5. Adrian
— ? —
Adrian
I’ve watched the footage forty-seven times.
The kitchen cameras aren’t sophisticated, just standard security feeds, grainy and wide-angled, but they caught everything. Every second of what happened, from the moment Camille walked into the room to the moment Elena’s face appeared at the window, rain-streaked and devastated.
I pause on frame 1,847. My hands are up. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just… frozen.
One second.
That’s all it was. One second of my brain failing to process what was happening, one second of paralysis before instinct kicked in and I shoved her away so hard she stumbled into the counter.
But Elena didn’t see the shove. She ran before the shove.
I pour whiskey into a glass. Macallan, eighteen years, the bottle my father gave me when I took over the company. I swirl it once, watching the amber liquid catch the light from my laptop screen.
Then I walk to the sink and pour it out.
I’ve been drinking too much lately. Burying myself in work and whiskey, ignoring the cracks in my marriage, pretending that being successful was the same thing as being present.
Elena deserved better.
She still does.
***
Her workspace is exactly how she left it.
I’ve walked past this room a thousand times in the three months she lived here, passed by the half-open door on my way to meetings and conference calls, never once stopping to look inside. It was just a room. Just her hobby. Just something that kept her busy while I was saving the world.
Hobby.
I’m a goddamn idiot.
The console table sits in the center of the space, nearly finished. Reclaimed barn wood, hand-cut joints, a brass drawer pull shaped like a honeybee. I run my fingers across the surface and it’s smooth, smoother than anything I’ve ever touched, like silk made solid.
There’s a portfolio on her drafting table. I open it.
Sketches. Dozens of them. Tables and chairs and cabinets, each one annotated with dimensions and wood types and notes about the clients who commissioned them.
Mrs. Delgado wants cherry for the sideboard, check Vermont supplier for reclaimed stock.
Miller dining set: luna moths, silver hardware, March deadline.
There’s a folder labeled “Showcase.” Inside, a letter from the Metropolitan Design Center accepting her console table for the Emerging Artisans exhibition. The date on the letter is October 15th.
The same day she tried to tell me about it.
She’d been carrying the best news of her career around all day, waiting for me to look up long enough to hear it.
I close the portfolio. Sit down in her chair. Look around at the space she built for herself in a house that was never really hers.
***
My laptop is still open on the kitchen counter when I get back.
I close the security footage, I don’t need to watch it again; I have every frame memorized, and open a new document.
Ways to prove I deserve my wife
I stare at the blinking cursor for a long time. Then I start typing.
1. Actually be present. Put down the phone. Look at her when she talks.
2. Defend her. Every time. Against my mother, against strangers, against anyone who makes her feel small.
3. Support her career. It’s not a hobby. It’s never been a hobby. It’s the thing she was doing when I fell in love with her, and I forgot that.
4. Show up. Even when she doesn’t want me to. Even when she tells me to leave. Show up anyway.
5. Wait. However long it takes.
6. Love her even if she never watches the footage.
7. Love her even if she never forgives me.
8. Love her anyway. Forever.
I save the document. Print it out. Fold it into quarters and slip it into my wallet.
Then I pick up my phone and text her.
I know you blocked me. I know you won’t see this. But I’m going to text you every night anyway, because maybe someday you’ll unblock me, and when you do, I want you to know I never stopped fighting.
Day 1: I went into your workspace today. I looked at your portfolio. I’m so sorry I never looked before. The honeybee drawer pull is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Almost as beautiful as the woman who made it.
I hit send. The message disappears into a blocked number, but that’s okay.
It was never about whether she’d receive it.
It was about sending it anyway.
***
I will send one every single day.
For weeks, and then months. Twenty-seven days from now, she will unblock my number at 2 a.m. on a night when she’s feeling weak, and twenty-seven messages will flood her phone at once.
She’ll read every single one.
But I don’t know that yet. I just know that I love her, and I failed her, and the only thing I can do now is keep trying.
Every single day.
For as long as it takes.