Chapter 4
The clatter wakes me.
Not gently, not sweetly. Just... noise. Mug against counter. Cabinet door thunking closed. The unmistakable whirr of the espresso machine trying its best to be helpful and cheery at way-too-early o’clock.
I’m on the couch, curled up like a forgotten throw pillow, laptop still open next to me, my resignation letter half-drafted in the harsh blue light. My neck is doing that awful crick-thing, and my mouth tastes like unresolved trauma and soy sauce.
Then, a coffee mug is hovering in front of me. Smells amazing. Too bad it’s served with a side of betrayal.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Mike says, all chipper and casual like it’s a Sunday in a life that isn’t cracking at the edges. “You didn’t come to bed.”
I blink at him, not fully human yet. “Yeah,” I mumble, sitting up and running a hand through my wreck of hair. “Must’ve fallen asleep here.”
My voice is croaky, but it passes as normal. He doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to .
He’s already dressed in charcoal grey slacks that cling a little too well to thighs that’ve clearly never skipped leg day, a navy button-down open at the collar like he’s trying to strike that impossible balance between take-me-seriously-in-a-boardroom and I-can-still-fix-your-sink.
His tie’s half-tucked into his shirt like he’s in the middle of something important, always mid-action, never fully present.
He’s wearing that camel-coloured wool coat I bought him last Christmas, the one that makes him look taller than he already is, like five-eleven wasn’t quite smug enough.
He’s broad-shouldered, sturdy. Not the gym-rat type, he’s never had abs, not even when we first met, but there’s a solidness to him. The kind of body you trust to carry the groceries and move the couch and lie straight to your face without flinching.
The travel mug is in his hand, guess he’s heading to the office, and not staying to deal with the mess he created.
And the worst part? He still looks good.
Clean-shaven. Hair a little mussed in that deliberate way. The kind of handsome that’s easy to overlook when he’s just home watching sports but impossible to ignore when you’re heartbroken and coffee-deprived and wondering how long he’s been lying to you with that same damn face.
He hesitates, standing there, just long enough to make it weird.
“Are we... okay?” he asks .
I look at him for a beat too long. Not dramatically, just... heavy. Weighted. Like I’m measuring the distance between what I want to say and what would actually be safe to say.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly.
He nods once. More of a twitch, really. “We’ll talk tonight.”
“Okay.”
He turns, walks toward the door like a man who thinks the hard part’s over. His briefcase clicks softly against his thigh. He’s almost at the exit when it hits me.
“Mike.”
He stops. Freezes. Then turns around, slowly. His smile is gone. Replaced with something tighter. Warier.
“Yeah?”
“How are you getting to work?” I ask. Voice sweet. Casual. Too casual.
He blinks. Just for a second. “Oh! uh. I called the mechanic,” he says, scratching the back of his neck like he just now remembered this convenient detail. “He came by early while you were still sleeping. Fixed it right here in the driveway.”
Of course he did. Magic mechanic. Invisible. Silent as a ghost .
I nod. “Okay.”
I don’t believe him. I don’t not believe him. I just... file it away. Like evidence. Like a loose thread I’m going to pull later when I’ve had more caffeine and less reason to cry.
And then, then he does the thing.
He unhooks the security chain on the front door. The one I latched last night.
He pauses.
Just a heartbeat.
And I swear to God, in that tiny moment, the lie crystallizes between us like ice.
Then he does what he always does. Moves past it. Pretends. Plays along. He opens the door, steps out like nothing just snapped in the space between us.
I sit there, mug warm in my hands, and stare at the door he closed behind him.
Because now I know.
And he knows I know.
I suppose the real question is, when did I start to suspect? And if I suspected, why the hell did I stay quiet?
The answer isn’t clean. Nothing about this is. It’s like trying to pinpoint the moment water starts to boil, you can stare and stare and still miss when the bubbles begin.
Everything just came at once. Leonard, the walking HR violation in a suit, taking over the office like a plague. The long hours, the gaslighting, the meetings that felt more like performance reviews for my uterus than my actual work. I was working myself sick.
I was isolated, Mike wasn’t interest in hearing me vent and Hannah was having her own problems, in the form of her helicopter mother-in-law.
We didn’t even talk much anymore because neither of us had the bandwidth to carry both our frustrations at the same time.
We’d just exchange these hollow texts and pretend we weren’t both drowning.
And then… the slow, awful realization.
It started when I came home from a business trip, nearly six months ago.
Nothing major. Just three days in Seattle, a shit hotel, and a bunch of overcooked client dinners.
Usually, when I got home, I would barely make it through the front door before Mike and I were all over each other.
Like magnets. Like a cliché I didn’t know I cherished until it vanished.
But this time… when I reached for him, he pulled away. Said he was coming down with something.
His first lie.
I told myself he was still pissed about me cancelling our trip. We’d fought. I’d been blunt. Maybe too blunt. I thought he was stewing, licking his ego wounds, needing space.
Then one day, a message came in. I picked up my phone on instinct, Chris, who always had a sixth sense for drama, had glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Hubby keeping tabs on you?”
But it wasn’t Mike.
It was Keira. Again. Some random question or excuse to message me. She’d been weirdly chatty ever since she moved back in with our parents. Overfriendly. Popping up with memes and passive-aggressive little jokes I didn’t have the patience for.
And Chris, God, he said it so casually. “Trouble in paradise?” I opened my mouth to say no, but the words didn’t come. Because in that moment I realized, Mike hadn’t texted me. Not really. Not in weeks.
He replied, sure. Brief, polite, efficient. But when I scrolled back, really scrolled, I saw it. The absence. He hadn’t reached out in a long time. No “thinking about you” texts. No dumb photos. No inside jokes or ‘what’s for dinner?’ flirts. Not for a while.
The last text he had sent me was Christmas day, a direct, “Are you really doing this?” He didn’t get that I had to go, that if I hadn’t, Leanord would have cause to fire me and all the effort and time I put into this job would be for nothing. Like it is now.
We haven’t had sex since Christmas .
There. I said it.
And I don’t mean “the spark has fizzled” or “we’ve both been so busy,” I mean nothing.
Not a touch. Not a brush of a thigh in bed.
Not even one of those half-hearted, let’s-get-this-over-with pity sessions.
Just a whole lot of cold sheets and me curled around the emptiness like it’s supposed to keep me warm.
And if he’s not getting it from me, he’s getting it from someone else. Let’s not pretend men just…stop. Especially not Mike. Especially not when his ego runs on admiration like a gas-guzzling truck. And if I had to bet actual money? I’d put it on Mackenna.
Work bestie. Right.
I shut down that "work wife" title the first time I heard it. Fast. Brutal. With a smile that said try me again and I’ll burn the whole office down.
But Mackenna, she’s the kind of woman who hides venom behind vocal fry and a pink manicure. Always just a little too close, too available, too breathy when she says his name.
“Oh Leni,” she’d cooed at the last office party, fake-laughing behind her wine glass, “I honestly don’t know how you manage being a wife and a lawyer. You’re superwoman.”
Translation: You’re selfish for wanting a career. You’re not giving him enough .
Then there was the time she said, actually said, “I could never leave my husband alone at home for days. I’d just worry something might… happen.”
And my personal favourite, the one I’ve replayed in the shower, in the car, staring at my ceiling like I’m trying to summon restraint from the drywall: “I hope poor Michael doesn’t get too lonely.”
Poor Michael. God, screw her.
I smiled then. I smiled like I wasn’t ready to slap the collagen out of her face. I smiled like her words didn’t stab me right in the chest, because that’s what we do, right? Women like me, we smile. We pretend. We put the lipstick over the bruise.
But something in me shifted that night. Just a notch. Just enough. Because I’ve seen the way he lights up when she walks in. The way She laughs at his jokes, even the dumb ones. The way his phone lights up and he turns the screen just slightly away.
I used to believe I’d know if he cheated. That I’d feel it. That some inner siren would scream. But it turns out betrayal isn’t loud. It’s quiet. It’s the absence of something that used to be there. A missed text. A turned back. A cold pillow.
And now I can’t stop asking myself the question I’ve been avoiding: If he already has someone else… Then what the hell am I still doing here ?