25
Orion
The house was surprisingly quiet when I walked through the front door.
Whitney’s car was parked in the driveway, but that didn’t always mean anything.
She sometimes went on long walks, especially when she got anxious that I’d disappear like I had the night before.
It was why I tried not to make a habit of it.
Early in our marriage, Jayden would drag me off to do all sorts of shit, so it wasn’t a stretch to blame last night on him.
We’d gone out, had a few too many drinks, and I needed to sleep it off somewhere.
Did it help me sell my so-called best friend to my wife?
Not at all. But after a decade, I’d given up trying.
I walked from room to room, but didn’t see her on the main floor. That meant she had to be upstairs in the bedroom. After last night, I wasn’t in the mood for any of those antics, but there was no guarantee that was what she was after.
Sure enough, Whitney was fast asleep, curled up in the middle of our queen-sized bed.
I didn’t want to wake her up, but the way she’d been trying to track me down made me think she needed me for something.
It wouldn’t help to startle her, so I made my way across the room as quietly as possible before sitting on the edge of the bed.
I really should have taken a shower after last night, but hopefully she wouldn’t notice.
The mattress dipped, causing her to roll a little closer to me. I tucked a strand of her silky auburn hair behind her ear, which only made her curl into my side a little more. She was so damn peaceful—it killed me to have to wake her up.
“Hey,” I prodded gently.
When Whitney didn’t stir at that, I nudged her shoulder, giving her a small shake. “Whitney, hon. I’m home.”
That seemed to do the trick—she blinked her pretty hazel eyes at me before sitting up in bed, lifting her arms above her head, and stretching.
“Sorry. I’ve just been really tired lately. Not sure what that is.”
She’d been tired for a long time. Probably another side effect of the depression that was no doubt my fault.
Fuck. I needed to do her a favor and have a serious talk with her sooner rather than later.
We were too old not to deal with this like adults.
Sure, there’d be some hurt feelings. We’d been married for a decade.
It was hard not to have things get a little volatile when you’d been with each other that long.
I shrugged before pulling her into a hug, kissing the side of her head. In the past I would have kissed her on the lips, but after the last few weeks, that felt so wrong. Hopefully, she wouldn’t notice the change.
The good news was that she was too tired to pay attention. She rolled out of bed and stood in the middle of the room before going to the bathroom. When she came back out, she grabbed my hand, pulling me downstairs.
She sat me on the couch before flipping on the TV to some random movie, turning the volume down low. She turned to face me.
“How come you didn’t come home last night?”
This was the moment I’d practiced for. Shit, it was stupid that I needed to.
Just own it like a man. Tell her you don’t want to drag this out anymore.
Maybe it’s best to part ways. But with the way those soft green eyes shone with sleep and warmth?
Fuck, I was putty for her. Probably always would be.
“I uh—I met Jayden...”
I didn’t get to say much more before a scowl crossed her pretty little face. “What did he talk you into this time?”
I laughed. “Would you calm down? We went out for some drinks. Nothing too crazy. I mean, things got a little carried away, so I ended up sleeping it off at his place.”
It was a story I’d told a lot in the earlier years of our marriage. It had been a lot better in more recent years. Maybe it had a lot to do with getting older. That sense of responsibility I had while I watched my dad and Jayden both throw their lives away. Someone had to have it together.
I did not, in reality, have anything together.
She wrapped her arms around my waist, snuggling into me. “I don’t care that you went out. Just please keep me more informed if you don’t plan on coming home.”
I threaded my fingers through her thick auburn curls, nodding. She wasn’t in a position where she could see me, but it didn’t matter. That was one of the nice things about being together for so long. We could communicate wordlessly, knowing what the other person was saying.
The movie on screen shifted from where a couple was enjoying a night out at dinner to walking down the street.
There was a man behind them—the woman kept looking over her shoulder as if she knew they were being followed.
If I knew what we were watching, I could probably guess where this was headed.
But at the moment I couldn’t tell if this was another one of her rom-coms or a suspense flick.
With the way the music picked up in the background, I was leaning toward suspense.
This couple didn’t want to be followed. Suddenly, I was more invested in what was happening to the couple on screen than what was happening in my personal life.
Maybe that made me a shitty person. Okay, I know it did.
Whitney had been worried, and here I was brushing off her concerns, focusing on a movie she’d turned on for background noise.
The couple picked up pace—the shadowy figure behind them did as well. Out of the two of them, the man didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on, which led me to believe it was the woman who was in trouble.
“Darling,” she said, grabbing his hand, stopping only momentarily. “We need to hurry. I’ll explain later.”
They broke into a run, my entire body tensed, making Whitney laugh. So maybe I was getting a little more into the movie than I thought.
The shadowy man followed them down several streets before the woman flagged down a taxi on a busy road, shoving her companion inside the vehicle.
“I think we lost them,” she sighed, pushing her wild hair back from her face.
The man looked confused. “Do you want to tell me what that was about?”
The woman on screen gnawed at her ruby-red painted lips, pulling the man in for a deep kiss. He didn’t fight her at first, but then pushed her back to get some answers.
“You can’t distract me with your charms. Tell me what’s going on, or I’ll jump from this car.”
It was all a little overdramatic, but maybe that was the point of a film like this. The music was still amped up, so I knew the couple wasn’t quite in the clear yet.
A shot rang out, and a hole appeared in the middle of the cab driver's forehead. The woman screamed as the car swerved off the road, causing it to crash into a tree. It then cut to an angle on the outside. Smoke rose from the hood of the crushed vehicle while the rear passenger door fell open.
The heroine crawled from the wreckage, looking back to show that her companion had not survived the crash.
Her eyes watered as she pulled her battered body closer to the sidewalk.
She didn’t make it far before the shadowy man loomed over her.
A gun was pointed at her head—in a moment of cinematic poetry, a lone tear rolled down her cheek before the trigger was pulled.
That I knew so much of the plot of the movie only drove home that I was paying too much attention to it and not to Whitney. We should have been talking, and I was trying to dissect what was happening on my TV screen.
“What are we watching?” I finally asked?
Whitney was practically vibrating with giggles at that point.
“I have no fucking idea. I just randomly picked something. Go figure that I had to pick the most dramatic thing in the world.”
When I looked at the screen again, it was the next day. The sun was out—the car crash scene was surrounded by cops, yellow tape, and investigators. Maybe it was some sort of mystery.
Either way, my interest in the movie was gone as Whitney got up from the couch walking to the kitchen. She let out a huge yawn on her way. She rubbed her eyes while exiting the room. As much as she’d been depressed, this was a whole new level of tiredness. I’d never seen her get this bad.
Instead of sitting there stewing on it, I got up following her into the kitchen. She was standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open. I wasn’t really hungry because it was still too early for dinner and I’d just eaten before leaving Sable’s place.
Maybe I should have felt a little more guilty about that. Whitney had been sitting at home all morning, wondering where I was. I hadn’t even thought to check if she’d eaten anything.
“Sit,” I said, pointing to the dining room table.
She looked up at me in alarm, but didn’t question it as she let the refrigerator door close, making her way across the kitchen. I wasn’t an amazing chef, but I could put together something reasonably nice for my wife.
When I’d been at Sable’s place, I hadn’t tried to snoop, but I knew that he’d made our breakfast from what he’d had available.
The selections in my own fridge were much better, and I didn’t want to compare.
There was some truth to his thoughts about how much better off I was than he was.
If only he knew all that I dealt with growing up.
There were days that my mom made a giant pot of stew because she knew it would stretch. We’d eat nothing but that for a week.
I still couldn’t eat a lot of soup because of it.
But this meal was about Whitney.
There was packaged lunch meat, some lettuce, fresh tomatoes, cheese…
It was simple and easy, but I could make a killer sandwich.
Once I’d pulled all the ingredients from the fridge, I grabbed the loaf of bread from the breadbox on the counter.
I pulled out enough to make two sandwiches.
Even if I wasn’t all that hungry, I didn’t want to deal with questions about why I suddenly wasn’t eating when I normally would have.
Neither of us was really big on condiments, but I still spread just a little mayonnaise and mustard on the bread because a dry sandwich was no one’s definition of a good time.
I layered all the vegetables before adding some thick slices of roast beef and a square of cheddar cheese.
The sandwiches were cut on the diagonal, plated, and brought over to the table where Whitney was sitting.
Whitney had her head resting on her arms, but she sat up straight, smiling when I presented her with the food.
“Do you remember in high school when you used to bring me one of these at least once a week?” She asked as she studied the bread before taking a small, tentative bite.
Memories of those times came flooding back to me because it had been one of my many attempts to flirt with her. Maybe if I fed her enough, she’d stick around. God, I was a fucked-up mess of a human.
“Of course I do. You were so confused the first time I did it because your parents always packed you something sort of pretentious. I don’t know... I wanted to win you over somehow.”
She laughed as she took another small bite before setting it back down on the plate.
When she didn’t pick it back up but instead crossed her arms over her chest to sit back in her seat, it had me feeling on edge.
Did she think something was wrong if I was doing this again?
‘The sole purpose was to elicit a fond memory, but fuck, maybe my guilt was making me read too much into things as well.
“It’s good. Those sandwiches then were the highlight of my whole week.
People used to look at me funny because what girl showed up with these special, fancy salads, and different meat dishes that tasted terribly when cold, by the way...
” she trailed off, laughing to herself. “You bringing me those made me feel like a normal teenager.”
It wasn’t that Whitney’s family was affluent, but they weren’t hurting for money either.
As further proven when they wouldn’t let me settle for renting an apartment when we’d gotten married.
Their baby girl would have her dream house.
They made me feel like shit about it repeatedly, like I’d never measure up to being the man they really wanted for their daughter.
Go figure, I was doing everything to prove them right.
It felt so strained. Like we were sitting there at our kitchen table, wading through molasses. Everything felt like it was coming to an eerie pinnacle, one wrong word away from setting off an avalanche of emotions that had been so neatly packed away. But that also might have been in my head.
“I’m glad I could do something so small.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. The way she just watched me as I took another bite of my sandwich made me think she knew every last little horrible thing I’d done over the last couple of weeks.
Her smile was weak, but she didn’t say anything. She leaned forward to pick up the sandwich again, but at the last minute changed her mind, putting it back on the plate.
“This is nice. I miss little moments like this. It just sucks that as much as I know I should be hungry, I’m really not.”
I gave her a tight smile before reaching across the table, covering her smaller hands with mine. “Don’t stress about it. I can wrap it up, you can eat it later.”
Her smile was a little brighter as she got up from the table, starting to help with the cleanup.
It wasn’t a big mess, but tomatoes always left their mark on the counter when cut.
It didn’t matter how sharp your knife was—those fuckers left juice everywhere.
And yeah, I probably should have cleaned it all up before we sat down to eat, but I had wanted to spend time with the woman I’d been neglecting.
After we had everything put away, we went back to the living room. I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen from there. For the first time in the years since we’d been married, I wasn’t sure how to proceed with our time together.
“How do you feel about watching a better movie?” Whitney asked, taking away some of the awkward tension in the room. She had to be feeling it as well.
I tossed an arm over her shoulders, pulling her in close, kissing the top of her head. “I think that sounds like a great idea.”
And so we spent our evening curled up watching shitty rom-coms that made her smile. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t something I would have normally cared to do. I owed it to her. She never went back for the rest of her sandwich. It was still wrapped neatly in the fridge three days later.
When I ultimately tossed it in the trash, something slimy unfurled in my gut even further. Everything was off. It was only a matter of time until everything came crashing down around me.