“Don’t be,” I answer, and neither of us means the cheese.
After dinner he stands, gathers our bowls, and rinses them with that same carefulness that used to make me feel looked after and now just makes me feel… handled. He stacks them in the dishwasher like it’s an equation that can be solved if he arranges the pieces the right way. I watch his hands because I can’t watch his eyes.
“You’ve got film?” I ask, even though I already know. The laptop on the coffee table has been a third presence for months.
“Yeah.” He dries his hands on the towel I’ve twisted into a rope. “Just an hour.”
“Okay.” I fold the towel back flat, smoothing corners that were never crooked. “I might take a bath.”
“Good.” He says it like a blessing, or a dismissal, or both. “You should.”
He pauses in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the way he does when he wants to say something that might bend the air. I hold my breath and wait, and he lets his go instead.
“Thanks for dinner,” he says.
“You’re welcome,” I say.
I run the bath too hot on purpose, sink down until the water licks at my ears and the house sounds like it’s happening in another city. I stare at the ceiling and catalog hairline cracks in the paint, the way steam curls and disappears, the constellation of tiny water marks from an old leak we never bothered to fix. Some part of me keeps score of everything we didn’t get to. I don’t know how to stop.
When I was little, I thought marriage was a door you stepped through and it clicked behind you, done, sealed, protected from weather. No one tells you that sometimes the latch never catches. That you take turns holding it closed with your shoulder until you’re too tired to lean.
We used to laugh, I remind myself. We used to argue about nothing and then make up over takeout on the floor. We used to be two people wanting the same future, or good at pretending we did. Now we’re two people careful not to bump the places that bruise.
Water cools around me. I let it. The tiles press chill against my shoulder blades when I sit up. Somewhere down the hall, his chair scrapes again. I picture him hunched over film, pen tapping, eyes far away. Still kind. Still careful but not here.
We were already breaking long before the vows.
I towel off and pad down the hall, hair dripping onto the hardwood. On my way to the bedroom, I stop at the hall closet to grab a fresh blanket for the foot of the bed. The top shelf is a mess, old candles, a box of off-season throw pillow covers, a shoebox I don’t remember putting there, wedged in the back.
I drag it down. The cardboard is soft around the corners, like it’s been opened and closed too many times.
Inside: a pair of knit booties I bought on a whim because they were cream and ridiculous and softer than anything had a right to be. A folded onesie with tiny stars. The printout of an online cart I never checked out. At the bottom, an envelope with my name in my own handwriting, never sealed.
The room tilts.
I sit on the edge of the bed with the box in my lap and let the air buzz in my ears. I used to think time softened things. It doesn’t. It just learns how to hide until you pull the wrong thread.
The thread was a night. The kind that starts small and ends up swallowing everything.
The Buried Past
It was after a fight with Jace we pretended wasn’t a fight. We’d said we needed space and then never defined what that meant. He stopped calling at night. I stopped asking if he’d come by.The apartment felt too big and too quiet and I hated how quickly the silence started to feel normal.
Knox, my brother's best friend since forever, showed up because Griff asked him to check on me. At least that’s what he said when I opened the door and found him in the hall, rain in his hair, hands in the pockets of a jacket that never quite zipped all the way.
“You good?” he asked, and it wasn’t small talk. He meant it. He always did.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “You don’t look… fine.”
He didn’t push past me or try to make me laugh. He just stood there, giving me time. When I finally stepped back and let him in, he toed off his boots and glanced around like he was memorizing details in case I decided to disappear.
We ended up on the couch with takeout I didn’t taste. He listened while I rambled, saying things I hated hearing out loud: how I was tired of being patient, tired of waiting for something to feel solid. How I hated that everything with Jace feltalmost. How I didn’t know what to do with love that only showed up halfway.
“You deserve someone who doesn’t make you feel small,” Knox said, not looking away.
It shouldn’t have hit like it did. He’d always been blunt like that, all cut-through-the-noise and quiet loyalty. He leaned his elbows on his knees and waited, the way he always waits for me to come back to myself. When I didn’t, he rested a hand on my knee like an anchor.
