"Nicole, dammit!"
The way he suddenly yells has me flinching and involuntarily turning to him, and that's when I finally see—
Oh.
My husband of almost twenty years, standing in the middle of the hotel hallway, dressed in the flashiest pair of silver boxers.
Silver!
Where did he even get that?
His belly hangs over the elastic waistband, and he just looks so, so ridiculous that it should’ve made me laugh but instead...it’s also the opposite. Just looking at him makes my heart hurt so, so bad because I don’t know...I just don’t know how we came to this. It’s like waking up one day and finding out that I neverknew the man I married even though we’ve been sleeping in the same bed for two decades.
"Mr. Big?"
And if that's not bad enough, I think the other shape...the younger shape...
She's about to join the party and come out of the hotel suite that I paid for.
"Mr. Big, is something wrong?"
Is it just because she's young that her voice sounds so sweet? I used to be young, too, but I don't think I ever sounded—
"Mrs. Shrew!"
—that sweet, traitorously so.
"I'm so, so sorry!"
She comes out in a white silk nightgown that barely covers anything, and she’s so...well, my husband’s right about her.
She really is tiny.
I’m not supermodel-tall or anything myself, but right now, she makes me feel like a giant...when in the past, when I thought she was just this nice girl who started working for my husband as an intern—-
I used to feel like I could be her big sister in the city. I even felt motherly towards her. But now I feel nothing at all...as I watch her start to cry, which then has my husband rushing to her side like his world is about to end if she sheds another tear.
"It's okay, my tiny."
"It's not okay,”she sobs.“It's not..."
She sobs in his arms so prettily. I don't think I've ever cried that prettily either, and I think...
I think that's why I shouldn't cry right now.
I shouldn't.
I won't.
Even if I want to, seeing how my own husband has forgotten all about me. He's all about comforting his tiny—
"It seems no explanation is needed."
—until he hears the very British accent of his boss, and just like that, his tiny is also forgotten.
"Mr. Everford, what—"
I find myself unintentionally echoing my husband’s question.