Page 4 of Rising Heat

His shoulders had loosened immediately, relief softening his face.

“That’s all I’m saying.”

He turned back to the laptop with that.

He didn’t reach for me, but why would he? He hadn’t reached for me in longer than I wanted to think about. At some point, I stopped noticing the distance between us on the couch because I always knew exactly where it would be. I stopped reaching first months ago because being met with a sigh and a laptop and an early meeting had become its own kind of routine.

Bex’s voice softens.

“Hey, still with me?”

I blink as the ceiling swims back into focus. I’m still in the bedroom. Still holding the navy mug with the nicked handle and the hairline crack in the glaze that Brett hates because it makes the kitchen look cluttered. I reach for it now without thinking, my thumb absentmindedly tracing the crack as I think.

Nausea creeps up my throat. I can’t remember the last time I held onto something just because I wanted to.

“I thought…” I clear my voice. “I thought I’d feel worse.”

Three years. A ring. A seating chart. A hundred tiny ways to become digestible. A future everyone approved of. My mother already has opinions about linens. My aunt booked a hotel block before I even picked flowers. Women at brunch touch my arm and say

you’re so lucky. The word sits in my stomach now like spoiled milk.

My laugh comes out thin and humorless.

“I can already hear my mom.”

Bex groans.

“Oh no.”

My mother’s voice arrives with brutal clarity

you don’t throw away something good because you’re restless. Marriage is work. Everyone compromises.

“I think everyone’s going to look at me like I set my own life on fire for no reason.”

Bex leans toward the screen.

“And so what if you did?”

“Huh?”

“So what if you lit the match? Sometimes that’s what it takes to see what’s left when the smoke clears.”

I let out a breath that shakes on the way out and my gaze lands on my running shoes shoved in the back of the closet beneath storage bins and an old steamer.

White once. Grey with dust now.

I used to run four mornings a week. Before emails and expectations and conversations I was already rehearsing in my head. Just cold air and quiet and the sting in my lungs because at least that part was honest.

I look around the room.

At the bench at the foot of the bed that nobody sits on because it’s for decoration. At the art I never chose. At my dresses shoved neatly behind Brett’s suits like they’re trying not to take up too much space.

My lower lip trembles once.

“I keep looking around this place,” I say, “and it feels like I’m standing in somebody else’s life.”

Bex doesn’t rush to fill the silence. My attention drifts to the laptop still open on the nightstand. The apartment listing is waiting right where I left it.