Page 36 of Angel
I can’t handle anything that might crack me open more than I already am.
At a red light, I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. Eyes red. Face pale. Mouth set in a line like I’m holding myself together through sheer force. I look like a woman who’s been fighting a war no one can see.
I pull into my sister’s driveway and sit there longer than I need to, forehead pressed against the steering wheel, hands trembling in my lap. The house is quiet.Safe.Somewhere I can think without feeling like I’m being watched or measured or pitied. I can exist without the weight of being someone’s wife who can’t seem to give him the one thing everyone assumes is inevitable.
I swallow hard and force myself to get out of the car. Each step up her path feels like a confession. Inside, the silence wraps around me gently this time. Not the suffocating silence of my house when Angel’s pacing and I’m spiraling. This feels different and quiet and doesn’t demand anything.
I kick my shoes off by the door and drop my keys on the counter, then just… stand there.Breathing.Listening to the quiet hum of the fridge. The faint tick of a clock I didn’t know she had, and the distant sound of a car passing outside. This is what space feels like. Room for the truth to finally surface.
I move like I’m underwater, slow, and heavy, and curl up on the couch with a blanket pulled tight around my shoulders. My phone sits face down on the coffee table like it might accuse me if I look at it too long.
I replay the moment again. Not just what he said, but everything around it. The exhaustion in his eyes, his voice roughened when he realized he’d gone too far, and the panic under the anger.
Angel wasn’t telling me to stop wanting a child. He was telling me he was scared of losing me. And somehow, we still ended up hurting each other.
I think about counselling. About the things we said, how we promised to talk, to listen, and to stay present even when it was uncomfortable. And then I think about how quickly we slid back into old patterns the second hope crept in.
That scares me more than the argument. It means we’re fragile in ways we haven’t fully reckoned with yet. It means the wound is still open, even if it scabbed over a little. One wrong move and it bleeds again. One wrong sentence and we’re right back in the dark.
And if we keep doing that, if we keep reopening the same hurt over and over, it won’t just hurt. It’ll poison us, turn love into resentment. And I cannot let that happen.I won’t. Not to Angel. Not to us.
My sister isn’t home yet. She’s still at work. She texted earlier that she left the spare key under the plant pot like always. The thought of explaining this to her makes my stomach knot. Not because she won’t understand, but because she will. She’ll look at me with those eyes full of quiet concern and say something gentle that makes me cry. And I don’t know if I can cry any more than I already have.
I go to the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are red. My face looks thinner than I remember. There’s a handprint smeared into the glass where I braced myself earlier, like I needed proof I still exist.
“I don’t know who I am right now,” I whisper to my reflection.
Wife.
Woman.
Maybe, Mother.
Maybe-not.
Every version of me feels unfinished. I sink onto the edge of the tub and let my head fall into my hands. The tile is cold under my bare feet.My throat burns. My chest feels like it’s full of sand.
I don’t want to leave Angel. God, I don’t want that. I want to crawl back into his arms and pretend none of this happened. Pretend love is enough to smooth over the sharp edges. But love didn’t stop me from disappearing into obsession. Love didn’t stop him from saying something that cut us both open.
And that means we need something else right now.Clarity. Space.Not to walk away. But to breathe without bleeding on each other.
I sit back up and wipe my face with the edge of the blanket. Then I pick up my phone. My hands shake so hard I nearly drop it. There’s a message from him already.
I’m sorry. I love you. And I’m here when you’re ready.
My chest tightens; I believe him. That’s why this hurts so much. If he was cruel, if he was careless, if he didn’t care… leaving would be easy. But he cares. He cares so much that he’s been choking on it. And he’s trying.
My fingers hover, shaking. Every version of what I want to say sounds wrong. Finally, I force myself to be honest — even if it breaks us a little more before it heals us.
I know you didn’t mean it the way it came out.
I pause. My eyes blur with tears. Because even admitting that feels like swallowing something sharp.
But I can’t be around you right now without feeling like I’m failing.
That word hurts.Failing.But it’s the truth of what my brain keeps screaming at me. If I stay, I’ll keep hearing his words echoing off every wall, and I’ll keep fighting my own body and then taking it out on him.
And I don’t want to resent you.
