On Christmas Eve, I Saw My Wife Kissing Another Man. That Night, I Stopped Being Her Husband.

Synopsis

On Christmas Eve, I was scrolling through a YouTube Live drone stream. Fireworks over Elliott Bay lit up the Seattle sky in brilliant flashes of color. And there, in high definition, was my wife of five years, passionately kissing her best friend, Daniel. I calmly closed the stream and dialed her number. It rang for a long time before she finally picked up. The background noise bled through the speaker. "Where are you?" After a brief silence, she said, "At the office. Didn't I tell you I had to work late tonight?" "Working late with Daniel?" The silence on the other end stretched out, heavy and suffocating. I heard my own voice, eerily calm as I asked the question. "You always do this. Whenever you don't have an answer, you just shut down." "Well, from now on, you don't have to answer at all."