Page 14 of Iridescent
Beautiful in a way that makes my throat tighten around everything I no longer know how to say.
Almost like the man I fell in love with—the one who used to look at me as if loving me was the easiest thing he had ever done, who slept in a hard plastic chair beside my hospital bed after my surgery, night after night, refusing to go home even when I begged him to.
Not the distant stranger he’s been lately.
I bite down on my lip, swallowing the ache.
The rest of the night blurred after he carried me upstairs. I must’ve cried myself to sleep, because I woke with my eyes swollen nearly shut and my head pounding.
It feels surreal to watch him sleep now, after so many nights spent aching for even a glimpse of the man he used to be. I’ve grown so accustomed to his absence that, sometime in the night, I folded myself into my corner of thebed instead of cuddling in his arms the way I used to.
Now, with him this close, I find myself wondering what moves behind those shuttered eyelids.
Whether he is as far away there as he is when he is awake.
I tear my eyes away from him and glance toward the en suite bathroom. From here, I can just make out the edge of the vanity through the slightly ajar door.
Inside that cabinet, behind a row of cleaning supplies, lies a small graveyard.
A dozen empty pregnancy test boxes I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.
I wonder if he has ever seen them. If he has, he has never said a word.
Maybe he pretends not to. Or maybe he couldn’t bear to ask.
After the last negative, he told me in a weary voice that if this cycle failed too, we should stop for a while.
Not forever, he said.
But grief has never needed forever to sound final.
I opened my mouth to argue—to say no, not yet—but the defeat in his eyes stole the words from me.
So I nodded instead, swallowing the protest that rose like bile, even as something inside me refused to give up.
My gaze drifts to the table near the balcony doors, where contracts, acquisition briefs, and marked-up proposals lie abandoned beside his open laptop, the screen long gone dark.
He stayed up working, even after coming home so late on our anniversary.
You would think he’d rest when he is here.
But he never really does.
Lately, it feels as if he lives there more than he lives here. If not for the annual dinner we are attending tonight, I doubt he’d be home at all.
I am glad he at least chose not to disappoint Elise.
We haven’t been able to reach her since our last conversation. I know the fear has been eating at him. Xavier is too used to carrying everything alone, and this time, it is starting to consume him.
I was relieved he had a reason for missing our anniversary. A reason I could understand.
His cousin’s father had died.
Grief isn’t something I know how to resent without hating myself for it. Still, there were better ways to handle it than disappearing for hours without so much as a text or phone call.
My husband isn’t close to anyone in his family except his younger sister, Elise.
So when he said his cousin’s father had died, it took my exhausted mind a moment to arrange the relation.
