Thirteen
The notification startles her—an angry pulse of light, like a shaming beacon on Nate’s otherwise silent phone. It demands attention. Demands curiosity. Claire should ignore it, but can’t. They’re not in the habit of secrets anymore, not since the threads of their marriage caught fire. So she sets aside her unfolded laundry and checks for anything urgent. A slow unraveling follows, then a plunge. Hands trembling, face flushed, stomach wrecked—Claire drops his phone like it burns. The messages are intimate, explicit. They’re not from her.
She picks it up again, heart wild as her eyes move through the digital betrayals. Even now, she doesn’t want to believe them. But there they are, damning and undeniable. Words she can’t unread. I’m dripping wet, baby. Can’t wait until you’re inside me again. Text after text, all in a long, unbroken chain. Claire reads the woman’s name. She doesn’t recognize it. She doesn’t need to. It feels like suffocating. Like choking. Her body keeps responding even as her mind races to catch up. The blood at her temples pounds; she hears it loud and rhythmic and hot.
This wasn’t supposed to happen—not after everything. Nate was the one who pushed, the one who kept wanting, even when she thought she’d drifted too far to be found. They weren’t roommates anymore. Weren’t strangers.
They’d just started finding each other again. Just started breathing the same air without bracing.
He had her lock the laundry room door, press her open desire into him like an apology for the silence. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but Claire knows what she’s seeing. He’s given himself to someone else. He was never hers—not really.
Her eyes blur. She keeps scrolling, searching for any explanation, any hint she’s misread. They’re all from before the wedding, but the words—the wanting—feel raw, fresh, possible. Why’s he keeping them? Why’s he reading them now? The more she looks, the deeper the impact: seeing each message like a match striking, setting off a flare in her gut, in her chest. What they have isn’t real. They haven’t rebuilt at all. Her throat tightens; her vision sways. She hears static, half expecting to see it wafting through the monitor with Nate’s fucks and his babys.
She swipes fast, fingers flying over damning evidence. Can’t get enough. Can’t wait until morning. You make me so fucking hot.
Back to barely holding on.
She imagines him reading these, then touching her with someone else’s residue on his hands, on his mouth, inside of him still.
Nothing feels whole.
Nothing feels hers.
Nate walks in before the tears do, hair wild from work, eyes soft and unsuspecting. Seeing him makes her hate him, makes her heart kick hard against the anger. How much is true? How much has he let her believe? Claire stands, shaking, adrenaline stinging every limb. She throws his phone to him like a grenade. “Who is she?” She spits it, scalding and raw. “Who the fuck is she?”
He catches it. Flips it over. Blanches. She doesn’t know if he looks horrified or just caught. Claire watches his mouth open, his voice refuse. “I—”
“Did you fuck her?” She’s still burning, words unstoppable, unfiltered, hot as the wreckage inside. “Is this why you’ve been so… so intense? You were just pretending? Just…” It hits her anew, the fresh wave of old history. “Is this your thing? Turn her on, then tear her apart?”
“Claire. What?” His eyes are wild, as confused as hers are clear.
“You’re still keeping secrets, Nate. You’re still… you’re still a liar!” Her voice splinters. The anger twists and tightens and makes room for hurt. “This whole time, you… you didn’t… how could you?”
He holds the phone like it’s a bomb. “Where did you find this?”
“I didn’t find anything. It lit up.” Her arms cross, each breath another fracture. “I thought it was important.” She thinks it still is. She thinks it’s everything. “I can’t believe you’ve been keeping those.” Claire’s chest rises, falls, each gasp too big and too small at once. “Who is she, Nate?” She fights the crack in her voice, hates that it finds her first.
He doesn’t want to say it. But he’s tired of lying by omission.
“They’re old.” His defenses are paper thin. Claire sees right through. She shoves against them, testing their fragility.
“That’s not what I asked.” Her chin lifts; her glare catches him square in the unsteady places. She’s all accusation, all wound. “Why are they still there?”
Nate’s jaw tightens, his arms still limp at his sides. He looks at the messages again, then to her, like maybe there’s a question he didn’t hear. “You’re overreacting.”
“Fuck you.” Her breath catches, breaks. She hears the static again, louder than before. “You were just waiting for me to see this, weren’t you? Just waiting until… until you could… Could say you needed someone else?” Her chest heaves, tight with rage. Her eyes are clear with tears. “Say that I wasn’t enough again?”
“I didn’t want you to see it at all. They’re… it’s not what you think.” His words aren’t fast enough. He isn’t fighting hard enough to mean them. She’s half furious, half terrified he really doesn’t want to.
“Then tell me,” Claire presses, voice sharp, the fear desperate to stick. “Tell me what it is.” She waits, and it burns and burns.
?
Claire’s waiting silence is deafening, loud as her accusations and twice as painful. Nate still holds the phone like it’s a truth he didn’t want her to see, not this way.
Not while they were just starting to be better. Her anger lands, raw and splitting, but it’s nothing compared to the hurt. Nothing compared to the way her words make him believe them. Nate doesn’t flinch; he doesn’t retreat. He looks right at her, right at everything. “I kept them because it reminded me of us.”
He watches it cut her, fast and hard. She folds her arms tight against the blow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Claire’s voice is sharp, suspicion clinging to it. Her body’s less certain—rigid and tender, poised to shatter if he says it wrong. “We’re nothing like that.”
“That’s what I mean.” He breathes in, the ache already too familiar. “We used to be.” He runs a hand through his hair, pushing back the morning, the years. Pushing back everything except this.
Her face is still flushed. He wants to be the one to cool it, not cause it. He isn’t sure if she’ll let him touch her again, not after the words they’ve already put between them. “I kept them because I miss it.” His words break and catch, like breathing against the hurt. “Because I miss us.”
He looks at her, seeing both the shock and the recognition that’s just beginning to pull at the edges of her anger. He looks at her until she can’t look back.
Claire’s eyes find the floor, her next breath shaky and sharp. “But we’re not… it’s not…” Her disbelief curls, then quiets. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
Nate holds her gaze, lets the question sit between them. Because you wouldn’t want to hear it. Because you didn’t want me. Because I was afraid you’d leave if you knew I felt like I already had. The answers pile up, unsaid but not hidden. He touches the phone again, a visible reminder of the pain he’s been carrying. “I didn’t know how,” he finally says, voice low and stretched thin.
“You didn’t know how? Or you didn’t want to?” She cuts, then flinches at the wound. Her voice is a shrinking echo of itself. “You’d rather have those than… than try?”
“They weren’t my first choice.” Nate’s tone isn’t cruel, isn’t kind. It’s a simple truth that he doesn’t try to hide from her. “They weren’t even my second.”
The distance feels vast, impassable, as though it’s been there longer than either of them realized. He wishes he’d closed it sooner. Now, it takes everything he has to cross it. “We didn’t even kiss for a year, Claire.” He swallows, hard. “You barely saw me. And when you did… you barely looked.”
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to. Her arms drop, and with them, every defense she’d built.
He takes her silence and cradles it, afraid that’s all he has left. “I felt like a ghost.” The admission is heavier than he’d imagined, heavier than he thought he could still carry. Nate’s shoulders sag; his grip loosens; his hands fall to his sides. They catch on nothing but air. “You were so far away, and I didn’t know how to reach you.”
Her knees buckle; she sits. The bed sinks beneath her, and Nate feels the gravity of the distance closing, not fast enough to save them. But enough to see each other across the breach. Enough to make the fall feel real. “I didn’t know you felt like that.”
“It was like I was the only one trying.”
“We both were,” she whispers, small and surprised at the reminder. “I just… I didn’t know you were hurting too.”
Her voice softens, his sharpens. “I wanted to forget about them, Claire. I wanted it so bad.” He feels unsteady, transparent, ripped open in a way that’s all new and all the same. “I thought if I just waited, if I kept pretending I was fine…” He shrugs, helpless, still unsure. “Maybe you’d see me again. But it just got worse.”
The depth of it stuns her. She doesn’t know how to hold it yet. He watches her hands find each other, unsure of what to reach for. The quiet turns, a slow and widening circle. She looks at him with a realization he wishes he didn’t have to make her see. “So you read them instead?” She sounds sadder now, sad for him, sad for her, sad for everything.
“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t say it as a promise. He says it because it’s all he knows to give.
She blinks. Her anger falters. Her voice softens. “Nate.”
“It felt like the only thing left. And even then, I didn’t… it wasn’t…” He’s more exposed than he’s ever been. “It never felt like enough.” He’s ashamed at how much it didn’t, ashamed at how much he still hoped for more.
Her arms wrap around her body like a safety net. Like a wish for comfort he didn’t think he could give her. She breathes slowly, absorbing his apology and letting it crash into the spaces where anger once settled. “I didn’t know you kept all that. I didn’t know you wanted it.”
“I didn’t know if you ever wanted me to.”
She studies him, disbelief and sadness lingering in her eyes. They’re wide and wet, knowing and still raw. “How could you even think that?” Her question isn’t sharp. Isn’t accusatory. It’s a simple echo of how much they haven’t been saying.
“You didn’t want anything to do with me, Claire. You stopped choosing us. You stopped choosing me.” Nate runs both hands through his hair, unsure if he’ll ever stop running. Unsure if she’ll ever want to catch him. “I didn’t know if it would be different this time. If you really wanted this again, or if…” He braces himself against the risk. “If I’d lose you all over.”
She holds the hurt between them, unsure of what it means. But this time, she doesn’t run. She doesn’t let go. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me?”
“I didn’t want to hear the answer.”
“But what we’ve been doing…” She trails off, each step another discovery. “Has it even been real?” She’s finally asking. She’s finally ready.
Nate closes the distance between them. He sits on the bed, the space between them closing. The breath between them shared. It’s the closest they’ve been all day, and it still feels too far. “It’s the realest it’s ever been.” He holds her gaze, waits for it to soften. It doesn’t, not yet, but it doesn’t harden either. “But I was so scared I’d fuck it up. I was so scared you’d go, I couldn’t stop myself.”
“From keeping them?”
“From holding on to the ghost of us. To the ghost of you.” He reaches for her hand; she doesn’t move away. But she doesn’t move closer, either.
Claire finally lets her shoulders sag, like they’re sharing the burden, like maybe it’s not just his to bear. “Why didn’t you just say you needed this? Needed us?” She watches the sadness lift just enough for him to answer.
“Because it’s been too long. Because I didn’t want to hear it if you didn’t.”
“I did.” Her voice is small, wounded. So is her smile. “I do.”
The hope lands soft, gentle, scared to break. “I want this. More than anything.”
“So do I.”
They don’t kiss, don’t fuck, don’t burn through the anger and back to the lust like it was a temporary detour. They hold the truth between them. Nate touches the outline of her hand. Claire doesn’t let go. They sit apart, quiet, and this time the silence feels different. They both breathe into it, filling the space they’re just starting to see again.