Chapter 5
Five
Sloane
When I walked in, Peter sat exactly in the same spot as always.
On the couch.
Football on.
Beer in hand.
He glanced up when the door shut behind me, his eyes moving over me for half a second before returning to the screen. He produced a sound that might have been mistaken for “hey” if you were being generous.
“Hey,” I replied. My keys hit the ceramic bowl by the door with a small, familiar clink.
He gestured vaguely toward the kitchen counter without looking away from the TV. “Left you something to eat.”
The way he said it—his voice flat, his eyes already drifting back to the t.v, like someone commenting on a slight change in the weather—made my stomach contract.
I waited for the barb, the twist of the knife, but it never came.
He’d already moved on, and somehow that seemed worse than any insult could have.
I set my bag down and crossed to the kitchen. There on the counter sat a plastic clamshell from Flay’s, the logo soft and blurred where condensation had soaked into it. He’d thought to get me dinner, remembered what I liked, and set it out for me.
Exhaustion became the only thing left in me.
I stood there for a moment with my hand on the lid, not opening it yet.
The hardest part wasn’t the fights or the coldness—those I could name, categorize, and defend myself against. It was the unthinking generosities that left me bleeding: a plate of pasta waiting when I worked late, fingers intertwining with mine in the blue glow of the television.
Little proofs that I wasn’t leaving a monster, but someone whose feelings no longer filled the space it once did, someone I’d outgrown like a sweater still soft but too small.
My fingers lifted the lid.
Lettuce. Cucumber. Tomato. A sad little plastic cup of ranch dressing.
I stared at it, waiting. Perhaps there was more, a burger wrapped in foil. A paper bag of fries tucked behind the microwave, anything with actual substance.
Nothing.
Only foliage.
“I already ate,” he called from the couch, as if that explained everything.
I turned, still holding the container open in my hands. “It’s a salad.”
“Yeah.”
“Why would you get me a salad and not a burger?”
He muted the TV.
The remote’s click echoed in our living room, and my stomach knotted with dread.
Four years together had taught me Peter’s patterns—the television became silent only when he needed my full attention, when words of consequence were coming.
Those moments, as rare as snow in summer, and as disorienting.
He shifted on the couch and turned to face me fully.
And I saw it.
Right there. Not tucked away behind politeness or careful wording. Not hidden at all.
Disgust.
Plain in the open and unapologetic, sitting on his face as if it had been there for months and he’d simply stopped caring enough to cover it.
“Sloane,” he said, and even the way he said my name sounded exhausted, like I’d already disappointed him and we hadn’t even started. “When we met, you were a hundred and ten pounds.” He paused. “I loved that about you.”
The words sank in, and my body froze in place. I wasn’t clenching my fists or gritting my teeth. I wasn’t even experiencing the heat of anger. I became simply suspended, like those split seconds after you hear glass breaking but before you see what’s been destroyed.
“I loved fucking you then,” he said.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
He stopped talking, but he didn’t stop looking. His eyes moved over me—slowly, deliberately—traveling down and back up again with an expression that made me want to cross my arms, shrink, disappear. That was not how a person views someone they cherish, or even the way someone looks at a stranger.
It served as an evaluation. Cold and final.
Like he’d already made up his mind about what he saw, and none of it was worth his time.
“Well now…” He hesitated, as if trying to find a version of the truth that didn’t make him sound like an asshole.
He didn’t find one.
“…now it’s like I’m fucking someone who’s let themselves go.”
For a second, I genuinely didn’t understand what he’d said.
I stood there, holding that stupid fucking salad, staring at him.
It registered.
Not all at once. First there was confusion—a blank, ringing nothing, like the silence after a slap—followed by pain that hit, sharp and dead-center.
So that was it.
Fifty pounds. I’d gained fifty pounds since we met, and apparently that was enough. Enough to erase everything. Enough to make him look at me like someone he had to tolerate.
One hundred and sixty pounds.
That’s what I weighed. One-sixty. Not some number that should make a man curl his lip. Not some number that should make him say let themselves go like that.
But there it stood. The line, and I stood on the wrong side of it.
And the worst part—the part that made my throat tighten and my eyes burn—was that he’d been thinking it. For how long? Every time he touched me? Every time he didn’t?
I kept my mouth shut.
I moved silently into the kitchen.
Opened the trash.
And threw the salad away.
The plastic container hit the bottom with a soft thud.
Behind me, he exhaled loudly. “Jesus, Sloane. You just threw away twenty bucks.”
I turned slowly.
“Peter,” I said, my voice quieter than I expected. Sharper, too. “I’m sick of you fucking me and leaving me hanging.”
He blinked, clearly not expecting that.
“I’m sick of you being selfish.”
There, I said it. Out loud. Finally.
And he laughed.
His eyes moved down my body as the laughter trailed off, slow and deliberate, as if surveying something that confirmed every point he’d already made. His mouth settled into something ugly—not quite a sneer, not quite a smile—it made my skin crawl.
“Oh, come on,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not—”
“Not what?” I cut him off, my hands shaking. I felt it starting in my fingers and working up through my wrists, but my voice held steady, and that was the only thing that mattered. “Not true? Not fair? Pick one, Peter. Tell me which part I got wrong.”
He stopped laughing.
Good.
“You touch me when your dick gets hard. You pump until you’re done, you roll over like I’m nothing but a goddamn fleshlight. Every. Single. Time.”
His jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle beneath his skin.
“That’s not fair,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
“It’s not fair?” My voice cracked on the word. My hands curled into fists so tight that my nails bit into my palms. “You don’t even fucking look at me anymore, Peter. You look THROUGH me, like I’m some convenient hole you tolerate between football games.”
He slammed his beer down. Amber liquid sloshed over the rim and onto his fingers. He didn’t wipe it off. His face darkened as he sprang to his feet.
“That’s fucking bullshit,” he snarled.
“Is it?” I stepped closer, my whole body trembling, but I didn’t back up. I had finished backing up. “Is it?”
“Yes,” he snapped, his face reddening from his collar to his hairline. “You’ve fucking changed.”
I let out a laugh that hurt coming up. “Yeah. I grew the fuck up.”
“No,” his voice dropped low, quiet. “You got comfortable.”
It hit hard, harder than I wanted it to.
Comfortable.
My jaw clenched, my molars grinding against each other.
“You know what?” he kept going, jabbing his finger toward me as if making a point in some boardroom. “I work my ass off. I come home fucking exhausted. The last thing I need is you attacking me because you can’t handle the truth.”
“The TRUTH?” My voice shot up so high it didn’t even sound like mine. “You just told me I fucking disgust you!”
“I didn’t say disgusted,” he snapped.
“You didn’t have to.” My throat burned. My eyes stung, but I would not cry. I would not give him that. “I saw your face, Peter, when you said let herself go—I saw exactly what you meant. You looked at me like dog shit stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“So don’t you dare,” I said, my voice shaking now, every word deliberate, “stand there and tell me I can’t handle the truth.
I’ve been handling it every night you finish in three minutes, roll over, and fall asleep without even asking if I’m okay.
I’ve been handling it every time you look at your phone instead of me. ”
My chest heaved. The kitchen was too bright, too quiet.
“The truth isn’t the problem,” I said. “You are.”
We stared at each other across the kitchen, his face tight.
Four fucking years.
Four years of my life, and only now seeing him clearly—this stranger with his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared, looking at me like I’d become a problem he no longer wanted to solve.
“I’m not asking for much,” I said. My voice dropped low, barely above a whisper, but it filled the room. “I’m asking to be wanted.”
He didn’t respond, merely stood there, breathing through his nose, staring at me with those flat, dead eyes.
Nothing.
Something inside me changed. Not shattered—I had moved beyond the point of breaking. The silence between us pulled taut until it reverberated, and Peter stood there with his jaw locked, as if everything I’d said had bounced off him and died on the kitchen floor.
My vision narrowed.
I lunged at him.
My palm cracked across his face so hard that the sound bounced off the cabinets. His head snapped sideways. A red handprint appeared on his cheek before he’d even turned back to look at me. The only sound was my ragged breathing.
Then his eyes found mine.
Dark. Furious. Pupils so wide there was almost no color left.
“You fucking bitch,” he growled.
I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to tear his clothes off. I wanted both at the same time, and I didn’t care what that made me.