 1: threatened the architecture, Not until now, when I see him
Speaker 1: differing in flashes, half turned away, shoulder tents is disant
Speaker 1: After a two lawn day, those say's when the rhythm
Speaker 1: breaks in a way I can't quite repair. We're at
Speaker 1: the bar with Izzy and Mark, our mugs crowded with
Speaker 1: local stouts, the table a jumble of fras and half
Speaker 1: eaten sliders. The talk is easy, the band to familiar.
Speaker 1: Remember last year's trivity buckle. Izzie says, cackling, Jake will
Speaker 1: never live down, answering Spandike's for a planet's name. But
Speaker 1: when talk turns inevitably to the upcoming couple's trip, there's
Speaker 1: a shift. Dizzy leans forward, launching into a story about
Speaker 1: last year's disastrous ay, but Mark, catching Jake's eye, hesitates.
Speaker 1: There's a micro second, a flicker of something passing between them,
Speaker 1: and then Mark asks, too casually, so are you two
Speaker 1: still in for the Lake District this year? Jake shakes
Speaker 1: his head. Can't do it. The Jim's just he gestures,
Speaker 1: pumps up as if helpless. Expansion headaches the new Morning crew.
Speaker 1: I'll be slammed for weeks. Izzy smile folders. Mark looks away,
Speaker 1: swirling the dregs of his beer. Izzy always quick, pivots
Speaker 1: we should send you photos then, or hey, a care
Speaker 1: pat sackat of bad Scotch and bacon. You can't eat.
Speaker 1: The conversation lurches on, but I'm reeling slightly. The trip
Speaker 1: has been a fixture since our second year together. Jake
Speaker 1: planned the last two scouted the running trails, coordinated the
Speaker 1: rental van was always the first to toast marshmallows in
Speaker 1: the last to climb into his bunk bed. I try
Speaker 1: to smooth my face into an understanding smile. After all,
Speaker 1: the gym really has been devouring every spare hour, the
Speaker 1: city's rents climbing infinite overhead. But a part of me
Speaker 1: aches the pot that depends on our rituals to make
Speaker 1: our busy, chaotic life makes sense. When we walk back home,
Speaker 1: Jake's phone vibrates twice, lighting up his coat pocket. He
Speaker 1: lingers on the cove, glancing at the screen for maybe
Speaker 1: half a blot more than necessary, tapping back a reply
Speaker 1: before I ever latched outdoor. Once inside, he excuses himself
Speaker 1: to the bathroom and doesn't resurface until I've already made
Speaker 1: tea and arranged our shoes side by side in the hallway.
Speaker 1: The small obsessive gestures you do when you scent something shifting.
Speaker 1: Friday night, Lucia's birthday party is a blaze of candles
Speaker 1: and mis matched plates are tied open, friend circle shrieking
Speaker 1: over all photos and two many April spritzes. Jake always
Speaker 1: loved this party. Had tradition since before he and emerged
Speaker 1: friend groups, But this year I see him caught sideways
Speaker 1: in conversation with Tom, checking his watch, glancing novousely at
Speaker 1: the kitchen door. When Izzy demands a group fertile, Jake
Speaker 1: is already stepping outside Fount's ear mouthing an apology through
Speaker 1: the window. He never returns for the toast. The next day,
Speaker 1: our running club group chat is on fire abyday. In
Speaker 1: new addition, a woman who is apparently shout at the
Speaker 1: Jim's olds beeve record at Jake Summer's class killer cards,
Speaker 1: serious hustle, someone writes. Another runner post a selfie with Jake,
Speaker 1: and the new woman, Kristop may be her name, floats
Speaker 1: it if Red otherwise full of memes and post run
Speaker 1: pizza plans. I scroll back, searching for any mention from Jake.
Speaker 1: Not then, I ask later hower class has heard there's
Speaker 1: some new besetting the bar, crazy high. I try for lightness,
Speaker 1: a turnlike friendly curiosity. He shrugs, Oh, yeah, must be
Speaker 1: one of the regulars. I haven't really met anyone who.
Speaker 1: I'm too busy behind the desk these days. His phone
Speaker 1: buzzes from the kitchen. He excuses himself tensioned, visible even
Speaker 1: as he tries to mask it with a lazy over
Speaker 1: practice smile. I stare at the spot where he just stood,
Speaker 1: recalling again his laughter two nights ago, that intimacy. I
Speaker 1: now realize I haven't been on the receiving end of
Speaker 1: in weeks. On paper, I know the explanation, business dress,
Speaker 1: new hires, the unrelenting friction of a start up, but
Speaker 1: the small details pile up into a nought I can't ignore. Thus, Saturday,
Speaker 1: Jake forgets to r S. He be to Lucia's party
Speaker 1: at first for someone who notoriously sets reminders for every event.
Speaker 1: Wednesday he bails on, or trivia night, pleading just one
Speaker 1: more stuff crisis. That night, he's typed in a brewer's
Speaker 1: grip photo on Sosha's shoulders, pressed between a laughing cup.
Speaker 1: Lo I've never seen his grin wide enough to split
Speaker 1: his face. The photo was timestamped for exactly when he
Speaker 1: texted me closing up, Jim might be late, sorry, babe.
Speaker 1: Sunday dinner at home is less a meal and more
Speaker 1: the theater of two distracted people going through the motions.
Speaker 1: Me prepping kale and poached eggs. Jake's carolling through his phone,
Speaker 1: tapping back at messages. He barely tries to hide conversation
Speaker 1: drifts to trivialities. My podcast's latest guest at Jim Equipment
Speaker 1: supplies endless delays. He mentions Mark and Izzy, but never
Speaker 1: commits to any future plans. Whenever I prod even gently,
Speaker 1: he offers only vague platitudes. We'll see. I'm just slammed
Speaker 1: right now. I wake several nights in a row to
Speaker 1: the dulgalow of his phone, and not in our bed,
Speaker 1: but from the living room couch. Once I close to midnight,
Speaker 1: I hear his voice, low but urgent, sketching lines of tenderness.
Speaker 1: I don't understand, you really think so? Naw, you're the
Speaker 1: only one. When I rise, the room is silent, Jake
Speaker 1: says close, one arm flung across his forehead, innocent exhaustion.
Speaker 1: Duck creeps in, first as a discomfort, then as an obsession.
Speaker 1: I tell myself not to spiral. Maybe this is how
Speaker 1: a marriage falls round new pressures, a little less intimacy,
Speaker 1: a little more space. But then at our next dinner party,
Speaker 1: I see the way leisure and as you talk around me,
Speaker 1: their eyes flicking to mark the conversation pinched and peculiar,
Speaker 1: as if they are worried the old balance is already gone.
Speaker 1: I laugh too loudly, refill one glasses with shaking hands,
Speaker 1: and resolved to get ahead of my own anxiety. Anything
Speaker 1: to avoid the humilation of becoming the last to know
Speaker 1: our bank account makes things harder to ignore. I'm sorting
Speaker 1: statements for tax season one. I catch a strain of small,
Speaker 1: out of character debits, an outscale bar. Jac only goes
Speaker 1: with out of town trainers, a beautique restaurant he's never
Speaker 1: mentioned all all nights, he insisted he was workingly. I
Speaker 1: bring up the charges gently after dinner. He waves it off.
Speaker 1: Business meetings. I guess some of the guys wanted to
Speaker 1: talk expansion. I know it's a lot, but I'll expense
Speaker 1: it with the gym. Something in his tone casual almost boards,
Speaker 1: strikes me as wrong. Jake once sweated every penny, especially
Speaker 1: when it came to new ventures. One night, scrolling my
Speaker 1: messages out of habit, I spotted erect pink from my
Speaker 1: friend Heather. At work. Saw Jake in Lincoln Heights around lunch.
Speaker 1: He looked in a hurry, hope everything's okay. Lincoln Heights
Speaker 1: is clear across town. He'd messaged earlier that day that
Speaker 1: he hadn't left the gym all afternoon. That's the moment
Speaker 1: my theory changes. Up to now, I've tried so hard
Speaker 1: to reframe every strange detail as the product of stress,
Speaker 1: of growing up, of businesses stretching us thin. I blame
Speaker 1: my own over scheduling my recent late night sprints DIY
Speaker 1: and out kinks in a big sponsorship deal. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: hypersensitive because my podcast is under review by major new network,
Speaker 1: and rejection feels new, certain, pulling every old insecurity to
Speaker 1: the surface. But the evidence stacks up. I confront Jake
Speaker 1: gently late one Friday, after we both collapse on the couch.
Speaker 1: I keep my voice quiet, urgent to avoid a fight,
Speaker 1: but unable to keep my fear entirely out of it.
Speaker 1: Are we okay? I ask, my eyes on the frayedage
Speaker 1: of the pillow between us. He seemed far away. I'm
Speaker 1: scared these words will sound like an accusation, but they
Speaker 1: come out small, almost embarrassed. Jake's sighs, gaze trained on
Speaker 1: the wall, just business cap Claire. The gym's close to
Speaker 1: going under if we don't get this expansion, staff tensions,
Speaker 1: trainers threatening to leave. I didn't want to worry. You've
Speaker 1: got your own deadlines. I'm just under water, that's all.
Speaker 1: He looks at me, then really looks, and in his
Speaker 1: eyes I see both exhaustion and a hopeful, nervous transparency.
Speaker 1: To my surprise, he begins to apologize for missing a
Speaker 1: Lake District trip, for bailing on dinner parties, for being
Speaker 1: the world's crappiest husband. He promises a weakened a way
Speaker 1: just us, and that next Saturday he'll map out a
Speaker 1: new running route for the two of us alike. Old
Speaker 1: kinds his hand, cover's mine, and it's warm and heavy.
Speaker 1: The gesture familiar. For a week, things seem to settle.
Speaker 1: A catch him smiling at my Cowney podcast that takes
Speaker 1: he plans, Dinna draw calls me into Jim conversations. I
Speaker 1: barely understand. My hope is cautious trembling. I'd even but
Speaker 1: the gateway, imagining us drinking wine in a hotel lobby,
Speaker 1: maybe finally talking without the itch of notification. Ping's trainer emergencies,
Speaker 1: canceled plans, the not in my gut, loosens a little.
Speaker 1: I resolved to trust him again, to prove to myself
Speaker 1: that marriage is built not just on ritual but resilience.
Speaker 1: But the next Thursday, a message slid into my books.
Speaker 1: So running club acquaintance, someone who floats on the periphery
Speaker 1: of our lives. Met Jake's new business potter christ at
Speaker 1: the networking event last night. Love for energy. When are
Speaker 1: you coming to happy hour so we can all catch up?
Speaker 1: The words sit on my screen like stones. CHRISTA networking event.
Speaker 1: Jake had come home late, grumbling about repairs at the gym.
Speaker 1: He'd never mentioned Christa were an event at all. I
Speaker 1: compose a breezy reply, Ak, wish I could have made
Speaker 1: it fully under water with work. Maybe next time. But
Speaker 1: my heart thuds That night, I lie awake, mapping time,
Speaker 1: mind's reconstructing explanations. Had I misunderstood the distance between us?
Speaker 1: Had I trusted the wrong version of event tents? There
Speaker 1: are photos, of course, there are always photos. In the
Speaker 1: group chat, someone posts a slidesho from the event. Jake
Speaker 1: in a navy button down, glass in hand, mid toast,
Speaker 1: beside a toll Brunett who's body leans almost seamlessly into his.
Speaker 1: The casual intimacy of the posture. Hand at her lower
Speaker 1: back I had tipped towards his shoulder, slices away my
Speaker 1: hope like a hot wire. I zoom in, fingers shaking,
Speaker 1: searching for evidence of innocence. Maybe it's just friendly. Maybe
Speaker 1: she's telling a joke. Maybe that's the problem with knowing
Speaker 1: too much about audio, about small details I can hear
Speaker 1: even from a frozen image. Tone Jake reserves for those
Speaker 1: he truly lets in, and lately that tone is never
Speaker 1: for me. I don't react right away. My habit is
Speaker 1: a journalist as a producer, demand context, evidence beyond the frame.
Speaker 1: I sift through my emails, pause at an unfamiliar subject
Speaker 1: line consultation confirmed, Hotel Madison eleven pum There are several
Speaker 1: each paid in cash reserves. Jake never mentions old title.
Speaker 1: Late Night Jim inventory updates. My chest feels tight, as
Speaker 1: if the world has shrunk to the size of my
Speaker 1: in books things at home Fieldbridge. Jake is more attentive
Speaker 1: at first, as if he sensed my withdrawal, but is
Speaker 1: the attention of some unpolicing a minefield. He's quick to anger,
Speaker 1: leary of questions about his schedule, and sometimes positively radiant
Speaker 1: with relief. When I let atop a drop our couch,
Speaker 1: conversations run ground on silence. Our runs together become rare, halting.
Speaker 1: I will count to day something came up. I confided
Speaker 1: in Lucia over drinks at the neighborhood wine bar. She's
Speaker 1: always been blunt to a fault, but to night she's careful.
Speaker 1: I scanning the room as of fur witnesses. Have you
Speaker 1: noticed anything weird with Jake? I ask, desperate to keep
Speaker 1: my tone light. She hesitates, whirling her glass. I mean
Speaker 1: he's looked tired lately, Jim drama. Maybe he's been at
Speaker 1: it with the new trainer, Christa right saw them chilling
Speaker 1: out on the Jim's steps after class Tuesday. You haven't
Speaker 1: met her yet. She's funny, intense, I thought, she trails off,
Speaker 1: realizing she said too much. My own questions mount. How
Speaker 1: can Jake have a business partner or even a friend?
Speaker 1: This and wine in our lives? And I haven't even
Speaker 1: heard her name until now? Why is he increasingly and available?
Speaker 1: Their conversations MULTIPLI just as are a shrink into the perfunctory.
Speaker 1: I try to top to Jake directly at night. I
Speaker 1: time it carefully after dinner, when he's relaxed putting away dishes.
Speaker 1: So I say, as breezy as I can, what's the
Speaker 1: scoop with Cursa? Everyone raves about her at the gym.
Speaker 1: His reaction is immediate, almost automatic. Who oh yeah, he
Speaker 1: mean Christof, She's new, barely know her honestly, just a
Speaker 1: staff thing. She's helping with schedules and you know, keeping
Speaker 1: everyone in line. He smirks, trying to be charming. But
Speaker 1: I see the micro expressions, the clenched jaw, the refusal
Speaker 1: to meet my eyes. Seriously, Claire, I have to chase
Speaker 1: so many of these people around lately. I barely remember
Speaker 1: half their names. The next day, he works late again,
Speaker 1: I'm left to wander the apartment, restless, as a caged animal,
Speaker 1: making mental inventaries a circumstance and story. I pick up
Speaker 1: his jacket, carelessly, flung on the couch, like always, can
Speaker 1: find a receipt, folded and greasy from Hotel Madison, dated
Speaker 1: last Thursday at twelve seventeen m Broom five hundred four
Speaker 1: consultation sweet paid in cash. My skills as a producer
Speaker 1: have always leaned investigative, rationalize my next moves as just
Speaker 1: getting the story straight. Their phrase I've heard a hundred
Speaker 1: times in the studio, a way to make the awkward
Speaker 1: business of digging into private lives sound almost benign. I
Speaker 1: call the gym using a Google voice line, pretending to
Speaker 1: schedule a fitness consult with Krista. The staffer on the
Speaker 1: other end is noncommittal. She is mostly taking night appointments,
Speaker 1: he says, or doing private training after hours with well
Speaker 1: with the owner Jake Yea want me to book you
Speaker 1: in next week? I member, thanks and hang up. Handshakings
Speaker 1: are hard. My phone newly slits from my grip. There's
Speaker 1: a sick, ridiculous clarity in the overlap late night consults,
Speaker 1: hotel with seats, staff cover stories that don't quite fit.
Speaker 1: But part of me doesn't want to believe it. There
Speaker 1: must be some benign, complicated work reason. There must be.
Speaker 1: His laptop is open on our dining table, maybe unintentionally,
Speaker 1: may be daring me to look. The temptation is ugly
Speaker 1: and potent. I hesitate, but the need to know is corrosive.
Speaker 1: I check his browsing history, but it's clean, ruthlessly so,
Speaker 1: like someone who's been coached then buried in the minimized windows.
Speaker 1: There is a message for Redas and Christa's nicknames abundant
Speaker 1: inside Joke's qreen of cardio, Sir, lunch, a lot, a
Speaker 1: kind of playful and guarded language I had almost forgotten
Speaker 1: he was capable of using. I close the laptop, of
Speaker 1: trembling hands, my rush. Now every marriage can weather storm crumbles.
Speaker 1: The days become a sledge of suspicion, shame, and reluctant
Speaker 1: self examination. I start second guessing everything every sunday he
Speaker 1: spends running errands, every meeting, every harmless text. I'm hypper
Speaker 1: aware of our friend's body language, the sabsle voidance of
Speaker 1: certain topics, the glances when I mentioned Jake's late nights once.
Speaker 1: I try to pen a producers memo for my next show,
Speaker 1: an episode about trust and digital relationships of all things.
Speaker 1: But the script won't come. Every quote, every interview question
Speaker 1: feels like a trap I'm setting for myself. One afternoon,
Speaker 1: a bump into Mark at the dog park, walking his
Speaker 1: elderly beagle. I sense the heaviness in the air, the
Speaker 1: way he treads carefully around our conversation. You two doing okay,
Speaker 1: he asks, fain cajun is cracking at the edges. Sure, al,
Speaker 1: I just the usual early mid life crisis. The gym
Speaker 1: is basically an animal shelter. Half the time, my podcast
Speaker 1: is about to implode, you know the dream. He smiles,
Speaker 1: but doesn't press. As with Stroll. I sense his loyalty,
Speaker 1: how he wants to protect both of us, how he's
Speaker 1: already perhaps protecting one at the expense of the other.
Speaker 1: A week later, Jake ducks out of Lucia's game night
Speaker 1: after only an hour, mumbling about the staff meetings. Lucia
Speaker 1: shoots me apologetic, look, cheeks a flame. You are coming
Speaker 1: next week, right, she asks? I promise, I am, but
Speaker 1: it feels like theater. I sink into bed that night,
Speaker 1: my skin crowling with the knowledge of how much more
Speaker 1: I don't know. Jake is asleep beside me, or pretending
Speaker 1: to be. His breath slow measured, the gap between us
Speaker 1: whiter than ever. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling,
Speaker 1: inventorying the lies of possible explanations, the thousand tiny betrayals
Speaker 1: that don't quite add up. I'm not ready to confront him,
Speaker 1: not yet, not without something more definitive than receipts inside
Speaker 1: on glances. Even now, some part of me aches for
Speaker 1: it all to be wrong, for the story to twist
Speaker 1: back toward the beginning. Two people up pace in the world,
Speaker 1: trusting the old rituals to hold fas against the weight
Speaker 1: of time. But as the days bleed into each other,
Speaker 1: the facade of routine disintegrates. I don't recognize our silence
Speaker 1: as more, nor the voice he uses on the phone
Speaker 1: late at night, or the way our friends seem to
Speaker 1: shrink from intimacy with me, perhaps unwilling to be witnesses
Speaker 1: to the implosion of our marriage. Every instinct day I
Speaker 1: as a journalist, the urge to get the false doorory,
Speaker 1: to find the source, to trace every threat. It makes
Speaker 1: me both capable and afraid the cousin. Like a story
Speaker 1: on tape. There's no safe ending here, no clever cut
Speaker 1: or artful everer. There's only the growing certainty that the
Speaker 1: person I trusted most may be the architect of my
Speaker 1: own endowing. And still some stubborn part of me clings
Speaker 1: to the idea that marriage is meant to be survived,
Speaker 1: not solved, that there is a way back if only
Speaker 1: I can find it, if only he will tell me
Speaker 1: the truth. But each night the evidence grows. The laughter
Speaker 1: I overhear, never returns to our shared world, and the distance,
Speaker 1: the Sunday distance, stretches out in all directions. Tuesdays the
Speaker 1: day I cave and show up at the gym, unannounced
Speaker 1: and unscheduled, a nice coffee sweating in my palm. Under
Speaker 1: the pretext to surprising Jake with him a day treat,
Speaker 1: I tell myself I am being a good wife, the
Speaker 1: kind who shows up, who brings caffen, who cares enough
Speaker 1: to cross the city on a whim. In reality, I
Speaker 1: just need to see him in the world I imagine
Speaker 1: as ours, to catch side of some trace of our oldies,
Speaker 1: may be to look into his face for signs that
Speaker 1: everything is indeed just stress and exhaustion. The gym is
Speaker 1: humming with lunchtime, regulous people dropping in between meetings, earthick,
Speaker 1: with the scent of rubber mats distance. Weat the sweet
Speaker 1: brandage of protein buzz being microwave at the reception counter.
Speaker 1: The music is loud top forth the armer mixed terrors,
Speaker 1: but underneath I can still sense the pulsive order that
Speaker 1: is Jake's trademark. Trains collecting waves, tiles stacked in obsessive rows,
Speaker 1: water bottles lined up with military precision. I see Christop
Speaker 1: before I see Jake, though I only know her from
Speaker 1: a distance from the photo that uncomfortably intimately and against
Speaker 1: his shoulder. In person, she's more striking, tall, athletic, with
Speaker 1: a swim of dark care puled into sharp ponytail, tent
Speaker 1: top revealing tatooed shoulders and arms that look carved from determination.
Speaker 1: She's made conversation with a client form correction may be
Speaker 1: her voice low and confident. Shake appears from the back office,
Speaker 1: clip ard in hand. He doesn't register me immediately, and
Speaker 1: the sight of him like this, a little harried stubble
Speaker 1: uplining his jaw, a forehead creased tugs as something tender.
Speaker 1: I left the coffee a fragile flag he's wroughts me,
Speaker 1: then a flucker of genuine surprize, giving way to something
Speaker 1: almost Defensive's hey, he jogs over, wiping his hands on
Speaker 1: his shorts. What are you doing here? I offer the coffee,
Speaker 1: aiming for breezy. Just thought you could use a pick
Speaker 1: me up between all the chaos. He takes it a smile,
Speaker 1: curving listlessly. Thanks, you didn't have to place his madness
Speaker 1: to day. He glances around, as if worried a small
Speaker 1: crisis might leap out at any second. Two While for
Speaker 1: five minutes on the treadmill, I ta is trying to
Speaker 1: read his face. He glances over his shoulder toward the office.
Speaker 1: Maybe later, I've got payroll, and actually I'm late for
Speaker 1: a phone consult rain check. Something about the way he's
Speaker 1: half turned away makes me feel peripheral, like a visitor
Speaker 1: watching a performance. A nod pretending I don't care, no
Speaker 1: worries they'll see you at home. Yeah, he says, already distracted,
Speaker 1: I'll text when I'm heading back. He ducks into the
Speaker 1: office without another word. A linger pretending to study a
Speaker 1: class schedule, sneaking another look at Christa. She's laughing now
Speaker 1: with a pair of older women, easy, and it's a
Speaker 1: conscious Her confidence are mistakable. At some point she glances
Speaker 1: toward the office where Jake just retreated, and her smile
Speaker 1: softened slightly, just for a second before she returns to
Speaker 1: her client. I leave the embarrassment salary my chest. My
Speaker 1: good wife gesture dissolved into something needy and cheap on
Speaker 1: the war come. I play our exchange over in my head,
Speaker 1: searching for proof that I am overacting that my insecurity
Speaker 1: is manufacturing paranoia out of Madaine interactions. I resolved focus
Speaker 1: on work to claim back some sense of autonomy, but
Speaker 1: I can't shake the feeling that I've peered through a
Speaker 1: door left slightly ajar and what I saw there was
Speaker 1: both of mine and not mine at all. Later that evening,
Speaker 1: sifting through notes for the next podcast episode, my phone
Speaker 1: vibrates with the message from Tom. Group run tomorrow morning,
Speaker 1: six thirty A m Oak Street. You in, I hesitate. Normally,
Speaker 1: Jake sets his alarm for these runs, cajoling me into
Speaker 1: joining for the sake of a community and metabolism. Recently,
Speaker 1: though he skipped everyone. I type, Come me in, then
Speaker 1: add Jake tore if I can drag him. Tom responds
Speaker 1: with the single thumbs up on a gift of a
Speaker 1: yawning sloth, which makes me snort into my tea. I
Speaker 1: ask Jake about it that night when he comes home
Speaker 1: fly frompink cheeked, either from the jim or the cold,
Speaker 1: impossible to tell. He hesitates tomorrow. I I've got a
Speaker 1: staff review to do with christa first quarter performance stuff.
Speaker 1: She can only do mornings this week A Bristol Beane
Speaker 1: hitting me like a door slamin since When Gud reviews
Speaker 1: at six thirty in the morning, he shrugs, it's one.
Speaker 1: She's available, single mum, her kids got appointments all afternoon.
Speaker 1: A new fact drop with suspicious ease. I nod, pressing
Speaker 1: down the urge to counter question him, to pull apart
Speaker 1: his timeline. Okay, I say, careful to sound supportive. I'll
Speaker 1: just run with Tom, maybe join the rest for bagels
Speaker 1: after perfect, he says, already slipping into the bedroom to
Speaker 1: grab a shower. The next morning, through the haze of
Speaker 1: predn chill, I joined the group at Oak Street. Tom
Speaker 1: and Lucia there, both with blaary eyes and paper cups
Speaker 1: of bad gas station coffee as he texts last minute
Speaker 1: to beg off for a parenting emergency. Her world lately
Speaker 1: feels as depleted as mine. The road is familiar, but
Speaker 1: there's something's sluggish into conversation, like people choosing their words
Speaker 1: with unusual care. At the Beage place afterwards, Lucia lingers
Speaker 1: with me while Tom heads inside to grab coffee for everyone.
Speaker 1: She leans in, voice hushed, how's um everything? You and
Speaker 1: Jake are right? I stiffen, bracing myself yea, We're okay.
Speaker 1: He's just works hellish. I guess you know how it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she says softly, clearly unconvinced. She reaches from my hand
Speaker 1: but thinks better of it. If you ever need to talk.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes these Jim projects, with all the new faces,
Speaker 1: it gets complicated. Not that Jake, She stops herself. Let's
Speaker 1: press tight. I meet her eyes, panic crowding my throat,
Speaker 1: but manage a week. Laugh. You're not the first person
Speaker 1: to mention christ lately. She's got quite the reputation. Ha.
Speaker 1: Lucia's smile is too quick, too eager to pivot though,
Speaker 1: you know, she's just noticeable, been part of that whirl.
Speaker 1: It's probably nothing. Before I compress further, Tom Return's conversation
Speaker 1: veers to Bagel preferences. The moment lost. I walk home,
Speaker 1: tension pulling in my shoulders, the city seeming suddenly disjointed,
Speaker 1: every face a little too interested, every side walks slightly
Speaker 1: off level. By the time I reach our apartment, Jake
Speaker 1: has already left for the gym. Are only over. Lapp
Speaker 1: a note in his rush to gribbly print good luck
Speaker 1: with edits to day left you the last of the
Speaker 1: rout milk. Sorry that night kneeling down. Interview order from
Speaker 1: my podcast episode. I hear of a familiar time about
Speaker 1: joint bank account notifications, three purchases, rapid fire juice bar,
Speaker 1: cycle studio I've never visited, and a small place beast
Speaker 1: Drid I've only seen on Instagram, definitely not in Jike's
Speaker 1: usual after hours rotation. I scroll through the bank statements,
Speaker 1: trying to rationalize each expense, maybe a team dinner, a
Speaker 1: new client consult but the receipts stack up with a
Speaker 1: nerving regularity. Always on knights, Jake claims to be inventorying
Speaker 1: at the gym or closing late. There's nothing criminal, nothing extravagant,
Speaker 1: just a current of secrecies so relentless it begun to
Speaker 1: feel structural. Friday brings a new kind of confirmation, although
Speaker 1: not the one I wanted. I get a DM from
Speaker 1: a former running club regular, Nordia, who moved to Denver
Speaker 1: last year but still looks on our group chat. Loll
Speaker 1: tell j congrats, she writes, screen shutting a mutual friend's
Speaker 1: AIG story. Jac and Curst attacked at an industry night out.
Speaker 1: He's in jeans, arms thrown wide. Crista close by, drinks
Speaker 1: in hand to her hand, brushing his hip as they
Speaker 1: posed for a selfie with a pack of Prayinos. I
Speaker 1: played off, looks like they are letting the Jim Nerds
Speaker 1: party hut. But inside a part of me disintegrates. Jake
Speaker 1: texted me at night around eleven saying he was closing up,
Speaker 1: probably crashing on the staff couch. Too white to Youber,
Speaker 1: the lie is not even slick, just casual, as if
Speaker 1: the truth has become so bent. Reality is only what
Speaker 1: he reports. That's the day my patience ruptures. I call
Speaker 1: Lucia and ask, point blank, have you heard anything about
Speaker 1: Jake and Christa. She pauses so long I almost hang
Speaker 1: up for mortification. When she finally speaks, her words are careful,
Speaker 1: cloved with concern. I mean there together a lot. She's
Speaker 1: taken on, some of the front office stuff. I guess
Speaker 1: they get on. I've only seen them out in groups.
Speaker 1: But Claire, are you okay? I don't hanswer red away,
Speaker 1: because I honestly don't know. Am I ok What does
Speaker 1: okay even mean? Now? I'm balancing between believing my gut
Speaker 1: and convincing myself and catastrophizing. I'm mutter something forgettabole, just
Speaker 1: needed to hear it's nothing weird and thank her that weekend.
Speaker 1: Our apartment is a stage set for two people overacting.
Speaker 1: Jake makes elaborate pancakes Sunday morning, neraty every step of force,
Speaker 1: cheer wilueberry banana both he calls voice stretching for normalcy.
Speaker 1: He kisses the curve of my neck over coffee, asked
Speaker 1: about a coming episodes, rubbed my shoulder as if he's
Speaker 1: willing himself into a version of himself he's lost connection
Speaker 1: with For a minute, I almost believe her back, but
Speaker 1: the small tells don't stop his phone face down, the
Speaker 1: way he checks notifications and starts to stand whenever a
Speaker 1: coll lights up. How he flinches imperceptibly when I mentioned
Speaker 1: running clubs or Christ's name. We watch a movie together,
Speaker 1: the kind he used to riar me for loving a
Speaker 1: true crime dock about an investigative journalist who finds ourself
Speaker 1: the subject of her own story. And I see how
Speaker 1: little he laughs at the jeruks, how often his glance
Speaker 1: flecks to the silent t V reflection, weighs for unress,
Speaker 1: vibrating occasionally like and wege aboard Plonchette, asking questions neither
Speaker 1: of us once answered. Another week, another misritual, our running
Speaker 1: club holds its monthly relay. Jake, who invented the damn thing,
Speaker 1: bails last minute. He claims a supplyer emergency texts the
Speaker 1: group with a half hearted rainchecked team that lands hollow
Speaker 1: at the finish line as he sidles up to me,
Speaker 1: awkward in a way that's ought to early uneasy. Hey,
Speaker 1: Jake said, you might bring one of your podcast guests
Speaker 1: to post un brunch, She asks, as if I'm a stranger,
Speaker 1: some bonus plus one. I shake my head, just me
Speaker 1: to day Jake a gesture lamely toward my phone. She
Speaker 1: nods with a little too much energy. Well let's go
Speaker 1: split a bloody marry anyway, she says, steering me toward
Speaker 1: the bar, her eye searching my face for cracks. At home,
Speaker 1: the silence is aggressive. The hours long, in and filled.
Speaker 1: Jake is at the gym, or says he is. His
Speaker 1: texts are tight, oddly formal, gonne o, the flirting an
Speaker 1: emoji jokes that once made up our digital shorthand I
Speaker 1: reap a voicemails, half expecting to find something hidden in
Speaker 1: the static, an echo of laughter or fragment of a
Speaker 1: woman's voice. There's nothing damning, but nothing redemptive either. We
Speaker 1: become housemates. Evenings spent thumbing through our own phones, feet
Speaker 1: touching at the far end of the couch. Like Dipomat's
Speaker 1: mocking territory, I learned to cook for one, to walk alone,
Speaker 1: to treat. Each day's evidence is both random weapon night
Speaker 1: finds me unable to sleep, scrolling Instagram form Kungruote's stories.
Speaker 1: Tired from Boss, Jake told me he hated Christa, cheekly
Speaker 1: referring too late night brainstrums with the Boss. I notice
Speaker 1: and photorapht to photo how often he is captured emotion
Speaker 1: leaning into her sneakers and tide. Sharet crumpled from a
Speaker 1: long shift and filled the same stricken all I once
Speaker 1: felt watching my parents drift years ago. At the realization
Speaker 1: that loves decay happens not in explosions, but in the
Speaker 1: multiplication of small secrets. I search our shave calendar for overlap,
Speaker 1: like a scientist looking for correlation. Jake's late shifts always
Speaker 1: orchestrated with Christi's available blocks, schum inventory checks scheduled for hours,
Speaker 1: neither of them usually works. It's all right there in
Speaker 1: the metadate of our digital marriage, screaming at me in
Speaker 1: a language only as seem able to interpret. Wednesday night,
Speaker 1: I do what I once swore never to do. I
Speaker 1: log into Jake's email, my handshake as I tied the password,
Speaker 1: and inside joke from my honeymoon Santorini running, and the
Speaker 1: familiarity wounds me. A cruel little ship in the dark.
Speaker 1: The inbox is a study in compartmentalization. Business Bill's Jim
Speaker 1: chains trainers griping about hours. The trash folder is where
Speaker 1: the real DNA is. Strings of late night confirmations Hotel Madison, eleven,
Speaker 1: PUM consultation, the reservation emails discuss privacy, off the clock payments,
Speaker 1: no record on the Jim's billing system. Some include Christa's
Speaker 1: g mail and the thread I click through calendar invites,
Speaker 1: strategy session, j and K post coaching review, always late,
Speaker 1: always offset. I don't find explicit love notes, not yet,
Speaker 1: but there are attachments inside jokes. A scan of a
Speaker 1: bad stick figure drawing Queen of Cardio saves the day.
Speaker 1: A mean flame in personal trainers who mix business with pleasure,
Speaker 1: annotated with his old cartoon wolf emoji from our own
Speaker 1: flirty days. I close the window, acid burning my throat.
Speaker 1: I stare at the wall, tracing the faint shadow of
Speaker 1: our wedding photo, that lost all of by years of
Speaker 1: sun exposure and now by the unreality of our present.
Speaker 1: Thursday morning, Jake has gone before I wake, the doors
Speaker 1: soft click, serving its prolog to my solitary coffee. Lucia
Speaker 1: texts to ask if I'll join her for dinner at
Speaker 1: the French place near her office. I agree, summoning a
Speaker 1: version of myself who will find a way to talk
Speaker 1: about anything except my own marriage. A marveling At dinner,
Speaker 1: Lucia watches me pick up my salad, concern radiating. You
Speaker 1: seem different, she finally says, not in a bad way,
Speaker 1: just more serious. Maybe are you in Jake fighting? My
Speaker 1: fork pauses midair. We're just stressed work mostly the expansion
Speaker 1: is killing him. Lucia nods her eyes, gentle. I saw
Speaker 1: him in christ outside the jim ufdrours last week, just talking.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, Claire. If I were you, i'd
Speaker 1: want to know. Has he told you about her much?
Speaker 1: I shake my head, lips drawn, then not really, Lucia
Speaker 1: looks down at her bread plate, as if expecting it
Speaker 1: to answer. I'm probably projecting, she says. But if you
Speaker 1: need anything, anything, okay, don't keep it inside. I nod,
Speaker 1: unable to speak. We hog a little too tightly for
Speaker 1: what should have been a light, gossipy dinner. I leave
Speaker 1: the restaurant with the deep, almost desperate urge to be alone,
Speaker 1: to run until the streets are unfamiliar. Instead, I march home,
Speaker 1: each step fueled by a rage that feels brighter than
Speaker 1: anything I've allowed myself to feel in weeks. That night,
Speaker 1: I listened to Jake's newest messages to our smart home device.
Speaker 1: I've always been the tech person, so our digital world
Speaker 1: is subtly slanted to me, the original admin. The command
Speaker 1: history is clean, wiped at hot intervals. Once the device
Speaker 1: tries to hold a complete call but suggests christap before Claire,
Speaker 1: my stomach twists. I recall every group dinner from the
Speaker 1: last six months, every time our friends veeared the conversation
Speaker 1: away from gin drama, from expansion moros, even from running.
Speaker 1: Every time their eyes darted to Jake or the subject
Speaker 1: got safely eroded to Mark's endless thesis or Izzies Toddler's
Speaker 1: latest vocabulary outburst. The picture becomes clearer. I am not
Speaker 1: only late to the truth, I am the only one
Speaker 1: still clinging to our old narrative. I lay awake that night,
Speaker 1: listening to the city's pulse and a deafening silence beside me,
Speaker 1: wondering how long has been since Jake considered mere real confidante.
Speaker 1: The certainty of my own intition is called comfort. I
Speaker 1: want more than any then to be wrong. Yet as
Speaker 1: dom prize fingers of light cross our windows, I resolve
Speaker 1: that I will confront him. Not to night, sir night.
Speaker 1: I am too brittle to survive what I might hear,
Speaker 1: But soon I need the confirmation to breathe again, even
Speaker 1: if what I inhale shatters me. By the next morning,
Speaker 1: Jake's side of the bed is empty, the ethic, with
Speaker 1: the smell of his colow and Stiel recirculated hope. My
Speaker 1: phone pins a group message reminder from our running club,
Speaker 1: A Bird, an impromptu happy hour at the new roofed
Speaker 1: up bar downtown. Cautiously, I text Jake to see if
Speaker 1: he wants to join, couching my invitation in the language
Speaker 1: of routine drinks at six just the crew could be fun,
Speaker 1: he replies fifteen minutes later. Can't back to back consults
Speaker 1: to night brain check promise. I reply with a thumb
Speaker 1: and a heart, then close a conversation, heart a tight
Speaker 1: not in my chest. Around midnight, unable to sleep, I
Speaker 1: browse the social feeds out of reflex. There in Lucia's
Speaker 1: stories you miss around up his A blurry group shot
Speaker 1: at the rooftop, the usual running crew, crowded tight with
Speaker 1: Christ oppressed at the edge. Her had thrown back in
Speaker 1: laughter jape beside her arm slung around her waist. Someone
Speaker 1: tagged the photo with a cheeky trainer take over the
Speaker 1: an a string of celebratory emojis. I don't register the
Speaker 1: cold at first, just the numbness. I force myself to
Speaker 1: watch the loop until the story expires, absorbing every pixel
Speaker 1: as if it will conjure a reason, an angle that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Then I close my phone, lay it face
Speaker 1: down on the night's end, and trace the ceiling's cracks
Speaker 1: in the semi dark. Sleep never comes. By morning, I
Speaker 1: know that the next step is not research, not analysis,
Speaker 1: not another conversation with a friend or a routine investigation.
Speaker 1: I will need to break the script altogether, to force
Speaker 1: this story into the open, to reassert a narrative that
Speaker 1: is solely mine. But for now, I put on my shoes,
Speaker 1: step into the morning brightness, and run and ron and ron.
Speaker 1: I run until my lungs burn, until the city's corners
Speaker 1: and crosswalks blare, until the embarrassment of being the last
Speaker 1: to no settle somewhere near my die fram I slaw
Speaker 1: only when my legs threttened to buckle, bracing myself against
Speaker 1: a lamp post, sweat icing call down my back, even
Speaker 1: though the morning's already warming up. My chest rises and falls,
Speaker 1: and jagged waves. Pedestrians walk around me oblivious. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I expected to feel, clarity. Maybe instead I
Speaker 1: feel a gathering sense of inevitability. The next steps aren't
Speaker 1: about collecting more hints or spinning out wishful explanations. I
Speaker 1: need to see Jake. I need to say the words,
Speaker 1: and he is answer. No matter how much I wish
Speaker 1: I could turn it all off, crawl back into some
Speaker 1: other and spoiled version of our life. By the time
Speaker 1: I get home, my keys are slippery in my hand.
Speaker 1: Jake's already back, his shoes cast off by the door,
Speaker 1: his him back sagging like a small defeat. He's at
Speaker 1: the kitchen counter, faone up to his ear. This attends
Speaker 1: lying to his shoulders, a forward leaning posture I recognize
Speaker 1: from a hundred small arguments and all the bigger ones
Speaker 1: we tried to smooth over. Afterward, A fresh cup of
Speaker 1: coffee sits and touched beside him. Black the way he
Speaker 1: takes it when he stares through a problem instead of
Speaker 1: around it. He doesn't see me at first. I take
Speaker 1: and seen the way he is half shadowed in the
Speaker 1: windows glare, the flutter of his thumb along the edge
Speaker 1: of the counter as he listens to whoever's on the
Speaker 1: other end. Yeah, yeah, I know, I said i'd squirt.
Speaker 1: No she doesn't know. His vosse drops horse tired. Not
Speaker 1: the intimate secret of register he uses with strangers, but
Speaker 1: a more familiar exhaustion. I let the door close a
Speaker 1: level too loudly. Behind me, he jumps, nearly dropping his phone.
Speaker 1: Our eyes. Meat is an anxious, muddy brown mine probably
Speaker 1: wide and red rim from my run. He covers. The
Speaker 1: muthbeast forces a laugh. Hey, just wrangling peril A beat,
Speaker 1: Then to the phone. I'll call you back. His attempt
Speaker 1: at Composure's brittle, like a pain of gossipbut splinter. He
Speaker 1: straightens and tries to smile, but the corners of his
Speaker 1: mouth won't go operate. Morning. I manage stripping sweat soaked layers,
Speaker 1: forcing some kind of normalcy into my tone. Long run,
Speaker 1: didn't expect you home. He nods, grabs his moggan sits
Speaker 1: too fast, wincing at the heat, barely shift at the
Speaker 1: gym got canceled. He moves restlessly, as much acting for
Speaker 1: himself as for me. Everything all right? The questions weighs
Speaker 1: and air, almost an accusation. I want to bite you,
Speaker 1: tell me instead. I try to hold the line between
Speaker 1: fury and collapse. There still a chasm between what I
Speaker 1: know and what I desperately hope is just a catastrophic misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: I make a bowl of cereal, hands moving without though.
Speaker 1: Fear of what's next is palpable. It thickens, the air,
Speaker 1: stretches the seconds, until neither of us can pretend there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. Jake stares at me as if waiting for
Speaker 1: me to set the terms of this confrontation. But I
Speaker 1: can't do it yet, not out loud, not until I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'm not about to destroy everything for a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: I take my cereal to the couch, pretend to scroll
Speaker 1: through emails for a few minutes. The radio in my head,
Speaker 1: my own show's voice over the mail, millions of ways
Speaker 1: I've broughted guests into honest. He keeps slooping. Say what
Speaker 1: you mean, ask the hard question? But I don't, not yet.
Speaker 1: Jack moves to another room, door shut, probably retreating into
Speaker 1: work or texting her. I close my laptop and stair
Speaker 1: at the wall until the silence becomes a screen. I
Speaker 1: barely sleep that night. Jake slips into bed at two
Speaker 1: in the morning, shower muttering about equipment, brake hands. He
Speaker 1: doesn't reach for me. I lie awake, rigid, pulse hammering.
Speaker 1: I replay the conversation yet on the phone. No she
Speaker 1: doesn't know. Heat flushes at my neck whenever I think
Speaker 1: about who she is to him. Now. By midday the
Speaker 1: next day, the weight of an action is unbearable. The
Speaker 1: city outside our windows is soft, whispering, but it feels
Speaker 1: like a world rendered me, everything filtered through a low,
Speaker 1: unrelenting dread. I text Lucher, are you around? Need to talk?
Speaker 1: Really talk? She replies, instantly come over any time. I
Speaker 1: want to escape, to sit across from someone who won't
Speaker 1: gaslight me. But I can't leave, not yet. Even the
Speaker 1: thought of the apartment, the acho of the life Jake
Speaker 1: and I have built, veels tainted. I get up, move
Speaker 1: room to room, gathering my things, packing and unpacking the
Speaker 1: same bag twice. Around three a text from Jake, running
Speaker 1: late at the Gem, grabbed dinner without me, the rope
Speaker 1: inside me for his setrickle of careful, plausible eyes. I
Speaker 1: respond with the brief rouquet, forcing each letter out as
Speaker 1: if my fingers are made of glass. That night, my
Speaker 1: phone charms with another notification, this time from our joint calendar,
Speaker 1: marked Kay and j strategy nine up on the medisine.
Speaker 1: The address is the same as the after hours hotel.
Speaker 1: The event is listed as a private officer. It sinks automatically,
Speaker 1: an oversight in the sea of carefully hidden appointments. I
Speaker 1: screenshot it, stare un till my vision blurs. I make
Speaker 1: a decision. If he doesn't come home by midnight, I'll
Speaker 1: go to the Madison myself. I need to see it,
Speaker 1: I hope, desperately, to catch him alone, to catch him
Speaker 1: in a lie that isn't what I think it is.
Speaker 1: But I know somewhere deep in my chest that I
Speaker 1: would find an innocent explanation. It's ten after one when
Speaker 1: Jake tipped to his inn, smelling faintly of saw whiskey
Speaker 1: and expensive soap. He moves quietly, closing the door with
Speaker 1: a care he didn't bother with for years. Hey, I say,
Speaker 1: voice too loud in the darkness. How was your strategy session?
Speaker 1: He freezes, silhouetted in the whole light. Didn't mean to
Speaker 1: wake you. It dragged trainers and he shoulders out of
Speaker 1: his jacket. A' too many opinions, not enough solutions. I
Speaker 1: flip on the lamp at the Madison. He startles, I
Speaker 1: was wrought in the sudden light. What I hold up
Speaker 1: my phone the event mark kuy and J's strategy displayed
Speaker 1: for him. It sinked. You forgot to hide it. His
Speaker 1: gaze bounces from the screen to my face, searching cornered.
Speaker 1: It's just a meeting, we have to at one in
Speaker 1: the morning. For one beautiful second, he almost cracks. I
Speaker 1: see Rona. Is there a desperate flicker that might still
Speaker 1: be the man I married? But he recovers too fast.
Speaker 1: Ye sound insane, he says, force gone hard, paranoid. It's
Speaker 1: just work, clared, You have no idea how much pressure
Speaker 1: I'm under. I can't let it go. Why haven't you
Speaker 1: introduced me to her? Then? Why all the late nights,
Speaker 1: the lies about where you are, the receipts, the hotel
Speaker 1: bookings and cash. He turns away, hand rubing at his chin,
Speaker 1: then spins back. Ye want to know. Fine, christ is
Speaker 1: helping me with the business. She smart connected, That's why
Speaker 1: she's around so much. All the bravado is brutal. That's
Speaker 1: not all I say of worth breaking. Just tell me
Speaker 1: I know what I've seen. He throws his hands white, desperation,
Speaker 1: peeking through. There isn't anything else. Do you want to
Speaker 1: check my phone? My email? Be my guess? Since you
Speaker 1: clearly don't trust me, I stare at him the anger
Speaker 1: he's weaponized against me, barely disguising the panic underneath. Are
Speaker 1: you sleeping with her? A violent silence? He blinks, breath
Speaker 1: hissing out like a slow leak. No, well now, he folds,
Speaker 1: leans against the wall, exhausted and not not really, not
Speaker 1: the way you sink. I close my eyes by rising,
Speaker 1: Then what is it? Because if it's not an affair.
Speaker 1: It's a hell of an imitation. He presses his palms
Speaker 1: into his eyes, hand shaking. We had started after the
Speaker 1: last staff party. I was miserable, Claire, the gym might
Speaker 1: go under. Everyone expects me to have answers. She listened,
Speaker 1: She understood. Things happened. Okay, I just to one night.
Speaker 1: I whisper a long pause, a few but mostly it's
Speaker 1: just talking as stupid. I know, but I felt seeing
Speaker 1: for the first time in months. You've been so busy,
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the podcast, and I kept thinking, if
Speaker 1: I got the business back on track, things we've come
Speaker 1: back for us too. His excuses spill up, work, stress, loneliness,
Speaker 1: my distance, all the sad, familiar tropes of a marriage
Speaker 1: and freeful. He says he never planned. It begs me
Speaker 1: to believe he never meant for it to go that far.
Speaker 1: I listened, numb. My mind catalogs every detailed, the WinCE
Speaker 1: in his voice, the slouch of his shoulders, the shame
Speaker 1: that makes him avoid my eyes. It's both less and
Speaker 1: more than I feared, less, calculated, more selfish, more but
Speaker 1: need than malice. He ruined us because he was desperate
Speaker 1: to feel special. Somewhere anywhere. Finally, I ask, are you
Speaker 1: still seeing her? Sleeping with her? He shakes his head. No.
Speaker 1: We ended it a swhere as soon as I realized
Speaker 1: what it meant. I've been trying to fix things clear.
Speaker 1: That's why I planned the getaway. I wanted to come clean.
Speaker 1: But he shrugs hopeless. I thought I could fix us first.
Speaker 1: I thought I could erase it. I feel a hollow fury.
Speaker 1: You can't fix it by lying more. You can't erase it.
Speaker 1: He burned the bridge and pretended you could float over
Speaker 1: the ashes. We stare at each other, both defeated. He
Speaker 1: takes a step toward me, but I flinch, so he
Speaker 1: stays put. At last, he says, quietly, what now. I
Speaker 1: have no answer for him. All I have is the
Speaker 1: crack of something beautiful collapsing under the weight of secrets,
Speaker 1: the knowledge that there is no way to unknow what
Speaker 1: I now know, no path back to the version of
Speaker 1: us that wrote vows in a sunnit garden and believe them.
Speaker 1: The immediate aftermath is a blur. I shuffle wordlessly into
Speaker 1: the guest room, the door clicking shot behind me, with
Speaker 1: the finality of a gavel strike. Jake throws things quietly outems,
Speaker 1: thumping against faber kinto daffel. I hear a muffled sort
Speaker 1: a curse, a scraping noise as he drags the bag
Speaker 1: into the living room. I don't sleep. I stare at
Speaker 1: the ceiling, counting slots of light from the window, absently
Speaker 1: rehearsing lines from my next podcast, as if repetition might
Speaker 1: offer comfort. I want to call Lusher to let the
Speaker 1: paint spill out, but I don't want to hear the
Speaker 1: pity in her silence. Not yet mourning jake'scomb by the
Speaker 1: time I drift up from shallow and satisfying dreams, his
Speaker 1: bag missing, his drawer half open. I forced myself out
Speaker 1: of bed, legs luod and face puffy and street. I
Speaker 1: packed my own bag, throwing in and off for days,
Speaker 1: maybe weeks, each eye to my cheese shirt podcast Mike
Speaker 1: Battered running shoes feels both practical and absurd, like a disaster,
Speaker 1: kids ssembled after the disasters already enfolded. I'll leave a
Speaker 1: note on the kitchen counter, three sentences long. I need time.
Speaker 1: Please don't contact me. I'll message when I'm ready. Lucia
Speaker 1: answers on the first ring keys are under the match,
Speaker 1: she says, before I can even ask arrive any time.
Speaker 1: Stepping out into the hallway, jim bag over my shoulder.
Speaker 1: I take one last careful look at the apartment, the
Speaker 1: scuff banister we were always going to fix, the photogrid
Speaker 1: of trips and laughing faces, the plans my mother sent
Speaker 1: as an insurance policy for togetherness. I don't feel together,
Speaker 1: not remotely, but I don't cry. I shut the door, quietly,
Speaker 1: stealing myself of the hall. The law beat, the wide
Speaker 1: open city beyond. The ride to Lucius is mercifully brief,
Speaker 1: she says, nothing at first, just envelops me in a
Speaker 1: Poland hug. I didn't know I needed arms sturdy round
Speaker 1: my shoulders, even as mine hang awkward by my sides.
Speaker 1: Stay as long as you want, she says. The scent
Speaker 1: of her lavender shampoo oddly ground ours past. I answer
Speaker 1: no calls from Jake. I don't even jeck. The text
Speaker 1: piling up. I type a short message to our friends Tom, Izzya,
Speaker 1: Mark and Counsel, all upcoming plans, answering their condolences with dry,
Speaker 1: abrupt assurances. Jake and I need some time apart. I
Speaker 1: try to keep it neutral, no embarrassing detail, no blame.
Speaker 1: I don't want to become gossip, though I know it's
Speaker 1: already begun. At Lucia's I collapse on the guest room bed,
Speaker 1: everything inside me liquified and useless. I tell myself not
Speaker 1: to cry, but the tears squeeze out anyway, as voluntary
Speaker 1: as breeding. Lucia hovers in the doorway, offering tea, tissues, space,
Speaker 1: whatever I'll accept. When I finally speak, it comes out
Speaker 1: in pieces, too much and not enough, half finished confessions
Speaker 1: and muttered curses. He said he felt invisible, blamed. Work
Speaker 1: said it was only a few nights that he tried
Speaker 1: to end it before it mattered. I'm so sorry, Lucia says,
Speaker 1: her voice steady, but none of that's your full Claire. None.
Speaker 1: We sit in silence for a long while, the city's
Speaker 1: afternoon street noise pizzing up through her old wooden windows.
Speaker 1: I want desperately to ask her what she knew, to
Speaker 1: press her about every sidelong glance, every awkward moment with
Speaker 1: our friends. But I'll let it go. The betrayal sits
Speaker 1: between us, a solid thing. She doesn't try to fix it.
Speaker 1: She just sits and breathes and waits as the sun
Speaker 1: goes down. I review my draft for the next week's podcast,
Speaker 1: half hearted, barely more than nose, and realize every line
Speaker 1: about partnership, synchrony, every day rituals is now afraid of meaning,
Speaker 1: hollowed out by what's happened. I close the laptop, listen
Speaker 1: for noises from the kitchen, then let my head sink
Speaker 1: down into the spare pillow, willing myself to sleep. She
Speaker 1: continues to call, sending apologetic texts, all variations on the
Speaker 1: same plea can we talk please, just once? I ignore them.
Speaker 1: The day after, Lucia finds me in the kitchen, hunch
Speaker 1: and silent. She hands me and Mark try to eat something.
Speaker 1: She says gently, Ye'll need your strength. I force down
Speaker 1: a banana, the bland taste sticking in my throat in
Speaker 1: a lull. I opened my laptop mindlessly habitually. My cusser
Speaker 1: hovers over the template for my podcast Weekly Up Day.
Speaker 1: I type and delete, type and delete. Unable to compose
Speaker 1: a public lie about the wholeness of my life, I
Speaker 1: can imagine recording a new episode, faking normal, inventing a
Speaker 1: cheerful check in for listeners who think I'm living the dream.
Speaker 1: I settle on one line this week, the stories on pause.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the investigation turnes too close to home. I schedule it,
Speaker 1: then close the laptop, feeling relieved and exposed at once.
Speaker 1: Lucia leaves for work the next morning, but not before
Speaker 1: she looks me in the eye. Just call if you
Speaker 1: want company, or quiet or misery pizza. I nod, grateful
Speaker 1: when I hear her keys jingle downstairs. The apartment settles
Speaker 1: into a thick, familiar hush. I set in the guest
Speaker 1: room for a long while, eyes tracing the delicate croucks
Speaker 1: and Lucia's ceiling and spoiling memories of the last five
Speaker 1: years with Jake. I think about Sunday runs, wedding toasts,
Speaker 1: shared secrets, all the rituals I counted on to insulate us.
Speaker 1: For the first time, though, I let myself see the
Speaker 1: fishes that run through with all the moments I dismissed
Speaker 1: my own instincts. The times are traded curiosity for reassurance.
Speaker 1: The thousand smaller visions that built into a waller couldn't
Speaker 1: scale until it crumbled under me. The city is a
Speaker 1: week outside, horns blaring delivery bikes whirring threw puddles left
Speaker 1: by the overnight rain. I watch the window light change,
Speaker 1: my body strangely heavy and light the same time, like
Speaker 1: I'm floating just above my own skin. Around noon, I
Speaker 1: put on my running shoes for the first time since
Speaker 1: everything broke open. They feel odd, as if borrowed from
Speaker 1: some earl her self lighter and more naive. I step
Speaker 1: into Lucia's hallway, down the staircase, and out onto the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: The street is busy for ivers leaning on their horns,
Speaker 1: the air bright and cold with the last gasp of
Speaker 1: wind off the river. I run, not far, not fast,
Speaker 1: just enough to feel the blood move under my skin.
Speaker 1: I tray side streets we used to jerk about getting
Speaker 1: lost in jog past the bakery which Jake won't surprise
Speaker 1: me with cossas at the Finnish Line. I look at
Speaker 1: these places and feel nothing sharp, only the distant pressure
Speaker 1: of something healing in a ragged, unfinished way. When I
Speaker 1: get back, flushed face and breathless, Lucious home, hunched over
Speaker 1: a laptop. She smiles when she sees my shoes. Good run,
Speaker 1: She asks, it was something I answer a start, Maybe
Speaker 1: she offers me coffee and I accept. She doesn't press
Speaker 1: me for details, doesn't demand I talk or make any
Speaker 1: decisions about next steps. Her presence is its own reassurance,
Speaker 1: a simple, durable kindness. I check my phone. Jake's texts
Speaker 1: have stopped, at least for now. There's a group message
Speaker 1: from Izzie and Mark offering support if I want it,
Speaker 1: saying they love me, that whatever happens, I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: I almost reply, then decide to wait. The space feels precious,
Speaker 1: a small reprief after months of vigilance and doubt. I
Speaker 1: a late afternoon, A familiar stubborness returns. I realize the
Speaker 1: next move, the final act of reclmmation, has to be
Speaker 1: something I choose, not out of reaction, not as a reflex,
Speaker 1: but out of the need to set a new baseline
Speaker 1: for myself. I change into fresh clothes, tie my hair back,
Speaker 1: and draft a final message to the one, to Jake,
Speaker 1: the one that closes the door he won't stop knocking on.
Speaker 1: I sit with it for a long moment. Phone balance
Speaker 1: to my palm. I need space. Please don't contact me again.
Speaker 1: I'll reach out if and when I'm ready. Take care.
Speaker 1: I hit send, then place the phone screen down on
Speaker 1: the desk. My chest feels bruised but clean. I take
Speaker 1: luziasper key from the kitchen counter slip it into the
Speaker 1: pocket of my jenes I stand for a beat in
Speaker 1: the growing light, then lace up my shoes again, feeling
Speaker 1: the ground solid underneath my feet. Before I leave, I
Speaker 1: clip my podcast mike to my back, close the guest
Speaker 1: room door behind me, and walk out of the apartment
Speaker 1: with my head held high. Outside the sky has cleared.
Speaker 1: I step into the morning, join the rush of runners
Speaker 1: and bikers and early commuters. The old roue calls me,
Speaker 1: but this time there is no one setting a pace
Speaker 1: but me. Each step is heavy, sure of determined. The city,
Speaker 1: bright and unfamiliar, opens of around me in new, unscripted ways.
Speaker 1: For the first time in weeks, I let myself turn
Speaker 1: away from the past and toward whatever is coming next.
Speaker 1: I run just from myself, and as I run the
Speaker 1: first corner, I find I can breath steadily. Every stride
Speaker 1: is proof of a new beginning in perfect but holy
Speaker 1: mine