“I know.” I managed to keep my voice light even as something inside me wilted. “I wasn’t asking you to stop training.”
“I didn’t say you were,” he replied, a little too quickly.
We stood there, not quite arguing, not quite connecting—two people circling the same thing and pretending we weren’t.
“Congratulations again,” he added, softer this time. “You earned it.”
“Thanks,” I said again, not knowing what else to say.
But it felt muted. Like we were both holding something back. Like my win had arrived at the exact wrong moment—too loud for his quiet focus, too alive for the narrow lane he was forcing himself to stay in. I’d wanted to share the high with him, to let it pull us closer for once. Instead, it hovered between us, unclaimed.
I told myself it was fine. That this was just timing. Just stress. Just the rules we’d agreed to. But the truth was harder to ignore: it felt like there wasn’t room for both his ambition and my joy in the same space.
Later that night, I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to untangle why it hurt so much.
I didn’t need his approval. I didn’t need his permission.
So why did it feel like my success had created more distance instead of less?
The thought crept in uninvited.
Does he only want me when I fit neatly into his life—when I’m useful, uncomplicated, easy to keep at arm’s length? When I’m playing the role he needs instead of asking him to meet me in the mess of real feelings?
The idea settled heavy, a sinking feeling, unwanted but persistent. I hated that it made a cruel kind of sense. I disliked even more that part of me was afraid it might be true.
The next morning, I met Livvi for coffee at theOrange Blossom Café, mostly because if I stayed alone any longer, I was going to spiral.
Livvi had become my person in a way I hadn’t expected. Since walking away from my parents’ world, she was the only friend who’d stayed. Or maybe the only one I’d been brave enough to keep. The rest had faded fast once I’d stopped fitting into the married-by-twenty, country-club-adjacent life they were racing toward. Turns out reinvention doesn’t always come with a plus-one.
She listened quietly as I talked—about the client, about Ledger, about the way everything had felt slightly off-center lately. I didn’t say his name at first, not directly. I danced around it, and Livvi let me.
When I finally ran out of words, she stirred her drink slowly, then looked at me over the rim of her cup with a familiar, assessing expression.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “I need to make sure I’m hearing this right.”
My stomach was already in knots, and we hadn’t even gotten to the hard parts of this conversation.
“You’re upset because your husband”—she made a small air-quote motion with her fingers—“the man you once described asemotionally constipated with delusions of Olympic grandeur—isn’t showing up the way you want him to?”
Heat rushed to my face. “I did not say emotionally constipated.”
“You absolutely did,” she said. “Twice.”
I huffed out a breath. “That was before.”
“That’s the part that’s throwing me,” she said, not unkindly. “Because three months ago, you could barely tolerate being in the same room as him.”
I stared down at the table, tracing the edge of a napkin with my finger. “I know.”
Livvi watched me for another beat, then sighed. “And yet,” she added, “I’m also not shocked.”
That made me look up.
“You’re not?”
She tilted her head. “Roxie, anyone with eyes could feel the tension between you two. It was loud. I just assumed you were ignoring it out of spite.”
I blinked. “Well. That tracks.”
