Speaker 1: When I pushed open the door to our apartment at night,
Speaker 1: keys jangling so much louder than normal, I half expected
Speaker 1: a place to be dark and silent. Mark rarely got
Speaker 1: home before I did. His hours were as chaotic as mine,
Speaker 1: if not more, especially since the new project at the
Speaker 1: charity took off. But that evening light spilled into the
Speaker 1: hallway from the living room, and somewhere beneath it, a
Speaker 1: thrum of music Miles Davis, lazy and low, drifted toward
Speaker 1: me that should have felt comforting. We used to unwine
Speaker 1: to jazz on knights. We cooked together, or stayed up
Speaker 1: far too late, drinking wine and imagining places we might travel.
Speaker 1: I balanced a bright bag of Vietnamese take out, a
Speaker 1: lemon grass chicken, Mark's favorite on my hip, ready for
Speaker 1: a re enactment of Surprise Joy, maybe an impromptu dance
Speaker 1: around the kitchen. In my mind, he light up when
Speaker 1: he saw me how early, and we'd eat on the balcony,
Speaker 1: arguing over whether to split the peanut sauce. But as
Speaker 1: I stepped further in, Mark joked upright from the sofa
Speaker 1: in a way that made me pause. Just inside the doorway,
Speaker 1: he was half way out of his seat, or maybe
Speaker 1: just lowering a laptop screen with more force than necessary.
Speaker 1: His fingers fumbled with the edge of a well worn
Speaker 1: Navy messenger back sitting on the coffee table, except the
Speaker 1: bag itself wasn't familiar. I stopped short. He caught my
Speaker 1: glance too quickly and swung the bag awkwardly to the floor,
Speaker 1: half shoving it behind his legs. Blu of hay, he said,
Speaker 1: voice punching up an octave, the way it did when
Speaker 1: he landed a difficult client call. A smile stretched wide
Speaker 1: and brittle. Here early, are you supposed to be presenting
Speaker 1: to the telecom guys tonight? Meeting got counseled last minute.
Speaker 1: I figured i'd bring home something delicious for my favorite wacolic,
Speaker 1: I said, trying to read the space, the way his
Speaker 1: hands hovered over his laptop, or how his gaze flicker
Speaker 1: had just passed my face instead of settling on me.
Speaker 1: He scrabbed a palm over his mouth and straightened. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I just got super into charity logistics stuff for that
Speaker 1: renou Kikoff, you know, trying to make deadlines work. Before
Speaker 1: the retreat, he gestured vaguely in the direction of the
Speaker 1: closed laptop, the hint of sweat above his bread, belying casualness.
Speaker 1: How is your day? You look wiped? I shrugged out
Speaker 1: of my rain jacket, letting it land more noisily on
Speaker 1: the bench than usual. Something in me, brace the usual
Speaker 1: death by process improvement. I left to take ut back
Speaker 1: nowmnw on two orders of spring rolls and a spicy
Speaker 1: beef just for you, gifts for surviving another week. Mark's
Speaker 1: eyes widened in the way the dew when he's genuinely surprised.
Speaker 1: Done yet he didn't move to hark or kiss me. Instead,
Speaker 1: he led out a short laugh, a little too bright
Speaker 1: at the edges he read my mind, I'm starving. Even then,
Speaker 1: his foot nudge steered the navy back deeper beneath the
Speaker 1: coffee table. He busied himself setting the table, rippling paper
Speaker 1: knapkins out in a line, acting so absorbed in stacking
Speaker 1: chopsticks that it would take a full drama to distract him.
Speaker 1: He was talking about the budget for the renovation test,
Speaker 1: his consistence on life plants in the event hall, an
Speaker 1: anecdote about a volunteers showing up in this mass shoes.
Speaker 1: But his words rushed together and his answers to my
Speaker 1: question spiraled off topic. That edge, something about the chill
Speaker 1: behind his practice charm made me pause in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: hands hovering over the plates. You've seemed extra distracted lately,
Speaker 1: I said, aiming for playful. We haven't even had one
Speaker 1: of those late night balcony talks, and weeks am I
Speaker 1: being replaced by spreadsheets and power points. Mark smirt, barely
Speaker 1: glancing up as he unpacked food. Just tired, Babe, these
Speaker 1: projects swings killed me. Maybe this weakened. He ducked his head,
Speaker 1: pushing the conversation aside like a loose knakin, and slipped
Speaker 1: away toward the bathroom. I heard the shower stirred up
Speaker 1: before I could say anything else, the water road between us,
Speaker 1: as if he needed it to muffle whatever lingered and
Speaker 1: spoken in the air. Standing alone in the kitchen, I
Speaker 1: tried to shake it off. I told myself I was
Speaker 1: being dramatic. What was stressful. Our routines were fraying, as
Speaker 1: was the sorder of every couple warned you about. But
Speaker 1: the chill wasn't entirely in my imagination. It pressed against
Speaker 1: my chest, cold and sharp. Our apartment held the remnants
Speaker 1: of years built side by side. There was a dent
Speaker 1: in the kitchen island from when I dropped a crate
Speaker 1: of wine after our first prop a dinner patty in
Speaker 1: the hallway. The frames held inside jokes marksmid school EEBK
Speaker 1: photo my old campus. I d postcards from cities we'd
Speaker 1: cycled through together. Sometimes the ordinary could feel stifling as
Speaker 1: a fiven joy left finger prints. Lately, i'd notice Mock
Speaker 1: rarely looked at those photos as he passed, especially to
Speaker 1: one from last year's city ride. Our hair, wind blown,
Speaker 1: faces split by laughter. When did that change? Dinner was fine.
Speaker 1: We ate in near silence. Mark worked his way through
Speaker 1: the spicy beef of dutiful mouthfuls and told me about
Speaker 1: a new sponsor journing the charity. He didn't name them,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't unusual. His eyes barely met mine, darting
Speaker 1: to his foam when its he'd turned it over screen
Speaker 1: sided down, a habit he'd never bothered with before. Afterward,
Speaker 1: he slipped away, saying he needed to finalize some plans,
Speaker 1: leaving his laptop shut on the sofa. The navy bag
Speaker 1: was gone. I realize hours later that he'd quietly taken
Speaker 1: it into the bedroom while I was rinsing dishes. I
Speaker 1: didn't ask where he was going when he slipped out
Speaker 1: for a ron later, nor why he'd insisted he couldn't
Speaker 1: skip to night's training when he'd already gone the evening before.
Speaker 1: We'd always moved so easily together at the start. Seven
Speaker 1: years ago, Mark and I met at an opening for
Speaker 1: an offbeat sculpture exhibit, something neither of us really understood
Speaker 1: but pretended to. He'd worn a blaze of two sizes
Speaker 1: too small and made a joke about industrial de kay chk.
Speaker 1: I'd lost a ludly escared people off from the wine table. Later,
Speaker 1: we'd escaped the gallery on his old twin two helmets
Speaker 1: clipped over the handlebars, and cycled to my favorite late
Speaker 1: night fay A still remembered the light from the neon
Speaker 1: signs streaking his face. Blue quicks over glint in his
Speaker 1: eyes as he claimed he could distinguish money from mannet
Speaker 1: by brush strick alone. He couldn't and never learned. We
Speaker 1: crushed each other's friend groups without effort, my college out crowd,
Speaker 1: his grad school engineer folk, all friction free, laughter, always
Speaker 1: at the center. That first summer was a blur of
Speaker 1: meaningless bar trivia victories, bike toes through citizide parks, long
Speaker 1: mornings tangled in bed sheets and quas crumbs. Over the years,
Speaker 1: the rituals accreted. Sunday mornings with coffee laced with card amum,
Speaker 1: lazy walks through the farmer's market, who poured whose wine?
Speaker 1: At dinner parties, there were rules and spoken before the
Speaker 1: person arriving home, last round the dishwasher, and nobody used
Speaker 1: their good olive oil on weaknents. We fought when we did,
Speaker 1: with the awkwardness of people who worried about breaking the tenuous,
Speaker 1: perfect thing they'd built. The most recent was over a
Speaker 1: new condor. He preferred old charm. I wanted clean lines,
Speaker 1: but after our spoiled over spreadsheets, we picked a place
Speaker 1: with high ceilings and a balcony barely big enough for
Speaker 1: two folding chairs, and a potted cactus. We celebrated that compromise,
Speaker 1: were cheap sparkling wine, and a little too much pride
Speaker 1: in how adulted it all felt well. Family was born
Speaker 1: to My parents visited three or four times a year,
Speaker 1: always stayed just long enough to disrupt our routines and
Speaker 1: tease us about not providing grand goods. Mark's family was here,
Speaker 1: his sister Danielle even closer, four years younger, boisterous and hilarious,
Speaker 1: always at our parties, quick with a sarcastic comment about
Speaker 1: our matching by Gearro the way Marks nowed if he
Speaker 1: fell asleep during movie nights. My consultants who paid well,
Speaker 1: and Mark's design project spaces for non profits, renovations for
Speaker 1: local businesses have always made me proud, even when Freeland's
Speaker 1: workman scrambling between inverases and chasing dan lay checks. He
Speaker 1: jerked often about designed world and stability, but lately the
Speaker 1: opposite seemed true. He said only last month how the
Speaker 1: charity's new project gave him purpose a confidence boost after
Speaker 1: a string of slow months. But sometimes beneath that friction,
Speaker 1: Mark never quite shook the idea that my work devowed
Speaker 1: more energy of time, or that I saw the world
Speaker 1: in twelve weeks. Prince, while he wanted more space, debreathe
Speaker 1: once after a long week he'd made enough uncommon, too
Speaker 1: sharp about consultancy, widowhood. I've retorted about starving artist distraction.
Speaker 1: We apologize holding sweaty hands over marks of late night
Speaker 1: Cammele promising not to let routines become distance. We'd always
Speaker 1: always circled back to each other, fought our way through
Speaker 1: the awkward bits with the kind of raw honesty that
Speaker 1: made friends enviees and family relieved. Mark was the one
Speaker 1: I told about the promotion before even calling my mother.
Speaker 1: He was the one who found solutions when I freaked
Speaker 1: out about taxes or anxiety spirals who teased me for
Speaker 1: over researching by grendels and cities we barely knew. We'd
Speaker 1: survived losses, bad sex, shrinking social calendars in a way
Speaker 1: there until recently made me believe us it was solid.
Speaker 1: Maybe not glamorous, maybe not magazines, bread tidy, but real,
Speaker 1: rs the truth. I trusted Mark in the marrow deep
Speaker 1: way you do when you share door codes and secrets,
Speaker 1: when you believe no one else in the world knows
Speaker 1: the specific, precise frequency of your laughter. That night, I
Speaker 1: kept turning all this over as a layin bed, blinking
Speaker 1: up at the plaster swirl above our heads. I listened
Speaker 1: to the careful patterns of Mark moving through the apartment,
Speaker 1: the light under the door flickering off, and on, the
Speaker 1: distant sound of water running longer than a normal quick rinse.
Speaker 1: When he finally slept him beside me. He smelled of
Speaker 1: unfamiliar shampoo. I mumbled you okay, and he murmured all good,
Speaker 1: just tired, rolling away so our faced his back. I
Speaker 1: drifted off, feeling the gulf open, small but real. A
Speaker 1: few nights later, determined not to let whatever strange and
Speaker 1: the current had settled between us thicken into something sticky
Speaker 1: and permanent, I tried to kick start one of our
Speaker 1: old rituals. Our anniversary was coming up, a date we'd
Speaker 1: always made a big deal of, usually with elaborate, laughably
Speaker 1: over planned weekends away inside jukes layered on top of
Speaker 1: each other until they nearly buckle. I brought it up
Speaker 1: over breakfast, grinning at him overburned toast, So venish the ducks,
Speaker 1: or are you planning on surprise in me and call
Speaker 1: a lumper? He blinked, mug halfway to his mouth. Anniversary right,
Speaker 1: oh babe, the volunteer calendar is wild. Right now, We've
Speaker 1: got a sight visit, Plus the retreat weekend lines up
Speaker 1: almost exactly. Lots of hands needed. Could we may be
Speaker 1: celebrate another time? His face formed this helpless, apologetic smire,
Speaker 1: timing ag is there any chance he can move stuff around.
Speaker 1: I push, keeping my voice light, nudging his foot under
Speaker 1: the table. This is our one non negotiable weekend. I
Speaker 1: already reached the three client invites in your honor. You know,
Speaker 1: he hesitated a split second too long. It's really complicated.
Speaker 1: I'm basically signed up as team logistics. If I bail,
Speaker 1: things will fall apart. His phone buzzed again, flipped face down.
Speaker 1: I vibrated three times before he casually shoved it away.
Speaker 1: Dinner that night was and nothing of Entermark was wired,
Speaker 1: jittering his knee under the table, scrolling his phone between
Speaker 1: forkfuls of left over needles. He smiled when prompted, but
Speaker 1: not at anything. I tried to steer the conversation. Funniest
Speaker 1: anniversary memory, most ridiculous trip we ever took, he answered,
Speaker 1: but ever replied trailed off. When I asked if he
Speaker 1: wanted to look at Abe for a future weekend, he
Speaker 1: just shrugged, don't know where we'll be. Let's leave it open.
Speaker 1: I watched him chewing each bite for a minute. I
Speaker 1: was glazed, a foreslaugh at my stories. After he went
Speaker 1: to bed, clemming an early starts dress, Needing to catch
Speaker 1: up on plannings, I sat in the living room and
Speaker 1: scrolled through old photos on my phone, our first anniversary picnic,
Speaker 1: Mark feeding me strawberries while a thunderstorm friend he'd insisted
Speaker 1: on dancing under the eaves, barefoot and dumb me happy.
Speaker 1: Was that just nostalgia or had something concrete change, something
Speaker 1: neither of us wanted to name. I lay in bed,
Speaker 1: staring at the dip in Mark's pillow where his head
Speaker 1: should be. He's just hired, I whispered under my breath.
Speaker 1: We'd swap rolls open enough, Me buried on the consultancy,
Speaker 1: dead lioned and picking up slack around the house. But
Speaker 1: this felt to Miss Olyon like a painting hung free
Speaker 1: degrees off center. I rattled off excuses in my head
Speaker 1: until I finally fell asleep, face pressed into the cool emptiness.
Speaker 1: Days started slipping past, and fragments, each colored by attention.
Speaker 1: I couldn't quite explain what began, swapping out his old
Speaker 1: bat at work backpack for the new Navy messenger bag
Speaker 1: at one i'd seen him hide on a night of
Speaker 1: the ticket. I would see it in the mornings, slung
Speaker 1: over his shoulder as he ducked out, always sip and
Speaker 1: clasped tightly shut. He left the apartment earlier, returned later,
Speaker 1: claiming sight meetings for the charity, sometimes texting that he
Speaker 1: be home after midnight. When he did come in, he
Speaker 1: moved carefully, as if trying not to wig me, sliding
Speaker 1: into bed with the delicacy of a sleep wooker. I
Speaker 1: brought up the charities of coming benefit at breakfast, suggesting
Speaker 1: we invite. Lisa and Jordan are too close A friends
Speaker 1: tradition dictated we always went as a group to these things,
Speaker 1: cheering Mark on, over tipping bartenders, and dancing late. Should
Speaker 1: I emil Lisa see if she can get tickets, I asked,
Speaker 1: tossing him a hopeful look. Mark paus coffee, half witty
Speaker 1: his lips. Ah, it's just volunteers this time, babe. They're
Speaker 1: keeping it really small, you know, internal logistics, bored people.
Speaker 1: WI swamped. I don't want you board with all the
Speaker 1: fundraising talk. He forced a tight laugh, but his fingers
Speaker 1: tapped a beat on the counter. Fast and insistent. I
Speaker 1: shrugged it off as he left for another sight day,
Speaker 1: but the sense of being gently expertly excluded pressed at me.
Speaker 1: At the corner cafe that afternoon, I ran into Daniell.
Speaker 1: She greeted me with her usual tackle hug her house
Speaker 1: still barren traces of purple from her last weekend's festival.
Speaker 1: We ordered coffee, scaping a down pounder, the awning idle
Speaker 1: gossip until I mentioned I hadn't seen Mark in days.
Speaker 1: He was always off somewhere with the charity. Daniel rolled
Speaker 1: her eyes. I tried to get him to come for
Speaker 1: family dinner last Friday. He said he had blueprints to finish,
Speaker 1: but was weirdly vague. Didn't even tell me which sight
Speaker 1: he was on. She said it lightly, but I heard
Speaker 1: the note of confusion. Has it always been this consuming?
Speaker 1: I asked, my gaze hitching on her nose, raying the
Speaker 1: rhythm of the rain. Dan Ale shrugged, Not until this project.
Speaker 1: At least he seems happy, just scattered. Probably needs a break,
Speaker 1: she winked. When you two figure out vacation, cunt me in.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, Lisa texted Lisa, the Muscless, the keeper
Speaker 1: of secrets and snarky wisdom you saw at trivia to night.
Speaker 1: Bring you a game, she wrote, Mark had counseled sending
Speaker 1: her a message that couldn't make it a some last
Speaker 1: minute charity nonsense. I felt my face flush with embarrassment.
Speaker 1: Our team had never skipped a night unless one of
Speaker 1: us was sick. Lisa sent a meme of a woman
Speaker 1: sibbing wine alone. I half smiled, but my heart hand
Speaker 1: That evening, an emil pinged my phone a credit card notification,
Speaker 1: but an unusual charge. My eyes widened at dinner bill
Speaker 1: at a rooft up bar neither of us had ever visited.
Speaker 1: The amount was double any place we'd splurged on before.
Speaker 1: I brought it up. As Mark came out of the bathroom,
Speaker 1: towel round his waist, he went still O that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I to tell you we did a goodbye dinner for Ari.
Speaker 1: She's leaving the board. I paid, then got reimbursed by
Speaker 1: the charity. Actually forgot to VEMMO you back. He spoke smooly,
Speaker 1: but his oys tacked left, not quite meeting mine. We
Speaker 1: ordered like idiots, three desserts for five people. Did you
Speaker 1: go with the whole team, I asked, doing my best
Speaker 1: to sound usual. Basically, yeah, a couple board people. Tessa,
Speaker 1: you know, the event manager. She's new, but she was
Speaker 1: the one who set up the reservation. Fancy place but
Speaker 1: kind of pretentious. He laughed, waving a hand as if
Speaker 1: that sealed the topic. The next morning, Mark's phone vibrated
Speaker 1: on the counter while I pour coffee. I glanced down
Speaker 1: charity board. Virgin flashed the notification. Marx swooped him from
Speaker 1: the hull, gathering the phone, sliding it into his pocket
Speaker 1: with the ease of someone retrieving something precious. Just another
Speaker 1: logistics fire, he muttered. He'd never kept his phone so
Speaker 1: hidden before I made breakfast. As he dressed, his back
Speaker 1: to me, yet every movement seemed quicker, more precise, and
Speaker 1: odd undercurrent in his voice as he riffed off a
Speaker 1: list of volunteer headaches of Vender's bailing, missing supplies of
Speaker 1: vent permits delayed when I offered to help scout for
Speaker 1: back venues. I had contacts, after all, he declined. Too
Speaker 1: much juggling already, babe, don't want to drag you in
Speaker 1: that evening. As I hung my jacket on the door,
Speaker 1: I brushed against the new Navy bag. It was heavier
Speaker 1: than I expected. Fumbling with my keys, I almost asked
Speaker 1: off Wright, what's in there? But might Ton stalled. It
Speaker 1: wasn't fair as much as it was a kind of
Speaker 1: slow crawling uncertainty that made me wary of my own assumptions.
Speaker 1: A few days later, Jordan called to invite us to
Speaker 1: his birthday drinks. Should I count you in? Markin? He asked,
Speaker 1: voice ecling on speaker or is he still in hermit
Speaker 1: mode with the renovation. I put him on mute for
Speaker 1: a second, checking our kitchen calendar, but Mark interrupted, stepping
Speaker 1: into the room. Tell Jordan, I'll be late then to
Speaker 1: the phone. Sorry, man stuck organizing with the charity crew.
Speaker 1: Send photos. I'll try to drop after there was a
Speaker 1: stiffness in his voice, almost rehearsed. Jordan chuckled, but a
Speaker 1: beat later he added quietly, have you met Tessa their
Speaker 1: new events leeve. She's how should I say, mildly intimidating, magnetic? Actually,
Speaker 1: Mark seems to talk about her a lot when he
Speaker 1: comes up for air. Something pro me no introductions yet,
Speaker 1: Jordan's voice softened, probably for the best. She'd of charm
Speaker 1: her anyway. Somewhere in the week that followed a start
Speaker 1: account in details that might have once seen benign now
Speaker 1: waited with uncertainty in Mark's jacket, left draped on the
Speaker 1: arm of the sofa. After a late night I found
Speaker 1: a Stubb for a movie. I'd been wanted to see,
Speaker 1: a French drama I had mentioned when it was released.
Speaker 1: I turned the slip over in my hand, reading the
Speaker 1: date and time. Mark had claimed he'd been at a
Speaker 1: sight walked through late that night. I set the ticket
Speaker 1: on the kitchen counter, almost as a trap, But when
Speaker 1: he came home and saw he just gathered it up
Speaker 1: and stuffed it in the laundry pile without comment. Had
Speaker 1: he forgotten it was there or just didn't care. On Sunday,
Speaker 1: the sun bright and sharp in the sky, I set
Speaker 1: off alone on our usual bug circuit. The park was
Speaker 1: filled with families, runners, old men feeding pigeons, the clutter
Speaker 1: and rhythm of city life as familiar as my own
Speaker 1: heart beat. Usually Mark and I would ride together, pausing
Speaker 1: for minty at the leg side shack, complaining about the wind.
Speaker 1: This time I rode the loop solo, counting my breath's
Speaker 1: thinking I Trustmark, don't I? Was I inventing problems because
Speaker 1: I missed the frantic wild early days, or had the
Speaker 1: small abrasions and uncharacteristic silences become their own language. That night,
Speaker 1: as Mark read in bed, I sat with a pen
Speaker 1: and note that scribbling a list reasons to truss. He
Speaker 1: remembers my coffee order. He brings me flowers for no reason.
Speaker 1: He answers my calls, even when a meeting's reasons not
Speaker 1: to trust is story shift. His phone is always hidden,
Speaker 1: he's never at events with friends any more. His sister
Speaker 1: finds him wordly vague. My hand trembled as I added
Speaker 1: unusual expense rooftop bar, then scratched it out angrily. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was being obsessive, but I couldn't deny the way
Speaker 1: it felt like I was circling an answer I didn't want.
Speaker 1: I snapped the note bud shut and slid it under
Speaker 1: the pile of magazines. Mark looked up, pure quiet. Lately,
Speaker 1: he said, the edge of worry in his voice, his
Speaker 1: work killing you. There was a time I would have
Speaker 1: reached for his hand, spelled out every ache and doubt,
Speaker 1: But now the words stuck behind my teeth. I just nodded,
Speaker 1: just tired, I whispered into the dark. I resolved enough.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was a problem. Maybe the universe does this,
Speaker 1: but distance between two people and it's up to you
Speaker 1: to bridget or let us follow you whole The next evening,
Speaker 1: determined to take a stand against whatever shadow have fallen
Speaker 1: between us. I messaged Mark mid afternoon, meet me at
Speaker 1: Bancroft Wine barre at said, and spontanety required. I sent
Speaker 1: an animated gift of two cat sharing a plate of cheese,
Speaker 1: hoping to make him laugh. He responded almost immediately seven
Speaker 1: on the dot, I'll be their chief. I arrived at
Speaker 1: Early Heart hammering for years. This was our anchor spot
Speaker 1: where we toasted new promotions and mourned every setback. When
Speaker 1: Mark once mapped out his dream renovation business on a napkin,
Speaker 1: I snared a corner table, ordered us a bottle o versay,
Speaker 1: tried to quiet the internal storm. He slid him beside me,
Speaker 1: late by just three minutes, but he wore a pained
Speaker 1: apologetic look. Sorry, there was a board call. I'm here now.
Speaker 1: He seemed thinner in the low light, tied round the eyes.
Speaker 1: But there is a softness there too. So are you
Speaker 1: planning to run away and join the circus or just
Speaker 1: booking me for truvy practice, he joked, cleansing sight ways.
Speaker 1: I grinned neither. I'd just I miss us. I pushed
Speaker 1: the menu toward him. This place hasn't changed, felt like
Speaker 1: a good spot for a reset. Mark held my stare
Speaker 1: for the first time in weeks. He didn't look away.
Speaker 1: He reached struver and squeezed my hand, thumbstroking my palm live.
Speaker 1: I know I've been off. I'm sorry. Things had the
Speaker 1: chair to spun out way more work than I expected,
Speaker 1: and honestly, he took a long sip of wine collected himself.
Speaker 1: It's made me feel out of my depth. Honestly, after
Speaker 1: seeing how good your junior business driving, it sometimes feels
Speaker 1: like I'm flailing that It's not fair to you. He
Speaker 1: didn't sign him for this much distance or mess My
Speaker 1: shoulders dropped. He don't have to compete with me, Mark,
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be on the same team. If this
Speaker 1: project is that much, maybe pull back, he winced. I
Speaker 1: want to, but I can't. Not until the gale is done.
Speaker 1: Then retreat and ill, settled down swear. He reached into
Speaker 1: his messenger bag. Yes, the damned mysterious Navy. When n
Speaker 1: pulled out the tiny gift rat box. I know it's
Speaker 1: not our official day, but I saw this and thought
Speaker 1: of you. Inside a delicate next the pendant reminiscent of
Speaker 1: one i'd pointed out to a lisp and marked years
Speaker 1: ago but never bought. I love it, I said, for
Speaker 1: his horse. He leaned over, kissing my foreheaded gentle familiar
Speaker 1: the way he always did when the world felt jagged.
Speaker 1: We ordered share plates, told old stories, laughed over the
Speaker 1: time I got us hopelessly lost, cycling to the botanical
Speaker 1: gardens while we got home. Mark Ryan is dumb along
Speaker 1: my jolleyin eyes dark with apology, and pulled me into
Speaker 1: a kiss that was a little desperate, a little raw.
Speaker 1: It felt like falling back into a room I thought
Speaker 1: was locked for days. After things seemed to ease, Mark
Speaker 1: suggested a cycling Sunday, just the two of us. No
Speaker 1: talks about work, no phones except for selfies. He lingered
Speaker 1: over coffee, brought home pastries for breakfast on Friday, tucknotes
Speaker 1: in my coat pockets. I love your impossible optimism. Even
Speaker 1: his phone, once a permanent fixture in his palm, started living,
Speaker 1: face up on the counter again. The next Sunday, sunlight
Speaker 1: crep cross our bed sheets. Mark grinned at me, ready
Speaker 1: to prove who actually has the strongest quads. We loaded
Speaker 1: our bikes onto the car, joking and bickering over the
Speaker 1: best road. Try not to humiliate me in public, he sat,
Speaker 1: shouldering his helmet, eyes mischievous. We set off through the
Speaker 1: city's winding rivers. I track there, sharp enough to wake
Speaker 1: every dormant sile. Mark was nervous, checking his watch a
Speaker 1: little too often, but when I called him out, got
Speaker 1: somewhere more important to me, he laughed, pretending to swerve
Speaker 1: off the path somewhere near the arts district. He slowed,
Speaker 1: craning his neck. Let's loop around, he said, fearing on
Speaker 1: to a less popular route, residential, quiet, sprawling, old alms
Speaker 1: shading the path. I followed, panting a little, questioning the change.
Speaker 1: As we rode, A group of cyclists swept up behind US,
Speaker 1: branded T shirts touting the charity's logo. I recognized a
Speaker 1: few faces from photo's Mark had shown me, but there
Speaker 1: was some one else at the front of A woman
Speaker 1: was striking auburn hair and a quick magnetic smile. I seemed,
Speaker 1: without thinking that this must be Tessa. She waved at Mark,
Speaker 1: then cycled closer, a smile tightening when she caught sight
Speaker 1: of me. Hey, markognized turn out yesterday, she called, giving
Speaker 1: him a quick once of her, then nodding at me.
Speaker 1: I caught the briefest flash of something tension recognition. Mock
Speaker 1: smiled back, but didn't quite meet her gaze. We broke
Speaker 1: off soon after. Mark looked rattle checking over his shoulder.
Speaker 1: As the charity group's BedHead, he suggested taking a shortcut home.
Speaker 1: Rain in the forecast, he said, even though the sky
Speaker 1: was cloudless. I wanted to press him to ask why
Speaker 1: his demeanor shifted so quickly, but I held back. Later
Speaker 1: that afternoon, after I dozed off on the couch post ride,
Speaker 1: my phone pained with a message from Danielle. Did you
Speaker 1: see the smarks? Practically famous? Haha? Check out the photo
Speaker 1: in the charity newsletter. There was an image attached Mark
Speaker 1: in a charcoal blazer, standing beside Tessa, both smiling, Her
Speaker 1: hand rested lightly on the small of his back. They
Speaker 1: looked comfortable, as if sharing a private joke. A queer
Speaker 1: kind of cold spread through me. I scanned the caption
Speaker 1: Gala night last week. Mark hat claimed to be the
Speaker 1: work site that night, late into the evening, texting me
Speaker 1: apologetically that he wouldn't be home for dinner. The timeline
Speaker 1: started clicking into locking in ways that felt unfairly ordinary.
Speaker 1: Same night as the gala, same night as the expensive
Speaker 1: roofed up dinner. I scrolled through the rest of the newsletter,
Speaker 1: more photos of Mark and Tessa at various events, planning committee,
Speaker 1: a brunch, a late night auction. He appeared in them,
Speaker 1: often smiling, arm touching horrors, always looking away from the
Speaker 1: camera at the edge of her words, much chest tightened.
Speaker 1: I felt dimly the shape of something larger, more dangerous,
Speaker 1: sliding into focus. I wanted desperately to believe there was
Speaker 1: a reasonable explanation that I was reading too much into
Speaker 1: bodies aligned in a photo. That bad lighting and Hatbiston's
Speaker 1: always made things look more intimate than they were. I
Speaker 1: saved the newsletter, forwarding it to myself at work. Then
Speaker 1: I dialed Lisa, needing her clarity, her no nonsense perspective.
Speaker 1: She answered quietly, her background noise shushing like a vacuum. Hey,
Speaker 1: everything okay, that dinner at the rooftop place. Do you
Speaker 1: remember who was there? I asked, boystrain, trying to sound casual.
Speaker 1: Lisa paused, I didn't want to say before, but Mark
Speaker 1: was there with Tessa. Actually I saw them from the
Speaker 1: elevator lobby. Looked pretty cozy. I just figured it was
Speaker 1: charity work. Didn't want to start something if it was nothing.
Speaker 1: I listened, the words rolling over me like cold water. Believe,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I had realized, no, you did the
Speaker 1: right thing, I said, even though I didn't feel. That night,
Speaker 1: Unable to shake a spinning in my head, I started
Speaker 1: scrolling through the charity's social media feeds, every photo, every
Speaker 1: tigg event. There was Mark always next to Tessa. At
Speaker 1: the planning brunch, at the Gale after party, at what
Speaker 1: looked like a late night strategy session at some one's loft.
Speaker 1: A few comments caught my eye. Power couple, energy, the
Speaker 1: mock in Tessa, unstoppable volunteers I'd never met, chiming in
Speaker 1: as if it was obvious. I dug deeper past events, schedules,
Speaker 1: Instagram stories, tag locations. My fingers trembled as I started
Speaker 1: writing it all out dates, times, events, Mark's explanations, the
Speaker 1: nights he came home, late dinners and meetings, and phantom headaches,
Speaker 1: my scooble time, unsart at showing gaps, ovolays, stories that
Speaker 1: could not all be true. For the first time, the
Speaker 1: pattern wasn't gentle, wasn't the product of my imagination. It
Speaker 1: stared up at me, undeniable as architecture. I tried one
Speaker 1: last time to talk myself out of believing it. Mark
Speaker 1: was impulsive, terrible at managing calendars, always the type to forget,
Speaker 1: mentioning things that he genuinely thought were unimportant. He'd never
Speaker 1: lied up right before, had he, And yet yet something
Speaker 1: incontrovertible had woven itself through our ordinary life, transforming what
Speaker 1: once felt stody into a fragile, half seen blueprint. I
Speaker 1: sat on the floor of our living room, surrounded by
Speaker 1: scraps of paper and screen shirts, the silence of the
Speaker 1: room swelling until it felt like another presence. When Mark
Speaker 1: returned late at night, whistling, I listened to the pitch
Speaker 1: of his voice, the scuff of his shoes on the mat,
Speaker 1: and I realized for the first time that there was
Speaker 1: a story within our story, one where I was already
Speaker 1: playing catch up, and somewhat in the pit of my stomach,
Speaker 1: the real question shoped not just what he was hiding,
Speaker 1: but how much of what I thought was real had
Speaker 1: been quietly, painstakingly redesigned behind my back. Mark didn't see
Speaker 1: me at first. I stayed seated on the living room
Speaker 1: rock papers spread like some private doomsday prophecy. The familiar
Speaker 1: sounds of his arrival, keys hitting the glass bowl, shoes,
Speaker 1: note half heartedly by the door, gave me just enough
Speaker 1: time to scramble to my feet, to sweep stray sheets
Speaker 1: into a nearby magazine, and hastily reposition myself at the
Speaker 1: kitchen island, phone in hand. During my best parody of
Speaker 1: casual browsing, my face fell hot. It was almost funny,
Speaker 1: the perverse normalody of it, my heart working double, and
Speaker 1: my hands acting as if I had never been so.
Speaker 1: He patted in, barely glancing my way. Hey, trouble maker.
Speaker 1: He said that singsong tony used on good days. He
Speaker 1: glanced at the fridge. Did we ever agree if this
Speaker 1: expired yogurt is mine or yours? In another life? That
Speaker 1: would have drawn a laugh. I made an uncommittal noise
Speaker 1: and kept my eyes on my phone, scrolling a news
Speaker 1: article with my thumb, the text to meaningless bla. I
Speaker 1: was aware acutely of everything about him in that moment.
Speaker 1: The way he sniffed the yogurt krimis, chucked it and
Speaker 1: turned for a glass of water. His whole body language
Speaker 1: was relaxed loose shouldered, so practiced that I had to
Speaker 1: fight the urge to ask, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: How do you act so entirely a holme in a
Speaker 1: life that you're spending at the seams? Mark lean in
Speaker 1: the kitchen doorway, arms folded, eyes mildly inquisitive. You look
Speaker 1: wreck cycling, too hot, or existential dread again? I forced
Speaker 1: a smile, but of both. Probably his gaze linger trying
Speaker 1: to read me the way he always had accept This
Speaker 1: time it was his own reflection he was searching for,
Speaker 1: not mine. I wondered if he could sense it, the
Speaker 1: heat under my skin, the questions pimboling behind my eyes.
Speaker 1: He moved on, talking about nothing, pausing sometimes for imput
Speaker 1: I barely gave. We were shadows circling each other. I
Speaker 1: wondered how long this had been happening, if Mark was
Speaker 1: as uneasy in it as I was, or if his
Speaker 1: mind was simply elsewhere. Now that night, in bed, I
Speaker 1: waited for the right moment. Could I show him the
Speaker 1: newsletter de man answers? But he was so matter of fact,
Speaker 1: tugging off a sure kissing my forehead, murmuring, long week,
Speaker 1: Let's just crash. He was asleep within minutes, gentle even breaths.
Speaker 1: I lay wait, listening, moonlight turning our sealing silver. The
Speaker 1: next day brought little clarity and even more reasons to question.
Speaker 1: At work, the wall was conquered Project time Mind's strategy, sessions, deliverables.
Speaker 1: There were no ambiguous silences, no stories that failed under scrutiny.
Speaker 1: But the moment my phone buzzed with a message from
Speaker 1: Lisa Reality buckle lunch, she asked, I replied, yes, grateful
Speaker 1: for the anchor at the cafe at least watched me
Speaker 1: pick apart's scone in silence. He looked like you were
Speaker 1: grading the pastry for authenticity, she teased. I smiled weakly.
Speaker 1: If only real life came of checklists. She leaned in, OK, live,
Speaker 1: You're never this weird unless you're hiding something. Does this
Speaker 1: have to do with Mark counseling on trivia and disappearing
Speaker 1: at Jordan's party? I nodded, twisting my napkin. I'm worried.
Speaker 1: I think something's off. He's always gone. The work stories
Speaker 1: don't line up. There's Tessa and the gale of photos
Speaker 1: an I trailed off, biting my lip. Lisa's face softened.
Speaker 1: Do you want advice or just company both. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be crazy. Maybe it's just stress. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: really into this project, but the lies are piling up
Speaker 1: and I can't. My voice caught, She reached, squeezing my wrist. Look,
Speaker 1: I don't want to suggest things that aren't there. You
Speaker 1: know Mark better than any one. But if you feel
Speaker 1: this way, if you're this uneasy, there's probably a reason.
Speaker 1: She paused, What will you do? I shook my head.
Speaker 1: Part of me wants to confront him with all of it.
Speaker 1: But then if he's actually just hiding a surprise or juggling,
Speaker 1: what drumale feel like a lunatic. Lisa tapped her coffee.
Speaker 1: Do what you tell me to do? You'd tell me
Speaker 1: to ask, You wouldn't wait around, swallowing glass. The conversation
Speaker 1: gave me no comfort, but it sharpened my resolve At
Speaker 1: home that night, I resolved to pay clothes attention, to
Speaker 1: move through the days, observing Mark as if he were
Speaker 1: a client under oud. These were the things I noticed
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. He left early, but his hair was freshly styled,
Speaker 1: his shirt crious, pervatual callist days, peeking out effort that
Speaker 1: usually meant some high stakes meeting or formal event, not
Speaker 1: of sight day and construction dust. When I hugged him goodbye,
Speaker 1: he pulled away too quickly. On Wednesday, while water and
Speaker 1: our cats on the balcony, I watched him through the
Speaker 1: kitchen window. He was hunched over phone in one hand,
Speaker 1: typing so rapidly his knuckles went white. He looked up
Speaker 1: once caught my eye's face closed like a shudder, and
Speaker 1: he waved too cheerful before calling out, just fighting with
Speaker 1: delivery vendors. He then stayed off the balcony the rest
Speaker 1: of the evening, making phone calls at odd intervals, always
Speaker 1: low voiced, always slightly turned away. Two days later, a
Speaker 1: career arrived at delivery remark, a box heavier than a book,
Speaker 1: marked with the logo of a beautique stationary store. We'd
Speaker 1: only been to once, back when we were first dating
Speaker 1: and buying silly gifts for each other on birthdays. The
Speaker 1: packaging ornate. Mark's face shifted when he saw it. It
Speaker 1: supplies for the charity auction. Tessa wanted personalized place cards
Speaker 1: this time. You know how she is high standards. Odd
Speaker 1: because in his description of Tessa he never mentioned her
Speaker 1: pension for details before and When I later asked, were
Speaker 1: you able to return that extra set of wine glasses
Speaker 1: from last year's auction? We could use the credit. He
Speaker 1: feigned confusion before saying he'd already dealt with it months ago,
Speaker 1: which didn't line up with what I remembered. Everything small
Speaker 1: felt larger now. His explanations seemed both plausible and labored,
Speaker 1: even the details he'd once delighted in sharing with me.
Speaker 1: The corks of volunteers, the drama andresen were gone, we
Speaker 1: replaced with a vase of little nothings. That Saturday, I
Speaker 1: tried calling Mark in the late afternoon. The coal went
Speaker 1: straight to vosmail. I tuxted, grabbing groceries, want anything for dinner?
Speaker 1: No reply. I drove by the charity's project site, something
Speaker 1: I'd never have done before, but in the moment it
Speaker 1: felt justified. A few volunteers milled about, but Mark's car
Speaker 1: was nowhere to be seen, nor was Tessa's, if it mattered.
Speaker 1: I circled the block, suddenly worried someone would see me
Speaker 1: and make assumptions. I forced myself to drive home, but
Speaker 1: I felt dirty, complicit in my own suspicions. After dinner,
Speaker 1: Mark breezed and smelling of rich, spicy cologne, not at
Speaker 1: all like drible and dust. He was flush, slightly breathless, apologetic,
Speaker 1: but not convincingly so sorry. Board meeting ran over. Then
Speaker 1: I had to help task to get her course started
Speaker 1: old sobs, you know how they were. He laughed too loud, again,
Speaker 1: the sound echoing around the kitchen. I tried to match
Speaker 1: his energy, but felt like a cheap imitation of myself.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Maybe I'd reach a breaking point,
Speaker 1: or maybe Mack's contradictory stories made me reckoss But while
Speaker 1: he was showering that night, I opened the Navy messenger bag.
Speaker 1: I told myself this was the line. If I found nothing,
Speaker 1: I'd let it go, apologize to the universe for doubting
Speaker 1: the man I loved. Inside was a thick folder of blueprints,
Speaker 1: charity bruschures, a few vent invitations, and then tucked in
Speaker 1: an inside pocket to crumbled napkin, the high end kind
Speaker 1: from the roofed up bar, A lipstick mark on it,
Speaker 1: faint but unmistakable and not my shade at all. The
Speaker 1: initials TM written in pen under a smiley face. My
Speaker 1: hands vibrated. I put everything back exactly as I'd found it,
Speaker 1: sit the bag, arranged a strap with vorensant precision. I
Speaker 1: barely heard the water shut off or Mark padding into
Speaker 1: the bedroom until he asked, you coming in? Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: the word papery is ash. That night I barely slept,
Speaker 1: mind and spoiling every detail to test his hand on
Speaker 1: his back, her knowing look on the cycling route, the
Speaker 1: latch to gun, the knakin, the whisper you coming in,
Speaker 1: as if he could sense I was further away than ever.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I sat on the edge of the bed,
Speaker 1: twisting the new necklace between my fingers. Mark emerged from
Speaker 1: the bathroom in a fresh tea and joggers, leaning against
Speaker 1: the door frame with an air of studdied nonchalants pancakes
Speaker 1: as he asked, I'm heading to the market, I said instead,
Speaker 1: He looked at me side on. You want company? I
Speaker 1: stared at him, really stared, searching for something on the surface, gilt, regret, fear.
Speaker 1: I think I need some air alone, he chewed his lip.
Speaker 1: Whatever you need to live. At the market, I wandered
Speaker 1: in a day's skipping our usual venders. I ducked into
Speaker 1: a bakery and found Jordan sitting with coffee and a
Speaker 1: half eaten crona scrolling his phone. He looked up immediately,
Speaker 1: olivy out, where's your shadow to day? I forced a
Speaker 1: small smile. Mark's got meetings. Jordan drank his coffee, glancing
Speaker 1: over the rim. You two fighting. You seem tense. I
Speaker 1: slumped into the chair, just off balance. But you saw
Speaker 1: the charity event photos right, seems like he's proud of
Speaker 1: these new friends. Jordan put his phone face down, as
Speaker 1: if making a point. He seemed tight as ever at
Speaker 1: my party last month. Mark mentioned you was want at work,
Speaker 1: but raved about how Tessa basically runs the place. Said
Speaker 1: something about her splitting from her husband, dropping old commitments
Speaker 1: would have us out. Don't let charity board drama mess
Speaker 1: up your anniversary, He raised his eyebrows. Unless you're bored
Speaker 1: of him, in which case I'm available for dramatic break
Speaker 1: up dinners. I tried a laugh, but my stomach cramped.
Speaker 1: Never it's just word seeing him this involved. He's working
Speaker 1: all hours, Jordan shrugged. Honestly, he seems a bit manic
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe midlife crisis territory. But I don't get
Speaker 1: the impression there's anything weird with Tessa. She's kind of
Speaker 1: intense though, wouldn't want how mad at me? I thanked him,
Speaker 1: feigning comfort. He squeezed my hand as at left, telling
Speaker 1: me you're the smartest person I know. Trust your gut,
Speaker 1: but don't jump to war over nothing. On my way out,
Speaker 1: I checked my phone screenshirt at the event, photos from
Speaker 1: the charity page, and sent a single message to myself,
Speaker 1: what's missing? Staring at Tess's hand on Mark's back, eyes
Speaker 1: half lidded, Mark laughing into her ear. These were the
Speaker 1: images that convinced every one else they'd build something perfect, collaborative, generous.
Speaker 1: What story was hidden beneath the surface? Back home, I
Speaker 1: found Mark in the kitchen Abernon whisking eggs, pretending at normalcy.
Speaker 1: One for spinach this time. Thought I'd at my amic game,
Speaker 1: he said, cheerily. I slid into a chair, watching him
Speaker 1: prepare breakfast, every muscle in his body orchestrating the perfect
Speaker 1: domestic tableau. He glanced over, hesitant, you were kay, I hesitated,
Speaker 1: then said, you putting a lot into this charity project.
Speaker 1: You and Tessa get along. He didn't miss a bee,
Speaker 1: but a flicker of something gilt maybe cross his brow. Sure,
Speaker 1: She's a force, brutal but cares a lot. Makes me
Speaker 1: look like a slacker. I nodded, leaving space for explanation.
Speaker 1: He busy seat himself with the X, then turned. He
Speaker 1: seemed tense. If I need to back off, I will
Speaker 1: just little more until retreat's done. Okay. I watched him,
Speaker 1: every sense straining. Let's see how it goes, I said,
Speaker 1: half hoping he would offer the truth. Later that day,
Speaker 1: I started laying out everything I'd amassed. The newsletter, the
Speaker 1: lipstick napkin, the charge from the roofed up bar at
Speaker 1: the galifordo, the shifting calendar. I lined them up on
Speaker 1: the living room for my own personal crime board. I
Speaker 1: wrote questions in the margins, drew lines between dates and alibis.
Speaker 1: At the center was always Mark and always now Tessa.
Speaker 1: I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of its relationship. Consultant
Speaker 1: by trade reduced to arm sure detective in her own home.
Speaker 1: The next evening, as I finished sorting laundry, my fun
Speaker 1: buzzed with the message from Danielle found me dinner to morrow,
Speaker 1: hoping you guys can make it. Mark's bin a Miley lately,
Speaker 1: Mon's threatening to stage and intervention. I stared at the message,
Speaker 1: weighing the comfort of normalcy against the tension I felt
Speaker 1: in my bones. I replied, I'll ask him, hope we can.
Speaker 1: When Mark came in, humming absently, I broached the subject.
Speaker 1: Daniel wants as a dinner to morrow, I said. He
Speaker 1: shook his head almost before I'd finished, can't charity thing. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'll text her cover for me. I narrowed my eyes.
Speaker 1: D'ye even want me there? Or is this strictly for
Speaker 1: the loyal volunteers? Mark shot me a look, come on,
Speaker 1: you know you're always welcome. I just can't step away
Speaker 1: to night's final planning, last stretch, always the board's favorite,
Speaker 1: I said, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
Speaker 1: He didn't answer for a long moment, just poured himself
Speaker 1: a glass of water and left the room. I picked
Speaker 1: up my phone, thums hovering over the keyboard. I started
Speaker 1: to type a message, then deleted it instead. I poured
Speaker 1: a drink, sat on the balcony and watched the city
Speaker 1: lights flicker, knowing every apartment held stories, most of them hidden.
Speaker 1: At work, the next day, as coleagues pickered about a
Speaker 1: budget line, my mind darted between their voices in the
Speaker 1: text from Lisa, which had arrived that morning. Still okay
Speaker 1: for that catch, I've drink to night, he sounded off. Yes,
Speaker 1: I rode back immediately. We met early before the after
Speaker 1: work crowd. Lisa ordered whiskey, her eyebrows raised in sympathy.
Speaker 1: So are we talking about it? Or am I playing
Speaker 1: therapist by default? Talk? Please? I said, you were right,
Speaker 1: something's not adding up. We compared lest my evidence, her
Speaker 1: impressions from the night at the bar. She hesitated, swirling
Speaker 1: eyes in her glass. If you want me to follow
Speaker 1: up with any one, Jordan Danniell, just say so, or
Speaker 1: just be a sounding board. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: to do, I confessed, for swavering for the first time
Speaker 1: in days. If I bring it up and he denies it,
Speaker 1: am I supposed to move on and wait for new evidence?
Speaker 1: Or am I waiting to become someone I hate? Lisa
Speaker 1: squeeze my shoulder. You're not her. You'll know what to
Speaker 1: do when it's time. Just don't let him decide for you. Afterward,
Speaker 1: I walked home through dock streets. Our apartment loomed. The
Speaker 1: head light in the window marks shadows shifting against the curtain.
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready. I sat outside on the steps, letting
Speaker 1: the night saddle over me. From this vantage, the whole
Speaker 1: of our shared life looks so ordinary, so vulnerable, so
Speaker 1: heart breakingly intact, And yet inside, some way between the
Speaker 1: scarf I left in the hole way in the study
Speaker 1: lamp with its crack shades, something was roarting away inside.
Speaker 1: Mark was cleaning the kitchen musical. Hey, he said, eyes tired,
Speaker 1: but trying. Long day. I nodded, not trusting myself to
Speaker 1: say more. He approached hesitation, stretched between us. I know
Speaker 1: you're worried. I can see it. If something's wrong, He'll
Speaker 1: tell me right. How could I answer? I wanted to
Speaker 1: lay every fact out, the lipstick, the photos, the lies,
Speaker 1: and ask him to tell me I was wrong. Instead,
Speaker 1: I said, I just need some quiet. He nodded, reached
Speaker 1: for my hand, held it a moment, then let go.
Speaker 1: That night, before bed, I gathered every piece of evidence
Speaker 1: again and shoved them into a single folder. I placed
Speaker 1: it in my bag, sippered it tight. I would watch
Speaker 1: one more day, just one more day. The following morning,
Speaker 1: Mark suggested another cycling trip to Morrow's unsupposed to shine
Speaker 1: all day. Let's hit the old River lip. We'll raise
Speaker 1: for pastries at remas. I agreed, surprised at how much
Speaker 1: hope still flickered in my chest. Saturday dawn, bright and coal,
Speaker 1: Mark was chipper in a practiced way, double checking tigh
Speaker 1: pressure and swapping out his water bottle for one with
Speaker 1: the scuff charity logo. Ready to lose, he teas nadje
Speaker 1: my helmet onto my head. We rode through the city,
Speaker 1: legs pumping when sharp in our faces. At the half reapoint,
Speaker 1: Mark feared off the published route. Shortcut trust me, he called, grinning.
Speaker 1: I followed, and there in a leafy subbout, another group
Speaker 1: of cyclist approached, matching t shirts, laughter cresting above the
Speaker 1: sounds of traffic. Tessa was among them. Auben Hay spotted
Speaker 1: even at a distance, head tilted as mock waved. She
Speaker 1: grinned at Mark, then her gaze slid briefly to me,
Speaker 1: before her expression flickered closed. Mark cold, great ride yesterday,
Speaker 1: Tess force brightness. Tessa waved him off, saving your legs
Speaker 1: for today's retreat. Don't forget we need the keynote draft.
Speaker 1: She flashed a practice smile at me, but there was
Speaker 1: no warmth. We kept riding. Mark seemed lost in thought,
Speaker 1: barely glancing at me, tapping reflexively on his phone as
Speaker 1: we stopped for pastries afterward. I checked my phone while
Speaker 1: Mark chatted with the pastry clerk and found a messag
Speaker 1: from Danielle saw you too on the charity feed famous
Speaker 1: nap also photo of market last week weekscale had just
Speaker 1: got published. Looking sharp. Brochure was suits more often. They
Speaker 1: attached him and schloaded slowly. There again was Mark, Tessa
Speaker 1: beside him, her hand pressed intimate and perceptible to any
Speaker 1: one but me against a fabric at the curve of
Speaker 1: his back. I watched Mark at the counter, laughing with
Speaker 1: the clerk, and I realized how small the actor portrayal
Speaker 1: could look from a distance, just an arm around the shoulder,
Speaker 1: a smile too familiar as secret exchanged in plain sight.
Speaker 1: On the way home, I said nothing. Mark filled the
Speaker 1: silence for capping the day the route. Who'd won the
Speaker 1: pastry bed When I asked, pointily, you in test sine close,
Speaker 1: He shrugged. She's a great manager, makes the whole thing work.
Speaker 1: That night, while Mark shower, I opened the folder again,
Speaker 1: photo's receipts, the napkin, every fact, strip of interpretation. I
Speaker 1: laid them out on the bed next to the necklace
Speaker 1: he'd given me, and made a new list, this one
Speaker 1: with only two headings. What he's told me, What I
Speaker 1: can prove. There were too many gaps, too many nights
Speaker 1: that existed in negative space. Just before midnight, lise a message,
Speaker 1: can't sleep, check the charity page. Do you want to talk?
Speaker 1: I typed and deleted several replies. Then finally, tomorrow, I
Speaker 1: need back up. As I lay in bed next to
Speaker 1: Mark's warm breathing form, I realized I'd cross some invisible threshold.
Speaker 1: There was no going back to the kinds of questions
Speaker 1: you could ignore or explain away. Now the only thing
Speaker 1: left to do was ask out loud. My heart thudded quietly,
Speaker 1: a metronome for the truth I could no longer avoid.
Speaker 1: My heart thudded quietly, a metronome for the truth I
Speaker 1: could no longer avoid. There was barely light when I woke,
Speaker 1: anchored between the tangled bed sheet and the knowledge that
Speaker 1: I had made a silent promise to myself to day
Speaker 1: I would ask. Mark was still beside me, breathing slow
Speaker 1: and unfamiliar. His arm thrown toward my pillow, though not
Speaker 1: quite touching. I lay still, feeling every inch of space
Speaker 1: between us as if it were a physical thing, sharper
Speaker 1: than any spoken accusation. When he stirred, I pretended to
Speaker 1: be asleep. The shuffle of his feet, the cabinet doors
Speaker 1: opening and closing, the mute a click of his pawn
Speaker 1: as he passed through the kitchen, each sound cataloged and
Speaker 1: suddenly threatening. There was no more innocence to be found
Speaker 1: in the rustle of a sleeve or the scrape of
Speaker 1: a mark. By the time I stepped barefoot into the
Speaker 1: living room, my body felt brittle porcelain. Mark avoided my
Speaker 1: eyes instead. He left a cup of coffee steaming on
Speaker 1: the counter for me. He was already dressed to leave,
Speaker 1: lacing up his shoes with his quick practice motions that
Speaker 1: looked careless, but weren't. He hesitated. I've got a ton
Speaker 1: to knock out with the board this morning, he said,
Speaker 1: I probably won't be back until late. There wasn't anything
Speaker 1: about his words that could be called to lie on
Speaker 1: their own. That was the problem. He had become so
Speaker 1: good at telling the truth and pieces. I waited what
Speaker 1: to say, did I confront him, now wreck his morning,
Speaker 1: my own resolve half baked, or did I let this
Speaker 1: last slice of normalcy play out and gather myself for later.
Speaker 1: I let him go see you tonight, I managed, as
Speaker 1: calmly as I could. He squeezed my shoulder, barely touching me,
Speaker 1: looking forward to it live. The door closed, I heard
Speaker 1: the elevator were still. I waited five ten minutes before
Speaker 1: letting myself fall apart, forehead pressed to the cold marble counter.
Speaker 1: The day graveled around me, A cold and sick voice strained,
Speaker 1: then wanted the apartment, unable to sit, unable to re,
Speaker 1: unable to do anything except move through the mess of
Speaker 1: everyday life that now fundamentally altered, every room containing echoes,
Speaker 1: every drawer and shelf holding evidence old or knew of
Speaker 1: a life that might be gone. I called Lisa Today's
Speaker 1: the day. I said. She didn't have to ask what
Speaker 1: I meant. She came over in leggings and a hoodie,
Speaker 1: hare wrenched into a sloppy barn and she just hugged
Speaker 1: me at the door. We sat on the floor with
Speaker 1: mugs of tea, my folder open, everything poured out between us.
Speaker 1: I talked through the timeline, my voice growing colder with
Speaker 1: each new of a lap, dates for receipts, knackin lipstick, blueprints,
Speaker 1: the palpable absence of Mark's truth in all of it.
Speaker 1: Lisa listened and more than once shut her eyes like
Speaker 1: she was in pain. You're not making this up, she
Speaker 1: said gently. This is enough. I wanted her to be wrong.
Speaker 1: What if I'm reading it all wrong? The question came
Speaker 1: out strangled, She said her muggerside shook her head. Liv
Speaker 1: If it looks like this much from the outside, I
Speaker 1: promise you it's not just a mirage. You know what
Speaker 1: has to happen. The afternoon bled into evening. I put
Speaker 1: everything back in the folder, at the newsletter, the lifstick, napkin,
Speaker 1: the printers from social media, the credit card statement. A
Speaker 1: place is square in the center of the dining table,
Speaker 1: next to my handwritten list of what I could verify.
Speaker 1: Looking at it, I thought about all the times in
Speaker 1: the past when I'd done the same, organized chaos, mapped
Speaker 1: out client projects, debrief relationships for other people, never for myself.
Speaker 1: Sunlight faded, leaving the apartment too toned and cold. My
Speaker 1: stomach clenched, a sow not settling under my ropes. I
Speaker 1: texted Mark around six, as I knew he'd expect home whenever.
Speaker 1: Let me know if you want dinner saved, he replied
Speaker 1: with the thumbs up emoji, and then almost done. See
Speaker 1: you soon, as if everything was normal, as if we
Speaker 1: really were ourselves. I went to the bedroom and changed
Speaker 1: into jeans and a clean top. My hand shook as
Speaker 1: I pulled my hair back. There was something theatrical in it.
Speaker 1: I wanted armor. I didn't want him to see how
Speaker 1: mard I was. Lisa left at seven when she heard
Speaker 1: the elevator's distant ring. I'll be ten minutes away. Call
Speaker 1: if you need me, she said, softly, placing a hand
Speaker 1: on my shoulder. My heart pounded so violently I was
Speaker 1: surprised the wolves didn't ripple with its force. I sat
Speaker 1: at the head of the table, the folder of evidence,
Speaker 1: the neckers Mark had given me my note acal precisely arranged,
Speaker 1: not accusing, just facts. The front door clicked open. Mark's
Speaker 1: voice too casual, Hey, word day traffic was insane. I
Speaker 1: listened to the familiar sounds, keys in the bowl, the
Speaker 1: soft glide of his bag on to the bench for
Speaker 1: a split second, bathed by a golden lamp lay. He
Speaker 1: looked like the man I'd loved for seven years, rumpled,
Speaker 1: self deprecating ordinary. He stopped cold when he saw me.
Speaker 1: And maybe it was that the stillness, the way the
Speaker 1: room seemed to contract around him, the way he glanced
Speaker 1: at the folder on the table, that made my result
Speaker 1: snap tight set, I said, voice so steady, surprised even me.
Speaker 1: He hesitated, searching my face for what this was going
Speaker 1: to be. When he finally dropped into the chair across
Speaker 1: from me. I saw the moment he realized I wasn't laughing.
Speaker 1: How long have you been lying to me? My question
Speaker 1: was quiet, not a weapon of just a star. Mark
Speaker 1: looked at the folder, lips parting as wide with disbelief,
Speaker 1: then narrowed to something worry. W do you live? What's this?
Speaker 1: I placed my hand on the folder so that it
Speaker 1: toward him a few inches. I have dates, photos, receipts,
Speaker 1: I have every story that didn't have every time you
Speaker 1: told me you were somewhere in evidence. Should otherwise? He
Speaker 1: opened his mouth to protest, but I kept going, Mark,
Speaker 1: I know I know about the gala, about the rooft
Speaker 1: up bar, and about the movie about the lipstick. I
Speaker 1: know about the hours you spent with Tessa that were
Speaker 1: charity board meetings or emergency planning. So I'm asking out
Speaker 1: loud for the first and last time, how long have
Speaker 1: you been lying? He drew in a breath, jaw flexing
Speaker 1: hard for a stretched moment. He didn't answer, measuring the room,
Speaker 1: me himself, the space that might be salvagible. Finally, he broke,
Speaker 1: nothing happened. That's not Tessa and I. We just worked together.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been killing myself on this project. I
Speaker 1: didn't want you to worry. He always told me to
Speaker 1: find passion, to throw myself into something. Stop. I interrupted,
Speaker 1: not raising my voice. Tessa's hand on your back. The
Speaker 1: nights at the bar, there were written calendar at the lipstick.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just work. He looked away, fist clenched, breathing ragged.
Speaker 1: I waited. I want to hear the truth in your
Speaker 1: own words. Mark His shoulders cave, the facad gone all
Speaker 1: at once. Fine, Fine, he want truth. I screwed everything
Speaker 1: up that I didn't mean for it to happen. I
Speaker 1: didn't at first. It was just late nights, talking, venting,
Speaker 1: feeling like someone actually saw what I was doing. Tessa,
Speaker 1: she got what it felt like to create something, to
Speaker 1: want it to matter. He glanced at my face, desperate.
Speaker 1: It was never about you. It was never supposed to
Speaker 1: be anything but work. Then we went for a drink
Speaker 1: after the gale, everyone else left. We just kept talking.
Speaker 1: It got blurry. I should have told you, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't want he to look at me like I
Speaker 1: had failed, like I was less than you. My throat burned.
Speaker 1: How long has it been physical? He ran both hands
Speaker 1: to his hair, tension in every line. Two months, maybe
Speaker 1: a little longer. I told myself it wasn't real that
Speaker 1: I could stop, that you'd never have to know. But
Speaker 1: I kept making excuses, I kept digging myself in deeper.
Speaker 1: And I hated it. I hated lying to you. A low,
Speaker 1: ugly laugh escaped him, more despair than humor. I miss
Speaker 1: feeling wanted live. I missed feeling like myself. You're so
Speaker 1: good at everything, and I felt like a background character
Speaker 1: in your life for so long. His words hit with
Speaker 1: the violence I wasn't ready for. I stood kneading space,
Speaker 1: turning always so he couldn't see my face. Twist. You
Speaker 1: could have told me about any of it, I asked,
Speaker 1: over and over. I asked you to tell me. There
Speaker 1: was a pause, filled only by the sound of distant
Speaker 1: traffic and the click of the refrigerator cycling on. I
Speaker 1: was scared, he whispered, finally, scared of what it meant.
Speaker 1: I thought if I ignored it, if I buried it,
Speaker 1: maybe it would stop. Maybe it didn't mean anything. But
Speaker 1: it did, I said, voice almost gone. He buried his
Speaker 1: head in his hands. I'm so sorry, Live, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I walked to the window, meeting Oxygen, watching the city
Speaker 1: swall below, knowing our life was shifting permanently out of reach.
Speaker 1: Neither of us spoke for long minutes. When I turned around,
Speaker 1: his tears had dried, leaving angry red streaks on his
Speaker 1: cheek bones. I swallowed, collecting what scraps of strength I
Speaker 1: still had. You need to leave to night? His head
Speaker 1: snapped up. Where where am I supposed to go? A Danniell's,
Speaker 1: a hotel, anywhere that isn't here, I steadied my voice.
Speaker 1: I need space. We're done, Mark. He stood as if
Speaker 1: he was about to collapse, gathering his messenger bag but
Speaker 1: leaving everything else strewn around. He crossed to the door
Speaker 1: and hovered, looking back at me, searching for permission to
Speaker 1: undo what he'd done. I didn't give it to him.
Speaker 1: He left, quietly, shutting the door. With a strange finality.
Speaker 1: I felt I could down the hallway when I had,
Speaker 1: the elevator were in full still. The silence in the
Speaker 1: apartment seemed to press against my ears, hot and ringing.
Speaker 1: I leaned both hands against the sink and finally allowed
Speaker 1: myself to solve the kind of keening loss that left
Speaker 1: me empty and shaking. I don't know how long I
Speaker 1: stood there, enough that my face had from salt that
Speaker 1: my knees threatened to buckle. I wiped my hands on
Speaker 1: a dish towel and forced myself to do small things.
Speaker 1: Filled a glass of water, strip the kitchen of his
Speaker 1: mugs and water bottles, pulled down the photo of us
Speaker 1: from the city ride and set it base down on
Speaker 1: the counter. Every motion was both hollow and necessary, a
Speaker 1: dismantling of partnership, detail by detail. After I'd boxed up
Speaker 1: his things, I texted Danielle markus coming over. I need space.
Speaker 1: Please don't ask questions yet, she replied, instantly understood, I'm here.
Speaker 1: I send a brief message to my boss of family emergency.
Speaker 1: Need to morrow off and want to Lisa. He's gone
Speaker 1: Lisa cold. But I ignored it, instead, switching off my
Speaker 1: phone and curling on the sofa, every muscle trimmering with
Speaker 1: the knowledge that nothing I could do would make me
Speaker 1: whole again right now. At some point, grief turned to exhaustion,
Speaker 1: and I slept in the blue quiet before summerrise arose,
Speaker 1: legs weak. Without turning on any lights, I walked to
Speaker 1: the balcony, the city below, blanketed in the hush of
Speaker 1: early hours. My fingers closed around the necklace Mark had
Speaker 1: given me, absently twisting it until the chain almost broke.
Speaker 1: I breathed once, twice, three times. In the wall below,
Speaker 1: the city's life we started itself, indifferent and constant buses
Speaker 1: shuttered awake. The bakery lights flickered on, and the single
Speaker 1: robin perched on the empty by crack, sunrise brushing its
Speaker 1: feathers gold. I opened my phone found the final photo
Speaker 1: of me in Mark, riding, faces split with laughter, wheels
Speaker 1: in perfect tandem. For a long moment, I stared, seeing
Speaker 1: now each floor of the strain beneath my eyes, the
Speaker 1: gap between our shoulders barely noticed until it was too late.
Speaker 1: Then steady handed, I deleted the image one last time.
Speaker 1: I walked through the apartment, clearing the debris jacket on
Speaker 1: a hooked slipper's push under the bed. Every note he'd
Speaker 1: stuck into my coat pocket over the last week. I
Speaker 1: gathered them in a box, carried it to the storage closet,
Speaker 1: and left it there without looking inside. I returned to
Speaker 1: the balcony, sat with my niece pulled up to my chest,
Speaker 1: the city pulsing below, letting the cold winds sing the
Speaker 1: last tears from my face. The necklace rested cold and
Speaker 1: unfamiliar in my palm. I watched the doorner raised shadows
Speaker 1: in our building and knew there was nothing left to
Speaker 1: save between us. I let myself stay there, perched on
Speaker 1: the edge of cold tile, until the city sounds filled
Speaker 1: in what Mark's absence left behind. It wouldn't have surprised
Speaker 1: me if I had trouble breeding with all that silence,
Speaker 1: but instead, every moment the follow felt heavy with its
Speaker 1: own completeness. I traced the neckace's chain between my fingers,
Speaker 1: letting the chill remind me I was still here, stole
Speaker 1: someone with choices to make. After a while, the steady
Speaker 1: eg of my muscles forced me indoors. Sun Lights billed
Speaker 1: through the kitchen windows, glancing off the glass where I
Speaker 1: found Mark's finger prints from the night before. A half
Speaker 1: eging apple sat on the counter, exactly where he'd left it,
Speaker 1: brown at the edges. I picked it up, stared at it,
Speaker 1: then dropped it gently in the trash, cleaning up after
Speaker 1: someone rarely felt so deliberate, every small act gesture of
Speaker 1: control the kind had surrendered for weeks. A few misscals
Speaker 1: blinked on my phone, one from Lisa checking in call
Speaker 1: me if you want to yell, not yelled, tea from
Speaker 1: my mother voice mauls I couldn't quite face yet, and
Speaker 1: one from Dannielle, timestamped close to tree in the morning,
Speaker 1: jes he's here. He wouldn't talk to me much and sorry,
Speaker 1: love the apology's done, even if it wasn't hers to make.
Speaker 1: I moved through the apartment, mechanically boxed up the keyring
Speaker 1: Mark always claimed from our dish, slept the study for
Speaker 1: his loose receipts, collected his hoodie from where he'd abandoned
Speaker 1: it on my side of the bed. After so much slippage,
Speaker 1: I found a strange, bracing reassurance in the decisiveness of it.
Speaker 1: He was gone, and I owned the space he vacated.
Speaker 1: It was late morning before I finally called my mother back.
Speaker 1: She answered on the second ring, a tremor in her voice, Olivia, sweetheart,
Speaker 1: what's going on. I pressed my forehead to the wall.
Speaker 1: Not now, mam. I just wanted to hear you, she hesitated,
Speaker 1: maybe weighing stories the vice maternal panic. We're close by
Speaker 1: if you need us. You don't ever have to go
Speaker 1: through these things on your own. Okay, I knowed, I managed,
Speaker 1: but I do want to be alone for a while.
Speaker 1: I set the phone down, barely resisting the urged mute
Speaker 1: it entirely. This was what the aftermath looked like like,
Speaker 1: Not rage or screaming or the fireroks of disaster, but
Speaker 1: the quieter, persistent work of disassembly. I returned to the bedroom,
Speaker 1: opening closet doors, stripping away the pieces that belonged to Mark,
Speaker 1: stacking them with a tired precision on the floor. There
Speaker 1: was an exhilaration in it, a subtle defiance. I didn't
Speaker 1: sob again. Not then. The crying was over, replaced by
Speaker 1: an odd, purposeful clarity. Everything felt separate, as if I
Speaker 1: were floating a few inches out from the world and
Speaker 1: mower but waitless. By mid day, the apartment had taken
Speaker 1: on a half empty hushrooms, echoing each surface just a
Speaker 1: little too bare. I washed my face, found a fresh shirt,
Speaker 1: and stared at myself in the mirror. Even my reflection
Speaker 1: seemed changed, sharp or somehow, eyes red but unbroken. I
Speaker 1: clung to that I hadn't disappeared in the wreckage round too.
Speaker 1: There was a knock at the door. For half a breath,
Speaker 1: my heart lapsed, some primal idiotic part of me hoping
Speaker 1: Mark would stand there, repentant, asking for a conversation he'd
Speaker 1: earned too late. But it was Lisa, holding bags of groceries,
Speaker 1: her eyes red roomed in solidarity. She didn't say anything
Speaker 1: at first, just set everything on the counter, then hugged
Speaker 1: me so hard I nearly buckled. We ate without talking,
Speaker 1: both of us understanding that words would come eventually, but
Speaker 1: when required. Just yet. She made me drink ginger tea
Speaker 1: and chase me out of the kitchen. When I tried
Speaker 1: to help wash up sit she said in her full
Speaker 1: monster voice, but then caught herself her gay searching my
Speaker 1: face for cracks. Do you want to tell me what
Speaker 1: you're feeling or should we do the silent richeal, she asked,
Speaker 1: tucking her legs under her on the sofa. I don't
Speaker 1: know what a field, I admitted. It's not what I thought.
Speaker 1: It's not even heartbreak. It's like I'm waiting for the
Speaker 1: next thing to shatter, and all I was quiet. Lisa
Speaker 1: tilted her head. Sometimes quiet is the only thing left.
Speaker 1: It just means a storm already passed. We sat together
Speaker 1: at the television, playing muted runs, neither of us really watching,
Speaker 1: comforted by the calmonness of the moment. Eventually, she squeezed
Speaker 1: my knee, want me to stay to night. I shook
Speaker 1: my head, thank you, But I think I need to
Speaker 1: do one last thing on my own. When she left,
Speaker 1: the world took on that strange double vision quality again.
Speaker 1: Every room was lighter, less familiar. The frame photos were
Speaker 1: gone from the shelves, Mark's charger no longer curled in
Speaker 1: a corner, his sneaker absent from the rat by the doorway.
Speaker 1: In the distance, I heard city traffic pulsing and relentless
Speaker 1: of background. Hunter whatever shape my pain would take next.
Speaker 1: It was dark by the time. I must have the
Speaker 1: courage to open my work email, bracing myself for the
Speaker 1: usual deluge. But all my boss had written was take
Speaker 1: what you need. Everything can wait. Even there in the
Speaker 1: impersonal lines of a work message, I felt a kind
Speaker 1: of seering gratitude. For a few minutes, I stared at
Speaker 1: my screen, thinking not about Mark, but about everything else
Speaker 1: I hadn't yet lost. Mark's final prisons in the apartment
Speaker 1: lingered longer than I'd expected. A single sat wedge behind
Speaker 1: the dryer, the smell of the shaving cream in the
Speaker 1: bath room, a half bottle of wine we'd opened when
Speaker 1: days ago. Weeks for no reason. He'd left a note
Speaker 1: on the washing machine, let me know when I can
Speaker 1: come for the rest. I don't want to make this
Speaker 1: hard of the little riddiers. His handwriting too careful, too measured.
Speaker 1: I crumpled the note and bend it. Then, on a wild,
Speaker 1: stupid whimsorded the laundry by myself for the first time
Speaker 1: in years, throwing out everything too stained, too small to
Speaker 1: his The phone vibrated quietly at the edge of the
Speaker 1: dining table. Another message from Danielle. He's not talking. You
Speaker 1: don't have to reply it. I just wanted you to
Speaker 1: know I care about you. I'm sorry. This time, I
Speaker 1: type back, it's not your fault, thank you for being kind.
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel angry, to summon rage, to blame
Speaker 1: Daniel for being family, but there was only exhaustion and
Speaker 1: an odd, cleansing sense of relief. It was over. That
Speaker 1: was what no one told you about betrayal. The world
Speaker 1: didn't end even when it should have. Instead, life stubbornly persisted,
Speaker 1: reshaping itself around the gap. I drifted toward the bathroom,
Speaker 1: flipping the overhead light, a hairbrush on the counter, holding
Speaker 1: a single strand of Mark's hair. Once, these tiny domestic
Speaker 1: entanglements had meant love, intimacy, years shared. Now they felt grotesque,
Speaker 1: out of place, as if some stranger had wandered into
Speaker 1: a house and left artifacts behind. I started bagging up
Speaker 1: the last few items, his cologne, his old university's richard,
Speaker 1: the un new set of keys. The process felt endless,
Speaker 1: but it was a ritual. At demarcation, I was drawing
Speaker 1: the line, now, declaring, at least in this space, at
Speaker 1: least in this moment, that he did not live here
Speaker 1: any more. Before bed, I stared at the Navy messenger
Speaker 1: back abandoned in the rush. I considered tossing it in
Speaker 1: the hallway of the trash, but instead set it on
Speaker 1: the edge of the couch, just in case he needed
Speaker 1: one last reminder that what he took from here was
Speaker 1: now his burden, not mine. At some point I found
Speaker 1: myself on the balcony again, a blanket draped over my shoulders.
Speaker 1: The city blinked up at me, indifferent, radiant, alive. If
Speaker 1: I turned my head, I could see the empty space
Speaker 1: where our bucks used to be, the place where I'd
Speaker 1: once thought we'd hinng planters build a future as endless
Speaker 1: as the sky line. I held the necklace he'd given
Speaker 1: me between my fingers, cold and familiar, it had traveled
Speaker 1: so quickly from chiversh to meaningless. Finally, hands steady, I
Speaker 1: unclasped it and set it on the metal table, letting
Speaker 1: it glindare the last piece of a story. I was
Speaker 1: done living inside. I didn't sleep until the edge of dawn.
Speaker 1: There was no dream, just the gradual renewal of silence,
Speaker 1: the absence of his breath beside me, and proventually sunlight
Speaker 1: pulling me back to my own body. Every cell tide,
Speaker 1: but still sure. The next day, I received a single
Speaker 1: text from Mark. I hesitated a long time before opening it.
Speaker 1: I know you don't owe me anything. If you need closure,
Speaker 1: i'll answer otherwise, I'll stay away until you se say otherwise.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for everything. I stared at the words, wondering
Speaker 1: if there was any truth still left in them, or
Speaker 1: if he was already halfway gone, even from himself. But
Speaker 1: I considered and then closed the phone, slipping it into
Speaker 1: the drawer with the other runnants of our failed architecture.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to sift through apologies or excavate reasoning.
Speaker 1: He could have the last word if he wanted it.
Speaker 1: I had no use for it now. When evening came,
Speaker 1: I lit a single candle at the edge of the balcony,
Speaker 1: pulled my knees up to my chest, and sat in
Speaker 1: the hushest traffic slowly thin down below. I could feel
Speaker 1: the city's pulse, could sense my own, and for the
Speaker 1: first time in so long, neither belonged to any one else.
Speaker 1: When I finally stood, I did not look back at
Speaker 1: the living room behind me, did not check the kitchen
Speaker 1: for stray memories, did not write what could have been
Speaker 1: the necklace, sat abandoned on the table, delicate and silent,
Speaker 1: catching only the faintest gleam from the street lights below.
Speaker 1: I wrapped my arms around myself and stepped back inside,
Speaker 1: leaving it in the entire chapter outside as the door
Speaker 1: clicked softly behind me,