Chapter 2
When I got down to his building, I sent him a text. [Which floor are you on? I brought you soup.]
He didn't reply.
Three minutes ticked by while my phone stayed silent.
Five more minutes passed, and the screen stayed just as dark.
I called the front desk instead. The receptionist's words landed flat. He had clocked out at five.
It was now eight at night.
His text at six had told me he was working late.
I stood there on the sidewalk outside his building, the thermos of soup dangling from one hand, and stared at his profile picture for a long time.
That night, I never did make it upstairs.
I went home, poured the soup down the toilet, and flushed it.
Then I sat down on the couch and waited for myself to cool off.
About ten minutes in, I pulled up his feed and scrolled through it again.
There was still just that one project update from three days back.
I tapped over to Emily Foster's profile. We didn't have any friends in common, but her feed was set to public.
Her latest post had gone up about an hour earlier.
[Pulled overtime till my legs gave out, thank god Michael saved my life with a steak dinner! The late-night food at this firm is unreal!]
The photo showed a steak plate with silverware laid neatly beside it and a glass of iced coffee on the side.
A hand was visible in the bottom-right corner of the photo.
It was a man's hand, knuckles sharp, with a plain silver band on the ring finger.
I recognized that ring.
I'd bought it for him with my first paycheck. It was just silver, nothing expensive, and I'd told him I'd swap it out for a gold one once I had real money.
He'd laughed and slid it onto his finger, told me this was the one, that he'd never trade it for anything in this world.
Below the ring was a desktop spread with blueprints. The other hand in the frame, fingernails painted in clear polish, was flashing a peace sign at the camera.
I set my phone down. Then I picked it up again.
Then I set it back down.
I didn't cry, and I didn't smash anything either.
I just sat there, staring at the TV screen. It was switched off, and my own face stared back from the dark glass, completely blank.
After a while, I heard the front door open.
Michael was home.
He kicked off his shoes and slipped into his house slippers, then caught sight of me on the couch and stopped short. "Anna? Why aren't the lights on?"
"I forgot," I said.
He flipped the lights on.
We were maybe ten feet apart, with him standing in the entryway and me sitting on the couch. The overhead light was too bright, and I squinted against it.
He didn't smell like alcohol. There was a faint trace of perfume clinging to him, and it wasn't mine.
"How was work today? You tired?" I asked.
"Not too bad. Drew a few drafts, gotta keep revising tomorrow." He pulled off his coat and hung it on the rack.
"What'd you eat?"
"Huh? Just grabbed some takeout, nothing special."
I didn't ask anything else. As I sat there, all the pieces clicked together in my head.
There was the bowl of soup I'd poured down the toilet, the perfume clinging to his skin, that social post, the photo he'd hidden from me, the silver band on his finger, and the old promise he'd once made never to trade it.
What I noticed, oddly enough, was how calm I felt.
I thought about my mom. The night she found out my dad was cheating, she smashed every dish in the house. Shards of porcelain landed at my feet, and she never even noticed.
I wasn't my mother.
I hadn't been since I was nine years old.
*****
The next day was Saturday.
He slept in until ten. I made breakfast, and after he finished eating, he curled up on the couch with his phone. I washed the dishes, wiped down the counter, then poured out two mugs of coffee, one for him and one for me.
"Michael," I said.
He looked up.
"Emily Foster. Right?"
The room went quiet for a second, and then two, then three.
He set his phone down, and his expression shifted.
"What did you say?"
"Emily," I said again. "The new girl on your team. Right?"
He didn't speak. His hand stopped where it was, the towel still draped around his neck.
I kept watching him with the same calm, like I was telling him grocery prices had gone up by a few cents.
"Relax, I didn't show up at your office and cause a scene, and I didn't go looking for her either." I picked up my coffee to warm my hands.
"There's just one thing I want to ask you. Are you still planning to keep going with this?"
He went silent.
He stayed silent for a long time. The sunlight from the window fell across his face. He was only 27, but the worry lines between his brows had already set in.
"Anna, it isn't what you think with her." He finally spoke, his voice rough at the edges. "I've just... been exhausted for a while now."
"And?"
"We've been together 24 years. From the time I can remember anything, you've been right there next to me." He paused, struggling for the words.
"Sometimes I don't know if it's habit or love. Like everything was already arranged for me, and I was just going along with it..."
"She makes you feel something different, doesn't she?"
He went quiet again.
That silence was the answer.
"But I haven't done anything to hurt you." He looked up at me, eyes bloodshot. "Anna, I really haven't. I just got... a little distracted. I don't know if you can understand that."
I nodded.
"You haven't done anything," I said. "But your heart had already started to drift, hadn't it?"
He didn't speak again.
I took a sip of my coffee. It was a little too hot.
Outside the window, a pigeon flew past.
I thought back to the year he turned six, when he'd written out that marriage certificate on a sheet of notebook paper and read it out loud, stumbling over the words.
"Anna, you're gonna be my wife from now on, and I, I'm gonna protect you for the rest of my life."
Once he was done, he'd looked up and asked, "Will you?"
I'd nodded then too.
Back then, I really did think that a lifetime meant a lifetime.
Turned out, 24 years of childhood love couldn't hold up against three months of something new.
I set the coffee down and looked him straight in the eye.
"Michael, you're allowed a moment of weakness. But I'm not the kind of person who bends on this."
He froze.
"I saw the whole thing back when I was nine. I watched the kind of life my mom lived after she forgave my dad." My voice was so quiet I could barely hear myself.
"I'm not going to turn into my mom, sitting up all night waiting for you to come home, sneaking through your phone, becoming someone I can't stand to look at. I wouldn't last a single day living like that."
"Anna, it's not that bad..."
"It is." I cut him off. "The biggest misunderstanding between us has been that you assumed I'd never leave, and I assumed you'd never change. Well, that misunderstanding is over now.
"Let's get a divorce."