The first time I noticed my husband’s phone was face-down on the kitchen counter, I didn’t think anything of it.
The second time, I told myself I was being silly.
By the tenth time, I had stopped counting, because counting felt like admitting something, and I wasn’t ready to admit anything.
It was a Thursday night in late September, two days before my sister’s first wedding anniversary. I was standing in our kitchen packing snacks for the drive. Goldfish crackers. Juice boxes. Apple slices in little plastic bags, because Sophie, our eight-year-old, gets carsick if she eats anything with too much sugar, and Ben, who is five, won’t eat apples unless they’re sliced “the thin way.”
Michael was sitting at the kitchen island. His phone was next to his elbow. Face-down.
It buzzed. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t even look at it. He just slid it a little closer to himself with one finger.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Work,” he said. “Nothing important.”
“At nine-thirty at night?”
“Welcome to marketing,” he said, and smiled at me. It was his good smile. The one that made me fall in love with him in college, twelve years ago, when he spilled coffee on my chemistry notes and spent the next week rewriting them for me in his neat, slanted handwriting.… TAP HERE TO CONTINUE THE STORY 👇
