She slips her right hand from under the table, picks up her spoon, and digs through the broiled cheese layer to get a nice, steaming spoonful of soup.
“Rach—”
She pops the spoon in her mouth and winces, then proceeds to blow out of her mouth like she’s trying to ventilate it. She swallows, puts down the spoon, and looks deep into my eyes.
“I’m your wife. Nah, fuck that—I’m your partner. Married or not, I would have learned to trust you in exactly the same way over the years. So you can whine all you want about what you want or intend, but keep this one thing in mind.
“I trusted you. I’ve been through it all with you, thick and thin. And I’ve followed you through everything, trusting you’d make the right choices for us. For our boys. Just like I trusted you to feed me onion soup that wouldn’t burn me. And look, it’s not all bad.”
She gestures to the soup, a sharp motion of her arm that conveys her frustration loud and clear.
“Yeah, it’s scalding hot, but it’s fucking good. So I’m not saying it’s all bad, Karan. But…”
She bites her lip and looks away.
Trusted me.
Past tense.
Fuck.
I resist the urge to lean over the table and lift her chin. “Come on. Talk to me, Rach.”
I need her to stop talking in metaphors. This has nothing to do with onion soup, and we both know it.
Her eyes well up with tears when she looks back at me. “I’m sick and tired of you choosing to be away from us. Away from me.”
She smacks her chest with her palm. A tear escapes down her cheek, and my heart sinks all the way to my feet.
“I begged you not to go back to the office when we were at the airport. Begged you, Karan. But you left me alone.”
“I didn’t have a choice. It was my job on the line, and I—”
“You always have a choice!” Rachel shrieks, her voice breaking. “Stop with the bullshit, or I’m done.”
My heart pounds violently against my ribs, and my vision tunnels. She can’t be serious, can she?
“Rachel…”
“No more excuses, Karan, please.” She places both hands on the table, as if gripping on to them for dear life, and maybe she is. “Can you honestly tell me, without an ounce of exaggeration, that you didn’t have a choice back then? What, did your boss have a hitman with a sniper aiming at you, ready to shoot if you were to say no? He wouldn’t really have fired one of hisbestsoftware engineers on the spot, would he?”
Her eyes are wild.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and take a deep breath.
She’ll forgive me if I can make her understand. Then everything will be fine. I can fix this.
“Maybe not on the spot…” I straighten my spine. “But I’m trying to build something for us, Rach. I took this job specifically for the pay bump, and there’s no way for me to get to the next level if I refuse to be all in.”
“You’re trying to build something for us, huh?” Rachel leans back against her chair and crosses her arms. “Karan, we don’tneedmore money. We were doing perfectly fine before you switched jobs.”
“I don’t want to be doingjustfine.” I grit my teeth, the constant, ever-whispering hint of terror weighing down my shoulders and laughing in my ear. “This world is going to shit, Rach. House prices are insane. Everything’s getting more expensive.
“If we don’t want our boys to struggle—if we want them to be able to own a house someday and actually thrive—we have to be proactive and save much,muchmore than we have been for them.”
“I don’t get it.” Rachel shakes her head. “We’ve been saving plenty. The boys will be fine—more than fine.”
Her eyes narrow. Her arms are no longer crossed, and she’s moving them frantically now.
