37. Love in the Dark #2
There used to be warmth in our “hi.” Little hints of excitement. Some spark that softened every long day. Now it feels like checking in with someone who lives on the opposite side of a wall—close enough to hear, too far to reach.
He scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Sorry I didn’t call earlier. We had practice, and then film review, and then I was trying to finish this assignment before—” He stops. His voice lowers. “Before everything gets worse.”
I stare at him, tired in a way I don’t want to admit. “It’s okay,” I say, even though it doesn’t feel okay. Even though I needed him earlier, even though I don’t know how to ask for what I need without sounding demanding.
He shakes his head. “It’s not okay. Nothing feels okay.”
There’s a softness in his tone that makes my throat tighten, but it’s layered with frustration. Not at me—at the situation. At the distance. At the pressure slowly crushing both of us.
I rest my elbow on the table and press my fingers to my forehead. “I don’t know how to fix any of this.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “I don’t either.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The silence doesn’t settle; it spreads. Thick. Heavy. Unavoidable.
Finally he exhales. “I feel like I’m failing you.”
My eyes lift. “You’re not failing me, Reid.”
He gives a humorless laugh—the kind that says he doesn’t believe me. “I’m never home. You’re carrying everything. Liam. Work. Bills. Family stuff. And I’m just…” He gestures vaguely at the library. “Here. Always here.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “You’re doing what you have to do.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.” He leans forward, elbows on the desk. “Do you know how many times I think about just dropping everything? Just quitting for the semester, moving back home, getting whatever job I can find so you’re not doing this alone?”
The image hits me hard—him abandoning school, abandoning the degree he’s worked so long for, just to make our daily life easier. It’s not a solution; it’s a warning. A sign of how overwhelmed he is.
“If you quit school to fix our problems,” I say, voice low, “we’d build resentment on top of everything else.”
He rubs his forehead. “I know. That’s why I’m not doing it.”
I swallow. “So we just stay stuck?”
He blinks. “Is that how you see us?”
The question hurts more than it should, but maybe that’s because I’ve been thinking it and avoiding it at the same time.
“I don’t know what I see right now,” I admit.
“I feel like we’re running on fumes. Like every day is survival mode.
Like marriage didn’t give us a foundation—it just added another thing we’re responsible for keeping alive. ”
He looks away for a second, jaw clenched. “I hate that you feel alone.”
“You feel alone too,” I say. “Don’t pretend you don’t.”
He doesn’t deny it. For a moment, I close my eyes and breathe through the ache in my chest. It’s not the sharp pain of a fight—it’s the dull, persistent kind that comes from too many days without real closeness. Without rest. Without relief.
Reid speaks first. “Ames… are we okay?”
I look at him through the screen. At the exhaustion. The fear. The hope he’s trying to hold onto even when he doesn’t have the strength. I want to tell him yes. I want to reassure both of us. But lying won’t help anymore.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
His shoulders drop like the air just left his body. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
“It’s the truth,” I say gently. “We’re both trying so hard to be strong, but I don’t think we’ve had a real moment of peace since the wedding. And now everything feels like pressure. Everything is heavy.”
He nods once, blinking hard. For a second I think he might cry, but he inhales slowly, steadying himself. “I miss you,” he says. “I miss my wife.”
That word hits differently now. Wife. It used to make my heart lift. Now it just makes me feel the distance more clearly.
“I miss you too,” I say, and the sadness in my voice cracks something open. “But missing you isn’t enough to make this work. We need time. We need presence. We need to actually feel like we’re in this together instead of managing separate crises.”
He shakes his head helplessly. “I don’t know how to give you more without something else falling apart.”
“I know,” I say, tears building. “I don’t know how to ask for more without breaking you.”
We’re quiet again. This time, the silence feels bruised.
He swallows. “Are we… losing this?”
I can’t answer. I stare at him, vision blurring slightly. The answer is not yes. It’s not no. It’s something scarier—uncertainty. He sees it. His expression fractures.
“Ames,” he whispers, voice cracking, “are we losing us?”
I bite back the instinct to reassure him. To tell him everything will be fine. Because right now, that’s a promise I can’t make. “I don’t want to lose us,” I say instead. “But something has to change. We can’t keep doing this.”
He nods slowly, wiping his face with the heel of his hand. “I’m scared,” he admits. “I’ve never been this scared.”
My chest tightens. “Me too.”
A beat passes. Two. Three. The air between us feels fragile enough to shatter.
Finally he whispers, “I should get back to studying.”
The words feel wrong—small, mundane, out of place after everything we just said. But that’s the reality of our life right now. Crisis or not, responsibilities still demand attention.
“Okay,” I say quietly.
“I love you,” he murmurs.
I close my eyes. “I love you too.”
He hesitates, like he’s waiting for something—a reassurance, a plan, anything. I have nothing to give. He ends the call slowly. The screen goes black. The silence that follows feels suffocating.
For the first time since we got married, the fear in my chest isn’t about being overwhelmed. It’s about losing the one person I built all this with. And realizing neither of us knows if love alone is strong enough to hold together what life is pulling apart.
It’s close to midnight when the house finally goes quiet. Not peaceful—just quiet in that way silence feels when it’s holding its breath. The kind of silence that waits, listens, presses against the walls like it knows something is breaking inside them.
Liam fell asleep with his arm around my neck, refusing to let go even after his breathing slowed. I had to wait an extra fifteen minutes before easing him onto the pillow. He whimpered when I pulled away. He’s been doing that for days now—reaching for me, needing more, sensing more. Kids always do.
They feel the fractures long before the adults admit they’re there.
I shut his bedroom door halfway and stand in the hallway for a moment, not moving.
My arms feel empty. The rest of me feels worse—hollow, stretched, thin in a way that sleep won’t fix.
I head to the kitchen and flick on the dim stove light.
The glow spills across the counter, catching the edges of bills, school notices, half-finished grocery lists, and a cold cup of tea I made hours ago and forgot to drink.
Forgot. Or didn’t have the emotional space to return to.
I lean my palms on the counter and drop my head, letting out a slow, uneven exhale.
The phone is beside me, screen black, carrying the weight of the earlier call. A call that didn’t feel like a fight. Fights have fire. Fights have sharp edges. This had nothing sharp—just dull ache. Exhaustion. Two people too tired to bleed anymore. He sounded far away. I sounded worse.
He said, “Maybe we need to slow down.”
I said, “I don’t know how to do that when everything is already falling apart.”
Neither of us meant it as an ending, but it sat there between us like one anyway—unspoken, heavy, impossible to ignore.
I straighten slowly, shoulders tight, and move through the living room.
The apartment is dim, lit only by stray streetlight through the blinds.
The couch is exactly the same as this morning, but it feels different now—isolated, like a single piece of land in the middle of an ocean I’m getting tired of swimming across.
I sit. Not because I want to, but because my legs finally give up.
I grab the nearest throw blanket and pull it around me even though I’m not cold.
My chest aches—not sharp, not dramatic, just tired…
deeply tired. A kind of fatigue that settles behind the ribs and refuses to let go. My mind keeps replaying the call.
His voice cracking on, “I’m trying, Amelia.”
Mine, barely above a whisper, “I know. I just don’t know if trying is enough anymore.”