Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I exit the screen, lock the phone ,and flip it face-down the way he left it. I set it gently on the nightstand with the precise angle he always puts it at, like it’s a compass and true north will only find him if the black rectangle is pointed toward it just so. I force myself to stand there and breathe until my hands stop looking like they belong to a person in a horror film.
The door opens. He steps out with a towel slung low on his hips, hair wet and pushed back. He looks like someone else’s fantasy. I blink though and he looks like my partner, my person, and that makes me angrier.
“You want the shower?” he asks, like nothing has shifted on the axis of the earth. His eyes pass over me like he’s searching, but finds nothing wrong and keeps moving.
“I’m fine,” I say, which is the kind of lie you train yourself to tell when fine is the price of entry. I want to rush to the shower and wash every bit of him off me. Then the part of me that loves this man wants to cling to his smell on my skin, the way my body still feels him inside me.
He rakes a hand through his hair and drops the towel to step into fresh boxers, pulling them up like we’re just doing the regular routine of bedtime. The phone sits quiet, innocent, and black as a closed eye.
He heads to the dresser, grabs a T-shirt, pulls it on. He checks his watch. He doesn’t check his phone. Not yet. He will. He always does before he sleeps, scrolling through emails and finance apps and whatever else keeps him in rooms with men who speak in numbers and shake hands that feel like decisions.
I watch him watch himself in the mirror, adjust the shirt so it falls a little better on his shoulders, tug it down. The man in the reflection smiles at the man he thinks he is.
“Kristen?” he says, finally catching my stillness.
“Yeah.”
He tilts his head. “You okay?”
There it is. The tiny door opening. He offered it without meaning to. He will hate that in thirty seconds.
I pick up my dress and step into it, because the armor feels better than the exposure. The zipper rasps up my spine. “I’ve got a question.”
He frowns, mild. “Shoot.”
I look at the phone. Then at him. My voice is steady when I don’t recognize it. “Who’s Q.?”
The name floats between us, light as a balloon. Then it pops, and the air in the room changes. Not invisible. You can feel these shifts if you live with a person long enough—pressure dropping before a storm, static prickling before lightning strikes.
His gaze flickers, one microsecond to the nightstand and back. If I wasn’t looking directly at him, I’d miss it. His mouth twists into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Is this what we’re doing?” he asks, lazy, like I’ve brought him a menu he already knows he hates.
I stand straighter. “I asked you a question.”
The silence is a suspended thing. The ocean thrums impatiently beyond the glass. He exhales. He walks to the nightstand. He picks up the phone. My heartbeat is a drum solo. He unlocks it with his face and scrolls like he’s bored. He’s not. A muscle jumps in his jaw, betraying him, and the petty part of me feels a tiny victory.
He sets the phone down again, casually, calmly. “You could have asked me instead of snooping.”
“If I had asked you, would you have told me the truth?”
He laughs. It’s quick, sharp, mean. “You already think you know the truth, Kristen.”
“I saw pictures,” I reply, and I surprise myself by not crying. The tears are somewhere far away, maybe on a beach at low tide, waiting for their turn to roll in. “I saw texts.”
“Right.” He scratches the back of his neck, unaffected. “So you broke my trust to confirm your paranoia because you’re insecure and this is my problem.”
I stare at him. In the bathroom mirror behind him, my face looks like a stranger’s—pale, eyes too big, mouth a flat line someone drew with a ruler. “I broke your trust.”
“Did I stutter?”
“You’ve been sleeping with someone else,” I state, each word a laid-out stone I dare him to step around. “More than once. For how long now, weeks? Months? I don’t even know.” My throat tightens again, but the words keep coming because there’s momentum in the truth. “You laughed in a hotel bed together. You bought her jewelry. You forgot your toothbrush at her place.” My voice changed and I couldn’t help the sharpness in my tone, “don’t worry though, she’s keeping it safe beside hers on the vanity.”
He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even blush. He considers me like I’m a bill he could pay or not. “You done?”