37. Love in the Dark
LOVE IN THE DARK
Days start blurring together when there’s nothing in them to look forward to.
I notice it first in stupid little ways—like how I have to check my phone to remember what day of the week it is, or how the laundry basket fills and empties and fills again without registering where the time went.
Work days. Daycare drop-offs. Bedtime routines.
Repeat. Somewhere in that loop, my marriage is supposed to live.
Lately, it feels like it’s just… hovering at the edges.
Reid and I don’t stop talking completely. That would be easier to label, easier to panic over. It’s more like we downgrade without saying so—calls turn into quick check-ins, which turn into voice notes, which turn into texts that can be answered “whenever you get a second.”
We both rarely have seconds. At Nexus, the office hums with the usual noise—clicking keyboards, low conversations, someone’s terrible playlist leaking from their headphones.
I sit at my desk, answer emails, fix bugs, attend stand-ups.
I do my job. I do it well. I nod, I contribute, I make people laugh when I have the energy.
If anyone looks closely, they might see the way I keep glancing at my phone, thumb hovering over the screen like I’m waiting for something.
Most days, nothing comes. When it does, it’s “practice ran late. I’m wiped.
How was your day? Or “Busy. Liam’s good.
We’re both tired. I hate that I’m not there. I’ll call soon. Promise.”
Soon stretches. Soon turns into, “I crashed, I’m sorry,” and then, “Tomorrow for sure,” and then, “This week is brutal, can we aim for the weekend?”
We do talk on the weekend—on speakerphone while I’m folding laundry, while Liam yells about dinosaurs in the background, while I stir something on the stove.
We cover the basics. Schedules. Assignments.
Liam’s latest phase. The conversation never fully tips into a fight, but it never settles into comfort either.
It’s like trying to balance on a chair with one leg shorter than the others.
You can sit, but you never feel steady. Liam feels it even if he can’t name it.
He’s clingier now, trailing me from room to room with his blanket dragging behind him.
If I leave the living room to grab something from the kitchen, he follows.
If I put him down to go to the bathroom, he stands outside the door and knocks.
“Mama? Mama? Mama?”
“I’m right here,” I say for the hundredth time, washing my hands and forcing my voice to stay gentle. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He doesn’t look convinced. I get it. The last time his world shifted this hard, he ended up with a new last name and a dad who lives in a different city during the week.
Kids are sponges. They soak up tension and hold it until it leaks out as tears and tantrums and velcro affection.
Tonight, he refuses to eat unless he’s in my lap, head tucked under my chin.
“Mama sit,” he says, patting the chair.
“I am sitting,” I tell him.
He shakes his head and climbs up anyway, pressing his back into my chest like he’s trying to fuse us together. I feed him small bites of pasta over his shoulder, my arms wrapped around him, plate balanced on my knees. It’s not efficient. It’s not comfortable. It’s what he needs, so I do it.
“Done,” Liam says around a yawn, dropping his fork onto the plate.
“Okay, buddy,” I say. “Bath time.”
He clings to me all the way down the hall, fingers hooked in my shirt. He doesn’t want bubbles tonight. He doesn’t want his usual bath toys. He just stands in the shallow water holding my wrists as I wash him, as if letting go of any part of me might make me vanish.
“Dada?” he asks when I wrap him in a towel.
“Dada’s at school,” I say softly. “He’s tired tonight.”
“Call?” he says.
“Not tonight,” I answer, throat tightening. “Soon.”
He leans his head against my shoulder in silence. Somehow that’s worse than when he cries. After I finally get him settled in bed—stories read, nightlight on, door cracked—Destiny texts.
Destiny: You good? Need anything?
I stare at the screen and try to figure out how to answer a question that big with a keyboard that small. I’m fine. We’re fine. It’s just stress. It’s just life. It’s just everything. I pick the simplest option.
Just tired. Long week.
Destiny: You’ve been “tired” for like a month.
She’s not wrong. She’s rarely wrong.
What do you want me to say? Marriage is hard, grad school is evil, daycare germs are winning, and I’ve forgotten what my own husband smells like?
There’s a pause, then.
Destiny: …yeah. That.
I laugh once, sharp and humorless. At least someone is willing to say it out loud.
Destiny: Come over this weekend. Mom will feed you. I’ll steal Liam for a bit. You can sit on the couch and breathe.
Part of me wants to say yes immediately. The other part of me hesitates because weekends are supposed to be for Reid. For calls. For maybe visits if we can swing it.
I check our thread. The last message from him is still the one about feeling sick. No follow-up. No hey, how’s your day going. No I’ll call later if I can. He’s allowed to be tired. So am I.
We’ll see how Liam’s feeling. Might take you up on that.
Destiny: Do it. Don’t make me drag you.
I set the phone down and sink into the couch cushions. The living room is dark except for the glow of the monitor on the coffee table. Liam is a small, curled shape under his blanket, chest rising and falling steadily.
Silence used to feel like a luxury—something rare and precious I could only access in tiny pockets between diapers and deadlines. Now it feels… louder. It presses in around me, filled with things that aren’t being said.
I used to know what Reid was doing almost every hour—class, work, hanging with Logan, gaming, all of it. Now I get broad strokes. Exam week. Extra practice. Group project. Need to study. I believe him. I also feel like I’m reading a summary of his life instead of living it with him.
At work the next day, I catch myself almost mentioning it to Callie, then stop. It’s one thing to say I’m tired. It’s another to say I’m scared we might be slowly grinding ourselves down into people who coexist instead of connect.
So I don’t say anything. I answer tickets. I drink coffee. I join a Zoom. I send updates. I perform “functional adult” so well I almost convince myself. The only time the mask cracks is when someone asks about Reid—casual small talk in the kitchen while the coffee machine sputters.
“How’s married life?” one of the newer devs asks with a grin. “You still in the honeymoon phase or has he started leaving socks everywhere already?”
A couple people laugh. I manage to smile.
“It’s good,” I say automatically. “Busy. We’re figuring it out.”
“Reid still at school out of state?” Eric asks, reaching for the sugar.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s in the middle of a brutal semester.”
“That’s rough,” one of the analysts says. “Long-distance and married? You’re stronger than me.”
“Or dumber,” I joke, because it’s easier than saying it hurts.
They laugh again. The moment passes. Someone changes the subject to Netflix recommendations.
I stir my coffee and think about how “married” and “long-distance” feel like opposite words that we keep trying to cram into the same sentence. Some days, it works. Other days, it feels like I’m stretching something that isn’t meant to reach that far.
By the time I pick Liam up, he’s clingy again, eyes big and tired. The teacher mentions he got upset during nap time and kept asking for me.
“Is everything okay at home?” she asks gently.
“Yeah,” I say, too quickly. “We’re just in a busy season.”
Busy season. Like this is a temporary work sprint and not my entire life. At home, I make dinner one-handed because Liam insists on being attached to my hip. I burn the first batch of chicken and end up microwaving leftovers instead. My phone sits on the counter, screen dark.
I tell myself not to count the minutes since I last heard from Reid. I do it anyway. I also the distance in every delayed message. He’s over there, drowning in exams. I’m over here, drowning in life. We keep tossing apologies across the gap like life preservers, but no one has the energy to swim.
I want to tell him that. I want to say, I miss you so much it scares me.
I want to say, I don’t know how to keep doing this if nothing changes.
I want to say, I’m starting to wonder if love is enough to hold all this weight.
Instead, I send him a message “I love you”.
The words are still true. They’ve always been true.
The problem is everything wrapped around them—responsibility, exhaustion, miles of highway and semesters of obligation.
I set the phone face down and press my palms into my eyes until the burning subsides.
Love in the dark still counts as love. I remind myself of that as I stand in the quiet, as I check the locks, as I put away the dishes. The problem is, it’s hard to tell which way to walk when you can’t see more than two steps in front of you. It late by the time I hear from him.
The call starts like every other one lately—too late at night, both of us more tired than we should be, both pretending it’s fine.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop open, though I’m not reading anything.
The screen is just a glow in the room, something to look at when my eyes can’t stay on one place for long.
Reid’s face appears in the small box on my phone screen, but the lighting is dim and he looks like a shadow of himself.
He’s still in the library. I hear faint typing and a whispered conversation in the background before he mutes his mic. When he unmutes, he tries to smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I say, and the word lands flat between us. Not angry. Not affectionate. Just… thin.