What if she didn’t want to come home? We’d been happy, or so I thought. Sure, we’d had our rough patches. What couple doesn’t after seven years? She’d been working longer hours lately, but she’d just gotten promoted to senior marketing director six months ago.
More responsibility meant more time at the office. I understood that. I’d supported it. But there were other things, little things I’d noticed and ignored. The way she’d started dressing differently for work, more attention to makeup, new clothes I hadn’t seen before.
How she’d angle her phone away when texting, something she’d never done before. The night she’d come home smelling of cologne that wasn’t mine, explaining it away as someone hugged me at the office.
I’d believed her because I wanted to believe her. Because the alternative was too painful to consider. At 5:15 a.m. the sky started to lighten, that pale gray pre-dawn that makes everything look washed out and unreal.
I was still on the couch, still in the same clothes I’d worn yesterday, still waiting. My phone sat on the coffee table, screen dark and silent. Then at 6:02 a.m.
it buzzed. I grabbed it so fast I nearly dropped it. Her name lit up the screen. Finally. But as I read the message, the relief I’d expected never came. Instead my blood turned cold.
I stayed at a hotel. We need to talk. Seven words. That’s all it took to confirm what I’d been afraid to admit to myself all night. People don’t stay at hotels in their own city unless they’re hiding something.
People don’t send cryptic messages about needing to talk unless the talk is one you don’t want to have. I sat there staring at those seven words, reading them over and over as if they might somehow rearrange themselves into something less ominous.
But they didn’t. They just sat there cold and final as the morning sun began to rise. My hands were shaking as I typed back, what hotel? Are you okay? Three dots appeared immediately, then disappeared, then appeared again.Alarm clock app
This went on for a full minute, her starting to type, stopping, starting again. Finally, I’m fine. The Meridian downtown. I’ll be home around noon. We’ll talk then. The Meridian. That was a luxury hotel, the kind with a rooftop bar and rooms that cost $400 a night minimum.
