Speaker 1: The first thing I noticed that night, honestly, was the
Speaker 1: way the remote felt too light in my hand, like
Speaker 1: it was missing gravity. There are kinds of loneliness that
Speaker 1: slip in quietly on ordinary weak nights through the simplest cracks.
Speaker 1: Mark's absence was never loud. At first. Our place, a
Speaker 1: sun warmed apartment on South Lamar with big windows and
Speaker 1: more succulents than furniture, was supposed to stay lit at
Speaker 1: night by banter and shared dumb jokes, us trash talking
Speaker 1: contestants on whatever show we half watched while scrolling separate screens. Instead,
Speaker 1: at nine forty five, I was huddled in the corner
Speaker 1: of our modular blue sofa, Great British bake Off, playing
Speaker 1: unconvincingly comforting background noise, my phone screen lighting the dark
Speaker 1: more than the cheap ikea lamp next to me. Mark
Speaker 1: and I always watched bake Off together. It was a
Speaker 1: ritual that outlasted every other obsession, even when work got
Speaker 1: wheild and weekends got social. Tuesdays were for British cakes,
Speaker 1: yelling at bread, scoring and debating the merits of a
Speaker 1: Swiss roll. Alone, the show felt filtered and dim. I
Speaker 1: sent Mark a simple text still alive. Prove just dissed
Speaker 1: someone s pasty muffin. You're missing the drama. I didn't
Speaker 1: expect an answer. Lately, he'd been putting in these heroic
Speaker 1: late nights. To night was the critical project launch, the
Speaker 1: deadline he'd compared to a moon landing. Still, I caught
Speaker 1: myself waiting for the screen to pop. Thirty minutes passed.
Speaker 1: I picked at leftover pad tie with a fork, not
Speaker 1: even using a plate, and tried to convince myself it
Speaker 1: was kind of freeing not to shape my evening around
Speaker 1: someone else's habits, But the fact is I wanted him there,
Speaker 1: complaining about chilly flakes and wincing at the tent drama.
Speaker 1: It was just shy of ten twenty where my phone buzzed,
Speaker 1: not from Mark but Jesse, She of the bottomless Malbeck
Speaker 1: paws and constant group texts. She and her wife Sarah
Speaker 1: were part of our every other Friday pub board game's crew,
Speaker 1: the ones who saw Mark at both his kindest and
Speaker 1: most annoying. Seeing her name made me smile, expecting a
Speaker 1: meme or gossip. Instead, Mark, with you now, I typed back,
Speaker 1: quick to sound casual. Nope, he's at work doing tech
Speaker 1: wizard stuff, or so the legend says. Why three dots
Speaker 1: flickered for a bit longer than felt normal, which was
Speaker 1: odd for how fast Jesse usually fired off jokes. Just
Speaker 1: thought I saw him at Vino Verita's to night. Looked
Speaker 1: like him with some woman. Guess it was her face.
Speaker 1: Emoji was a squint and a wine glass, trying to
Speaker 1: sound breezy. Vino Veritas. That was our favorite date night
Speaker 1: wine bar, the one with mismatched couches, and the bartender
Speaker 1: who remembered our favorite surah. I grinned into my phone,
Speaker 1: or tried to, and sent, well, unless he cloned himself,
Speaker 1: must have been a doppelganger. He better be earning that paycheck.
Speaker 1: But then the sentence replayed, Looked like him with some woman,
Speaker 1: his hand on her arm. How neither of them seemed
Speaker 1: to notice anything else. I was annoyed with myself for
Speaker 1: feeling anything. Jesse had a wild imagination. She once mistook
Speaker 1: our friend Gregg for an eber driver during south By Southwest.
Speaker 1: Besides tech launches run late and the mark I knew
Speaker 1: wouldn't risk something so obvious. Still, the phrase worked its
Speaker 1: way under my skin. His hand on her arm wasn't
Speaker 1: that just how Mark always touched me in bars, guiding
Speaker 1: me through crowds, careful but unconsciously intimate. I tried to
Speaker 1: brush it off. Maybe someone at work, maybe Jesse, saw wrong.
Speaker 1: For lack of anything else to do, I scrolled through
Speaker 1: Mark's old Instagram photos us at Hamilton Pool, gleaming in swimsuits,
Speaker 1: eating tacos on a street curb, smiling with friends, some
Speaker 1: tech mixer. Though he was in all his dorky, tall,
Speaker 1: curly haired glory, I was always a little crinkled, the
Speaker 1: grin that always always reached the corners. For years, I'd
Speaker 1: felt so secure, Unlike so many tales of tech couples
Speaker 1: blown apart by stress, distance, or sheer temptation. We d
Speaker 1: promised ourselves we'd never be those people. We'd always said
Speaker 1: our secret was radical transparency, inside joke and boundary woven together.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I didn't trust my own ability to tell a
Speaker 1: harmless coincidence from a tremor. I waited another forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: then finally gave into sleep. Bake off long over Mark
Speaker 1: not home, his busy night now a spiral in my chest.
Speaker 1: Mornings were our best time together. Waking up next to
Speaker 1: Mark Maye getting out of bed a tiny victory. I
Speaker 1: loved the silly ways he'd narrate the coffee making process,
Speaker 1: or suggest what he called advanced breakfast cereal and toast,
Speaker 1: and still somehow make it a conversation. We wound between
Speaker 1: soft banter and shared planning, tossing out schedules, jokes, gentle nudges.
Speaker 1: That morning, sunlight sliced across the terrazzo countertop, the kitchen
Speaker 1: filled with the nutty scent of strong coffee. I watched
Speaker 1: as Mark stood hair askew, working his way through the
Speaker 1: French press ritual he believed in wholeheartedly. We de met
Speaker 1: five years ago at a hackathon in Houston, Team Read
Speaker 1: versus Team Blue Nerves over caffeine. I'd liked him instantly,
Speaker 1: not for the reasons tech people usually impress. Mark was competent, sure,
Speaker 1: but he was more than that. He listened, he laughed
Speaker 1: even when tired. Our banter was quick, protective, flirty as hell,
Speaker 1: but warm. We'd landed jobs together in Austin, him at
Speaker 1: a start up me at a big sas company. We
Speaker 1: fit both nerdy under the skin, ambitious when the hours
Speaker 1: demanded it, but craving life outside the screen too. In
Speaker 1: the city, we'd become semi famous for our themed house
Speaker 1: parties and legendary karaoke nights. Power couple Jesse had dubbed
Speaker 1: us half teasing, half jealous. We had rules, gentle ones,
Speaker 1: but clear transparency in everything, no secrets. The other couldn't
Speaker 1: ask about shared foone pass codes as a symbol more
Speaker 1: than a tool, calendar invites for every double booked social moment,
Speaker 1: and enough breathing room for solo hobbies. Our space was sacred,
Speaker 1: but our boundaries respected. Neither of our families was truly central.
Speaker 1: My mother had always been wary of how fast we'd moved.
Speaker 1: She was all steel and worry less, hugs, more scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Mark's parents flew in for holidays, brought scotch, and were supportive,
Speaker 1: if a little distracted. Early on, Jealousy was my demon.
Speaker 1: Old heartbreaks had left their Mark, and Mark could turn
Speaker 1: on the charm no matter the crowd. But over time
Speaker 1: he'd grown into reassurance, texting me from conferences, inviting me
Speaker 1: to every work social making his loyalty not just known
Speaker 1: but felt. Our routines were part romance, part survival. We'd
Speaker 1: alternate who cooked or ordered pizza, walk up to Zilka
Speaker 1: Park on weekend mornings, host tech friends at free play arcade,
Speaker 1: collapse on the couch Sunday nights, surrounded by food wrappers
Speaker 1: and half solved New York Times cross words. We joked
Speaker 1: our schedules needed a synchronization API. When work pressed in,
Speaker 1: we honored dinner together, no screens. If you wanted to talk,
Speaker 1: you said so. In those years, it never occurred to
Speaker 1: me i'd ever be blindsided. My deepest fear was being
Speaker 1: the last to know while everyone else watched my story
Speaker 1: play out. I swore we'd never become a punch line
Speaker 1: at some mutual friend's bar brunch, displaying new wounds as
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. So the late nights only registered as strange
Speaker 1: because they weren't us. Mark always shared about product launches,
Speaker 1: but this grind was more than anything before, and I'd
Speaker 1: felt more alone in recent weeks than ever in our
Speaker 1: five years. It was Monday night, the next moment the
Speaker 1: growing unease made itself known. I was panseering salmon in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, Mark's favorite, a little showy but easy. When
Speaker 1: I heard his keys at the door, I glanced up,
Speaker 1: surprised by the bounce in his step, the careless energy
Speaker 1: in his smile. He dropped his back pack by the counter. Hey, babe,
Speaker 1: longest feature sprint ever. I think I actually wrote good
Speaker 1: code after midnight. That's like forbidden territory. He poured himself
Speaker 1: a glass of boxed wine and started telling me about
Speaker 1: a new a P I his team couldn't live without.
Speaker 1: I listened, searching his face the way you do when
Speaker 1: you want the world to make sense Again. I slid
Speaker 1: into the rhythm, laughing when Mark cussed about q A
Speaker 1: admiring the way he could simplify the most arcane tech babble. Still,
Speaker 1: when the moment opened, I risked it. Any one from
Speaker 1: your team survived long enough to go out. After Mark
Speaker 1: stopped fiddling with his wine, his eyes shot to the fridge,
Speaker 1: not to me. No, everyone just crashed hard. I'm lucky
Speaker 1: I even made it home. He drained his glass and
Speaker 1: ducked toward the bedroom, mumbling about needing a real shower
Speaker 1: to cleanse the bug reports. That's when I caught it.
Speaker 1: Not his voice, but a faint scent right as he
Speaker 1: brushed past me. Not the familiar citrus of our detergent
Speaker 1: or the herbal stuff. In his beard. Oil, something floral, expensive,
Speaker 1: sweet in the wrong way. I told myself stories. Maybe
Speaker 1: they changed hands soap at work. Maybe I was primed
Speaker 1: to doubt after Jesse's text. Still I replayed Jesse's message,
Speaker 1: vino Verita's hand on her arm, intimate, and Mark insisting
Speaker 1: everyone just crashed. No I contact, I told myself I
Speaker 1: was reading too deeply, too paranoid. Mark was always loyal.
Speaker 1: Still he changed even as he came back from the shap,
Speaker 1: sliding up behind me with rare theatrical warmth, arms wrapped
Speaker 1: too tight, words a little too smooth. He started talking
Speaker 1: about a trip to Portland next month. Let's just go
Speaker 1: old times micro Bruce Powells, just us now, work talk.
Speaker 1: We hadn't done anything spontaneous in a year, not since
Speaker 1: the start up sucked him in so hard it landed wrong,
Speaker 1: forced intimacy pasted over a gap, and I couldn't bring
Speaker 1: myself to protest. When he kissed my neck, I let
Speaker 1: myself fall into the contact, not the comfort. That meal
Speaker 1: and every word that followed had the distinct taste of overcompensation.
Speaker 1: My doubt deepened, layered with gilt, for even suspecting. The
Speaker 1: next days became catalogs of small contradictions. Clues began to accrete,
Speaker 1: as if I'd started a fetch quest. I never agreed
Speaker 1: to play Thursday at happy hour with the regular group.
Speaker 1: We'd scored a roped off corner at Lazarus Brewing. Half
Speaker 1: the table in black hoodies, the other half in ironic
Speaker 1: designer tes, tech gossip, karaoke plans, old memes. Mark was
Speaker 1: there a little too attentive, refilling my glass, laughing at
Speaker 1: every joke. I made his focus almost performative. More quietly,
Speaker 1: he tactically avoided Liam. Now, Liam's always been Mark's oldest,
Speaker 1: austin ally quiet around big groups, but there for every
Speaker 1: broken air conditioner and every gig Mark played rhythm guitar
Speaker 1: at that night, they barely traded words. When Mark stepped
Speaker 1: out to take a call, Liam drifted by me on
Speaker 1: his way to the bar. He nudged an elbow. Hey, Elena.
Speaker 1: Mark actually still coding late every night. He meant it light,
Speaker 1: but it landed awkwardly, like a question, not quite meant
Speaker 1: to stay a joke. Apparently code can write itself now,
Speaker 1: but takes longer, I quipped. He just shrugged and gave
Speaker 1: me a look. I didn't know how to read a
Speaker 1: flicker of concern or maybe pity. I watched my walk
Speaker 1: the patio perimeter, face lit by the glow of a screen,
Speaker 1: talking too quietly. I tried to catch a name, but
Speaker 1: all I heard was him say yeah, I'll text when
Speaker 1: I'm done here. That night, Mark left early, claiming a
Speaker 1: deployment read alert. I hitched a ride home with Jesse,
Speaker 1: who kept shooting me sidelong glances. She was quiet, which
Speaker 1: wasn't like her, as if she was waiting for me
Speaker 1: to talk. First, I checked our shared bank account after
Speaker 1: not looking for anything except a reason to mindlessly scroll.
Speaker 1: That's where I noticed the first anomaly, a charge the
Speaker 1: week before for a pair of on Cloud running shoes,
Speaker 1: size twelve marks. I thought you hated running, I muttered,
Speaker 1: half amused. Friday morning, he was already lacing them up
Speaker 1: at the door, explaining, gotta clear my head, babe, try
Speaker 1: something new. Running might make me less of a night owl.
Speaker 1: He'd never even jogged for a bus before. Later that
Speaker 1: week received on his credit cards spoke for themselves a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty dollars to a boutique. Jim. I'd never heard
Speaker 1: of lumin athletics. Three spends for smoothies all early mornings,
Speaker 1: when I thought he was still asleep beside me, A
Speaker 1: venmo payment for eighty two dollars to someone labeled AV
Speaker 1: a w description. I waited for him to mention the jim,
Speaker 1: to drop a friend's name. Anything. He didn't that morning
Speaker 1: at brunch with our crew, the sort of boozy competitive
Speaker 1: Egganfritter Glory we used to love. I waited for him
Speaker 1: to explain the new hobby. Instead, he joked about his
Speaker 1: new tech bro glutes and then wandered off with his plate,
Speaker 1: seating himself next to Sarah, ignoring Liam entirely. Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 1: half buzzed on leftover prosecco, I checked his run tracker app.
Speaker 1: Not because I was looking for dirt, I told myself,
Speaker 1: but because he'd once challenged me to beat his step count.
Speaker 1: His last three runs had weird start and end points,
Speaker 1: nowhere near our block, some as far as east, one
Speaker 1: ending on a street called Travis Heights Boulevard. None matched
Speaker 1: the route he claimed to be taking. Curiosity overtook guilt.
Speaker 1: I googled lumin Athletics upscale, small group fitness, no walkins,
Speaker 1: members only a soho looft Instagram feed peppered with motivational
Speaker 1: quotes and wine night photos, mostly women in Lululemon, a
Speaker 1: few men with forced grins. That evening I tested him
Speaker 1: training for a race. I half laughed as I said it,
Speaker 1: holding up the app. He grinned, no, just getting my
Speaker 1: energy back in dorphins, right, But then he swiped the
Speaker 1: phone from my hand, tucking it away with a sudden,
Speaker 1: almost childlike possessiveness. I'm serious, Elena, I just need something
Speaker 1: outside the code grind that could have explained it all.
Speaker 1: But his eyes didn't match the joke. Financial weirdness compounded
Speaker 1: another venmo, this time eighty dollars to harv w at midnight,
Speaker 1: tagged ride share. I hovered over the notification, debating, texting
Speaker 1: him about it. Ride shares from South lamar after midnight.
Speaker 1: He never told me he'd been out that late. I
Speaker 1: waited for a crack, a moment where his story would
Speaker 1: line up on its own. The new Jim, the late
Speaker 1: night's splitting work rides with an unknown contact, receipts for
Speaker 1: overpriced juices, He counted every concern with easy shrugs, team drinks,
Speaker 1: new hr temp covering a tab every time I poked,
Speaker 1: he'd shift focus, tell me about some meeting gone mega,
Speaker 1: or make a joke about his own failing memory. Once
Speaker 1: I pressed who's Ava work friend? He barely looked up
Speaker 1: from his phone. Ava. Oh, just a tempt from h R.
Speaker 1: She left already, didn't even finish on boarding total flake.
Speaker 1: The words tumbled out with overdone nonchalance, the answer of
Speaker 1: some one over ahearst still. He was affectionate at company events,
Speaker 1: insisted I attend the next product demo as the owner,
Speaker 1: real QA that matters. When we showed up at his office,
Speaker 1: open bar, huge cheese boards, a cluster of cross functional teams,
Speaker 1: I caught a stray comment from someone at the snack table,
Speaker 1: glad you guys finally met Mark's wife. The way they said,
Speaker 1: finally gnawed at me all night. Mark deflected easily when
Speaker 1: I asked afterwards, that's just Sheila, Her memory's gone. She
Speaker 1: probably met you last happy hour and forgot. But the
Speaker 1: discomfort hung over us, a splinter, invisible but felt every
Speaker 1: time I leaned in clothes at home, Mark retreated affection,
Speaker 1: filtered through a caution I couldn't quite name. During sex,
Speaker 1: he was present physically, but emotionally distant, quick, careful, sometimes
Speaker 1: apologizing afterwards as if he'd committed some minor infraction. But
Speaker 1: when I tried to breach the wall, a real heart
Speaker 1: to heart, he'd deflect, It's just the product cycle. We'll
Speaker 1: get through. Let's get some me time. Even Jesse, who
Speaker 1: was never started quietly prodding. She brought over a bottle
Speaker 1: of cabinet and sprawled on our living room carpet, telling
Speaker 1: me you seem off, babe. Don't get all Martyrwaye on me.
Speaker 1: There's trust and then there's being blind. She let it
Speaker 1: hang there, not accusing, just concerned. I brushed her off,
Speaker 1: mostly insisting Mark was just stressed that I would absolutely
Speaker 1: know if something was wrong. That night, in a fit
Speaker 1: of private anxiety, I did something we'd always joked we'd
Speaker 1: never do. Lurked Mark's recent social media Twitter mostly and
Speaker 1: his public in star liked posts late at night pictures
Speaker 1: i'd never seen, an interior shot of a bar I
Speaker 1: recognized as Vino Verita's. No one else tagged comments from
Speaker 1: names I didn't know, references to private wine downs. Nothing
Speaker 1: blatantly compromising, but enough that I saw a pattern i'd missed.
Speaker 1: He was present online more at midnight than when he
Speaker 1: was at home. Each of these incidents could on its
Speaker 1: own be written off busy season, a new hobby, overlap
Speaker 1: between friend groups. Yet together they built a lattice of confusion,
Speaker 1: enough evidence to spark terror, but never enough to confirm it. Finally,
Speaker 1: on a rainy Wednesday, it all became too much to swallow.
Speaker 1: I sat on our bed, scrolling through yet another late
Speaker 1: night charge on Mark's card, this time for a ride
Speaker 1: share at twelve eighteen a m From an address on
Speaker 1: East Cezar Chavez, nowhere near his claimed office. My head
Speaker 1: spun with the whiff of cologne that wouldn't wash from
Speaker 1: his jim bag. The receipts I couldn't square with his timeline,
Speaker 1: the pile of inconsistencies, all hidden under a layer of
Speaker 1: surface normal. That night's shamefaced, I cracked. I waited up,
Speaker 1: nerves shot to hell, legs tucked underneath me as I
Speaker 1: waited for his keys at the door. When he entered,
Speaker 1: rain dripping from his jacket, he looked, surprised to see
Speaker 1: the lights still on. He kicked off his shoes. Did
Speaker 1: you wait up? You o? Kay? I tried to keep
Speaker 1: it light, but my voice wobbled YEA, just can we talk.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're missing each other lately. You're always absent,
Speaker 1: even when you're here. He set his laptop down, slowly
Speaker 1: studying my face. If this is about me being m
Speaker 1: I A. I've got news, but it's not. It's not cheating,
Speaker 1: I promise. I almost snapped. Who said anything about cheating?
Speaker 1: He sat for the first time in weeks. He looked
Speaker 1: honestly tired. The weariness not just in his posture, but
Speaker 1: etched into the angle of his shoulders, his knuckles white
Speaker 1: around the cushion edge. He let out a deep breath.
Speaker 1: I got demoted tech lead to I see. They never
Speaker 1: went public, but I lost the project. I've been scrambling
Speaker 1: for freelance gigs, setting up a side project, talking to
Speaker 1: recruiters on the sly. I didn't want to tell you
Speaker 1: until I had a win to share. That's the late nights,
Speaker 1: the jim, just trying to get my head straight. Ava's
Speaker 1: a recruiter. I met her twice the drinks, ne working,
Speaker 1: he exhaled, voice cracking. I felt like an idiot, Like
Speaker 1: if you knew I was failing, you'd look at me different.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, E it landed heavy, but then heartbreakingly, all
Speaker 1: my evidence converged to support him. Late nights, money, oddities,
Speaker 1: weird behavior, shame and stress, not betrayal. I felt the
Speaker 1: tension uncoil, replaced with empathy so strong it made me
Speaker 1: want to curl up beside him and forgive everything. He
Speaker 1: started crying, real tears, breaking through the careful control. We
Speaker 1: ordered take out, curled up under a blanket, mapped out
Speaker 1: a potential Portland getaway, swore we'd hit reset that night.
Speaker 1: Mark was the man I loved, vulnerable, clumsy in his affection,
Speaker 1: grateful for the smallest comfort. The next morning, a package arrived,
Speaker 1: misdelivered to the wrong door by some confused college kid
Speaker 1: from the lobby downstairs. The label scrawled in loopy handwriting
Speaker 1: to Mark and Our I almost left it on the
Speaker 1: hall table for Mark to grab, thinking it was one
Speaker 1: of his endless text swag deliveries. But the package felt different.
Speaker 1: An actual ribbon looped round the top. I almost laughed.
Speaker 1: Mark hated gestures like this. Inside two tickets to a
Speaker 1: private wine tasting at Vino Verita's. The enclosed card congratulations
Speaker 1: year two at our spot, See you soon, signed simply
Speaker 1: Arva with a flourish of a wine glass doodle. I
Speaker 1: stood there, tickets in hand, the room spinning, the same bar,
Speaker 1: the same name, when he'd only hours before called just
Speaker 1: a recruiter, the inside joke, our spot suddenly sharp, a
Speaker 1: blade pressed to every soft part of me. I just
Speaker 1: impossibly soothed. I didn't confront him then. Instead, I moved
Speaker 1: through our apartment on autopilot, mind running in circles. I
Speaker 1: examined the tickets under the lamp, tried to find an
Speaker 1: innocent thread, but the white kine bar, the implication, the
Speaker 1: intimacy etched in casual handwriting. There was no version where
Speaker 1: this was net working, no version that made sense. I
Speaker 1: took the afternoon off from remote work. My boss texted,
Speaker 1: oh MG, feel better soon. I almost replied, yeah, wish
Speaker 1: me luck catching the flu at Vino Verita's, But I
Speaker 1: kept the joke to myself. I needed to know what
Speaker 1: else I'd overlooked. If I only had the package, the tickets,
Speaker 1: maybe it could still be some elaborate miscommunication. Maybe, but
Speaker 1: everything else, every delay, every slippery explanation, suggested I needed
Speaker 1: to be methodical. I started with the physical mark, always
Speaker 1: joked our place was Google organized Yet when I poked
Speaker 1: through his gym bag, something hard and cold lodged in
Speaker 1: the side pocket, A generic silver key with a number
Speaker 1: stamped awkwardly on the bow, four hundred ten, A not
Speaker 1: our unit number, not our old storage. I ran my
Speaker 1: thumb along the edge, feeling the chill bleed into my skin.
Speaker 1: His laptop was sleeping on the kitchen table, plugged into charge.
Speaker 1: We had each other's pass codes. It had always been
Speaker 1: a symbol of trust. I hesitated for entire minutes, shames simmering,
Speaker 1: but anger overtook guilt. Once inside, I went hunting in
Speaker 1: downloads and browser tabs Gmail. One folder labeled William's A.
Speaker 1: I listened, God, I listened to my heart pounding as
Speaker 1: I opened it. The earliest exchanges were innocent head hunter
Speaker 1: emails about potential freelance opportunities, but in recent weeks their
Speaker 1: tone bent unmistakably late night time stamps subject lines like
Speaker 1: mist you at our spot and lines in the body
Speaker 1: that hurt to read. You always pick the best SURRARH
Speaker 1: can't wait until I'm not just a client any more,
Speaker 1: jokes references dozens I'd never heard details about a trivia night,
Speaker 1: a tucked away apartment even hopes to get away together.
Speaker 1: One weekend after the next product cycle, I scrolled through,
Speaker 1: feeling lightheaded. Her signature was consistent Arva W. Williams, the
Speaker 1: very same as the Venmo payments, the tickets, the wine bar.
Speaker 1: Mark had marked her contact card as or hiding it
Speaker 1: from my normal search tiles by the trick of using
Speaker 1: initials as a last name. At that point, evidence felt
Speaker 1: like floodwater. Paranoia was replaced by this ugly sharp clarity.
Speaker 1: I dug deeper the apartment key. I checked the least docks.
Speaker 1: No mention of four hundred ten A in any of
Speaker 1: our notes. I called the number on the Jim's receipt,
Speaker 1: asked about their locker assignment, playing dumb as a new member.
Speaker 1: They told me it was an exclusive code for VIPs
Speaker 1: A side entrance. It never occurred to them that I
Speaker 1: was AVA. I waited until that night to act, following
Speaker 1: routine as close as possible. Mark insisted he'd be late
Speaker 1: big group dinner with the Austin Deva Lions. I wished
Speaker 1: him luck, texted a heart emoji, and left it at that. Instead,
Speaker 1: I camped out in my battered car, idling just outside
Speaker 1: lumin Athletics glass facade, pretending to scroll my phone, rehearsing
Speaker 1: a story in case anyone asked. Thirty minutes became an hour.
Speaker 1: Through the smoked glass, I watched Mark exit, Jim Baggs
Speaker 1: slung over his shoulder. He was alone for only a
Speaker 1: minute before a woman joined him, tall, striking, her hair
Speaker 1: pulled into a sleek ponatill ava. They didn't hug, but
Speaker 1: they walked close, her hand finding his arm just above
Speaker 1: the elbow in a way that made familiarity the only
Speaker 1: possible explanation. I watched them walk off down the block together,
Speaker 1: hand in hand, disappearing out of my line of sight.
Speaker 1: After nearly an hour, I made my way home, sitting
Speaker 1: in our two bright kitchen, staring at my own reflection
Speaker 1: in the window, trying to map what felt possible. Later
Speaker 1: that night, I texted Jesse without context, Hey remember the
Speaker 1: VS thing? What did you actually see? The reply came
Speaker 1: slower than normal. Honestly, Yeah, I saw them. I saw
Speaker 1: him kiss her. Ye. I just didn't want it to
Speaker 1: be real, or to be the person who told you.
Speaker 1: I put the phone down. The next day, I found
Speaker 1: myself walking secuitously, numb but focused. I stopped by Liam's
Speaker 1: shared office. Pretended I was dropping off Mark's old hoodie.
Speaker 1: He looked tired, gilt, thick in his posture. You know right,
Speaker 1: he said, not even trying to fake it. No, what
Speaker 1: Ava's around? I thought it was start up stuff, new
Speaker 1: team getting help, but they're close. He never told me
Speaker 1: what it was exactly. I'm sorry. I nodded. I wanted
Speaker 1: to scream, but my voice would have cracked. The final
Speaker 1: key linked in. I sent Aarva Williams a message, pretending
Speaker 1: to be a lapsed client, asking if she could refer
Speaker 1: me to a recruiter. She wrote back, professional at first,
Speaker 1: but with an undertone I could feel in her phrasing.
Speaker 1: Mark speaks so highly of you. He always says you're amazing.
Speaker 1: He's lucky. Don't let work burn him out as much
Speaker 1: as those late nights unwinding, the kind of slip only
Speaker 1: someone intimate would make. I thanked her, quickly, refraining from
Speaker 1: asking more. The context alone sealed the rest. I let
Speaker 1: the truth roll over me, wave after wave, stark and clean,
Speaker 1: after the months of dull anxiety. I spent the next
Speaker 1: hours wandering Lady Birdlake, watching runners flash past, each one
Speaker 1: a moving blur. The city vibrantly alive, entirely untouched by
Speaker 1: my private disaster. The sun pressed down, harsh and indifferent.
Speaker 1: I wanted the next steps to be clear. They were,
Speaker 1: but one thing had become unmistakable. Nothing about this was accidental,
Speaker 1: or repairable, or even forgivable by simple apology. There was
Speaker 1: a different kind of betrayal tangled through every friend, every
Speaker 1: corner of our so called open life. I walked home
Speaker 1: past Vino Veritas, pausing for a heartbeat to look in
Speaker 1: the window. A couple sat inside, heads duck together, sharing
Speaker 1: a bottle. I turned away, breathing shallow, my keys too
Speaker 1: cold and heavy in my fist. Night fell, and I
Speaker 1: waited for Mark to come home, not ready for confrontation,
Speaker 1: not yet, but unwilling to keep pretending. I built a
Speaker 1: small pile of evidence on the living room table. The tickets,
Speaker 1: the note, a print out of the emails, the receipts.
Speaker 1: The city lights bled on to our walls. The silence held,
Speaker 1: and for the first time I didn't know if our
Speaker 1: apartment would ever feel like home again. I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about what it meant to have every one know something
Speaker 1: before you did, not just the specifics, but the cold
Speaker 1: mechanics of it the way trust could fracture invisibly, and
Speaker 1: suddenly the mundane, the board games, the brunches, the borrowed
Speaker 1: passwords became a web holding only broken pieces. The hum
Speaker 1: of the ac cut off, leaving the apartment thick with
Speaker 1: a silence that wasn't just physical. I watched head lights
Speaker 1: flick past the blinds, too wired to do anything but
Speaker 1: stare at the facts I'd marshaled to top, the coffee table,
Speaker 1: the tickets to the wine tasting, the scrawled card, screenshots
Speaker 1: from Mark's g mail open on my phone, each browser
Speaker 1: tab a knife twist. Eight minutes to midnight, I was
Speaker 1: still in work, leggings, hair in a mess at the
Speaker 1: back of my head, hands coiled protectively at my sternum.
Speaker 1: I kept flipping the Jim receipt over and over, noticing
Speaker 1: that the paper was starting to soften, creased so many
Speaker 1: times it might just disintegrate. I wasn't ready, couldn't be
Speaker 1: ready to confront him with all of it. Not yet,
Speaker 1: something kept me pinned to the couch, the need to
Speaker 1: be really truly sure, as if enough undeniable evidence might
Speaker 1: cauterize the part of me screaming to just beg him
Speaker 1: to prove it wasn't real. Footsteps in the hallway one
Speaker 1: floor up sent panic flaring through me, but they faded,
Speaker 1: some neighbor coming back from drinks or work or a date,
Speaker 1: some one drifting through a life that, for all I knew,
Speaker 1: was just as cracked as mine felt. A squerily thought
Speaker 1: kept circling. What if Jesse had known for weeks? What
Speaker 1: about Liam? Is that why he couldn't meet my eyes
Speaker 1: at brunch? All strange earnestness and pity disguised as concern
Speaker 1: the whole group? Was it obvious to every one but me?
Speaker 1: I pressed my thumb against my phone, fighting the urge
Speaker 1: to text her again, to demand clarity or reassurance, or
Speaker 1: even just the comfort of her voice, which I knew
Speaker 1: I wouldn't believe anyway. Instead, I picked up the keys
Speaker 1: from the bowl near the door, clipping them together in
Speaker 1: my palm, and paced the length of the living room.
Speaker 1: Half the succulents by the window were dying. When had
Speaker 1: I last warted anything that required even an ounce of care?
Speaker 1: I forced myself to sit at my laptop again, cold
Speaker 1: blue light making my cheeks look bruised in the reflection.
Speaker 1: I searched morbidly through Mark's iCloud looking for recent locations, and,
Speaker 1: because paranoia had become routine, pulled up credit card statements
Speaker 1: stretching back three months, vague sense of place lines, a
Speaker 1: pizza place neither of us liked, late night steakhouse charges
Speaker 1: on nights he claimed to grab froyo with co workers.
Speaker 1: Lift rides starting at the gym, none ending at home,
Speaker 1: always at various addresses marked only by time stamps, late, later, later.
Speaker 1: Still there's shame in snooping. I won't defend it, but
Speaker 1: there's survival too, a sick logic in uncovering what you're
Speaker 1: most terrified to believe. I kept looking slower, now, compiling
Speaker 1: not just proof but a pattern. The emails weren't daily,
Speaker 1: but were regular late Friday nights, sometimes every three or
Speaker 1: four days, looping from thanks for last night to subtle
Speaker 1: administrative cover remind me to bring your charge in next time.
Speaker 1: Did Arva know I existed? Had she been told I
Speaker 1: was just a friend? Or was she part of a
Speaker 1: maneuver to keep me comfortably distant? My mind itch to
Speaker 1: fill every blank, find every missing text, contextualize every smile
Speaker 1: in every Instagram photo. I started second guessing myself running
Speaker 1: through weeks of moments, reconstructing what I'd missed. The last
Speaker 1: time Mark brought me leftovers from a work dinner. He'd
Speaker 1: mentioned some one named Ava in laugh off terms h
Speaker 1: R TEMP Real Jim rat. Now even that throwaway line
Speaker 1: felt weighted. I scrolled further into the work slack he
Speaker 1: left open. In the d MS was nothing obviously incriminating,
Speaker 1: but a couple of new private channels, Late Night dev
Speaker 1: and Fitfam, almost all men except one user, Ava w
Speaker 1: The public messages were clean, but in gaps between group
Speaker 1: chat time stamps and Venmo charges, I saw the faint
Speaker 1: impression of another rhythm, one that didn't match the story
Speaker 1: I'd been sold. My eyes were dry from screen glow.
Speaker 1: My body vibrated, skin prickling with a confusion, heavy as
Speaker 1: air right before a storm. I wanted proof from somewhere
Speaker 1: outside myself, some one to confirm that reality was still reality.
Speaker 1: On impulse, I texted Sarah random cue at happy hour
Speaker 1: last week, what did you think of Mark's new running obsession?
Speaker 1: She left me on read, then, fifteen minutes later replied,
Speaker 1: it fits his mid life panic. El O L you worried?
Speaker 1: I stared at the screen unamused. By one thirty, I
Speaker 1: was out of methods. I told myself to sleep, but
Speaker 1: ends of thoughts frayed into new questions. I considered leaving
Speaker 1: the evidence on the table for him to find. A
Speaker 1: childish part of me wanted to be saved from having
Speaker 1: to raise my own voice. But I couldn't surrender on
Speaker 1: a technicality. Not after all this that insomnia led morning,
Speaker 1: I showered in silence, dressed carefully, black jeans, clean T shirt,
Speaker 1: some armor. In routine, I called in flexible w f
Speaker 1: H on slack, I hit the Farmer's Market, then free
Speaker 1: Play for a morning coffee, pretending I was just any
Speaker 1: other remote worker, killing time, and then walking back down Congress,
Speaker 1: I paused outside Vino Verita's eleven thirty, too early for
Speaker 1: any one I knew to be inside. I stared at
Speaker 1: the battered sandwich, bored on the sidewalk. Private tasting Friday,
Speaker 1: reserved by name. Arva and Mark had reservations. I wondered
Speaker 1: if the staff remembered them as a couple, if any
Speaker 1: bartender they knew their life was some one else's mess.
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but step inside. The owner Raqwell glanced
Speaker 1: up from a stack of invoices, smiled, looking for Mark.
Speaker 1: He made another reservation for Friday. You joining? This time
Speaker 1: the words hit so clean. I couldn't fake my normal self.
Speaker 1: Oh not sure, I guess I'll check in with him.
Speaker 1: Rackwell shrugged, not noticing my hand fisting the hem of
Speaker 1: my shirt. Nice to see couples still come out together,
Speaker 1: so rare. Now with that, she disappeared into the kitchen, oblivious. Outside,
Speaker 1: the air was hot and bright, weightless, the way Austin
Speaker 1: gets even. In January, a lie of summer. I texted Mark,
Speaker 1: wanting to see how he'd frame it. Hey, Rackwell says,
Speaker 1: you reserved Veno again? Am I getting surprised for date night?
Speaker 1: The reply came too fast to compose. Work thing. The
Speaker 1: new h R chick Ava is hosting a vendor party.
Speaker 1: I'll bail if you want me home early instead, another
Speaker 1: tangled story. This time, at least the lies were neat practiced,
Speaker 1: but the haste, the generic h R chick my own
Speaker 1: name never mentioned, each piece a damning echo of whatever
Speaker 1: he was hiding. I tried to imagine what explanation would
Speaker 1: even make sense any more, what detail would turn all
Speaker 1: of this from rot to just another awkward office event
Speaker 1: my phone. Mark added, seriously, it'll be boring just execs
Speaker 1: and wine nerds. Would weigh rather crash on the couch
Speaker 1: with you? I said nothing. As I walked, I considered
Speaker 1: calling Ava herself, arranged some meeting demand her side, but
Speaker 1: a deep weariness stopped me. What if I heard honesty
Speaker 1: and it hurt in some fresh novel way I still
Speaker 1: wasn't braced for. Instead, I cave to the most basic
Speaker 1: urge surveillance. I called a lift and on Friday night
Speaker 1: approached Vino Verita's early sitting across the street at the
Speaker 1: old record shop, pretending to browse faded fleetwood Mac vinyls
Speaker 1: through the bar windows. I watched as a few vendor
Speaker 1: types gathered. Mark arrived, no tie, shirt, rumpled just enough
Speaker 1: to look deliberate. He carried a gym bag why for
Speaker 1: a wine tasting. Moments later, Arva appeared from the side door.
Speaker 1: There were hugs, not chummy, not brief, the kind of
Speaker 1: close press of bodies that had a certain familiarity. She
Speaker 1: flicked at his collar, smoothing it and let her hand
Speaker 1: rest there. They laughed about something. He bent closer, and
Speaker 1: for a split second, even without sound, you could see
Speaker 1: the intimacy, the way she smiled at him, the way
Speaker 1: they moved together without thinking. Some one called Mark's name.
Speaker 1: He straightened, and for a moment I almost believed he
Speaker 1: wore the gilt on his back, a hunch to his shoulders,
Speaker 1: an excess of bounce in his pivot. But then he
Speaker 1: was all charm, shaking hands, doing the flirting up the
Speaker 1: room routine every one bought as his friendliness. I texted Jesse, shaking,
Speaker 1: not even knowing what I hoped for. If you were me,
Speaker 1: would you want the dirty details or just the broad strokes?
Speaker 1: She replied with a voice note, her tone pitched somewhere
Speaker 1: between confession and caution. You deserve the real story, l
Speaker 1: But like I dunno, do you want me to tell
Speaker 1: you face to face? It's more than just what you
Speaker 1: already know. I pocketed my phone. Watching through that glass
Speaker 1: made the decision for me. I would need to hear everything,
Speaker 1: but not to night, not while I was too raw
Speaker 1: to tell anger from fear. I left feet, taking me
Speaker 1: mechanically home, the city's noise washed out behind me. Even then,
Speaker 1: some foolish part of me hoped for a call, some
Speaker 1: simple explanation that would tether me to our old routines.
Speaker 1: But Mark came home after midnight, breath quick jackets slung
Speaker 1: over his arm, hair slicked with sweat from the walk.
Speaker 1: I lay in bed, pretending to sleep, listening to the
Speaker 1: soft chime of his phone as he scrolled, almost certainly
Speaker 1: not reading code. Saturday, I messaged Liam. We hadn't talked,
Speaker 1: not directly, since that weird brunch. He replied, sure, beers
Speaker 1: at Lazarus. You good when we met. The conversation circled
Speaker 1: around work for a few minutes, tech gossip, mutual acquaintances,
Speaker 1: leaving town lay offs looming. Eventually I cut in, voice
Speaker 1: so thin I barely recognized myself. Liam, did you know
Speaker 1: about Mark and Nava? He froze beer midair, look Elina
Speaker 1: I he ah mentioned a new project, but I didn't
Speaker 1: get details. His pause was too long. I knew there
Speaker 1: was someone from the gym he hung out with a lot. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I thought it was start up planning or whatever. You
Speaker 1: know how Mark is keeping side stuffed secrets so he
Speaker 1: can drop a surprise when it's ready. I stared, waiting.
Speaker 1: Liam finally sighed, but last week he left my place
Speaker 1: at like eleven, saw him get in a lift with her.
Speaker 1: I didn't ask, I was. I'm sorry. I should have
Speaker 1: checked in with you. I just didn't want to blunder
Speaker 1: into drama. He looked like he meant it, but the
Speaker 1: damage was done. I felt something harden, a resignation to
Speaker 1: the fact that even our friends, the people I trusted
Speaker 1: to hold bright lines, preferred plausible deniability to risking confrontation.
Speaker 1: I walked home from the brewery, wind cold against my cheeks.
Speaker 1: The glow of certainty replaced what little pity I might
Speaker 1: have felt a day earlier. Mark was building a life
Speaker 1: at the margins of our own, and nobody, least of
Speaker 1: all me, wanted to admit how visible it had become.
Speaker 1: My next chance came on Monday. Mark texted in the
Speaker 1: afternoon off to lumin will grab dinner with Jim Crew.
Speaker 1: Don't wait up, babe, a familiar excuse. I told myself
Speaker 1: not to follow, not to become the person who trailed
Speaker 1: partners like a private eye, but my hands shook as
Speaker 1: I pulled on a sweatshirt, grabbing the spare key, and
Speaker 1: ducked out. Late. I parked near the Jim's Side entrance,
Speaker 1: hidden behind a thicket of glossy leaved oaks waited as
Speaker 1: dusk melted into full night. Arva emerged first with her
Speaker 1: Jim bag Mark followed, grinning. They walked together down the block.
Speaker 1: This time, as they rounded the corner, she reached for
Speaker 1: his hand, lacing her fingers with his, without watching to
Speaker 1: see if anyone cared. There was no mistaking it for
Speaker 1: anything innocent. I watched until they disappeared into the door
Speaker 1: of an apartment building marked four hundred ten A. Of course,
Speaker 1: my throat felt bruised. I almost didn't go home. I
Speaker 1: wanted to confront them both on the sidewalk, to break
Speaker 1: the secrecy by brute force, but instead I turned away,
Speaker 1: stumbling back to the car. I drove aimlessly up and
Speaker 1: down Congress, the city sparkling in a kind of oblivious optimism.
Speaker 1: My hand hovered over my phone, craving a connection I
Speaker 1: no longer trusted. It was nearly midnight when I finally
Speaker 1: let myself in, numb and feverish. Mark was already home, showered,
Speaker 1: sprawled on the couch, messy hair curling over his eyebrow. Sorry, babe.
Speaker 1: Jim went long, then hit torches with the crew want chips.
Speaker 1: I stared at him how easy the lie had become.
Speaker 1: I had to look away so he didn't see my
Speaker 1: face fracture. No, I'm tired early stand up in the morning,
Speaker 1: I said, moving into the bedroom before tears could surface.
Speaker 1: That night, Jesse message again, you okay, want company? I debated,
Speaker 1: then sent, I need to know exactly what you saw
Speaker 1: at Veno, no filter please. Her typing bubble appeared, vanished,
Speaker 1: then appeared again. She called me voice gentle but brittle.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I sat on this. I saw them at
Speaker 1: the bar l Mark kissed her and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: a quick thing. They looked like like a couple, honestly,
Speaker 1: like nobody else existed. She hesitated. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to tell you Mark's my friend too, but I should
Speaker 1: have come to you first. For a strange, suspended moment,
Speaker 1: it felt almost freeing, like the invisible half of the
Speaker 1: puzzle finally slotted into place. No more waifs, no more
Speaker 1: gaslighting myself with elaborate explanations. The confirmation was hideous, but
Speaker 1: it was real. The next morning, after a sleepless night,
Speaker 1: I did the inevitable. Found Ava's contact on LinkedIn, sent
Speaker 1: a message using my word account. Hi aarva. I'm looking
Speaker 1: for recommendations on head hunters specializing in product management rolls.
Speaker 1: Mark mentioned you knew a few folks. Can you point
Speaker 1: me in the right direction, she responded mid afternoon. Of course,
Speaker 1: Mark speaks really highly of you. Those late nights are killer.
Speaker 1: He always says you're the one who keeps him sane.
Speaker 1: And then, as if unable to stop herself, she added,
Speaker 1: happy to refer you or grab a glass at Veno
Speaker 1: some time when you're not both completely spent from unwinding.
Speaker 1: It was, at last the final blow, intimacy acknowledged, if
Speaker 1: not outright phrased as romance. She knew enough to reference
Speaker 1: the bar, the drinks, even me glossed as the long
Speaker 1: suffering wife who kept Mark anchored something inside me finally
Speaker 1: let go. There would be no more investigation, no more
Speaker 1: pleading for proof, no more arranging facts in my head
Speaker 1: for an acquittal that would never come. But the cost
Speaker 1: was visibility. Now that I saw it, I saw all
Speaker 1: of it. Every skipped beat in our conversations, every abrupt
Speaker 1: change in affection, every friend's reluctance to meet my eyes.
Speaker 1: The realness of our relationship had quietly been replaced by
Speaker 1: substitute routines, Mark's high energy, the jim the late night
Speaker 1: work dinners, our friends. Caution wasn't just loyalty, it was complicity,
Speaker 1: self preservation, defending the group over the individual. I sat
Speaker 1: by the window, light fallen to blue shadow over the
Speaker 1: city and wrote out every fact I'd found. Did it
Speaker 1: for myself, for the fact of order, even if the
Speaker 1: order was only the pattern of betrayal. Three pages of ink,
Speaker 1: a physical record to keep my resolves steady. I tested
Speaker 1: the new key, the one labeled four hundred ten A,
Speaker 1: just for the feel of it. I let it rest
Speaker 1: in my palm, sharp and solid and utterly damning, then
Speaker 1: zipped it back into its spot in the jim bag.
Speaker 1: If Mark noticed later, he never said. The day before,
Speaker 1: before I decided to end it, I wandered Target listlessly,
Speaker 1: picking out things we didn't need. A new dish, soap,
Speaker 1: a terrarium for a plant that would die soon anyway.
Speaker 1: I took my time getting through self checkout. When I
Speaker 1: returned home, Mark was unusually cheerful, suggesting we do take
Speaker 1: out again. He made an offhand joke about needing a
Speaker 1: real US night to reset. When I replied, sure, as
Speaker 1: long as it's just the two of us. My voice
Speaker 1: barely trembled. He kissed my forehead, all smiles, and called
Speaker 1: in a pizza order. That night, I slept with the
Speaker 1: evidence under the spare pillow, physical proof that I wasn't
Speaker 1: inventing any of this, wasn't misreading. I wanted to dream
Speaker 1: about anything else. All I got was the sensation of
Speaker 1: falling repeatedly into a dark place that should have felt familiar,
Speaker 1: but didn't. The next morning, a Wednesday, I brewed coffee
Speaker 1: and worked out the plan. Mark would come home at
Speaker 1: the same time as always, I'd lay out everything e mails, tickets, key,
Speaker 1: the card, and ask for the truth. For the first
Speaker 1: time since all this had begun, I hoped for nothing
Speaker 1: but honesty, no matter how ugly. The city woke up outside.
Speaker 1: I could see buses starting down, congress runners tracing roots
Speaker 1: along the river. I wondered how many of them were
Speaker 1: keeping secrets, how thin the membrane of their ordinary lives
Speaker 1: really was. When Mark texted at noon that he be
Speaker 1: late again, pushing code with AARVA then post mortem drinks,
Speaker 1: the message landed softly, expected, almost merciful in its transparency.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer. I spent the afternoon, piecing together a
Speaker 1: form letter to our landlord, drafting the first lines of
Speaker 1: a message i'd send once everything was in the open. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm requesting an updated lease with only my name on
Speaker 1: the file. I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror
Speaker 1: before he came home, noting the shadowed eyes, the unfamiliar
Speaker 1: tightness in my mouth. I looked older than the thirty two,
Speaker 1: five years with Mark, and five years erased from the
Speaker 1: inside by something I now couldn't name without cringing. By sunset,
Speaker 1: i'd set the table with the artifacts of his betrayal,
Speaker 1: the evidence not as accusations, but as facts, cold, neutral, unignorable.
Speaker 1: My hands were steady. The apartment felt cleaner than it
Speaker 1: had in weeks. I waited with the kind of patience
Speaker 1: you only find when you know something is ending and
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do to slow it down. The
Speaker 1: world outside faded to low yellow lamplight and the hush
Speaker 1: of cars rolling over pavement. Hours passed, the soft tick
Speaker 1: of the kitchen clock impossibly loud. I stopped rehearsing what
Speaker 1: i'd say, knew it wouldn't matter that whatever I scripted
Speaker 1: was only for me. Finally, Mark's keys jingled at the door,
Speaker 1: the familiar scrape and muffled exhale, as if coming inside
Speaker 1: was permission to finally drop whatever mask he'd worn out there.
Speaker 1: This was the moment I had dreaded, desired, and now
Speaker 1: at last accepted as necessary as breathing. I let him enter,
Speaker 1: the silence not rising, letting the evidence do the talking,
Speaker 1: knowing that what came next would be the final accounting,
Speaker 1: not just of faith, but of all the little silences
Speaker 1: we both had learned to keep. Mark clocked the evidence
Speaker 1: on the table. The instant he walked in. His steps
Speaker 1: stuttered just for a blink in the entryway's yellowed patch
Speaker 1: of light. He didn't put down his bag, didn't even
Speaker 1: close the front door all the way. For three heartbeats,
Speaker 1: the only sound was the building's hallway hush behind him,
Speaker 1: night air drifting in and pressing against the back of
Speaker 1: my neck. He stared tickets, the card with Aarva's handwriting
Speaker 1: as spot see you soon, the gym receipt, the ridged,
Speaker 1: unfamiliar silver key, screenshots clipped together. Every artifact signaled some
Speaker 1: piece of the architecture he'd built away from me. The
Speaker 1: moment had no sarahmony, no grand music, just the sticky,
Speaker 1: real scent of our apartment and the electric prickle of
Speaker 1: my own skin. Mark hovered a little deeper into the
Speaker 1: living room when to set his bag down, then seemed
Speaker 1: to think better of it. He ran a palm over
Speaker 1: his mouth, hiding the bottom half of his face. I saw,
Speaker 1: for the first time in an age that he looked
Speaker 1: genuinely afraid. Elena. He said, just my name, nothing else.
Speaker 1: I didn't stand. It felt important not to keys aren't
Speaker 1: for our place. My voice was even receipts don't fit
Speaker 1: your stories. And this I lifted the card between two
Speaker 1: fingers hands. Steady is from Ava, signed to both of
Speaker 1: you from Veno, your work event venue. For one pitiful second,
Speaker 1: he looked around, as if searching for some off stage ally,
Speaker 1: a witness who could explain it away. He tried and
Speaker 1: failed to summon indignance. You went through my stuff, don't bother,
Speaker 1: I said, quieter than I meant. The lies came before
Speaker 1: the snooping. A long breath hissed from him. He stepped sideways, carefully,
Speaker 1: as if proximity alone might buy time, but didn't get closer.
Speaker 1: His eyes darted over the table, jumped from the key,
Speaker 1: to the tickets to my face and back. Ay, I
Speaker 1: can explain old rehearsal, new setting, some of this. It's
Speaker 1: not what it looks like, of course it is. I interrupted,
Speaker 1: My voice cracked there anger finally leaking in. It's exactly
Speaker 1: what it looks like. You just hoped I'd keep believing you,
Speaker 1: even when you stopped bothering to lie well. Mark swallowed,
Speaker 1: pressed his hands flat to his thighs, then dropped on
Speaker 1: to the edge of the sofa across from me. The small,
Speaker 1: battered coffee table felt like it had multiplied itself wide
Speaker 1: as a conference table, each object now a piece of
Speaker 1: evidence in a process neither of us wanted to complete.
Speaker 1: He didn't touch anything. It wasn't planned. He started looking
Speaker 1: at the Serah ticket, not me. She Ava was just
Speaker 1: someone from the gym. At first, after the demotion, I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to tell you. I felt like shit,
Speaker 1: like I was failing everything. She listened. She had just
Speaker 1: started happening, So the recruiter I spat the net working drinks.
Speaker 1: Was that part true or just shorthand for screwing her
Speaker 1: behind my back? His jaw clenched. She did help with
Speaker 1: work stuff, but she was more than that after a while,
Speaker 1: all the practice lies from before, the easy charm, the
Speaker 1: script he'd spun about Jim's late night partnerships, temp hires collapsed,
Speaker 1: exposed as a house stacked crooked. I could feel an
Speaker 1: old version of me, the pleading, hopeful person, desperate for
Speaker 1: one reason not to implode, ticking through each item in
Speaker 1: a kind of panic. But there was no more room
Speaker 1: for that. Elena. Here, the wine bar, the private apartment,
Speaker 1: the godamn tickets. Was any of it accidental? Until I asked?
Speaker 1: He flinched, actually flinched when I managed to keep my
Speaker 1: tone measured. No, I mean yes. The first time we
Speaker 1: ran into each other there, I thought of you. Actually
Speaker 1: I almost didn't stay, but she made it easy to
Speaker 1: be I don't know, different, not judged. I kept telling
Speaker 1: myself it was just about feeling better. Until it was
Speaker 1: my hands clenched in my lap. I was aware of
Speaker 1: every nail pressing into my palm, an inventory of muscle
Speaker 1: and wilpur keeping me from hurling his phone at the wall.
Speaker 1: So you told her about me, I said, just enough
Speaker 1: that she could make me a joke in her own messages,
Speaker 1: Mark paled. She thinks she knows you're my wife. I
Speaker 1: never pretended you didn't exist. It just I told her
Speaker 1: things weren't working, that I felt alone, that we were
Speaker 1: more friends than partners lately. The fury in me wanted
Speaker 1: to spit that back at him, ask how he justified
Speaker 1: his side when he'd eliminated me from all contexts that
Speaker 1: would allowed me to matter. You went to Liam, You
Speaker 1: let Jesse see you, You let our friends lie by omission.
Speaker 1: You let me sit in this apartment and doubt my
Speaker 1: own sanity because you were too cowardly to just admit it.
Speaker 1: His eyes finally met mine, wet shining, uncertain if he
Speaker 1: should defend himself or collapse. I was going to end
Speaker 1: it al, he pleaded, and then that phrase, exhausted, pathetic
Speaker 1: made me snap. No, you were going to get caught,
Speaker 1: I said, there's a difference. Ava wasn't an accident. Lying
Speaker 1: wasn't an accident. You put all your effort into being
Speaker 1: careful and failed because you underestimated me and overestimated your
Speaker 1: ability to keep your lives disjoint. Mark's body caved a little.
Speaker 1: Then he pressed both hands to his face, exhaled a
Speaker 1: shaky breath. I'm sorry, he mumbled behind his fingers. Then
Speaker 1: dropped them and tried again. You have to believe I
Speaker 1: was just lost. I wasn't trying to hurt you. All
Speaker 1: that stuff at work. I didn't even know who I
Speaker 1: was any more. She she saw me when I needed it.
Speaker 1: I shook my head, lips trembling as tears threatened for
Speaker 1: the first time. All your reasons are just apologies for
Speaker 1: never talking to me, for thinking pain is something you
Speaker 1: keep clean by outsourcing the dirt. You could have told
Speaker 1: me you were failing. Instead, you found a woman to
Speaker 1: play therapist and lover, and then built a goddamn ritual
Speaker 1: out of hiding. For a moment, I wanted him to rage,
Speaker 1: to fight for something, to say no, wait, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: But Mark only sagged further, shoulders hunched. I'm so sorry, Elle,
Speaker 1: I swear if I could take it back, but you can't.
Speaker 1: I cut him off, my own voice, cavernous and hollow.
Speaker 1: You're only sorry because it's over. You don't get to
Speaker 1: say if now. He tried then to reach for my hand,
Speaker 1: but I drew back, leaving air and evidence and a
Speaker 1: sprawl of broken trust between us. Tears tracked down my cheeks,
Speaker 1: not from relief and not quite from grief, just the
Speaker 1: fatal confirmation, the chemical backlash after certainty, I found myself
Speaker 1: almost laughing, the sound sharp and ugly. You know what
Speaker 1: hurts worse than the cheating, Mark, the fact that you
Speaker 1: kept letting me clean up the mess after you'd already
Speaker 1: decided not to care. He was crying, now, not performatively,
Speaker 1: but with the shame of a man finally forced to
Speaker 1: see how small his apology looked in the face of
Speaker 1: actual damage. I'll go, he managed to night. I'll get
Speaker 1: out of your way, pack a bag, I'll get some
Speaker 1: one to change the locks in the morning, I answered,
Speaker 1: surprised at how clipped I sounded. Tell Ava whatever you want.
Speaker 1: I don't care. He stood, finally registering the gravity of
Speaker 1: what I'd already decided. Can I just can we talk
Speaker 1: in a few days, once this, Once I'm somewhere sane,
Speaker 1: I shook my head again. Slow, No, we're done here, Mark.
Speaker 1: He nodded, so island and moved to the bedroom, the
Speaker 1: door clicking shut with slow, deliberate care. I listened to
Speaker 1: drawers pulled open, the hollow thunk of him packing, the
Speaker 1: clatter of his shoes tumbling into a bag. I stood
Speaker 1: only to lock myself in the bathroom, washing my hands
Speaker 1: until they glowed red, shaky all over. The chaos of
Speaker 1: the last hour didn't make anything clearer. It only pushed
Speaker 1: the wedge all the way through. I could hear him
Speaker 1: on the phone, voicemail, then another try, presumably Liam, judging
Speaker 1: by the apologetic fragments that slipped down the hall, the
Speaker 1: privacy was gone, though the illusion of partnership shattered into
Speaker 1: logistical fragments. He left the apartment without a word, duffel
Speaker 1: bag slung over one shoulder, not quite looking at me
Speaker 1: as he slipped out the click of the lift down
Speaker 1: the hall. The second it took to know it was
Speaker 1: finally unequivocally over. With him gone, the silence grew larger,
Speaker 1: stretched to fill everything, the kitchen suddenly too right, the
Speaker 1: living room colder, without the clutter of excuses. A fat,
Speaker 1: terrible sense of anticlimax washed over me, then receded. The
Speaker 1: phone was still on the coffee table, Mark's face caught
Speaker 1: in a frozen selfie from some months ago at Zilka,
Speaker 1: beaming before these months of subterfuge. I swiped it off,
Speaker 1: placed it behind the lamp, and sat staring at the
Speaker 1: scattered artifacts of a marriage just concluded. In the pure
Speaker 1: ugly legalistic sense of exposure. Sleep didn't come, not really
Speaker 1: body shaking. I moved through motions of undressing, slipping into
Speaker 1: bed on my side, sheets too cold. Morning brought no relief,
Speaker 1: only the crawl of consequences, heavy as breath. Before the
Speaker 1: sun broke fully across the kitchen. I dialed the locksmith,
Speaker 1: booked an appointment for noon. There was brief resistance from management.
Speaker 1: Is the cotenant notified? Yes? I lied, The lease would
Speaker 1: change soon enough anyway. Jesse texted at seven zero five
Speaker 1: a m. I'm sorry, L call me when you need.
Speaker 1: I didn't answer at first. Instead, I started a mental
Speaker 1: inventory what needed to be removed, fixed, undone, or left
Speaker 1: as evidence of my own agency. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did was gather what Mark left behind his back up charger,
Speaker 1: a half used tube of beard oil, a stack of
Speaker 1: receipts and business cards from his side hustling. I put
Speaker 1: them in a brown paper bag, taped the top shut,
Speaker 1: and left it by the door. By nine am, the
Speaker 1: locksmith rang up, friendly, too talkative. I hovered near by
Speaker 1: watching him install the new lock with an efficiency that
Speaker 1: felt pointedly uncaring about what dramas it might have followed.
Speaker 1: Once the final click echoed against the door, I wandered
Speaker 1: the apartment, opening closet doors, smelling each shirt left behind
Speaker 1: for hints of Aarvour's perfume or that strange clawing Jim Eyre.
Speaker 1: Satisfied and sick at, I dumped half of it, the
Speaker 1: obviously shared the ambiguous into another bag, determined to have
Speaker 1: the space back, however symbolic. The rest of the morning,
Speaker 1: my phone vibrated with notifications, three missed calls from Mark,
Speaker 1: one from Liam, a single checking in from Sarah, our
Speaker 1: friend who never quite picked sides. No message from Ava,
Speaker 1: only her digital presence on Instagram now blocked. Mark's mother
Speaker 1: called in the afternoon. I silenced it, not ready to
Speaker 1: replay the story for someone who saw this as a
Speaker 1: proof of maternal wisdom rather than a real loss. By
Speaker 1: mid afternoon, I pennied a quick email to our landlord
Speaker 1: Hi that co signer will be moving out as of
Speaker 1: this week. Will need to revise the least soonest. Please
Speaker 1: confirm what you need from my end. The professionalism of
Speaker 1: the tone was a shield for the truth churning behind.
Speaker 1: At sunset, I forced myself out brushed hair, thin sweater,
Speaker 1: walked the same four blocks we traversed every Saturday in
Speaker 1: earlier years. I dropped off the last bag of Mark's
Speaker 1: things at Liam's doorstep, not staying to see if Liam
Speaker 1: opened or tried to talk. It sat there, a silent
Speaker 1: accusation against both of them. Jesse showed up with wine
Speaker 1: and granola bars, which we ate on the couch in
Speaker 1: wary silence. She curled her legs beneath, her hands wrapped
Speaker 1: around the glass, her tone quiet but not cowardly. This time,
Speaker 1: I should have told you sooner, she said, finally, eyes wet.
Speaker 1: I just thought if I waited, maybe you were trying
Speaker 1: to protect the status quo, I replied, or yourself. She nodded,
Speaker 1: shame plain. I didn't want to pick sides, but I
Speaker 1: let him use that to keep you in the dark.
Speaker 1: I know the wine did not go to my head.
Speaker 1: Nothing could. But Jesse's presence steadied me enough to start
Speaker 1: deleting things, Instagram photos of us, the shared playlist, the
Speaker 1: last fragments of digital couplehood. Later, I set my phone
Speaker 1: to do not Disturb, poured the last glass of blackened serrar,
Speaker 1: and walked alone to Vino veritas, no real plan, just
Speaker 1: a quiet, ironic gesture. I sat at a corner table,
Speaker 1: watched other couples in their rituals, and let myself be
Speaker 1: another woman alone at a wine bar, unseen and unremarkable,
Speaker 1: nobody's secret and nobody's alibi. After that, my world narrowed
Speaker 1: to small, deliberate acts, changing the Wi Fi password, updating
Speaker 1: emergency contacts on every shared app or subscription, ordering a
Speaker 1: new set of towels online, small defenses against the echo
Speaker 1: of his presence, markers of a space only mine Again.
Speaker 1: The city pulsed outside, oblivious, down on Congress. The headlights
Speaker 1: were stacked up, lines of cars going nowhere, in particular,
Speaker 1: the rhythm of ordinary life, continuing as if my private
Speaker 1: world had not shattered and rebuilt itself in the light
Speaker 1: of a single night. Eventually, fatigue forced me home, where
Speaker 1: I emptied the sink, scrubbed the counters, lined each thing
Speaker 1: up with an absurd, purifying precision, the useless calm of
Speaker 1: making order out of chaos. And when even that ran out,
Speaker 1: I lay on the floor, arms flung wide, staring up
Speaker 1: at the cracked ceiling, letting the silence do what it
Speaker 1: could not fill the space he'd left. The next wave
Speaker 1: was the cause from family, My mother, both vindicated and
Speaker 1: actually for once kind. I always worried he wasn't as
Speaker 1: solid as he claimed. But you did nothing wrong, El,
Speaker 1: you did nothing wrong. The relief in her voice was
Speaker 1: nearly as draining as the ache. Some silver of age
Speaker 1: wisdom badly applied. I told her, simply the minimum, it's over,
Speaker 1: He's gone. She offered to come down. I said no.
Speaker 1: Jesse followed up, offering again to crash on my couch,
Speaker 1: but I declined, I need to be by myself if
Speaker 1: I'm going to feel anything at all. She accepted, but
Speaker 1: left a door stop. Note. You deserve better. Don't let
Speaker 1: his selfishness define you. For a while, it was enough
Speaker 1: to manage passwords and make arrangements, but Mark was persistent.
Speaker 1: Messages arriving after midnight, sometimes direct, I'm sorry, I miss you,
Speaker 1: sometimes defiant. You know I'm not just a villain here.
Speaker 1: I was in pain too. I ignored them all. He
Speaker 1: tried once to stop by for the rest of my stuff,
Speaker 1: but I buzzed him in, didn't open the door, and
Speaker 1: watched through the peep hole as he gathered. Defeated, Liam
Speaker 1: messaged once I'm sorry, Elena. I thought he'd stop. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have stayed out of it. I didn't reply. There
Speaker 1: are things that don't need saying any more. When the
Speaker 1: new lease arrived, I signed it electronically, hands steady, crossing
Speaker 1: out his name in digital black. Those days I lived
Speaker 1: by habit, mapped out each task, no room for unscripted grief.
Speaker 1: The apartment became lighter area. I slept better than I
Speaker 1: dared hope, though that sleep was empty, free of dreams.
Speaker 1: Vino Veritas called finally, Hi, just checking, do you still
Speaker 1: want the Friday reservation? I canceled, no explanation, no emotion,
Speaker 1: one less ritual for some one else to reclaim. At night,
Speaker 1: I'd sometimes scroll back through texts I never sent explanations
Speaker 1: and demands bravado and wounded pride. Then I would delete them,
Speaker 1: each absence, reaffirming that there was nothing left to retrieve,
Speaker 1: nothing at all left to say. One last time before
Speaker 1: the final undoing, I gathered the remainder of Mark's accidental leavings,
Speaker 1: his mug from the sink, a shirt I found looped
Speaker 1: over the back of his office chair, and placed them
Speaker 1: out in the recycling area. Anonymous free for anybody. I
Speaker 1: stood at the kitchen window, watching dusk slip into real dark,
Speaker 1: contemplating which version of myself I hoped would emerge next,
Speaker 1: the person I was before, or some one else entirely.
Speaker 1: Eventually the mess receded, replaced by the clean, uneasy piece
Speaker 1: of aftermath. I turned off the lights, pulled the curtains,
Speaker 1: and made a list just for me of what I
Speaker 1: wanted most that was not and had never been, dependent
Speaker 1: on him. The city outside was still going unbothered. My
Speaker 1: world was closed, but surviving, open in places he would
Speaker 1: never see again. I rose before dawn the following morning,
Speaker 1: skin tight with the chill, made coffee, and stepped barefoot
Speaker 1: onto the balcony. The air was almost silent, only the
Speaker 1: low drone of the earliest buses lights blinking on a
Speaker 1: long congress avenue, the city coming awake. I sat knees,
Speaker 1: pulled up, mug, balanced carefully atop fhone heavy in my hand.
Speaker 1: A single text from Mark Time, stamped three seventeen a
Speaker 1: M I'm sorry. I hope you find happiness some day.
Speaker 1: His usual bravado vanished, No ask, no plea, just the
Speaker 1: final outpost of regret, without ceremony. I hit delete thumb firm.
Speaker 1: There was no version of us left to mourn in pixels.
Speaker 1: I finished my coffee, sliding the mug on to the railing,
Speaker 1: and stood for a handful of seconds. I looked out
Speaker 1: over the unremarkable new skyline, letting the loneliness come and pass.
Speaker 1: Then gathered my things and left the apartment, the lock
Speaker 1: clicking behind me, a sound sharper than finality, less a
Speaker 1: wound than an open cut, healing cleanly. The morning rustled
Speaker 1: with a new kind of silence, less vacancy, more bare possibility,
Speaker 1: thin and almost metallic in my chest. I puttered around
Speaker 1: the kitchen, fingers clumsy on the French press, spoon rattling
Speaker 1: loud against the countertop in the hush. I wasn't hungry,
Speaker 1: but I made oatmeal anyway, leaving half of it to
Speaker 1: go solid in the pot. The physical gestures kept my
Speaker 1: mind busy, brought muscle memory back into the foreground, so
Speaker 1: I didn't have to linger in the empty spaces of thought.
Speaker 1: I caught myself checking my phone every half hour, not
Speaker 1: out of hope, just the reflex of old habits with
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. Bits of practical fallout gathered at my
Speaker 1: feet like loose threads, the unopened stack of shared mail,
Speaker 1: a jar of change we always argued about cashing in
Speaker 1: his poster, still hanging askew in our office, reminders of
Speaker 1: decisions yet to be made, small islands of grief, but
Speaker 1: nothing that could wound on its own. I scanned through
Speaker 1: our apartment, pausing at the sight of Mark's old concert
Speaker 1: tea gray from years of overwashing, draped over the back
Speaker 1: of a chair. For the briefest second, I reached to
Speaker 1: fold it and then stopped, letting its slump where it
Speaker 1: was stubbornly orphaned. There was a notification from the landlord,
Speaker 1: Elina will send new paperwork and of week. Let us
Speaker 1: know if you have any security questions before the lock update,
Speaker 1: I answered quickly, thank you, ready as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Each completed task became its own small relief, a partitioning
Speaker 1: of self. The city's routines barged forward without mercy. Garbage
Speaker 1: trucks shrieked in the alley. As I rinsed a mug,
Speaker 1: washing out that familiar sticky layer of sleep, deprivation and adrenaline.
Speaker 1: I wondered how many apartments across Austin held similar scenes
Speaker 1: this morning. Some one's version of trust, dissolving into paperwork
Speaker 1: and logistics. I called my mother back, stealing myself for
Speaker 1: what would be both mercy and a reckoning. She answered immediately,
Speaker 1: voice small from distance, but edged now with concern rather
Speaker 1: than suspicion. I gave her the bare facts, answered the
Speaker 1: questions she managed to keep mostly out of I told
Speaker 1: you so territory, and ignored the gentle push come home
Speaker 1: for a week end, just to breathe. I couldn't imagine retreating,
Speaker 1: not now. My world felt raw, but it was mine,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't ready to trade it for the softness
Speaker 1: of childhood rooms or protective nostalgia. Jesse texted mid morning.
Speaker 1: Her message brists but apologetic. I'm sorry again. Ell. If
Speaker 1: you need anything, lifting furniture, burning old photos, I'm your gal.
Speaker 1: Just say the word. I stared at it, thumb hovering.
Speaker 1: I typed, deleted, then just sent three heart emojis. She replied,
Speaker 1: whine later if you want. I didn't answer, but I
Speaker 1: left the door ajar. By noon, the locksmith arrived. The
Speaker 1: old lock clanked out with absolute satisfying finality. I thanked
Speaker 1: him a little too profusely, tipped in cash, and watched
Speaker 1: the street for a long moment after he left, I
Speaker 1: felt not powerful, not victorious, just less vulnerable. A few
Speaker 1: hours later, an email landed, subject line lease agreement updated.
Speaker 1: It was plain, wrapped in legalese, but it felt ceremonial.
Speaker 1: I clicked through, initialed in digital ink, and sent it
Speaker 1: back within two minutes, just my name now, and that
Speaker 1: shockingly didn't sting. Later, still bags packed with marks, things
Speaker 1: waited on the landing, ready for whatever friend would collect them, tidy, impersonal,
Speaker 1: as if they'd always been meant to move in and
Speaker 1: out without ceremony. One had burst slightly at the seam,
Speaker 1: revealing the corner of our old settlers of cat and box,
Speaker 1: our start up years, all night games before life got
Speaker 1: so layered and complicated. I hesitated, then stuffed it all
Speaker 1: the way in, taping the bag up again. No relics
Speaker 1: needed surviving this. In the late afternoon heat, I walked
Speaker 1: mindlessly toward the river, sunglasses on to disguise the red
Speaker 1: drift beneath my eyes. The city, barely noticing, never knowing,
Speaker 1: spilled around me, full of park joggers, food trucks opening
Speaker 1: for dinner, distant laughter that didn't scrape nerves as it
Speaker 1: had yesterday. I stopped for coffee, the barista chirping the usual,
Speaker 1: that's a strong order. Rough day, I tipped too much,
Speaker 1: shoulders jerking in something close to a laugh. Home Again,
Speaker 1: every surface in the apartment felt like it had shed
Speaker 1: a film. I spent hours compulsively vacuuming, scrubbing everything that
Speaker 1: would come clean, tossing out anything with his handwriting, as
Speaker 1: if bleach and precision could raise more than physical grime.
Speaker 1: I felt a thin, hard pride at reclaiming these meters
Speaker 1: of space, small, vital, unremarkable. Toward dusk, I stood at
Speaker 1: the window with the new locks tested twice, hands pressed
Speaker 1: to the slightly foggy glass, watching as cars lined up
Speaker 1: on South Lamar for the evening's first hint of night.
Speaker 1: I pulled out my phone and almost without thinking, blocked
Speaker 1: Mark's number, Then aarvas, then the group chut that had
Speaker 1: been so central for so long to our life together.
Speaker 1: I paused, thumbed over the old photos in the shared
Speaker 1: cloud folder, then left them. I didn't need to raise
Speaker 1: everything to night. A knox startled me. For a crazed second,
Speaker 1: I imagined Mark outside, the unlikely bravado of someone trying
Speaker 1: to reclaim a narrative plead for clemency, but it was
Speaker 1: just Jesse, holding quick dinner and a bottle too nice
Speaker 1: to waste on heartbreak. She came in all elbows and
Speaker 1: co and let herself move through the apartment as she
Speaker 1: always had, except now there was no mark for her
Speaker 1: to joke, with no third presence for her to triangulate off.
Speaker 1: We shared silence and distracted commentary, not quite managing to
Speaker 1: return to levity, but the ritual of company was enough.
Speaker 1: At one point, Jesse said, I know this sounds weak,
Speaker 1: but God, you really dodged a lifetime of half truths.
Speaker 1: If not now, it had be next year or ten
Speaker 1: years from now. I nodded, not answering there was a
Speaker 1: wholeness to her words, but I didn't want the future
Speaker 1: prepackaged for me yet. Jesse left after a second glass,
Speaker 1: squeezing my shoulder with a kind of reverence. I'll keep
Speaker 1: checking in, okay, just let yourself be messy for a while,
Speaker 1: I said, about putting the apartment back into the shape
Speaker 1: I wanted. I rearranged the pictures on the fridge, our
Speaker 1: old sunglasses, selfies, the sticky festival wristbands, group shots with friends,
Speaker 1: all still grinning. Naive and idiotic. I took down the
Speaker 1: photo of hers from our fifth anniversary at Barton Springs
Speaker 1: and tucked it away in the back of the silverware drawer,
Speaker 1: out of sight but not destroyed. In the chill emptying apartment,
Speaker 1: I let myself replay the confrontation, the finality in Mark's eyes,
Speaker 1: when he realized nothing was left to salvage, the flat
Speaker 1: resignation in his body as he shouldered his bag. If
Speaker 1: I looked inward, the grief hovered close, like a bruise,
Speaker 1: still coming up, not blue yet but full of heat.
Speaker 1: But there was no craving to restart, to usurp reality
Speaker 1: with any alternate fantasy of reconciliation. Later, a knock at
Speaker 1: the outer entry startled me again. This time it was Lium,
Speaker 1: sheepish and rain damp, standing awkwardly in the flicker of
Speaker 1: the hall light. He held another bag of mark S,
Speaker 1: likely the last, and an envelope with my name on it.
Speaker 1: He cleared his throat, Elena, I just I brought this over.
Speaker 1: Mark asked me to, but ah, I wanted to say.
Speaker 1: I had no excuse. I thought staying out of it
Speaker 1: was being neutral, But I see that was just cowardice.
Speaker 1: I let him inside for a minute, not wanting to
Speaker 1: be cruel. You weren't the first person to look away. Liam,
Speaker 1: It wasn't your fault. But maybe next time, just rip
Speaker 1: off the band aid. Everyone deserves to know what story
Speaker 1: they're really living. His eyes flickered with regret, not quite
Speaker 1: meeting mine. He's not himself lately. Or maybe this is
Speaker 1: who he is and I just never noticed. Anyway, If
Speaker 1: you ever need anything fixed, ACA plumbing, whatever, I'll make
Speaker 1: up for it. I managed a smile, grateful enough to
Speaker 1: accept the gesture, if not the absolution. He left quickly,
Speaker 1: leaving the envelope and the weight of half formed apologies behind.
Speaker 1: Standing in the now quiet apartment, I tucked the envelope
Speaker 1: on top of the fridge, unopened, its contents irrelevant to
Speaker 1: the forward thrust of life. I turned down all the
Speaker 1: lights except the kitchen, then let myself stand in the
Speaker 1: dim hush, listening as the last traffic of the night
Speaker 1: thinned out and left the world outside to itself. A
Speaker 1: rush of cold determination filled me. The closing of old
Speaker 1: doors the opening of new windows. There was no grand
Speaker 1: plan for next stages, no road map for remaking oneself
Speaker 1: from the raw spattered center out, But I didn't dread
Speaker 1: the blankness. If anything, it was cleaner than I'd given
Speaker 1: it credit for. When the hour got late and the
Speaker 1: city's surface noise faded to a thin, manageable murmur, I
Speaker 1: let myself finally slip into bed, burrowing deep into the blankets,
Speaker 1: letting sleep rise in its slow, indifferent tide. There in
Speaker 1: the darkness, I imagined nothing about Mark, no reckonings, no
Speaker 1: last arguments, no please for understanding, only the slow interior
Speaker 1: calibration of body and mind to a tune without static.
Speaker 1: Morning came in, gentle, fresh, almost restored light. The world
Speaker 1: dulled down to quiet, permissible aches. I shuffled on to
Speaker 1: the balcony with my coffee, resisting the urge to check
Speaker 1: any messages, determined that the first words I heard belonged
Speaker 1: only to the birds asserting their small, forceful songs over
Speaker 1: the city's waking churn. I sat phone silent beside me,
Speaker 1: wrapped in a sweater that only smelled of my own detergent.
Speaker 1: Out on Congress, the first busses rolled along, their movement
Speaker 1: repetitive and predictable balm for the slick, unpredictable months scraped
Speaker 1: roar behind me, my phone finally stuttered to life, a
Speaker 1: lone message from Mark, the blue unread dot heavy with omission.
Speaker 1: The words were simple, I'm sorry. I hope you find
Speaker 1: happiness some day. I took a long, considered breath, then
Speaker 1: deleted the message without reading further. The final thread cut clean,
Speaker 1: the conversation closed for good. I drained my coffee, set
Speaker 1: the mug down, and stepped through the pale light of
Speaker 1: the living room, each stride settling deeper into a body
Speaker 1: that was definitively finally my own. The door clicked softly
Speaker 1: behind me as I left, not a sound of loss,
Speaker 1: but a promise to greet the day precisely as it was,
Speaker 1: hollow and relieved, open and unfinished.