Chapter Two
Six Years of Proof
I called in sick to my old job once, back when I still had a job to call in sick to.
That was seven years ago. I remember standing in the kitchen of my studio apartment, holding the phone, lying to my boss about a fever I didn't have, because Damon had asked me to fly to Chicago with him for a work thing and I couldn't say no to him yet. I didn't know how to say no to him yet.
I thought about that morning while I stood in our kitchen now, six years married, watching him eat toast like nothing in the world was wrong.
"You're quiet," he said, not looking up from his phone.
"Didn't sleep much."
"The party wore you out. It wore me out too." He smiled at me, that easy smile that used to make my knees go soft. It didn't do that anymore. It just looked like a smile someone wears when they've practiced it in a mirror.
"Damon, can I ask you something?"
"Sure." He finally looked up.
I opened my mouth to ask about the hallway.
I wanted to. My whole body wanted to say it, right there over toast and orange juice, in the kitchen with the good light coming through the window.
But something stopped me. Maybe it was fear.
Maybe it was the part of me that had learned, over six years, exactly how these conversations went with him.
"Never mind," I said. "It's nothing."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
He kissed my forehead on his way out the door, same as always, and told me he loved me, same as always, and I stood there in the kitchen after he left with my coffee going cold in my hands, thinking about all the things I used to be before I became just his wife.
I used to be a graphic designer. A good one. I had my own little studio space above a coffee shop downtown, three clients on retainer and a fourth one I was courting, a boutique hotel chain that wanted a full rebrand. I remember the day I told my business partner, Marisol, that I was pulling out.
"You're doing what?" she'd said, standing in our shared office with a mug of tea in her hand, staring at me like I'd grown a second head.
"Damon wants to move to the city for his new position. It's a huge opportunity for him."
"What about your opportunity? The hotel deal?"
"I can freelance from there. It'll be fine."
"Elena." She'd set the mug down hard enough that tea sloshed over the side. "You built this with me. You can't just walk away from it."
"I'm not walking away. I'm just... shifting priorities."
She didn't say anything else that day. She didn't have to. I could see it in her face, the disappointment, the worry, the thing she wanted to say but wouldn't because she loved me too much to make me feel worse than I already did.
I never did freelance from the city. Somehow there was always something else.
Dinners with Damon's business partners that I needed to plan.
A charity gala I needed to help chair. A renovation on the new house that needed my attention because Damon said he trusted my eye more than any designer we could hire.
"You have such a gift for this," he told me once, standing in the half finished living room, surrounded by paint swatches and fabric samples. "Way better than some overpriced consultant."
I believed him. I wanted to believe him. It felt good to be needed, even if the thing I was needed for wasn't the thing I used to be good at.
My mother noticed before I did.
"When's the last time you touched your design software?" she asked me one Sunday over lunch, maybe four years into the marriage.
"I don't know. It's been a while."
"A while like weeks? Or a while like years?"
I didn't answer that one. I just moved my food around my plate until she let it go.
My sister Camille stopped visiting around the same time, though it took me longer to notice that too.
She and Damon never got along, not really, not since the wedding when he'd made some comment about her boyfriend at the time that she never forgot and never fully forgave.
Little things kept happening after that.
Missed birthdays because Damon had a work dinner.
Christmas was spent with his family instead of mine because his mother insisted it was tradition.
A slow drift, so slow I didn't feel myself drifting until one day Camille called me and I realized we hadn't spoken in three months.
"You picked him," she said on that call, not angry exactly, just tired. "Over and over, you keep picking him."
"That's not fair, Cami."
"Isn't it though?"
I hung up that call feeling like I'd been slapped, and then I went and made dinner for Damon because he had a client coming over, and somewhere in the middle of setting the table I forgot to even call her back.
I thought about all of this standing in my kitchen with cold coffee in my hands, the morning after the gala, the morning after hearing my husband's voice in that hallway telling my best friend he was sorry.
Six years. What did I actually have to show for six years?
I walked to the spare room we never used for anything, the one that used to be my design studio back when we first moved into this house, back when I still believed I'd get back to it eventually.
The desk was still there under a sheet, gathering dust. I pulled the sheet off and sat down in the chair, and it creaked under me like it hadn't been sat in for a very long time, because it hadn't.
My old sketchbooks were still in the bottom drawer.
I opened one and flipped through pages of logo concepts, color palettes, little doodles I used to make when I was thinking through a problem.
I didn't recognize the woman who drew these.
She felt like someone I used to know a long time ago, someone I'd let slip away without even saying goodbye.
My phone buzzed. A text from Priya.
Hey, are you free for coffee this week? Been missing you.
I stared at that message for a long time. Been missing you. From the woman I'd heard apologizing to my husband in a hallway less than twelve hours earlier.
I didn't answer right away. I set the phone face down on the dusty desk and just sat there, in that room full of everything I used to be, and let myself feel something I'd been avoiding for a long time.
I was angry.
Not just about Priya. Not just about Damon.
I was angry at myself too, for every version of me that had said never mind instead of asking the real question, for every dinner I'd planned instead of finishing my own work, for every time I'd let Camille's calls go to voicemail because Damon needed something from me right then.
I thought about the day of our wedding. My father walked me down the aisle, and right before he handed me off to Damon, he leaned in close and whispered something in my ear.
"You sure about this, sweetheart?"
"Dad."
"I'm just asking. Once we get up there, that's it."
I remember laughing, a little nervous laugh, and telling him of course I was sure, look at him, look how happy I am. And I was happy. That part wasn't a lie. Standing there in my white dress with Damon looking at me like I was the only person in the room, I had never been more sure of anything.
I wondered now, sitting in that dusty spare room with my old sketchbook open on my lap, exactly when that certainty had started leaking out of me, drop by drop, until there was nothing left but this hollow feeling and a phone buzzing with a text from a woman who might have taken something from me that I hadn't even fully let myself lose yet.
I picked the phone back up.
Sure, I typed. Thursday work for you?
I hit send before I could think too hard about it. If I was going to find out the truth, I needed her close. I needed to look her in the eye and see what was really there, because six years of proof had taught me one thing above everything else.
I was done finding out the hard way, standing outside locked doors, listening through cracks, catching things out of the corner of my eye. If something was happening under my roof, in my marriage, with my best friend, I was going to look it dead in the face and demand an answer.
That evening, when Damon came home, he found me still in the spare room, sketchbook open, the desk lamp on for the first time in years.
"What are you doing here?" He leaned against the doorframe, tie loosened, looking tired the way he always looked after a long day at the office.
"Just looking through some old stuff."
"You should get back into it sometime. The design work, I mean. You were really good at that."
I looked up at him. Really good at that. Past tense, like it was something I used to be instead of something I still could be if given half a chance.
"Maybe I will," I said.
"Good." He smiled and started to walk away, then paused in the doorway. "Oh, I ran into Priya at the coffee shop by the office. She said you two are getting together this week."
My whole body went still.
"That's right," I said, keeping my voice light. "Thursday."
"Good," he said again, and this time something flickered behind his eyes before he turned and walked down the hall, something I couldn't quite name, but something that looked, if I was being honest with myself, a little bit like worry.
I sat in that spare room a long time after he left, listening to him move around the kitchen, running water, opening the fridge, the ordinary sounds of a marriage that from the outside looked whole.
Six years of proof, I thought. Proof of what I'd given. Proof of what I'd let go. And now, maybe, if I was brave enough to keep looking, proof of exactly why.