I slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door; the silence was immediate.
For a moment, I just sat there.
My fingers hovered over the ignition, then retreated to my lap. Part of me wanted to start the car and drive somewhere—anywhere—that wasn’t home. The other part knew exactly what waited for me there: the conversation I’d been rehearsing for weeks. The one that might end everything. Maybe I should wait another day. Maybe tomorrow I’d be braver, more certain.
No…I’d decided. Tonight.
Peter and I had been together for almost four years.
Four years.
And somewhere along the way, we’d stopped being real and started being convenient—predictable, safe in the worst possible way—though sometimes, in thequiet moments when his hand would find mine during a movie, or when I’d catch him watching me with that old softness in his expression, I’d wonder if I was making a mistake. If the problem wasn’t him at all, but me.
To be fair to Peter, sex for me had never really been the emotional experience other people described. I’d never experienced that connection that women talked about—that closeness that was supposed to make you feel less alone. I’d lie awake sometimes, staring at the ceiling while he slept beside me, wondering if something was wrong with me, if I were missing that fundamentalthingthat everyone else had simply been born with. The years passed, and that emotion didn’t go away. It grew. And with Peter, it had stopped being emptiness and started being closer to erasure. When he touched me now, it had nothing to do with us. It was about him, as if it had always been about him.
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and closed my eyes.
I knew what I wanted. I wasn’t confused about that, at least. I wanted intensity. I wanted to feel wanted badly enough that it showed, physically, unmistakably. I wanted rough hands and the focus that made you the only thing in the room. I wanted to be claimed—not used. There’s a difference, and it mattered, and Peter had never understood that.
What we had now wasn’t any of that.
His needs. His timing. His release.
One-sided. Detached. Mechanical, it made me feel worse afterward than before, like I’d given so much and gotten nothing back except the reminder that I didn’t really factor into the equation.
I was done with it.
Done pretending it didn’t bother me.
Done pretending I didn’t deserve better.
I lifted my head and started the car.
Tonight, we were going to talk. Really talk. No deflecting, no letting him change the subject, no telling myself it wasn’t worth the fight.
Because I couldn’t keep living like this—half present, half satisfied, half seen.
I was so tired of only being half of anything.
Five
Sloane
When I walked in, Peter sat exactly in the same spot as always.
On the couch.
Football on.
Beer in hand.
He glanced up when the door shut behind me, his eyes moving over me for half a second before returning to the screen. He produced a sound that might have been mistaken for “hey” if you were being generous.
“Hey,” I replied. My keys hit the ceramic bowl by the door with a small, familiar clink.
He gestured vaguely toward the kitchen counter without looking away from the TV. “Left you something to eat.”
The way he said it—his voice flat, his eyes already drifting back to the t.v, like someone commenting on a slight changein the weather—made my stomach contract. I waited for the barb, the twist of the knife, but it never came. He’d already moved on, and somehow that seemed worse than any insult could have.