“I hadn’t meant to,” I added quickly. “That’s the point. I didn’t know when we got married. But by the time I did know, it felt like admitting it would make everything we’d built a lie.”
“And not admitting it didn’t?” she retorted.
I had no answer to that.
Silence stretched between us.
“I kept thinking it would go away,” I said after a moment. “Or that I could simply… ignore it. That it didn’t have to change anything.”
Diana shook her head. “But it did.”
“Yes.”
“Our marriage, for one thing,” she added.
“Yes.”
“It created distance between us. A lack of intimacy.”
I nodded.
“I thought it was me,” she said quietly.
The words hit harder than anything else.
“It wasn’t,” I said immediately. “It was never you.”
“ButIdidn’t know that. All I knew was that my husband didn’t seem to want me.”
Guilt twisted sharply in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “And now?”
I hesitated.
“I don’t think I’m straight,” I said carefully. “I don’t know if that makes me… bi, or—” I stopped, then pushed out a sigh. “But what I do know is that what I feel for men is stronger. Clearer. It’s not something I can ignore anymore.”
Diana absorbed that in silence. “And you swear you’ve never acted on it?”
“Never,” I said firmly. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She studied me, then nodded once. “I believe you.” Another pause. “So where does that leave us?”
I looked at her, the answer sitting heavily between us. Neither of us spoke it.
Because we already knew.
Diana found the courage to say the quiet part out loud before I did.
“Maybe we need to call it a day.”
I stared at her. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “You’re not happy. Well, I have news for you—neither am I. So why stay together if it isn’t working for either of us? Maybe if we look elsewhere, we’ll find the happiness that’s eluded both of us.”
My heart hammered. “So what do you suggest we do?”
She drew in a deep breath. “We split. I’ll move out.”