He looks exhausted, his eyes glassy, his shoulders slumped. “I meant… I feel overwhelmed. Like every month it’s just bills and worries and...”
“And that’s new?” I cut in, voice rising before I can stop it. “You think you’re the only one who lies awake at night wondering if we’re doing enough? If we’ll ever feel like we’ve got it together?”
He looks up at me then, and there’s something raw in his expression. “No. But I guess I forget that you’re carrying it too.”
“That’s the problem, Dan. You forget.” My voice wobbles. “You see me here, doing school runs, folding laundry, keeping three small humans alive, and you think I’m just… coasting. But you have no idea what it’s like being needed every second of every day.”
Ruby’s laughter echoes faintly from the living room, mingled with the cartoon theme tune. It makes the silence that follows even sharper.
Dan steps closer, lowering his voice. “I didn’t mean to make you feel small.”
I swallow hard. “You did, though.”
He reaches out, tentative, fingertips brushing my arm. “Emma…”
I pull away. “No. You don’t get to touch me right now.”
His hand drops. For a second, he looks like he’s been physically hit.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
The apology hangs there, but it’s flimsy, like paper in a storm.
I turn and start stacking plates in the cupboard, needing something to do, something mindless. My throat burns. “You know what hurts the most?”
He doesn’t answer, just waits.
“That you said it like it was logical. Like it was just a fact. Not cruel, not angry, just true.” I blink hard, fighting tears. “That’s what makes it worse. You believe it.”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t. Not really. I was tired. I said it because I was frustrated and I...”
“Then maybe you should learn to be frustrated with the situation, not the person standing next to you in it.”
He exhales, defeated. “You’re right.”
I laugh, short and bitter. “Don’t agree with me just to shut me up.”
“I’m not,” he insists, voice cracking. “I’m saying you’re right because I know I screwed up. I’m just… I don’t know how to fix it right now.”
The kids shriek with laughter in the next room. It’s surreal, how normal everything sounds out there while in here the floor feels like it’s giving way.
I look at him properly, his messy hair, the faint lines around his eyes, the worn T-shirt stained with fajita sauce. He looks like the man I fell in love with and a stranger all at once.
“Do you ever think,” I say softly, “that maybe we forgot how to talk to each other without hurting each other?”
He hesitates. “Sometimes, yeah.”
I nod slowly. “That’s the saddest part.”
We stand there in the quiet hum of the kitchen, the air thick with the smell of peppers and tension.
After a while, he says, “Do you want me to go for a bit? Give you space?”
I shake my head. “No. Because if you leave, it’ll turn into one of those things we never talk about again. We’ll pretend it didn’t happen. And then one day, it’ll explode again, worse than before.”
He leans on the counter beside me, not touching. Just close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his arm. “You’re right,” he murmurs. “We’re great at pretending.”
That stings because it’s true.
