Page 5 of In Somnis

“Then kick her out of the bridal party.” Sienna’s voice is bored. “One less dress to find that looks decent on her.”

“I can’t kick her out. She’s doing the cake.”

“Guys.” Spencer scolds my so-called friends in the recording.

The first time I listened to it, hope sparked stupidly in my chest, even though I knew it should have come sooner. But I thought he was finally about to shut them down, defend me, and love me out loud for the first time ever.

Yeah. That hope is dead and gone.

“Come on, Spence. You saw it too.” Sienna sighs. “When she moves in with you, you’ll have to watch what she eats. It’s not good for her health. We worry.”

“We do,” Aubrey agrees. “It’s unfortunate that you both cook so well.”

There’s a brief pause, too brief, before Spencer replies.

“Yeah, I… noticed. I figured it was… fine while she was dealing with her mom. I thought she’d, I don’t know… lose it once she started grieving properly.”

Grieving properly. As if I’m even failing at that.

“Do you even still find her attractive?” Sienna asks.

My eyes start to sting as I lift my hand from my roiling stomach and slide my thumbnail under the edge of a grinning citrus slice until the polish lifts.

“You know I was never with her because of looks.”

Every time I get to this part of the recording, my throat tightens so hard it burns.

Spencer never called me beautiful. Not once in the year and a half that we’ve been together. I told myself he just wasn’t wired that way, that love didn’t always sound like anything, and that some people showed it differently, quietly, in ways I hadn’t figured out how to read yet.

The truth is, I always knew, somewhere underneath all that convincing, that he only tolerated me. The sprinkles I put on everything I bake, the lemon-themed everything, my nail art, my sweaters that look as if they belong in a children’s book, and my inability to resist glittery mugs, fairy lights, or a pillow shaped like a pastry.

He hated all those things. Everything that makes me me.

He used to joke that I was like a unicorn throwing up sugar and sunshine across every surface. And what grown man wants that?

Slowly, I made myself smaller around the edges, telling myself it was a compromise. That muting yourself, your colors, your voice, your happiness was what loving someone looked like when you were the louder one.

I wore the dresses he liked. Stopped putting sprinkles on the eggs I made him on Sunday mornings because he said it was childish, and I heard it as you are. I caught myself mid-sentence more times than I can count, watching his face for the exact moment his attention started to drift, and cutting myself short before he could do it for me. I got very good at knowing when I was too much. I got so good at it that I started doing it preemptively, pruning myself back before anyone had the chance to ask me to.

I don’t know when I stopped noticing. Or when it stopped feeling like a choice.

That’s the part that scares me most. Not that he didn’t love me the way I needed, but that I made myself so small for so long that I can’t quite remember, right now, what size I’m supposed to be.

“But…” Spencer says after a long pause, “She is fun and kind, the motherly type. I can see her as the mother of my kids.”

I let out a dry, bitter scoff, and my quiet companion glances at me.

He doesn’t say anything, of course, but his gaze is almost concerned, which makes my nose burn.

Great. Now I’m about to cry over basic human decency.

“She’s not that either anymore, is she?” Sienna argues. “Fun, I mean. Every time I talked to her these last few months, she was never anything but tired and sad. It got so bad that I stopped mentioning anything good. She would have tainted it.”

“Wait,” Aubrey says with a laugh. “You still haven’t told her about the pregnancy?”

“She will find out eventually, won’t she?”

My fingers curl around the edge of the counter until the laminate bites into my skin.