Speaker 1: It's just after midnight, and the kitchen smells of charred
Speaker 1: rosemary and wilted endive traces of the dinner I'd spent
Speaker 1: all Saturday preparing duck breast ban my sour plum tarts,
Speaker 1: those little fermented tea eggs Lee pretended to love, mostly
Speaker 1: because one of our friends said, umami bomb in a
Speaker 1: reverent voice. I'm elbow deep in dishwater, scraping plates we'd
Speaker 1: barely touched because Lee left early for gallery prep. The
Speaker 1: last guest had made polite noises about my solo hosting powers,
Speaker 1: then let the door ease shut behind her. Now the
Speaker 1: place is just me, the crunch of glass on tile
Speaker 1: under my sock, and a sticky, faint wine slick on
Speaker 1: the countertop. I set my phone on a folded paper
Speaker 1: towel and start the next sinkful, watching the bubbles blur
Speaker 1: the shape of the empty wine glasses. My hands ache,
Speaker 1: maybe from scrubbing, maybe from something else. I nudge the
Speaker 1: phone on, figuring up podcast would take the edge off instead.
Speaker 1: The last thing I opened still sits on the screen.
Speaker 1: Lee's latest Instagram story, a profil photo is her in
Speaker 1: paint caked overalls, head thrown back in full open laughter
Speaker 1: her gallery face. It's a photo someone else took. The
Speaker 1: contrast is jarringly sharp. She looks so happy, free, surrounded
Speaker 1: by five people. I don't recognize. The caption stings more
Speaker 1: than I want to admit. Found my people couldn't do
Speaker 1: it without you. All Last year she used nearly that
Speaker 1: same phrase, only she was leaning against my shoulder, raising
Speaker 1: a toast to our New Year's crew at Candle Light Lounge.
Speaker 1: I try not to take social media literally, but as
Speaker 1: I swipe to the next story, there's a boomerang of
Speaker 1: Lee's spinning in the gallery foay paints splattered in her hair,
Speaker 1: cheeks flushed. The comments under each post are effusive. Seriously,
Speaker 1: who are these people? One guy with a severe jawline
Speaker 1: uploads a black hand white filter of Lee painting. Hashtag
Speaker 1: muse my phone pings push notification new group chat gallery collective.
Speaker 1: It's the first time have been added. The chat bubbles
Speaker 1: bounce around as I unlock the screen. It's a thread
Speaker 1: I've never seen before. Mina Sylvian, Julia Marco, some one
Speaker 1: called Ivonne. The thread auto scrolls up. Good night, Lee,
Speaker 1: see you to morrow. For round two, row and twenty
Speaker 1: Mina drops a selfie of the group in a heap
Speaker 1: on the gallery floor, Lee in the center, grinning. I
Speaker 1: scroll up, looking for my name, for any reference to
Speaker 1: my existence, but it's all shop talk and emojis and
Speaker 1: still buzzing from to night. I pause with my finger
Speaker 1: hovering was this meant for me? Did Lee add me
Speaker 1: as a one off? Or did some one else do
Speaker 1: it accidentally? I glance around our kitchen for a sign,
Speaker 1: the Lee plus keV painted plate on the sideboard, the
Speaker 1: cheap museum prince he hung above the espresso machine. Everything
Speaker 1: is still here, but Lee's absence feels new, raw, like
Speaker 1: an empty seat at a table that nonger needs setting.
Speaker 1: When did I become the one out of place in
Speaker 1: my own home? Had she noticed, truly noticed the way
Speaker 1: things had shifted? Or was it only me counting ghosts
Speaker 1: where nothing had been changed on the surface. I leave
Speaker 1: the last glass soaking and wipe my hands, then open
Speaker 1: my own chat with Lee. The last few messages are practical.
Speaker 1: What time are you coming home? Everything okay? Save me
Speaker 1: a plate, she replied an hour ago. Sorry, lost track,
Speaker 1: studio stuff, no heart, no inside joke, not even a zoxo,
Speaker 1: Just efficient. I thumb a blank message field, but nothing
Speaker 1: comes out. I close the chat instead. In the quiet,
Speaker 1: the only sound is the fridge ticking, and somewhere outside
Speaker 1: the faint thump of music, probably from the gallery. I
Speaker 1: ask myself, honestly, am I just being left behind? Or
Speaker 1: is Lee the one drifting into something she doesn't want
Speaker 1: to explain. People always talk about instant chemistry, the first
Speaker 1: magnetic touch of hands, the laughter that cracks out without warning.
Speaker 1: For us, it was the echo of some one else's voice,
Speaker 1: a tour guide's monologue at a conceptual art show that
Speaker 1: neither of us cared for, though we'd each bought the
Speaker 1: overpriced tickets for different reasons. I met Lee on a
Speaker 1: wet Thursday in March at a pop up gallery in
Speaker 1: River North. She wore a thrifted puffer and shoes with
Speaker 1: violet laces, and she rolled her eyes so hard at
Speaker 1: the phrase met architectural liminality that I nearly snorted my seltzer.
Speaker 1: I covered my mouth. She caught me. We waited until
Speaker 1: the guide slid into the next room, then slipped back
Speaker 1: and whispered caustic commentary on each installation until we were
Speaker 1: out in the rain with our hoods up, laughing, neither
Speaker 1: in a hurry to go home. We'd both come to
Speaker 1: Chicago for work, too stubborn to admit we felt out
Speaker 1: of place. She just landed a gig at Wyman plus Greer,
Speaker 1: the architecture firm that prized precision over poetry. I was
Speaker 1: freelancing as a developer, handling legacy code for small clients,
Speaker 1: deady but unimpressive. I thought we each had stories of
Speaker 1: things we wanted to build or design that employers dismissed
Speaker 1: as indulgent. That night, after noodle bowls at Furious Spoon,
Speaker 1: we rode the Blue Line together. She fell asleep on
Speaker 1: my shoulder, and neither of us said good bye. At
Speaker 1: her stop. It all felt natural. Five years later we
Speaker 1: bought this two bedroom in log and square, with wood
Speaker 1: floors and high ceilings, too much white wall space to
Speaker 1: fill all at once. Lee insisted we hang only original pieces,
Speaker 1: no reprints. That became a ritual. Every month or so
Speaker 1: we'd earmark a little money, find a piece by a
Speaker 1: local artist, and argue about its placement for an afternoon.
Speaker 1: It was an odd sort of way to claim territory
Speaker 1: in a city full of strangers. A day to day
Speaker 1: built up quietly, a layering of chores and jokes. Tasks
Speaker 1: always divided. She hated vacuuming. I hated loading the dish washer.
Speaker 1: We'd host long, noisy dinners for our group half her
Speaker 1: architecture circle off my tech world friends. Evenings stretched across
Speaker 1: the dining table or onto the back patio when weather allowed.
Speaker 1: Sunday mornings we had a checkpoint brunch at table L
Speaker 1: and a walk to check out the rotating front window
Speaker 1: mural at Vertice. If a week was particularly rough, either
Speaker 1: Lee's project manager demanded too much or one of my
Speaker 1: clients ghosted me, one of us would pick a new
Speaker 1: restaurant so the other could escape the grind, as Lee
Speaker 1: called it. On rainy saturdays, Lee would spread out tarps
Speaker 1: in the spare room and we'd each work on canvases.
Speaker 1: She sketched architectural forms in charcoal. I bled color fields
Speaker 1: across six dollar panels from blick. Sometimes we'd swap, laughing
Speaker 1: at each other's ruins. Once she painted an entire skyline
Speaker 1: of stick people holding smartphones, and I threatened to submit
Speaker 1: it to her annual review. We never wanted kids. It
Speaker 1: wasn't an argument so much as a shared understanding a
Speaker 1: luxury of making our own, meaning both of our families
Speaker 1: scatter on the coasts, would send us Venmo for our
Speaker 1: birthdays and then forget to call our friends. Julia, alex Mina, Dan,
Speaker 1: Sophie acted as our chosen family. It worked mostly if
Speaker 1: I was honest. We did have friction. Lee's independence was
Speaker 1: at first what I found most magnetic. She wasn't the
Speaker 1: type to wait on plans or slow down to let
Speaker 1: others catch up. I loved her drive, but sometimes I
Speaker 1: felt like she was already half way down the next
Speaker 1: street and I was jogging to keep up. She'd needle
Speaker 1: me good naturedly. I thought about disappearing into code for
Speaker 1: days at a time. If I missed a dinner out
Speaker 1: because of a last minute deadline, she'd sigh and say,
Speaker 1: someone has to keep you interesting. It was funny, but
Speaker 1: sometimes only almost funny. In the last year, something shifted.
Speaker 1: Lee's firm was recognizing her in ways that made me
Speaker 1: proud but also quietly jealous. She led two major projects,
Speaker 1: got invited to present at design conferences. My work, steady
Speaker 1: but underwhelming, began to feel dwarfed by hers. Then came
Speaker 1: that brutal winter. Lee's office slowed, her calendar opened. She
Speaker 1: seemed smaller, quieter, more vulnerable. Some part of her, the
Speaker 1: one that always sought connection and novelty, started looking for
Speaker 1: something more. I tried to fill the space, more walks,
Speaker 1: spontaneous gifts, movie nights where we ordered everything Lee wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted her to know I saw her, even if
Speaker 1: I didn't always understand what she needed. Now it seems
Speaker 1: the world's reversed. She's found something new, people new late nights,
Speaker 1: and I am the one still in the kitchen wondering
Speaker 1: why she doesn't reach for me first any more. It
Speaker 1: started as a passing comment at brunch, Lee chattering over
Speaker 1: her cappuccino while I finished my second espressor. The collective's
Speaker 1: going to be wild, she said, We're doing an overnight
Speaker 1: installation blitz. They need an architect who actually sketches. I
Speaker 1: grew relieved. She sounded animated again. That's awesome. They're lucky
Speaker 1: to have you. What's the plan? She went on about
Speaker 1: an abandoned studio in Pilsen, how the gallery's new exhibition
Speaker 1: needed a full repint, found objects, entire walls reimagined. There
Speaker 1: were references to Dardarists all night jams, the kind of
Speaker 1: artists who valued vibes more than blueprints, urban ghosting, whatever
Speaker 1: that means, she joked, half rolling her eyes. I said
Speaker 1: I could help with logistics, maybe run some late night food,
Speaker 1: anything to be involved. She didn't say. No, Just it's
Speaker 1: a madhouse, babe. I'll barely know which way is up.
Speaker 1: You should probably stay clear unless you want a paint
Speaker 1: bomb in your hair. We both laughed. The names of
Speaker 1: her new crew tumbled out, Julia, who I knew from
Speaker 1: our old party circuit, joined by Mina Sculpture, Sylvin Multimedia,
Speaker 1: Marco Painter, and Yvonne in stall Tech. I nodded along,
Speaker 1: pretending I recognized each one. That Ma loco guy, she said,
Speaker 1: he built his own pigment mill wild. Some nights, I'd
Speaker 1: catch Lee at home, crouched over sketches, her phone buzzing
Speaker 1: every few minutes with group texts and calendar chimes. A
Speaker 1: patchwork of enthusiasm, anxiety, and secrecy settled around her. When
Speaker 1: I pressed for details. So who's actually leading this project?
Speaker 1: He'd shift, suddenly vague. Honestly, it's kind of a free
Speaker 1: for all. No one's in charge exactly. Then she started
Speaker 1: being unavailable on studio nights, calls would roll to voicemail.
Speaker 1: My texts hung unread for hours. When she replied, it
Speaker 1: was always a breezy sorry caught up with the team,
Speaker 1: or a smile emoji and nothing else. One night, after
Speaker 1: I finally managed to wrangle some friends over for dinner,
Speaker 1: Julia was among them. Sophie, one of Lee's oldest friends
Speaker 1: and a notorious gossip, pulled me aside. I thought you'd
Speaker 1: be there last night, she said, twirling her earring. Lee
Speaker 1: was at Tears food truck after midas night with that
Speaker 1: fascinating painter. She keeps talking about the curly hair guy Marco.
Speaker 1: Seriously intense but clever. You'd like him. She wriggled her
Speaker 1: eyebrows in a way that was supposed to be conspiratorial,
Speaker 1: but only made my skin crawl. I was sure Lee
Speaker 1: hadn't mentioned midnight tacos or being with Marco. Maybe I
Speaker 1: just missed a throwaway comment, but I felt left out.
Speaker 1: That same week, Lee started sleeping in the guest room
Speaker 1: after gallery nights, claiming the paint fumes were nasty, might
Speaker 1: even be toxic. I just don't want to keep you up,
Speaker 1: she added a little too brightly, but when I tried
Speaker 1: to check in ask if everything was okay, if she
Speaker 1: wanted ginger tea, she'd be curt mutter, distracted, fine, keV
Speaker 1: just tired. The next morning, she'd stick to the other
Speaker 1: side of the kitchen island, barely looking at me. Once
Speaker 1: I found her notes open beside her coffee, half raised
Speaker 1: and scribbled through at odd angles, as if she didn't
Speaker 1: want me to see. Maybe I was tell us of
Speaker 1: her new camaraderie, or maybe I just missed her. I
Speaker 1: tried not to catastrophize. Adults have separate lives, right, Maybe
Speaker 1: this was just what it looked like to be married
Speaker 1: to someone more vibrant, plugged in, and for the first
Speaker 1: time in her element. But when the next dinner came
Speaker 1: a Thursday, late spring, and Lee texted at five that
Speaker 1: she just have to miss it again, I caught myself
Speaker 1: reading over her messages twice, trying to pase meaning from
Speaker 1: her minimalist punctuations don't wait up, love you all, exclamation,
Speaker 1: no signature. I stood in the kitchen after everyone left,
Speaker 1: the lights from the apartment across the street reflecting in
Speaker 1: our own windows. Was I the only one feeling? This?
Speaker 1: Was Lee chasing something? I never had to offer That week,
Speaker 1: I decided to reclaim some of the narrative. Lee was
Speaker 1: always energized by action, so I offered to drive down
Speaker 1: to the studio with her help, carry supplies, a few
Speaker 1: rickety stools, massive stretches of cans, even a box of
Speaker 1: snacks for whoever was pulling the long shift. She appreciated
Speaker 1: it in theory, but waved me off. It's pretty wild
Speaker 1: right now, she said, head deep in her overnight bag.
Speaker 1: I know you wouldn't enjoy it. It's really chaotic inside jokes,
Speaker 1: music blaring, everyone flinging ideas around. I survive on red
Speaker 1: bull and cold pizza and like zero structure. Trust me,
Speaker 1: it's only fun if you're in the group already that's strung.
Speaker 1: Even if it made sense, I hovered, trying to find
Speaker 1: another way in. Maybe I could just drop something off,
Speaker 1: or swing by for a late dinner after, maybe take
Speaker 1: you home. She flashed her tight work politics smile. Let's
Speaker 1: not sometimes we're still sorting out big conceptual fights at
Speaker 1: two a m. And then it's just crash or you
Speaker 1: hate every one in the room for an hour. She
Speaker 1: kissed my cheek, but I caught her glancing at the clock,
Speaker 1: rain check, keV. Maybe I should have pushed, but I
Speaker 1: told myself to trust her. Twice I overheard late night
Speaker 1: murmurings from the hallway. Lee's office door barely cracked. Once,
Speaker 1: she answered in a whisper, Yeah, yeah, no, just five
Speaker 1: more minutes. Another time, Mina, I swear I triple checked
Speaker 1: the wall dimensions, Marco said, before trailing off. Mina's name
Speaker 1: was new, but Marco's now seemed to pop up everywhere,
Speaker 1: even when Lee talked about things unrelated to painting. Julia
Speaker 1: at our next happy hour, grinned sideways at Lee and me.
Speaker 1: You missed one hell of a paint fight with Marco,
Speaker 1: she said, would have loved to see you clean that up, keV.
Speaker 1: Julia assumed I knew all about it. Lee just flicked
Speaker 1: her wrist dismissively. He's a menace with a squeeze bottle,
Speaker 1: That's all. I felt like a tourist in my own marriage,
Speaker 1: forced to smile along with inside jokes i'd never share.
Speaker 1: That feeling only thickened when, while sorting our budget's sheet
Speaker 1: one afternoon, I found an unfamiliar charge, A pricey bottle
Speaker 1: of Ya Mayzaki whiskey, A cut above anything, we'd spring for.
Speaker 1: The invoice read thanks for the collab, scribbled in a
Speaker 1: spiky hand. I asked Lee about it that night on
Speaker 1: the couch. She shrugged, too light. Oh, it was a
Speaker 1: group gift for the team leader. We all chipped in
Speaker 1: Marco's birthday. I figured if I bought it, reimbursements would
Speaker 1: be easier. She breezed past the topic, making herself a drink.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure whether to push, so I let it drop.
Speaker 1: Her recaps of the days became quick, just a lot
Speaker 1: of prep, nothing special or Marco kept spiraling on the mural.
Speaker 1: He's such a perfectionist. After a while, it all sounded
Speaker 1: intentionally dull. We fell into a rhythm of missed connections.
Speaker 1: Lee would come in, smelling of acrylix and turpentine, shower quickly,
Speaker 1: then collapse either in the guest room or slip out early,
Speaker 1: crashing at the studio. She described it as practical, too far,
Speaker 1: too late, too much hassle to you. But back physical
Speaker 1: closeness dwindled too. Mornings, she'd snag her coffee and avoid
Speaker 1: the touch of my hand. Focus pinched on her phone,
Speaker 1: headphones in bed sheets started cooling fast. Each keeping to
Speaker 1: our own side, whether together or apart, I tried awkwardly
Speaker 1: to insert myself. Dropping by a mutual friend's show one Friday,
Speaker 1: Lee's collective entered in a noisy clump. Everyone seemed to
Speaker 1: orbit Lee, all eyes, all energy on her. She made
Speaker 1: a grand entrance, lighting up as she wrapped Mina in
Speaker 1: a hug. Exchanging cryptic quips with Sylving. They bantered about
Speaker 1: last Thursday's disaster, Gray Primer apocalypse, Lee's secret superpower, none
Speaker 1: of which made sense to me. I hung back, making
Speaker 1: small talk with the few people I recognized from old
Speaker 1: dinner parties. Later, as I tried to piece together a
Speaker 1: group for a toast, one of the artists this guy
Speaker 1: with an angular beard, maybe Sylving, teased Lee. Someone drove
Speaker 1: home in style last night. Ha, although those late night
Speaker 1: lift rides living the high life, Lee, she laughed, if
Speaker 1: only man must be thinking of someone else, all I
Speaker 1: get is a splatter headache. It was friendly light, but
Speaker 1: I felt like there was something in it I wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to hear. After the show, Julia posted a photo
Speaker 1: Lee and a striking man, tall, curly hair, expressive hands,
Speaker 1: resting just beside hers. The two leaning in toward the camera.
Speaker 1: In the comments, Yvonne joked power couple alert. Mina left
Speaker 1: a string of fire emojis that night. Scrolling through feeds,
Speaker 1: I asked Lee while she moved laundry from the dryer,
Speaker 1: what's with the power couple jokes on Julia's post. Didn't
Speaker 1: know you and Marco were quite that tight. She rolled
Speaker 1: her eyes at the towel in her hands. It's just
Speaker 1: art world teasing. Julia likes to stir. Seriously, Marco is
Speaker 1: all energy, zero game. Also, he's married. She said it
Speaker 1: like a preemptive answer, a closing of any further question.
Speaker 1: So I made myself believe her for a while. But
Speaker 1: two mornings later, on my walk to the l I
Speaker 1: paused by the gallery window. There inside, Lee and Marco
Speaker 1: stood close, laughing, Marco brushing a fingertip through a blob
Speaker 1: of wet paint on Lee's nose. She shrieked, laughed, play
Speaker 1: slapped his shoulder. He leaned in too intimate. Even if
Speaker 1: nothing more happened, they lingered like the world was blurred out.
Speaker 1: By the time I passed, they'd split apart, business as usual.
Speaker 1: That night, over takeout, I brought it up. You and
Speaker 1: Marco seem pretty tight. I saw you through the window.
Speaker 1: Lee looked blank for a split second. Yeah, well, we
Speaker 1: were fixing the mural. He's a dork. I promise you'd
Speaker 1: love him if you met him. He and his wife
Speaker 1: host game nights. All the artists have to show up.
Speaker 1: You d tell me if something was you know, weird? Right?
Speaker 1: I pressed, I love you, she said, slow but distracted,
Speaker 1: looking at her phone. Marko is married. I hide nothing
Speaker 1: from you. I told myself to let it go, except
Speaker 1: the pattern only grew on a gray Sunday, while rain
Speaker 1: hammered the window and Lee nursed a mug in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: I finally put my worry into words as gently as
Speaker 1: I could. I feel like I'm not part of your
Speaker 1: world any more, I said, trying to hold her gaze.
Speaker 1: Is there some one else? Lee? She set her mug
Speaker 1: down with a soft thunk. For a second, her face
Speaker 1: twisted real pain. I thought, keV, what, no, no, where
Speaker 1: is this coming from? Her eyes filled suddenly, and she
Speaker 1: tucked a strand of hair behind her ear a nervous tell.
Speaker 1: I'm just this project is huge. All eyes are on
Speaker 1: me now, especially Marko's wife. She runs the whole business side.
Speaker 1: She's terrifying. If she thinks we're getting too chummy, she'll
Speaker 1: start policing every breath I take. I hide stuff from
Speaker 1: her shore, but nothing from you. She came over and
Speaker 1: took my hands, squeezing hard. Come to the next gallery
Speaker 1: event see for yourself. I want you there. The following evening,
Speaker 1: I put on a real shirt, brushed my hair, and
Speaker 1: walked in with Lee. It was full buzzing. People clapped
Speaker 1: her on the back, pulled her from conversation to conversation.
Speaker 1: I met Marko's wife, Gabby, a tall woman with a
Speaker 1: sharp handshake and a schedule in her eyes. She watched
Speaker 1: Lee with cool, evaluative interest, but was civil to me.
Speaker 1: I watched Lee and Marco no touching, only laughter, and
Speaker 1: the same back and forth with the other artists. I
Speaker 1: even talked to Marco at the bar. He was witty,
Speaker 1: if distracted, quick to talk about pigments, and never about people.
Speaker 1: By the end, I felt both reassured and exhausted by
Speaker 1: the effort. I told myself Lee must be right. The
Speaker 1: group was close, but the lines between connection and flirtation,
Speaker 1: secrecy and community, they seemed solid drawn with gallery tape
Speaker 1: not open to erasure. Lee took my arm as we left.
Speaker 1: See you're in the SAR cucle two. Nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: But the next night, after Lee fell asleep in the
Speaker 1: guest room again, I went to look for a sketch
Speaker 1: She'd promised to show me one of her concepts in progress.
Speaker 1: She told me to always check her main sketch book,
Speaker 1: so I paged through half way in slipped just under
Speaker 1: tracing paper divider, I found an unsigned note on heavy
Speaker 1: stock paper. It was a short, awkward scrawl. Thanks for
Speaker 1: last night meant everything M. It was unsigned, but the
Speaker 1: M was unmistakable. I ran my thumb over the indentation,
Speaker 1: feeling the difference between what Lee said and what her
Speaker 1: world actually looked like. Was I reading too far into it?
Speaker 1: Was it just an inside joke? Or did this mean
Speaker 1: what I feared For the first time. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: how careful Lee's explanations sounded. Something was happening, after all.
Speaker 1: I sat with myself, the evidence, the contradiction. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to become the guy scrolling through his wife's phone
Speaker 1: or reading her email. Still, I wanted to face what
Speaker 1: was happening with open eyes. I began quietly tracing the
Speaker 1: practical details. Noticing calendar invites, Lee hid under private session
Speaker 1: receipts for supplies. I'd never seen expenses labeled late night
Speaker 1: run to addresses I couldn't place. I started to note
Speaker 1: patterns whenever there was a private sketch session blocked out
Speaker 1: in Lee's calendar. Marco's name was also in her group texts.
Speaker 1: These were not public events. They ran late hours after
Speaker 1: the group's official meetings broke up. Most of the names
Speaker 1: from the group never seemed to attend, or if they did,
Speaker 1: they always signed off hours earlier. Casually, I reached out
Speaker 1: to Julia one afternoon, Hey, so, who usually closes up
Speaker 1: shop at the gallery? I thought about dropping by, but
Speaker 1: didn't want to spook anyone. She glanced at her phone, considering, honestly,
Speaker 1: Lee and Mark usually pulled the all nighters. The rest
Speaker 1: of us bail around one a m. Those two were
Speaker 1: just extra when it comes to the mural. It's their baby. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Julia didn't linger, maybe thinking I already knew the shape
Speaker 1: of things. I started checking Lee's lift history through our
Speaker 1: shared account. Most rides were straightforward gallery supply runs home,
Speaker 1: but one kept recurring, a late trip to an address
Speaker 1: in West Town I didn't recognize. Always between midnight and
Speaker 1: two a m. It wasn't a studio. It was a
Speaker 1: private residential building. I pulled up Google street View tension rising,
Speaker 1: a red brick walk up, no gallery anywhere near by.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see the buzzer, but the time stamp on
Speaker 1: the receipts built a mosaic. Private sessions, always when everyone
Speaker 1: else was dead on their feet, with rides to a
Speaker 1: place Marco mentioned once off handedly as his home workspace.
Speaker 1: Still there was no absolute proof. Yet it was all
Speaker 1: in implication, plausible deniability. I tried not to become cold
Speaker 1: or confrontational at home. I was more careful with my questions,
Speaker 1: tracking what Lee would share. I watched her flinch at
Speaker 1: the sound of incoming messages. I watched her linger outside
Speaker 1: the bedroom, texting before slipping in after she thought I
Speaker 1: was asleep. One night, when Lee left early for in
Speaker 1: stall work, I took a walk that just happened to
Speaker 1: lead me near Marco's block. I hung back beneath a tree,
Speaker 1: feeling faintly ridiculous, a grown man reduced to amateur sleuth.
Speaker 1: But then there was Lee's voice and laughter. I saw
Speaker 1: Marco let her in touching the small of her back,
Speaker 1: the door closing softly, the night air went thin. Ten
Speaker 1: minutes later they emerged, each holding a different canvas, hair
Speaker 1: must clothe specked, neither looking at the other directly. Lee
Speaker 1: looked different, subdued, but glowing at the edges with something
Speaker 1: I couldn't name. They said a few words, then Marco
Speaker 1: called her a lift. I followed the car at a
Speaker 1: distance for a block, my heart thumping, and then let
Speaker 1: it go. Later she came home in fresh genes, make
Speaker 1: up slightly scrubbed. She acted normal, told me she'd been
Speaker 1: painting the night away. She reheated old coffee and asked
Speaker 1: if we could have breakfast out that weekend. I started
Speaker 1: a list notes in a locked file, entries for each ride,
Speaker 1: each bill, each calendar mark. That didn't add up, Julia's
Speaker 1: passing comment about late closings, the mural, the so called
Speaker 1: secret collaboration, Marco's wife's absence from those sessions. Everything was
Speaker 1: adding up, converging on a pattern too relentless to ignore.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what to do next. Every piece of
Speaker 1: evidence sharpened my vision. Every explanation Lee gave sounded thinner,
Speaker 1: more practiced, and still some part of me desperately wanted
Speaker 1: to be wrong. I wanted to think I'd find a
Speaker 1: reasonable answer, a miscommunication, an overblow, own fear, something that
Speaker 1: would let me lock away the suspicion for good. But
Speaker 1: deep inside I recognized something else. Lee's new found glow,
Speaker 1: her sense of freedom and energy, were not just about art,
Speaker 1: not just about creativity. They were about privacy, the thrill
Speaker 1: of being seen once more by someone who wasn't me.
Speaker 1: And now I was the one left in the margins
Speaker 1: of a life we'd built together, wondering just how long
Speaker 1: it had been since Lee had let me in on
Speaker 1: the truth. It's a stretch of days when everything at
Speaker 1: home settles into what must look from the outside like normal.
Speaker 1: Lee leaves early or crawls in late, trailing paint smudges
Speaker 1: and stories about impossible deadlines. I wake up first, take
Speaker 1: my coffee by the living room window, work, surrounded by
Speaker 1: blank walls and the steady hum of my laptop. We
Speaker 1: pass each other, her on her way to the shower,
Speaker 1: me shuffling out of the kitchen, and manage a joke
Speaker 1: or two about whose turn it is to buy oat milk.
Speaker 1: There's a brittle politeness in her voice that pinches. Some days,
Speaker 1: she nearly overcompensates, pausing to rub my shoulders, leaning in
Speaker 1: to press a kiss to my jaw before rushing out
Speaker 1: the door. If I try to hold her for a
Speaker 1: second longer, she stiffens, then slips away with a love you, babe,
Speaker 1: already aimed at the hallway. One night, around two a m.
Speaker 1: I wake to the sound of creaking floorboards. I crack
Speaker 1: the door and catch Lee shuffling quietly around the entryway,
Speaker 1: peeling paint caked clothes off, careful not to bump anything.
Speaker 1: She doesn't see me. I don't say anything. I hold
Speaker 1: my breath and listen as she sighs, a long, flat breath,
Speaker 1: the kind that collapses after an adrenaline rush. Her phone
Speaker 1: lights up on the window sill. She glances at it,
Speaker 1: types quickly. Then she stands for a minute in the
Speaker 1: darkened kitchen, head bowed, fingers fiddling with the edge of
Speaker 1: the countertop. It looks like a prayer or penance, or
Speaker 1: maybe exhaustion. In the morning, she's gone before I get up.
Speaker 1: For the next week, I try to stay busy. I
Speaker 1: schedule unnecessary check ins for freelance work, rearrange my Trello
Speaker 1: boards book a drinks night with Dan and Sophie. She
Speaker 1: declines the invitation, claiming deadline hell At the gallery, Sophie
Speaker 1: raises an eyebrow over the rim of her glass when
Speaker 1: I tell them Lee's too busy for gin or gossip,
Speaker 1: but doesn't push, just says they miss her, that she
Speaker 1: hasn't answered their memes or Zebra video spam. In days,
Speaker 1: Mina the only collective member I've shared more than high
Speaker 1: with comments under one of Lee's posts, sleep is for
Speaker 1: the dead studio zombies. I like the comment, mostly to
Speaker 1: see if Lee notices. She never mentions it. On Thursday,
Speaker 1: I decide to try again. I text Lee in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: I made your favorite lemongrass soup. Let me know if
Speaker 1: you want company after the studio. I attach a dumb emoji,
Speaker 1: trying to keep things light. No response for three hours.
Speaker 1: When she replies, it's just so sweet. Not sure what
Speaker 1: time will break, but will try kiss kiss A kiss.
Speaker 1: Kiss feels oddly impersonal, adapted from a language we only
Speaker 1: half speak. Now. At eight, I portion the soup into
Speaker 1: a thermos, pack crackers and drive across town. My hands
Speaker 1: are sweating on the steering wheel. The entire way. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I want to catch her in an
Speaker 1: awkward private moment or just prove to her that I
Speaker 1: exist on the fringes of her new world. The gallery
Speaker 1: is a two story box with street facing glass and
Speaker 1: a battered mural half finished across the facade. Colored lights
Speaker 1: angle from rented stands, throwing odd geometric patterns over the entrance.
Speaker 1: It's loud inside, music, laughter, distant clatter of wood on concrete.
Speaker 1: No one spots me as I come in. The space
Speaker 1: is littered with folding tables, brushes, open, cans of paint
Speaker 1: splashes everywhere. I see Julia, Sylvin, Yvonne mid debate near
Speaker 1: the far wall at the back, and a cluster of
Speaker 1: hanging bulbs. Lee stands beside Marco, looking over a long
Speaker 1: un rolled canvas propped on saw horses. She gestures with
Speaker 1: a paint brush. Marko laughs gestures back. Their bodies are
Speaker 1: close a foot and a half maybe two, just enough
Speaker 1: to say colleagues if anyone asks, but not an inch
Speaker 1: more of room than necessary. I hover at the edge
Speaker 1: of the activity, feeling ridiculous and exposed. Yvonne notices me,
Speaker 1: waves me over with a half smile, Hey, keV, didn't
Speaker 1: know you were on the night's shift. Welcome to our circus.
Speaker 1: She's friendly, but clearly doesn't expect me to stay long.
Speaker 1: Thought Lee might want dinner or you know, an audience,
Speaker 1: I say, lifting the thermos as evidence she's in her element.
Speaker 1: Yvonne shrugs. Marco's weird about letting outsiders, enduring these pushes,
Speaker 1: space and tempo and all that. She'll be done when
Speaker 1: she's done. I nod and retreat, teetering on the edge
Speaker 1: between polite persistence and intrusion. I hang my coat, watch
Speaker 1: the collective for a bit. Everyone's so at ease, even
Speaker 1: amid the chaos, a shorthand of gestures, a shared tempo
Speaker 1: I can't match. Lee doesn't look up to see me.
Speaker 1: I can't quite bring myself to interrupt what looks like
Speaker 1: a crucial moment. After maybe twenty minutes, Julia spots me
Speaker 1: again as she passes. Lee's kind of locked in with Marco.
Speaker 1: If you want, I can tell her you dropped by,
Speaker 1: just wanted to bring her something to eat. No pressure,
Speaker 1: I say, pretending that's all I needed to do. I'll
Speaker 1: leave it by her stuff, Julia offers, already whisking the
Speaker 1: bag away. I stand there awkwardly trying to pick up
Speaker 1: scraps from their conversations. Studio terms fly past, degas, undercoat,
Speaker 1: hex pigment, spill, l shaped, perspective, fail, Marco barks as sharp,
Speaker 1: no up and right trust me lay lay now a
Speaker 1: clipped casual private nickname. Eventually I slip out, feeling more
Speaker 1: alien than ever. Back home, Lee arrives just before Dawn
Speaker 1: slips into the guest room without a word. In the morning,
Speaker 1: she leaves a sticky note on my coffee mug, thanks
Speaker 1: for the soup three needed that. I can't tell if
Speaker 1: it's sincere or if she's covering bass guilt. I want
Speaker 1: to ask, but she's already disappeared into another day. On Friday,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to host Dan and Sophie for drinks and
Speaker 1: a new board game at five. Lee texts Murial hit
Speaker 1: a wall, literally, can you cover for me? Sorry? Sorry? Sorry, Dan,
Speaker 1: when he arrives, rolls his eyes and hands me a
Speaker 1: bottle of whiskey in a banal kind of sympathy. You
Speaker 1: sure she's not cheating on us with a crowd of
Speaker 1: paint freaks, he jokes, and I bark a laugh a
Speaker 1: little too sharp. Half Way through the night, Sophie prods you, okay, keV,
Speaker 1: haven't seen you lose code names this thoroughly since grad school.
Speaker 1: I mumble something, force a smile. I want to spill
Speaker 1: the confusion. How Lee is simultaneously present and gone. How
Speaker 1: I feel stranded. But the word to choke off it
Speaker 1: would sound paranoid. Saturday, Le text to say she might
Speaker 1: come home early. We could do movies, something mindless. I
Speaker 1: text back, sounds perfect. I order delivery, open a bottle
Speaker 1: of langdock we've been saving. By nine, I'm on the sofa,
Speaker 1: the food cooling on the counter. She hasn't messaged again.
Speaker 1: At ten thirty, she walks in, apologetic but giddy with adrenaline,
Speaker 1: cheeks flushed high, talking about breakthroughs, showing me a photo
Speaker 1: of a half finished wall that looks to me like
Speaker 1: a series of mismatched stripes. We settle on the couch.
Speaker 1: I try to pull her legs over mine, but she's antsy,
Speaker 1: picking at her thumbnil, scrolling her phone even as we
Speaker 1: half watch an inane comedy. I ask if she wants
Speaker 1: ice cream or tea, if she wants to talk about
Speaker 1: the mural not tonight she says, too tired. Later, as
Speaker 1: she gets ready for bed, she stands in the doorway
Speaker 1: of the guest room and says, almost gently, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: sleep in the big bed tonight. Miss the smell of
Speaker 1: actual sheets. It's an overture, I think. But now I'm
Speaker 1: the one feeling uncertain. She slides in beside me, back
Speaker 1: to back in a few minutes. I can hear her
Speaker 1: gentle snore. I wait to feel something, relief, comfort. Instead,
Speaker 1: I feel suspended, like I'm one word away from shattering
Speaker 1: something we can't repair. Sunday, Lee says she needs to
Speaker 1: swing by the gallery just for a few I ask
Speaker 1: need a ride. She pauses, weighing the offer. Actually, Marko's
Speaker 1: passing by. He offered, no sense both of us burning gas.
Speaker 1: He's coming here. I try to keep my voice even No.
Speaker 1: I'll meet him at the corner. It's on his way.
Speaker 1: I can walk. She grabs her bag, and just for
Speaker 1: a flicker, hesitates as she zips her jacket. Don't wait up.
Speaker 1: I close the door behind her, feeling like that's a
Speaker 1: kind of metaphor no one's allowed to say aloud. Late afternoon,
Speaker 1: I message Julia How's collective life drama and paint fumes
Speaker 1: the usual. Why just checking in? Haven't seen much of Lee.
Speaker 1: She and Marco are in mad scientist mode. I think
Speaker 1: Gabby's giving them a wide berth. Julia adds a winking emoji. Wait,
Speaker 1: Gabby's cool with all the all nighters, Julia replies, no way.
Speaker 1: She hates anything off Calender, but Marco doesn't care. He says,
Speaker 1: art Trump's admin. Gabby gets over it. There's something about
Speaker 1: the casualness, the assumption that every one knows who's pairing off,
Speaker 1: where friction lives and dies. It makes me cold. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: I try again to join. Hey, could I stop by
Speaker 1: the studio for a bit? I text Lee, she calls
Speaker 1: me instead of writing, a small act of intimacy that
Speaker 1: makes my pulse quicken. Babe to Night's not ideal, she says,
Speaker 1: sounding weary. We're like running up against a wall. Marko's
Speaker 1: a stress case. Sylvin's not even speaking to a von
Speaker 1: right now, and there's just so much going on. I'll
Speaker 1: be gross, annoyed and no fun. I can just bring snacks,
Speaker 1: drop and run. I just misseeing you in your world sometimes,
Speaker 1: she sighs audibly. You're sweet. I love you for it,
Speaker 1: but really, Tonight's not the one promise We'll have a
Speaker 1: real world date this weekend. Just us. Let me get
Speaker 1: through this push. I relent, feeling shut out, but not
Speaker 1: wanting to force what clearly isn't wanted. I wonder afterward
Speaker 1: if I sound needy, if insisting on entry is only
Speaker 1: making things worse. That night, I scroll through Lee's social feeds,
Speaker 1: noting the frequency of updates. Many group shots, always a
Speaker 1: different cluster of faces, but Marco appears in most. There's
Speaker 1: a snap of Marco and Leon ladders opposite each other,
Speaker 1: Mok's sword fighting with paint stirrs, both laughing, speckled with color.
Speaker 1: The captions are always vague, insider references Team Chaos, night
Speaker 1: owls underneath someone meaner comments you two are dangerous together.
Speaker 1: Julia power tools dream. I catch myself zooming in, looking
Speaker 1: for the ghost of intimacy in a glance the edge
Speaker 1: of her smile. Wednesday, Lee's phone dings at breakfast, a
Speaker 1: series of rapid notifications. She grabs it before I can look,
Speaker 1: fingers quick across the lock screen. Anything interesting, I try
Speaker 1: voice casual group logistics, She answers, barely, glancing up schedules
Speaker 1: and supply runs nothing fun. I want a press, ask
Speaker 1: why she tenses at the sound of incoming messages, Why
Speaker 1: she's so intent on keeping privacy, But I let it slide.
Speaker 1: At lunch, Lee's mother calls me. We catch up about
Speaker 1: a minor plumbing emergency at their beach condo, but before
Speaker 1: hanging up, she asks lightly, you two still planning your
Speaker 1: anniversary trip. Lee's mentioned Italy twice now for a moment.
Speaker 1: The idea of forward planning, the assumption was still in sync,
Speaker 1: that we both want the same trip at the same
Speaker 1: time time feels like a cosmic joke. I mumble that
Speaker 1: we'll see how things shake out workload wise. She laughs, delighted,
Speaker 1: wishing us young people energy. When Lee returns that night,
Speaker 1: I ask, do you still want to do Italy? She
Speaker 1: pauses by the fridge some day. Sure. Sorry, my head
Speaker 1: hasn't been in the future much lately. Feels like every
Speaker 1: day is five minutes long. She says it with a smile,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't reach her eyes. At least. Promise you'll
Speaker 1: drag me with you, she smirks, and reaches over to
Speaker 1: muss my hair. As long as you promise not to
Speaker 1: complain about the stairs in Naples that night, I hear
Speaker 1: her crack open a beer in the guest room a
Speaker 1: minute later, muffled laughter, ear buds in. Maybe a FaceTime,
Speaker 1: maybe a real I bite my tongue and go back
Speaker 1: to reviewing code, but my mind's elsewhere. Two days later,
Speaker 1: I pass the gallery on a late walk, not intending
Speaker 1: to peer in, but the lights are so bright they
Speaker 1: build splotches of yellow on to the sidewalk. Through the window,
Speaker 1: Lee and Marco are alone, working on different sections of
Speaker 1: a huge canvas, but every so often they lean in,
Speaker 1: talking closely. At one point, Marko's hand hovers over Lee's back.
Speaker 1: She laughs, and for a moment it's a tableau intimacy
Speaker 1: made plausible by the context. Professional but not quite. I
Speaker 1: snap a blurry photo, then hate myself for it immediately.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Lee floats through brunch with distant, restless energy.
Speaker 1: When I mention maybe having some friends over, she agrees,
Speaker 1: but with reluctance. I'll probably have to drop in late.
Speaker 1: There's just so much to do before the show. Marco's
Speaker 1: pushing for a full rework of one pillar. Isn't that
Speaker 1: a little last minute you know, artists, she says, avoiding
Speaker 1: my gaze he's worse than most on impulse, I say,
Speaker 1: if you want me to help carry hall whatever, I
Speaker 1: have muscles too, you know. She laughs genuinely this time
Speaker 1: you die in there. Then she softens, almost kindly. Let's
Speaker 1: just get through this crunch. Then I'm yours again. Promise
Speaker 1: it's an olive branch, but feels conditional, a carrot held
Speaker 1: an inch out of reach. Later, browsing our shared calendar
Speaker 1: to co ordinate a cleaning service, I noticed three entries
Speaker 1: blocked off as private session for Lee, always after midnight,
Speaker 1: always overlapping with Marco's sporadic project ex events. One is
Speaker 1: marked explicitly m slash Lee session set for the night
Speaker 1: before the big show. My skin prickles. I debate asking,
Speaker 1: but instead forward the cleaner confirmation and nothing more. That evening,
Speaker 1: Julia calls about a frame order. I'd promise to split
Speaker 1: with her for a group gift. She's chatty, tired talking
Speaker 1: about the chaos at the studio. At least you and
Speaker 1: Lee get to spend time together, she laughs, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen her solo in WI. Yeah, well, she's always with
Speaker 1: Marco these days. Julia falls silent, then says carefully, they're
Speaker 1: kind of the engine for this whole thing. Honestly, even
Speaker 1: Marko's wife is a little annoyed by it. She gripes
Speaker 1: about Lee getting all the good ideas and Marco being absent.
Speaker 1: I try for a light tone. You think Gabby's actually
Speaker 1: mad ey She likes to have a handle on stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean Marco's intense. He and Lee basically talk their
Speaker 1: own language. I stay out of it for my own peace, Oh,
Speaker 1: I say, trying not to sound too interested. How late
Speaker 1: do they usually stay? Late? Like suns up late? Sometimes
Speaker 1: Lee crashes at Marco's if she misses her ride. Gabby
Speaker 1: hates that, but Marco says it's professional. You'd know if
Speaker 1: there was more right. Julia's laughter is awkward anyway, don't
Speaker 1: mind me. It's probably nothing. People get weird about art projects.
Speaker 1: I hang up, feeling the old sick thump behind my ribs.
Speaker 1: That night, unable to sleep, I scroll through our joint
Speaker 1: lift account again. Lee's rides keep popping up to the
Speaker 1: same West Town address, to E. AUGUSTA b l v
Speaker 1: D Marco's apartment. According to a random group selfie I'd
Speaker 1: spotted on his social media. The tag's easy enough to match.
Speaker 1: I text Lee late May be too late ride home
Speaker 1: or are you at the studio to night? She doesn't reply.
Speaker 1: In the morning, she texts, crashed at Marco's, too wipe
Speaker 1: to lift. Sorry, we'll hit Jim on way back. There's
Speaker 1: an edge to the sorry. I can't read not apology,
Speaker 1: more like reflex. The next night, while Lee showers off
Speaker 1: a long shift, I leaf absent mindedly through her notebook
Speaker 1: pile in the living room, searching for nothing in particular.
Speaker 1: Folded in an architecture mag I find a second note.
Speaker 1: Can't stop thinking about last night. Next time equals more US,
Speaker 1: less guilt, M, same scrawled M, no signature. I slip
Speaker 1: the note back, mind racing a cold resolve setting in.
Speaker 1: I don't confront her, not yet. Instead, I start documenting photos,
Speaker 1: lift records, calendar blocks, screenshots. The evidence forms a chain.
Speaker 1: I ask questions of friends, phrased innocently, to see if
Speaker 1: anyone else seems suspicious. No one does, or more likely
Speaker 1: they do. They're just better than I am at acting.
Speaker 1: A week later, I call Gabby, Marco's wife, telling her
Speaker 1: I want to borrow their heavy duty toolkit for some
Speaker 1: shelves Lee wanted installed. She's polite, but tired, Marco basically
Speaker 1: lives at the gallery these days. She sighs. If you
Speaker 1: want tools, you're better off going through him or Lee.
Speaker 1: Those two are obsessed with the renovation, makes running the
Speaker 1: business side a nightmare. I murmur sympathetic noises, feeling her
Speaker 1: tension through the phone line. By then, I have enough candlapse,
Speaker 1: two notes, recurring rides, missing hours, excuses that ring hollow.
Speaker 1: Marco and Lee have built a world I can only
Speaker 1: glance into through cracks. It's two days before the gallery
Speaker 1: opening when I decide to see for myself what the
Speaker 1: private sessions look like. I walk to Marco's apartment after midnight,
Speaker 1: hoody up, hands in pockets, like a man out of place.
Speaker 1: I hang back by an alley, heart pounding with adrenaline
Speaker 1: and embarrassment. Marco's building is dark except for one second
Speaker 1: floor window light blaring. At one twenty three a m
Speaker 1: Lee's silhouette crosses behind the curtains. A few minutes later,
Speaker 1: Marco appears beside her. They sit close, heads almost touching,
Speaker 1: gestures animated. Then Lee laughs, her face turning toward him unguarded.
Speaker 1: A little after two, the front door clicks open. Lee
Speaker 1: and Marco emerge She's bundled in a coat, hair slightly wild,
Speaker 1: cheeks flushed. Marco touches her elbow gently, not possessive, but familiar.
Speaker 1: The hands brush. They say a few low words, faces
Speaker 1: inches apart, and then separate different directions. I can't catch
Speaker 1: a single word, but the intimacy is written in gesture,
Speaker 1: not language. I slip home, my body hollowed out, everything,
Speaker 1: crawling with a cold, spent energy. That night, I don't sleep.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Lee is bright, perky, pouring through our
Speaker 1: kitchen for granola. Big show to night. She chirps, nerve
Speaker 1: racking but exciting, want to come early. I study her,
Speaker 1: trying to see the cracks. She's good, too, good, may
Speaker 1: be ashamed, may be freed, may be both. I murmur
Speaker 1: that I have a call and will meet her there.
Speaker 1: She blows me a kiss, disappears in a hurry. When
Speaker 1: she leaves. I sit and consider everything, My notes, the receipts,
Speaker 1: the lift logs, Julia's almost confessions, Gabby's veiled complaints, Marko's
Speaker 1: hands on her back, the notes she tried to hide,
Speaker 1: nights I slept alone, friends, voices blurred with apology. The
Speaker 1: patterns connect now clear and merciless. There are no gaps
Speaker 1: between actions and explanation, no more plausible deniability. As the
Speaker 1: sky turns dull mid day gray, I know I have
Speaker 1: to decide what to do with the truth. Somewhere in
Speaker 1: the apartment, Lee's laughter lingers on the air, offset by
Speaker 1: a silence that now feels cavernous, like something spilled and
Speaker 1: dried beyond repair. I sat there at the kitchen table,
Speaker 1: half empty mug, cooling fast in my palm, surrounded by
Speaker 1: the evidence. Had never wanted to collect. Lift receipts open
Speaker 1: on my laptop, two folded notes pressed like foreign currency
Speaker 1: against the wood, calender, Screenshots toggling in another window. My
Speaker 1: phone buzzed with a gallery promo, Lee's face bright under
Speaker 1: streaks of red mural paint, promising beauty to strangers across
Speaker 1: the hall. The muted were of our clothes, drier, the
Speaker 1: only domestic noise that didn't demand explanation. For a while,
Speaker 1: I just sat pretending. I suppose that if I kept
Speaker 1: perfectly still, patterns might shuffle into some other story, one
Speaker 1: where secrets are just creative surprises. But every detail already
Speaker 1: pointed away from wishful thinking. There was no puzzle left
Speaker 1: no loophole to crawl back into our early careless years.
Speaker 1: Yet I didn't pack my bag, didn't text or call her. Instead,
Speaker 1: I moved through routines, clinging to our artifacts, plates still
Speaker 1: stacked from last night, an unopened bag of Lee's favorite
Speaker 1: coffee on the counter, the absurdity of her old sketch
Speaker 1: Lee plus cav tape to the fridge, a joke from
Speaker 1: the days she threatened to brand everything with our initials.
Speaker 1: I washed a single fork and dried it, placing it
Speaker 1: carefully in the drawer, as if order could hold chaos
Speaker 1: at Bay. The morning air in the apartment felt colder
Speaker 1: than usual. I watched condensation bead on a window until
Speaker 1: it blurred my own reflection. Around ten, Lee texted, wild night,
Speaker 1: Hope you're getting some rest. Want a brunch after the
Speaker 1: install s done? Miss you. I didn't answer. The house,
Speaker 1: with its unmatched socks and white walls, bathed in sun,
Speaker 1: felt hostile in its stillness. Mid day, I tried to
Speaker 1: work a bug fix for one recurring client, a chunk
Speaker 1: of JavaScript that meant nothing, lines of code that lost
Speaker 1: syntac's shape. As soon as I blinked, I caught my
Speaker 1: own face in the laptop's glare too, pale, eyes forked
Speaker 1: with red. It occurred to me that I hadn't truly
Speaker 1: slept in nights, that I might be the only one
Speaker 1: tracking the pace of my collapse At some point, I
Speaker 1: don't really know when I moved, only to clean dishes,
Speaker 1: the bathrooms, sink, the living room corners where dust webs
Speaker 1: had collected. I found one of Lee's stray ear rings
Speaker 1: under the coaster. A hair tie beneath the couch clues, yes,
Speaker 1: but also signs that we'd shared a real world as
Speaker 1: much as a secret one. When Lee finally called around too,
Speaker 1: I let it ring. She tried again an hour later,
Speaker 1: Hey love you, O kay? You went dark. Her voice
Speaker 1: was light, hesitant, almost skillful in the way it tiptoed
Speaker 1: around concern and guilt. By then, all I had left
Speaker 1: to do was wait. Pressure built fast, a haphazard test
Speaker 1: of daily balance. Neither of us good at pretending long.
Speaker 1: Lee kept to chat threads and light texts, as if
Speaker 1: cushions of emoji could delay a reckoning. We crossed in
Speaker 1: the kitchen once, her hair damp. Sporting a vintage tea,
Speaker 1: eyes shadowed by exhaustion, she pressed a deliberate, too gentle,
Speaker 1: kiss to my cheek, and asked if I'd mind covering
Speaker 1: dinner with Julia on Friday. She murmured something about artist
Speaker 1: fires to put out and too many plates spinning. I
Speaker 1: made a noise in my throat that she took as assent.
Speaker 1: That night, a friend from the old crowd, Dan texted
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, heard from Lee. You've been busy. Hope
Speaker 1: all's good man. I almost laughed at the neatness of
Speaker 1: her p r the ease with which she closed ranks,
Speaker 1: But as I typed back a reply, my hands started
Speaker 1: to shake. I deleted it. No update would fit. The
Speaker 1: next evening, things came to a head. Lee came in
Speaker 1: just past midnight, arms full of rolled canvas jackets spotted
Speaker 1: with dried gray and ochre paint. She looked, startled to
Speaker 1: see me awake. Hey, she said, a little wary, couldn't sleep.
Speaker 1: I was waiting, I said, careful to keep my voice
Speaker 1: from cracking. She shrugged, avoiding my eyes. Rough night on
Speaker 1: the mural. Marco's a lunatic about symmetry. We'll be lucky
Speaker 1: to finish by the opening. She moved to drop her
Speaker 1: bag by the door, but I blocked her with my gaze. Lee,
Speaker 1: I said, I need you to listen, not to dodge,
Speaker 1: not to spin, just listen. She braced, barely perceptibly, and
Speaker 1: crossed her arms tight to her stomach. What's wrong, keV.
Speaker 1: What's wrong, I repeated, is that I'm not stupid, and
Speaker 1: I'm done being polite about what you're actually doing on
Speaker 1: those nights. I held up two notes, the scrawl, the signature,
Speaker 1: who is em? What am I missing? She gawked, clearly blindsided,
Speaker 1: just long enough to let her guards slip. She reached
Speaker 1: for the notes. I set them on the table between us.
Speaker 1: I saw the lift logs Lee, the midnight rides, the
Speaker 1: private sessions labeled with Marco's name, sometimes to his place,
Speaker 1: always late, always the two of you alone. I let
Speaker 1: the words land quietly, unwilling to turn this into a
Speaker 1: performance or a plea. She looked at the table for
Speaker 1: a long minute. Then finally her shoulders sank. She rubbed
Speaker 1: her hand over her mouth, searching for a script that
Speaker 1: would soften the hard edge of the truth. It's complicated, keV,
Speaker 1: I swallowed a laugh, brittle at the edges. I think
Speaker 1: it's actually not Did you sleep with him? My voice
Speaker 1: low and shaking. She hesitated only a breath too long. Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: it was it's not just it's not what you think exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not love or she stopped, seeing how
Speaker 1: hollow that sounded even as she said it. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: she whispered. I waited. She exhaled slow and braced her
Speaker 1: palms on the back of a chair, like it was
Speaker 1: all that held her up. It started with the mural,
Speaker 1: the late nights. We pushed each other creatively. I haven't
Speaker 1: felt that in years. He saw things in me that
Speaker 1: I forgot I even had. It wasn't supposed to be more,
Speaker 1: but it got blurry. Each word a stone hitting water.
Speaker 1: My hands, palms up on the kitchen table were trembling. Blurry,
Speaker 1: I echoed. Is that what you call coming home with
Speaker 1: paint marks? You didn't bother to explain. Is that what
Speaker 1: you call lying? Again and again she flinched. I lied, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I was stupid. I thought if I
Speaker 1: kept it compartmentalized, it would burn out and I could
Speaker 1: come back. I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't.
Speaker 1: She swiped at her face, masked cracking. I never stopped
Speaker 1: loving you, keV I just I needed to be somewhere
Speaker 1: I could feel new again. And Marco he wanted to
Speaker 1: be seen too. That's all it was, I swear. And
Speaker 1: his wife, I said, you lied to her too, To
Speaker 1: every one. She nodded, a soft, desperate laugh, bursting out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I lied to Gabbie, to myself, to you, to all
Speaker 1: of them. I was careful. I kept you out because
Speaker 1: I needed it not to bleed into everything. I needed
Speaker 1: one part of my life to be untouched. Silence the
Speaker 1: words between us thickened the air. Nothing could dilute the taste.
Speaker 1: I thought you wanted me to be happy, she said softer.
Speaker 1: Now I should have said I was lost before I
Speaker 1: did any of this. You deserved honesty, and now I
Speaker 1: managed voice dry. Now what am I supposed to do
Speaker 1: with all of this? She looked up, red eyed, mouth
Speaker 1: twisted in pain. I don't know. I want to fix it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if that means salvaging us or
Speaker 1: giving you space. I just I'm so sorry. A car
Speaker 1: passed outside, flooding the tile with bouncing headlight. I looked
Speaker 1: at her, really looked and saw. Finally the pain was real,
Speaker 1: but the damage was done. We drifted suddenly on separate
Speaker 1: sides of the kitchen. She gathered her things methodically. I
Speaker 1: retreated to the living room, heart beat pulsing in my jaw,
Speaker 1: ears ringing with all the conversations we'd never actually had,
Speaker 1: nights stretched out, with neither of us able to sleep,
Speaker 1: the house in a kind of limbo, I moved into
Speaker 1: the guest room, dragging a blanket and a single pillow
Speaker 1: behind me, closing the door with a soft click that
Speaker 1: sounded like a verdict for the next day. We orbited
Speaker 1: around each other, careful, quiet, painfully considerate. Our old routines
Speaker 1: collapsed into polite nods and logistical text threads. I'll take
Speaker 1: the morning coffee. Run, there's soup left in the fridge.
Speaker 1: I'm staying late, wait up. A choreography of avoidance. Lee's
Speaker 1: presents in the apartment, her hair caught in the comb,
Speaker 1: shoes lined by the door, remained a steady aching reminder
Speaker 1: At work, I could barely focus, mind returning again and
Speaker 1: again to scraps of conversation, her need for discovery, her loneliness,
Speaker 1: my own obliviousness. The betrayal replayed in flashes. Sophie called
Speaker 1: you guys, okay, Lee es been off, just checking in.
Speaker 1: I kept it vague, murmured bit of a rough patch.
Speaker 1: She didn't push, but her concern lingered through the phone.
Speaker 1: On the gallery night, the opening loomed like a test
Speaker 1: neither of us wanted to take. Lee was fraught with nerves.
Speaker 1: I saw it stitched in every gesture. I debated attending,
Speaker 1: hovering at the edge of a new world, a ghost
Speaker 1: among her found family. But in the end I couldn't
Speaker 1: stomach it. I texted Julia, not feeling up for crowds
Speaker 1: to night, but good luck. She sent back, wish you
Speaker 1: were coming. Lee could use the support. Instead. I walked
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, winding narrow blocks until my legs ached. When
Speaker 1: I caught my reflection in darkened shop windows, I looked
Speaker 1: taller and older, a person who'd stepped out of a
Speaker 1: picture he no longer belonged inside. That week became a
Speaker 1: series of minor humiliations, conversations with friends, the slow ripple
Speaker 1: of word passing through the collective. Lee, to her credit,
Speaker 1: didn't shield herself. A day after I moved into the
Speaker 1: guest room, she sat across from me at the breakfast
Speaker 1: bar Palms Flat and said, I need to tell Gabby,
Speaker 1: I can't let them keep trusting me like this. I nodded,
Speaker 1: What else could I do? You need to do what's
Speaker 1: right for them, for us, she told Gabby on a Thursday.
Speaker 1: The same day, I fielded three texts from friends who
Speaker 1: suddenly just wanted to check in. Words spread quick, the
Speaker 1: collective fractured. Julia was first to call, sounding dazed. None
Speaker 1: of us saw it, but now it feels obvious. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, keV. Even our closest friends divided in small,
Speaker 1: awkward ways. Some blamed the studio nights, the endless pressure
Speaker 1: of the mural, Marco's neediness. Others, perhaps more honestly, saw
Speaker 1: the route in the quiet drift that had opened up
Speaker 1: between me and Lee long before the affair. Our apartment,
Speaker 1: always alive with energy or color, went mute. We canceled
Speaker 1: a dozen plans, dinners, parties, even the Italy Tripley's mom
Speaker 1: had dreamed about on our behalf. The city outside spun on,
Speaker 1: impervious to loss. Inside. The art we'd collected together, canvas
Speaker 1: to canvas, story to story, formed a mute jury on
Speaker 1: our separate silences. Packing became a habit with no real destination.
Speaker 1: Lee stayed in the bigger bedroom. Moving wordlessly through her
Speaker 1: old routines, I shifted between anger and numbness, measuring days
Speaker 1: by what we didn't say. One evening, as I sorted
Speaker 1: through laundry, I found a shirt we'd bought on a
Speaker 1: whim during a rainy day street festival. The pattern, faded,
Speaker 1: fabric scented like Lee. I sat down, pressing it into
Speaker 1: my knee and sank, what next? People always want neat answers, separation,
Speaker 1: or forgiveness, a sudden fresh start. Ours was none of
Speaker 1: those things, just hours, stacked like unfired pottery, soft and useless. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: during these blank, stuttering hours, I thought I might stay
Speaker 1: that if I could see the shape of what we'd been,
Speaker 1: I might find a thread to pull us back together.
Speaker 1: And then I'd remember Lee's face inches from Marco's in
Speaker 1: that stairwell, all the heat and secrecy, and I'd lose
Speaker 1: my grip on even that small hope. Our art, the
Speaker 1: thing that once let us dream together, gallery fines, street art,
Speaker 1: even the dumb stick figure city Lee drew one rainy Saturday,
Speaker 1: now stared accusatory from every wall, each piece and artifact
Speaker 1: of gentler seasons, even the ones I'd picked, even the
Speaker 1: ones that had nothing to do with her. On the
Speaker 1: fifth morning of our limbo, Lee stopped by the guest room.
Speaker 1: We have to tell people cav together, not as a fight.
Speaker 1: Her voice, for the first time, sounded resigned. I met
Speaker 1: her eyes and nodded, yeah, we do. That day we
Speaker 1: started calling friends, splitting the list. Some were shocked, others
Speaker 1: mumbled something about difficult times and didn't call back. Later,
Speaker 1: we ate dinner at opposite ends of the counter, picking
Speaker 1: silently at the same takeout. I watched her thumb at
Speaker 1: her napkin, watched the way her face fell. She started
Speaker 1: to speak, then thought better of it. Nights now I
Speaker 1: lay on the creaky twin in the guest room, listening
Speaker 1: to whatever show Lee streamed in the main bedroom, muffled
Speaker 1: beneath old quilts. Sometimes I heard her laugh too loud
Speaker 1: for one person. Was she talking to someone else, trying
Speaker 1: to fill the cavern, or just pretending? I don't remember
Speaker 1: when exactly I decided to go again and again. The
Speaker 1: apartment felt too tight, haunted with memories in every object,
Speaker 1: every dull shaft of morning light. I called Sophie one afternoon,
Speaker 1: asked if I could crash for a week or so
Speaker 1: any time, she said, no questions, no pity. Packing was easy,
Speaker 1: A carry on some work clothes, my oldest hoodie. As
Speaker 1: I zipped its shut, Lee appeared in the doorway, quiet
Speaker 1: as a cloud, carrying the first painting we ever bought,
Speaker 1: a little sit escape, abstract k neon blue with a
Speaker 1: single yellow square in the middle that Lee always said
Speaker 1: looked like hope with a window. She held it awkwardly,
Speaker 1: careful not to smudge the corners. Her face was blotchy,
Speaker 1: eyes red, but her voice came out clear. I thought
Speaker 1: you'd want this, she said, extending it, not quite offering,
Speaker 1: just making sure I saw. I looked at her, not
Speaker 1: knowing if we were done for good or just poor.
Speaker 1: Was in a slow, indefinite ending around us. The apartment
Speaker 1: was still, no laughter, no background music, just us in
Speaker 1: the shockingly quiet aftermath. We stood for a long moment,
Speaker 1: neither speaking. Finally I took the painting, wrapped my fingers
Speaker 1: around its edges. She nodded once, jaw tight, lips pressed
Speaker 1: together to keep everything in bag in hand. I pulled
Speaker 1: the door open, feeling the last cool draft curl around
Speaker 1: my ankles. I hesitated, waiting for a word. A joke
Speaker 1: a plea anything, But all I caught was her eyes,
Speaker 1: wet and searching in the morning half light, and the
Speaker 1: echo of a hundred some day promises we'd left unsaid.
Speaker 1: I stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
Speaker 1: The thunk gentler than I expected. I stood for a
Speaker 1: minute at the landing, thumb tight on the frame of
Speaker 1: the painting, searching for the right next breath. The city's
Speaker 1: din carried up, faint but alive, as if to prove
Speaker 1: that the world world keeps moving even when you don't
Speaker 1: know how you'll join it again. Outside, the air was
Speaker 1: brisk and nervy, spring refusing to soften fully into warmth.
Speaker 1: Down on the street, cars idled at red lights, cicadas
Speaker 1: tuning up in the stubborn squares of curb grass, bicycles
Speaker 1: rattling along the pitted avenue. I walked, suit case rolling
Speaker 1: behind me, the painting cradled in one arm. The canvas
Speaker 1: felt both precious and burdensome, a relic from a life
Speaker 1: that had seemed unshakable, proof of shared history and the
Speaker 1: impossibility of rewriting even a single detail of what had
Speaker 1: come since. I paused at the corner and considered calling
Speaker 1: a car, then just kept walking, not toward Sophie's, not
Speaker 1: toward anywhere in particular, just moving, wearing a groove into
Speaker 1: sidewalk concrete. Each step away from the apartment was both
Speaker 1: easier and heavier. Freedom and gravity doubled. My shoulders ached.
Speaker 1: With the effort of not looking back. I could almost
Speaker 1: picture Lee on the other side of that door, standing
Speaker 1: as I had, holding the possibility of another sentence, another
Speaker 1: unspooled argument, or worse, a kind clean good bye. But
Speaker 1: nothing came, just the clatter of my own footsteps. By
Speaker 1: the time I made it a few blocks south, past
Speaker 1: a line of closed up store fronts and illuminated flats,
Speaker 1: my phone buzzed with a text, Julia heard your taking
Speaker 1: a break. If you want to talk to Vent or
Speaker 1: just yell about art supplies, hit me up. I stared
Speaker 1: at the screen, thumb hovering. The words did arrive, so
Speaker 1: I pocketed the phone again. A street performer was packing
Speaker 1: up his violin case outside the Blue Line station, humming
Speaker 1: under his breath. I stood for a second and watched
Speaker 1: him coil the bow, still attached, absurdly gentle after everything
Speaker 1: I'd just been forced to snap in half. The night
Speaker 1: stretched into an aimless rhythm. Walk past familiar blocks, check
Speaker 1: for late buses, drop into a coffee shop to warm
Speaker 1: my hands and write a nonsense email to myself, just
Speaker 1: so my fingers could move. Each little errand gave me
Speaker 1: a moment's permission delay, recalibrate, remember myself as a person
Speaker 1: with choice. I wasn't in a hurry. There was nothing
Speaker 1: waiting at home except a hollow shape where my marriage
Speaker 1: had lived. By midnight, I found myself sitting on Sophie's stoop,
Speaker 1: with the paintings still tucked beside me, suit case at
Speaker 1: my feet. Inside the windows glowed the pleasant noise of
Speaker 1: people moving through clutter and television, the thud of an
Speaker 1: upstairs neighbor. Sophie opened the door before I could knock,
Speaker 1: wrapped me in a bracing ordinary hug, then led me in,
Speaker 1: said a cup of ginger tea in my hands. Asked nothing,
Speaker 1: said nothing about Lee. I just sat and sipped, feeling
Speaker 1: language and story start to return at a pace I
Speaker 1: could almost handle. Over the next days, the logistics sorted
Speaker 1: themselves out with mechanical efficiency, the emotional fallout only starting
Speaker 1: to show around the edges. Lee texted a few times.
Speaker 1: Let me know you're okay once. If you need anything
Speaker 1: from the apartment, just say, I replied with the bare minimum,
Speaker 1: polite but neutral, never touching anything sharp. Friends reactions trickled
Speaker 1: in all variations on a theme shock, concern, confusion about
Speaker 1: how none of them saw it, or how they might
Speaker 1: have guessed but said nothing. Dan invited me to trivia night.
Speaker 1: Julia sent memes. Yvonne left an awkward condolence voice note
Speaker 1: about bilateral creative destruction, as if that could hold the weight.
Speaker 1: Gabby Marco's wife reached out once through Lee. She wants
Speaker 1: to apologize to you, if that matters, Lee wrote, I
Speaker 1: let it hang. I didn't want to pick at any
Speaker 1: more raw edges for her or myself. The collective, as
Speaker 1: far as I heard, imploded. The mural finished half a
Speaker 1: week late, patched and uneven. Social photos vanished from Lee's feed.
Speaker 1: No more inside jokes, just old snap shots and one long,
Speaker 1: hollow caption. Sometimes you have to repint the whole wall.
Speaker 1: I scrolled past, unwilling to dwell on the legacy of
Speaker 1: her new community, their fractures and alliances, what it had
Speaker 1: cost to build, and what it cost to watch burn
Speaker 1: in the apartment, Lee staid she messaged updates on the
Speaker 1: mail or if a bill needed paying. Once she reported,
Speaker 1: she'd boxed my books from the living room, left them
Speaker 1: in the hall closet for me. Her tone in every
Speaker 1: interaction was measured, gentle, never supplicant. She seemed to understand
Speaker 1: better than either of us could put to words that
Speaker 1: no grand overture would change the fundamentals, no wild apology,
Speaker 1: no last argument to tie it in a bow. For
Speaker 1: a second, I was grateful we could still summon decency
Speaker 1: even as we rehearsed for entirely separate lives. We tried
Speaker 1: briefly to talk on neutral ground a Sunday afternoon in
Speaker 1: Palmer Square, sitting on different ends of a park bench,
Speaker 1: while children screamed and skatered circles around us. We stuck
Speaker 1: to small talk halting. I asked if the gallery planned
Speaker 1: to keep the new mural, if she'd stay in the collective.
Speaker 1: She shrugged off both questions, said only I'm just working,
Speaker 1: trying to find some quiet now. I nodded, not finding
Speaker 1: any wisdom in myself to offer, no urge to extend
Speaker 1: the conversation past what the day would bear the outlines
Speaker 1: of a future without Lee came so slowly I didn't
Speaker 1: see it till I was already in it, waking up
Speaker 1: to a strange ceiling, brushing my teeth with a travel brush,
Speaker 1: finding time to linger in grocery aisles without coordinating wine
Speaker 1: with anyone. The ache came less like heartbreak and more
Speaker 1: like an echo, a cavity where routine and certainty had
Speaker 1: once fit so snug. When I did finally return to
Speaker 1: the apartment, just once more, it was to pick up
Speaker 1: the rest of my things. The place was scrubbed bare,
Speaker 1: no trace of Lee's hurried mornings in the kitchen, no
Speaker 1: scent of turpentin. There was a kitchen magnet with a
Speaker 1: post it left over pastuster and the freezer if you
Speaker 1: want a real meal, stay safe. The handwriting was neat,
Speaker 1: no exclamation marks underneath a key on a string, labeled
Speaker 1: simply in case I pocketed it, but knew I'd never
Speaker 1: use it, not after this. Standing in the empty living room,
Speaker 1: framed by stark white walls, I let my hand trail
Speaker 1: over the cool edge of the cityscape painting. The apartment
Speaker 1: felt less like a home, more like a blank gallery
Speaker 1: waiting for some one else's story. My chest tightened but
Speaker 1: I resisted the urge to look for Lee's shadow in
Speaker 1: every room. The choice had already been made, first by accident,
Speaker 1: then by force. Shouldering my bag, I paused at the door.
Speaker 1: I said nothing out loud, no curse, no benediction, not
Speaker 1: even a quiet good bye. I gripped the painting a
Speaker 1: little tighter, stepped out into the hallway, and pulled the
Speaker 1: door closed behind me, letting the soft click mark the
Speaker 1: end of the world we'd built and the uncertain shape
Speaker 1: of everything to come. And that is the end. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and I will see you in the
Speaker 1: next one.