Page 43 of Pretend You Love Me

Elsie’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile. Not amusement either.

Something worse. Almost like disbelief.

“I did figure something out,” she said. “Just not with you.”

For one strange second, I couldn’t breathe. Then Milo stirred in the bouncer and made a small, dissatisfied noise, and Elsie turned away from me immediately.

Like the baby’s smallest sound had more claim to her than my entire collapse.

A flash of resentment moved through me so fast and ugly that I nearly flinched from it.

Of course she turned to Milo. She always turned to Milo. To Maisie. To nappies and bottles and laundry and the thousand tiny disasters that had become the shape of our life. The thought came sharp and bitter, and then shame followed so closely it was almost enough to make me nauseous. They were babies. My babies. I loved them. God, I loved them so much it frightened me sometimes. Milo with his furious little face and impossible lungs. Maisie with her solemn eyes that made me feel judged by someone who couldn’t yet sit up properly. I loved them.

And still, some dark, rotten part of me remembered the months before they were born and thought, everything changed because of them. Then I hated myself for thinking it. Because it wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t Elsie’s fault either. She had been drowning. I knew that now. Maybe I had known it then. Maybe that was worse.

She had been swollen and sore before they were born, exhausted in a way I didn’t fully understand. Then came the NICU, the fear, the monitors, the wires, the plastic chairs, the pale hospital light that made everyone look half-dead.

Afterward, home had become crying and bottles and alarms and Elsie moving through rooms like she was being held together by caffeine and muscle memory.

And me. What had I become? A man standing at the edge of it all, feeling useless. Unwanted. In the way. A man who had taken a pay cut three months before the twins were born and never told her how badly it had gutted me because it sounded pathetic.

A man who had watched my title change at work in all but name, watched younger men with louder voices get the accounts I used to handle, watched the managing partner call it “a restructuring” with the sympathetic expression of someone sliding a knife in gently.

I had come home that day wanting Elsie to look at me like I was still someone that mattered. But she had been thirty-two weeks pregnant with twins, sitting on the bathroom floor crying because her hips hurt so badly she couldn’t get her leggings on. I had helped her up. I had told her it was okay. I had never properly told her what happened.

Because her pain was bigger than mine. Everything was bigger than me then.

And I had hated myself for wanting space to matter.

The first message from Jasmine hadn’t felt like betrayal. That was the lie I had told myself at the beginning. It was just attention. A way of destressing without adding pressure to my wife. The app didn’t seem bad at first. A joke after work. A compliment. A picture that made me smile.

Then another woman on the app. Then Snapchat. Then messages I should have deleted before they could become anything. Then hotel rooms. Then lies. Then the particular high of being wanted without being needed.

With them, I was not the man who had taken a pay cut. Not the husband who couldn’t fix my wife’s exhaustion. Not the father of two fragile newborns whose crying made panic crawl up my throat.

I was just Daniel. Attractive. Funny. Desired. A man someone looked at like I was a choice instead of a responsibility. And that had been the thrill. Not love. Not even really sex, though that was part of it. It was the escape.

The doorway out of a life I had chosen and then somehow felt trapped inside. That was the part I could never say to Elsie. Because it sounded monstrous. Because maybe it was.

“I don’t even know why I did it,” I said instead.

Elsie stopped moving. Milo had settled again, one tiny fist pressed to his mouth.

I looked at my wife, really looked at her, and saw how worn down she was. How grief had changed her face. How the woman who used to fill whole rooms with noise and wild commentary now stood so carefully, as if every word had to be measured before it came out.

I had done that. The thought was unbearable.

“I don’t,” I repeated, because silence felt like it was too much. “I don’t know why I couldn’t stop.”

Elsie stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “That’s not comforting.”

“No. I know.”

“Do you?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because the truth was, I didn’t know anything anymore. Well not the things that matter.

I knew I loved her. I knew I had betrayed her. I knew I wanted my life back.