Chapter 1: The Contract on the Kitchen Table
The scent of yesterday’s coffee grounds mingled with the vanilla perfume Beth had worn to her audition, a stale sweetness hanging in the warm, lamplit air of the apartment. Mark stood in the middle of the living room, a single sheet of paper held between his fingers like a live wire. Around him, the chaos of their life together was comfortingly familiar: the leaning towers of half-read novels, the dented leather armchair worn smooth in the seat, a single dog-eared copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray left splayed on the coffee table beside two empty mugs.
From the bedroom, he could hear her humming, a tuneless, happy sound punctuated by the thump of a suitcase being pulled from the closet.
He looked down at the contract again. The print was standard, full of legal clauses about indemnification and exclusivity. But his eyes kept skating over all that, landing on the two signatures at the bottom. Bethany Cole. Her looping, exuberant script, the ‘B’ a flourishing dagger of excitement. And just below it, the other one. The signature was an artistic scrawl, but the printed name beside it was clear: Ed Sheeran.
A world tour. Twelve countries. Six months.
“Babe? You wanna order Thai? My treat!” Beth’s voice called out, followed by the sound of a drawer opening and closing with decisive finality.
Mark didn’t answer. He just stared at the page. The paper felt heavy. It was just paper. But it felt like a chisel, hitting the fine crack that had been quietly spiderwebbing through him for months now.
She bounced into the room then, a whirlwind of kinetic energy. Her fiery red hair was twisted into one of her elaborate braids, a few escaped curls framing her face. At five-foot-four, she always seemed to take up more space than her frame should allow. She was wearing leggings and an oversized sweater that slipped off one shoulder, and her cheeks were flushed.
“I’m thinking pad see ew. Extra peanuts.” She beamed at him, her green eyes sparkling. Then her gaze dropped to his hands. “Oh! You found it. Pretty cool, right?”
“It’s… it’s incredible, Beth.” He meant it. He heard the flatness in his own voice anyway.
“Right?” She swooped in, plucking the contract from his loose grip. She didn’t notice how his fingers tightened for a half-second before letting go. “Can you even believe it? Tokyo. Sydney. Barcelona. I mean, I’ve done backup for the VMA’s and that Hyundai commercial, but this… this is legit.”
“It’s very legit.” He forced a smile. It felt stiff on his face.
She traced Sheeran’s signature with a fingertip, a slow, reverent motion. “Greg—my agent—he said they loved my energy. Said I ‘popped on camera.’” She did a little hip-shimmy where she stood, a playful, professional-grade move that was both adorable and, in this moment, impossibly distant from him.
“You always pop,” Mark said. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his chinos.
She laughed, tossing the contract onto the table where it slid and covered Dorian Gray’s doomed face. “You have to say that. You’re my husband. It’s in your vows. ‘To have and to hold and to always say she pops.’”
“I think the officiant forgot that line.”
“Well, he should have included it.” She closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning her head against his chest. He instinctively folded his arms around her, breathing in the scent of her shampoo—apples and something else, something clean. She fit perfectly against him, a puzzle piece he’d grown accustomed to. “It’s only six months,” she murmured into his shirt.
“Six months is a long time.”
“It’ll fly by. You’ll be busy with tax season. It’ll be over before you know it.” She tilted her head back to look at him, her expression softening. “And we’ll video call every day. You can send me care packages full of boring accountant socks.”
He tried to match her levity. “I was thinking of sending you spreadsheet formulas. To remind you of home.”
She pinched his side gently. “See? That’s why I love you. You’re wonderfully, predictably you.”
The words, meant as an endearment, landed somewhere in his gut and hooked there. Predictably. He saw his life in a sudden, flash-frame montage: the same commute, the same coffee shop, the same weekly meal-prep on Sundays, the same comfortable silences that were, maybe, just silences. He saw her life from these same six months: airport terminals, stadium green rooms, dancing under foreign skies with a thousand-watt smile, surrounded by people who ‘popped.’
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She was too perceptive.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, forcing another smile. “It’s amazing news. I’m proud of you. Really.”
“But?”
“No ‘but.’ Just… processing.” He let go of her and walked over to the window, looking down at the quiet street below. Their street. “It’s a big change.”
She followed, standing beside him, her shoulder pressing against his arm. “Change is good, Mark. It’s air. It’s… it’s life. This apartment, this routine—it’s starting to feel like a really cozy, lovely sweater that I’ve accidentally shrunk in the wash.”
He looked at her reflection in the dark glass. Her eyes were wide, earnest, full of a restless light he’d always adored but could never quite seem to reflect back at her. “I like the sweater,” he said quietly.
“I know you do.” She sighed, a sound full of affection and a faint, unbridgeable frustration. “And I love that you love it. But I can’t breathe in it anymore.”
There it was. The crack, voiced aloud. Not about the tour, not really. About everything that came before it and everything that would come after.
He turned from the window. “So don’t wear it.” The words came out harsher than he intended.
She flinched, just a little. “It’s not that simple.”
“Isn’t it? You just signed a paper that says you’re leaving for half a year to wear sequins and dance in front of fifty thousand people. That seems like a pretty definitive way to take off the sweater, Beth.”
The humor was gone from her face now, replaced by a defensive gleam. “Is that what this is about? You’re… what, jealous?”
“No.” The denial was automatic, hollow. He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not jealous of Ed Sheeran, Jesus. I’m…” He struggled, the feeling a formless, heavy thing in his chest. “I’m worried I’m the sweater.”
Silence pooled in the room, thick and hot. The furnace kicked on with a rumble.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered. “Don’t make this about you not being enough. This is about me needing to be more. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” He met her gaze, his own vulnerability laid bare now, a raw nerve he usually kept buried under spreadsheets and dry humor. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like the life we’ve built—the one with me in it—is the thing that’s shrinking.”
She stared at him, her lips parted slightly. He watched as a dozen emotions flickered across her face: guilt, defiance, love, that relentless, terrifying need for more. She reached for his hand, her fingers lacing through his. They felt small and strong. “I love you, Mark. That part of the sweater is perfect. It’s just… the rest of it.”
He looked down at their joined hands. He believed she loved him. He just wasn’t sure, anymore, if love was the anchor she needed, or just a weight holding her to the seafloor while she longed to swim up toward the light.
“I know,” he said finally, his voice rough. He squeezed her hand. “Order the pad see ew. Extra peanuts.”
She searched his face, looking for the argument that had fizzled out, for the resolution that wouldn’t come. He offered her nothing but a tired smile. The momentum of her joy was too great, the promise of the future too bright. His doubts were just shadows in their warm, cluttered apartment, and she chose, as she always did, to turn toward the light.
“Okay,” she said, her smile returning, though it was softer now, tinged with relief. She pulled out her phone, already moving on, already halfway to Bangkok in her mind. “I’ll get the spring rolls, too.”
Mark nodded, letting her go. He walked back to the coffee table and picked up the contract again. The paper crinkled in his grip. He stared at the two signatures, his wife’s and the famous man’s, a covenant for an adventure he was not part of. The humming from the bedroom resumed, a melody he didn’t recognize. He stood there, in the yellow pool of lamplight, holding the future in his hands, and felt the quiet, unspoken truth settle around him like dust.
It had begun.