The twins don’t notice. Or maybe they do and they’re smarter than us about it because Lily chatters through breakfast about a dream she had involving a purple horse and a swimming pool, while Luke eats his toast in triangles, reading his book without looking up.
Archer leaves for practice at eight. He pauses in the doorway as he always does, and I wait for him to say something—anything, even just a “Have a good day”—but he simply nods and walks out.
The door closes. I stand at the island, holding my coffee with both hands, staring at the spot where he was standing.
Last night, I asked for something reasonable: my own apartment, my own address, a life that doesn’t dissolve if he and I don’t work out. He heard it as goodbye.
I get the kids dressed, drive them to preschool, and hold Lily’s hand in the parking lot. I watch Luke walk himself inside; he looks back twice, and I wave both times. Afterward, I sit in the Lexus and call Lauren.
“We had a fight,” I say.
“About what?”
“I told him I want to get my own apartment.”
“Good. And?”
“And he said, ‘So you want an exit strategy,’ and it went downhill from there.”
Lauren sighs. “Men.”
“I’m not leaving him. I told him that. I just need something that’s mine, and he can’t separate that from rejection.”
“Because for him, you being in that house proves that you’re staying. You taking a step toward independence feels like a step away from him.”
“That’s not what it is.”
“I know. But that’s how it feels to a guy who’s been left before.”
I lean my head against the steering wheel. She’s right. Bree left. She moved out of this house, took half the furniture, and filed paperwork. Now I’m sitting in his car talking about getting my own place, and of course he heard it the wrong way. Of course he did.
“What do I do?” I ask.
“You go home tonight and tell him what you actually meant. Not the logistics version. The real version.”
“Which is?”
“That you want to stay. That the apartment isn’t about leaving—it’s about having something that’s your own.”
I hang up and head to the senior center to teach my class. Dolores asks if I’m okay. I say yes, but she doesn’t believe me. Still, she lets it go because Dolores understands that sometimes a woman needs to be alone with her thoughts and a Missy Elliott playlist.
The day crawls by. I pick up the twins and make dinner. Archer comes home, and we eat with the kids between us, but nobody says anything meaningful. The conversation revolves around logistics—bath time, bedtime, tomorrow’s schedule. We’re co-parenting without the co, just two people managing children in parallel.
After the twins are down, he goes to his room. I hear the door close—not a slam, just the click.
I stand in the hallway, looking at his door.
I could go to the guest room, read my book, text Lauren, fall asleep alone, and wake up tomorrow to do the polite-distance thing again. Maybe by Friday, we’ll have drifted back to normal, whatever that is for us.
Or I could knock on his door.
I knock.
“Yeah.” His voice comes through the wood—low and guarded.
“Can I come in?”
A pause. “Yeah.”
