Page 7 of Pretend You Love Me

“She literally wrote, and I quote, ‘Can we make it feel a bit more like a lighthouse that’s also a person’s face? But friendly, not creepy.’” Another pause. “I’m going to commit a crime, and I need you to know I considered alternatives.”

I press my lips together. Then I laugh, short and slightly startled, the kind that escapes before you can decide whether you’re allowed to have it. The sound bounces off the kitchen cabinets, too loud in the quiet kitchen, and I press a hand to my mouth as if I can push it back in.

The kettle clicks off, the water inside still bubbling slightly. I stand there with Liv’s voice note still playing on repeat in my head and think, not for the first time, that they would have my back if I told them. Harper, with her quiet understanding and perfect one-liners. Luca, who would probably show up at Daniel’s office with a baseball bat and threats. Liv, who would start researching divorce lawyers before I’d finished the first sentence.

They would believe me. They would help me. They would make sure I wasn’t doing this alone.

I’m just not ready yet. Not ready to say it out loud. Not ready to watch Daniel’s face when he realizes I know. Not ready for whatever comes after, the conversations, the decisions, the careful unwinding of a life built around the wrong story.

So, I make the tea instead, two mugs, milk in Daniel’s, nothing in mine, and carry them back to the living room. Daniel is still on the floor with Milo, though they’ve moved on to a different game now, Daniel making exaggerated faces while Milo attempts to grab his nose, both of them dissolving into laughter every time Milo’s tiny fingers actually connect with their target.

“He’s in a good mood tonight,” I say, setting Daniel’s mug on the coffee table within easy reach.

“Yeah,” Daniel says, glancing up with a smile. “He’s been brilliant all afternoon. Hardly any fussing at all.”

I smile back, the expression settling onto my face like it belongs there. “That’s good,” I say. “Maybe we’ll actually get some sleep.”

Daniel laughs, the sound warm and familiar in the quiet room. “Fingers crossed,” he says, and turns back to Milo, who’s now attempting to stuff his entire fist into his mouth with his full focus.

I sit down on the couch, my tea steaming gently beside me, and watch my family from a careful distance. Daniel bounces Milo on his knee, making airplane noises that send our son into fresh peals of laughter. In the bassinet by the window, Maisie sleeps peacefully, one tiny hand curled around the edge of her blanket. The late afternoon light turns everything golden, Daniel’s hair, Milo’s delighted face, the worn carpet where Daniel’s sitting cross-legged with our son balanced on his knee.

It looks perfect. From the outside, you’d never guess that anything was wrong.

I take a sip of my tea and hold my brittle smile in place.

Four

I let myself in through the side door of Page & Grounds at 5:45 in the morning, before the world is fully awake, before the chairs are right-side up on the floor and the lights are all the way on. The café smells as it always does at this hour. A warm mixture of coffee and books that hasn’t yet been filled with the particular madness of customers and conversation and life. It’s the only smell in the world right now that doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my skin.

The espresso machine hisses in its warm-up cycle. The lights are on but not all of them, just the ones Luca needs to see the counter, to pull the first shots, to start the day. Everything else is still in shadow, chairs upside-down on tables, the mugs still drying on the rack, the chalkboard with yesterday’s specials still half-erased at the edge.

I drop my bag at my usual table, the one with the wobble Luca keeps promising to fix, and slip behind the counter, my movements practiced enough that I don’t need to think about them. Luca is at the back, counting inventory on his phone, but he looks up when he hears me.

“Jesus, Els,” he says, already reaching for a mug. “You look like shit warmed over and served with a side of existential crisis.”

“Good morning to you too,” I say, and it comes out the right level of normal,.

He doesn’t answer, just starts making my coffee, a large, strong one, with an extra shot and enough milk to make it drinkable before 6:00 AM. He sets it in front of me with a careful, deliberate movement, then goes back to counting stock, giving me the amount of space he thinks I need.

My phone sits face-down on the counter beside me, its screen dark and peaceful in a way I haven’t felt since I opened Daniel’s. I haven’t looked at our group chat in three days. The messages started Sunday evening, Luca asking if I was dead or just ignoring him, Harper checking in with a careful “all okay?” that somehow contained the entire emotional range of concern without being pushy, and then Liv, at 11:47, with her usual subtlety: “If this is another one of your accidental depression spirals, please react with an emoji so I know whether to bring wine or a shovel.”

I didn’t answer any of them. The silence stretched through Monday, Luca asking if I’d seen his text, then Harper again, then nothing. On Tuesday, the chat went completely quiet. Just the little dots that indicated someone was typing, then nothing. Not Liv’s rage or Harper’s careful concern, just Luca, watching the chat and deciding not to fill the space I’d left.

That deliberate silence was what finally pulled me here. The knowledge that someone had noticed the absence and decided to wait at its edges instead of rushing to my rescue.

Luca hands me a blueberry scone on a napkin, “the last one, so eat it before I change my mind”, and I take it because it’s easier than explaining that I haven’t been hungry for days.

“You know,” he says, rearranging the pastries in the case, “it’s actually incredibly rude to ignore my very important texts about Barry Manilow tickets. Some of us have dreams.”

“He’s eighty-five,” I say, my voice sounding like it’s coming from somewhere else in the room. “And the tickets aren’t for six months.”

“He’s a legend,” Luca counters, his back still to me as he moves milk cartons from the delivery box to the fridge. “And you’re deflecting, which means something’s actually wrong instead of just the usual Elsie-brand catastrophizing.”

I look down at my coffee, watching the tiny ripples form on its surface from the slight tremor in my hand. “Daniel’s been cheating on me,” I say, the words dropping into the space between us like stones. “Since I was pregnant from what I can tell. Maybe before.”

Luca freezes, one milk carton suspended halfway to the fridge. “Fuck,” he says, very quietly.

“It’s…“ I start, but then the rest comes flooding out in one long, barely punctuated stream, like it’s been waiting behind a dam that’s finally broken. “I found a Snapchat notification on his phone when I was trying to order nappy sacks because he gets triple points and we’re running low and the preview text was from someone called JazzyGirl asking when she could see him again and thinking about something he did with his tongue and there was a photo attached and it wasn’t me and I checked and there were hidden apps in a utilities folder, utilities, of course utilities, with messaging apps and a hookup thing and three women at least, probably more, and it started when I was pregnant and couldn’t even get off the couch without making this awful noise and he stopped touching me because he said he was worried about hurting me or the babies but really he was just finding someone who wasn’t so fat and then…“ I stop, take a breath that doesn’t quite make it all the way to my lungs. “Then I found the messages from when the twins were in the NICU. When Maisie couldn’t breathe right and Milo had jaundice, he was texting some woman about when they could meet up to ‘take his mind off things.’ He sent her a photo from the hospital bathroom. While I was…“ My voice breaks on the last word. “While I was watching our babies fight to stay alive.”