Page 34 of Wreckage and Rain

"You can stay all day. Or all week. Or forever, honestly."

"I have to go home."

"Why?"

That's a good question. I sit with it for a minute. "Because if I don't go home, he gets to keep telling himself a story where this is fine. And I don't want him to have that story. I want him to have to look at me."

Autumn nods. Slides me a coffee. "Take the rest of the cake. I'm not eating sad cake. I have standards."

I shower at her place. The sweats and the Vandy t-shirt go back on. I can't make myself put the dress back on this morning. I fold it into my bag. I look like exactly what I am. A woman who slept on her best friend's couch on her birthday because her husband forgot she existed.

"Call me," Autumn says. "Whatever happens." She holds the door. "And Summer? Stop asking whether he loves you. He does. Ask what he's turning into while he does it."

"I just can't right now Autumn, this is all just such bullshit. I'll call you as soon as I can."

I drive home.

***

The driveway is empty.

For one stupid second I feel relieved, because if he isn't here I don't have to do this yet.

I park. Get my bag. Walk to the front door.

I hear him before I see him.

His voice. Through the kitchen window. The bay window over the sink that faces the driveway, because the driveway is on the side of the house and the kitchen is on that side too, which means he's standing at the sink with his back to the window or he would have seen me park.

He's on the phone. Laughing.

I stand on my own front porch and I listen to my husband laugh with someone who isn't me on the day after my birthday that he forgot.

I open the door.

***

He doesn't hear me.

The kitchen is across the front hall and around the corner, and his voice is bright and easy and pitched low because he doesn't think anyone is home. The front door doesn't slam. I close it behind me with the kind of care a person uses when they don't want to be noticed.

"...no, I told him I'd handle Calloway personally. He's not going to push back on that." A pause. A laugh. "Stop. I'm not going to say that to my father. I have to live with him, Cheyenne."

He talks to her the way he used to talk to me. Like she is the person he tells things to.

I stand in my own foyer in the clothes I slept in at my best friend's apartment and I listen to my husband flirt with another woman. I don't cry and I don't make a sound. I don't let my keys clink in my hand. I don't breathe loud.

I take my shoes off.

I carry them up the stairs in my hand.

***

The bedroom is exactly as I left it. Bed unmade on his side, made on mine.

I close the bedroom door. Quietly. Take the green dress out of my bag. Hang it back in the closet where it came from last night, when I got dressed for a birthday dinner he didn't show up to.

I turn on the shower.