Page 5 of Seven Minutes
He must’ve heard the edge in my voice because he finally looked up, a fleeting glance laced with guilt, and pressed his mouth to my cheek. Not a kiss, exactly. A brush of obligation.
“Don’t wait up,” he said, already halfway to the door.
The lock clicked shut behind him, the silence that followed echoing louder than any slam could.
I stood there for a long time, staring at the space he left behind, trying to remember when goodbye had started to feel like relief.
The eggs went rubbery. The coffee cooled. Something inside me had gone quiet, and it just sat there, stretching me thin from the inside out.
I should’ve been used to it by now—this vacant version of him, always rushing, always somewhere else. But every morning I still hoped he’d sit down, eat with me, ask about my plans like he used to.
Instead, it was just me and the empty chair across the table.
I stared at the wood grain as if it might open and give me back the version of him who used to linger, who used to kiss me goodbye.
The quiet pressed in until I couldn’t stand it.
The refrigerator hummed as if it had something to say, and the clock above the microwave ticked in steady accusation. The isolation was suffocating. I grabbed my keys just to escape the grating disappointment of it all. Groceries. Errands. Anything to fill the loneliness of my day, anything to outrun the echo of that lock.
The fridge was nearly empty—just a half carton of eggs, leftovers from the dinner I cooked last night that went uneaten, and milk that had soured days ago. I sighed, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the grocery store.
The automatic doors whooshed open in greeting. For amoment, it felt like relief. Rows of fruit, bright and ordered, people pushing carts, chattering on phones—it was all so ordinary, so simple, compared to the mess of my house, of my marriage.
I tossed things into the cart—cereal, bread, milk, the frozen dinners Adrian used to laugh at before he got too busy to laugh with me at all. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out too fast, heart stupidly leaping, only to see a reminder email about my car insurance.
“Did you find everything okay?” The cashier asked as she scanned items, her tone polite but distant.
“Yeah,” I said, though my voice cracked like the lie it was. I forced a smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
She bagged the groceries without conversation, and I imagined Adrian once teasing me for always double-bagging, for worrying the handles would snap. He hadn’t teased me in months.
Back in the car, I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a beat before starting the engine. The errands blurred after that—pharmacy, post office, gas station—but through it all ran the same loop in my head:He didn’t even look at me this morning. Didn’t even say goodbye.
By the time I lugged the bags inside, the house felt colder, emptier than when I left. I set everything on the counter with more force than necessary, the thud of cans against wood sounding far too loud in the quiet.
That’s when my phone buzzed again. This time it was him.
Someone called out. I’m covering for them. Don’t wait up.
Three sentences, and my day was ruined. I stared at thescreen until it blurred. Then I shoved the phone down, grabbed my jacket, and slammed out the door.
Winter had come early that year, a weather that swallowed the day whole before you realized it was gone. It was barely five o’clock and already dark, the temperature falling fast. The cold bit through glass, through skin. An iciness that made everything quiet. It settled over me the same way it had over the town, heavy and uninvited.
The car felt confining once I slid inside, the air stale with the faint scent of old coffee and Adrian’s cologne still clinging to the upholstery. I turned the key anyway, desperate for motion, for noise. The radio sputtered to life mid-chorus, drums pounding so hard they rattled the windows.
I drove for what felt like hours, though it was barely twenty minutes. Streetlights blurred into streaks. The world outside rushed past in pieces—neon signs, brake lights glowing like angry eyes, rain starting to bead across the windshield. My hands tightened on the wheel, knuckles bone-white, and I pressed the gas harder than I needed to.
The music poured through me, a wall of sound that drowned out the hush Adrian had left behind. I sang until my throat burned, until my voice broke, until it almost felt like I could scream the ache out of me.
But even over the guitars, even over my raw voice, the memory of his text cut sharp as glass.Don’t wait up.
After twelve years together, I was an afterthought. Less significant than a piece of furniture left at the curb on move-out day.
I told myself I was just going for food, just trying to shakethe mood. Why should I cook if there is no one to share it with? But the truth was much sadder than that. I was running from the ghosts of that house, from the memory of a marriage I wasn’t sure was even alive anymore.
When my phone buzzed again on the passenger seat, my pulse leaped, hope and fury tangling like barbed wire.
But it wasn’t him.
