1. Maren #2
“I have a consultation.” I’m already turning toward the door. “I’ll see you tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Whenever you get home.”
“Maren.”
I stop with my hand on the door handle. He’s right behind me now, close enough that I can smell his cologne, close enough that my body remembers being held by him and wants it with a desperation that embarrasses me.
“Can I at least kiss you goodbye?”
It’s such a simple thing. Such a normal, married thing. A year ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated, I’d have turned around and kissed him and it would have been easy, natural, the most obvious thing in the world.
Now I hesitate. Just for a second, just long enough for him to notice. And when I turn and let him press his lips to mine, the kiss is brief and careful, the kiss of two people who aren’t sure where they stand anymore.
He notices. I can see it in his eyes when he pulls back, the flicker of confusion, of worry, of something that might finally be understanding.
“Have a good day,” I say, and I go inside before either of us can make it worse.
The consultation goes well. A fall wedding, rich colors, a bride who actually listens when I explain why her Pinterest ideas won’t work with her venue’s lighting. Nora handles the register while I sketch preliminary designs, and by noon I’ve almost managed to forget about the fight in the car.
Almost.
“You seem tense,” Nora says, appearing at my elbow with a cup of coffee I didn’t ask for but definitely need. “Rhodes?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That means yes.” She settles onto the stool next to my workbench, clearly not going anywhere. Nora is five years younger than me and approximately five hundred percent more nosy. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened. Everything is fine.”
“Mare.”
I look up from my sketch. Nora is watching me with that expression she gets, the one that says she knows I’m full of shit and she’s going to wait me out until I admit it.
“He came home at three in the morning,” I say finally. “Again. And I brought it up, and he got defensive, and we had a fight in the car, and I don’t know why I keep expecting things to change when they never do.”
Nora is quiet for a moment. “Have you told him? Actually told him, not just hinted at it?”
“I’ve told him.” I set down my pencil, suddenly exhausted.
“I’ve told him a hundred times. Told him I feel alone, that I miss him, that the business is taking over our marriage and I need him to be present, actually present, not just physically in the same room while mentally running through his to-do list.”
“And?”
“And he says he’ll do better, and things improve for a week, and then there’s another crisis and another late night and another missed dinner, and we’re right back where we started.
” I pick up my coffee and take a long sip, letting the warmth settle in my chest. “I’m tired, Nora.
I’m so tired of fighting for scraps of his attention while Rachel gets to see him every day, all day, like she’s his actual partner and I’m just the woman he comes home to sometimes. ”
Nora’s expression shifts. “You don’t actually think there’s something going on with Rachel, do you?”
“No.” The answer is automatic, certain. “No, I don’t think he’s cheating on me.
Rhodes wouldn’t do that. But sometimes… sometimes I wonder if it matters whether he’s actually sleeping with her when he’s already giving her all the parts of himself I used to have.
His time, his attention, his energy. By the time he gets home to me, there’s nothing left. ”
The bell above the door chimes, and Nora squeezes my shoulder before going to greet whoever just walked in. I turn back to my sketch, but the lines blur together, and I realize I’ve been drawing the same leaf over and over for the last five minutes.
This is what it’s come to. I can’t even focus on work anymore because I’m too busy cataloging all the ways my marriage is falling apart.
Rhodes comes home at 12:47 a.m. with a box from the French bakery I love, the one that’s twenty minutes out of his way, the one that makes the chocolate mousse cake I’ve been obsessed with since our first anniversary.
I’m awake. Of course I’m awake. I’ve been lying in bed for two hours, not sleeping, waiting for the sound of the garage door even though I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore.
He appears in the bedroom doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, bakery box in hand. “Come downstairs.”
“I have to be up early.”
“Come downstairs anyway.” His voice is soft, almost pleading. “I got your favorite. We can eat it at the kitchen table like we used to, back when we’d stay up too late talking about nothing.”
God, I want to. I want to so badly it physically hurts, the wanting, the remembering, the ghost of who we used to be before everything got complicated.
We used to do that all the time when we were first married.
Late-night conversations over dessert, sharing forks, laughing about our days.
I’d tell him about difficult brides and he’d tell me about impossible vendors, and we’d end up making out against the kitchen counter like teenagers.
But that was before. Before his business became an empire, before I became an afterthought, before I started measuring my place in his life against calendar appointments and phone calls.
“I’m tired, Rhodes.”
“I know.” He sets the bakery box on the dresser and sits on the edge of the bed, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to.
“I know you’re tired. I’ve been distant, I get that, and things have been hard.
But I want to try. I want to have cake with my wife and talk to her and remember why we fell in love in the first place. ”
There’s something in his voice that gets to me, the crack of genuine regret, the rawness underneath all that practiced composure. For a moment, he sounds like the man I married. For a moment, I almost believe things could be different.
“When did we become like this?” I ask, and my voice is barely a whisper.
Rhodes is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “I don’t know. I keep thinking I’ll have more time soon, that once this deal closes or that project finishes, things will calm down and I can-”
“Things never calm down.” I sit up, facing him in the dark. “There’s always another deal. Another crisis. And I keep waiting for you to choose me, to put me first for once, and it never happens.”
“That’s not-”
“I’ve been asking you that for a year.”
The words land like a punch. Rhodes goes still, his breath catching, and I can see him processing it, the realization that this isn’t new, that I’ve been drowning while he’s been too busy to notice, that my reaching for him in the car and in the kitchen and in all the small moments hasn’t been nagging or neediness but desperation.
I’ve been asking him to see me for a year, and he’s only just now hearing it.
His phone lights up on the nightstand, the screen glowing bright in the dark room. I see the name before he does: Rachel.
Neither of us moves. The phone keeps glowing, waiting for him to answer, demanding his attention the way it always does. The way she always does.
Rhodes doesn’t reach for it. He doesn’t even look at it. His eyes are on me, searching my face like he’s trying to find an answer to a question he doesn’t know how to ask.
But it doesn’t matter. It’s too late tonight for cake and conversation, too late for me to pretend that unanswered phone calls make up for a year of chosen absences. I’ve spent too many nights waiting for him to choose me, and I’m tired of being disappointed.
I reach over and turn off my lamp, plunging us into darkness.
“Good night, Rhodes.”
He doesn’t move for a long moment. I can feel him there, sitting on the edge of our bed, wanting to fix something he doesn’t fully understand yet.
Finally, I hear him stand. Hear him pick up the bakery box. Hear his footsteps retreat toward the door.
He leaves the phone unanswered on the nightstand. It glows once more, then goes dark.
For the first time, choosing me doesn’t fix anything at all.