Chapter 1: The Routine
The ceiling fan made its fifth lazy rotation before Mark finally closed his eyes. He focused on the physical sensation, the wet heat of Sarah’s mouth, the mechanical rhythm of her head. It was efficient. He let out a slow breath that was supposed to be a sigh of pleasure but felt more like a release of pressure, like loosening a valve.
Her hand moved at the base of him, a practiced twist. He could hear the soft, obscene sounds. In the dim glow of her bedside lamp, he watched the crown of her head, the fall of her blonde hair hiding her face. He used to run his hands through it. Now he kept them fisted at his sides, knuckles white against the dark blue sheets.
A minute later, maybe two, it was over. He shuddered, a purely physiological response. Sarah pulled away smoothly, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. She didn’t look at him. She never did at this part.
“Thanks,” he said, the word hollow in the quiet room.
“Mhm.” She was already shifting, turning onto her side, her back a graceful, unbroken curve facing him. The mattress dipped and settled. She reached for the lamp. The click was definitive. Darkness swallowed the room, thick and velvety, broken only by the thin line of light under the bathroom door.
He lay there, sticky and unsatisfied. The scent of her perfume—something clean and citrusy—clung to the pillows, a cruel contrast to the sharper, more biological smell now lingering between them. He wanted to say something. Was that it? Did you even feel anything? Do you still want me, or is this just maintenance?
But he didn’t. He never did. He was an agreeable man. He feared the silence that would follow his questions more than the silence he already lived in.
“Big presentation tomorrow for the Kensington account,” he said to the dark.
“That’s good,” she murmured, already half in sleep. Or pretending to be.
“Yeah. Could be a big win.”
“Mmm. Night, Mark.”
“Night, Sarah.”
He stared at the ceiling fan’s vague shadow. His heart slowed. His body cooled. He felt a profound loneliness, a hollow space in his chest that the quick, functional release had only made wider. He thought about turning toward her, spooning against that back, seeing if she’d relax into him. But he imagined the subtle stiffening of her shoulders. The pretence of deeper sleep. He stayed on his back.
From Sarah’s side of the bed, a low buzz hummed, vibrating softly against the wooden nightstand. Then a second, more insistent buzz. A phone lighting up.
The glow was a blue-white explosion in the dark room. It etched the curve of her shoulder, the edge of the sheet. Mark, curious, annoyed at the interruption, turned his head on the pillow.
The screen was face-up. A notification banner glowed brightly against the dark.
Lexi: Can’t wait to feel you again.
The light faded to black.
Mark blinked. The afterimage of the words floated in his vision. Can’t wait to feel you again, Lexi. He parsed the grammar. Not ‘see you.’ Feel you.
His mind, slow with post-coital fog and the slow drip of dread, turned the sentence over. Lexi. A name. Female. Can’t wait to feel you.
Sarah’s breathing was even. Too even. He realized she was holding it. The entire line of her back was rigid, a cliff face in the dark. She’d seen it. She knew he’d seen it. The charged silence between them was no longer about absence. It was now about a presence. A secret, pulsing like a second heart in the room.
He opened his mouth. His tongue felt thick. No sound came out. What was there to say? Who’s Lexi? He already knew. The hollow space inside him cracked open, bottomless and cold.
He didn’t move. She didn’t move. They lay in the marital bed, corpses side-by-side, waiting for the other to breathe first.