Chapter 42: Alone with Her Thoughts
The vanilla scent from the diffuser did nothing to cleanse the air. Simone lay rigid in the center of her bed, the cotton sheets too crisp, too cool against her skin. The shower had been scalding, a futile attempt to strip the night from her pores—the citrus perfume, the hotel soap, the faint, metallic trace of Marcus still lingering between her legs. She’d scrubbed until her skin shone pink, but the memory was a tattoo.
Her ceiling was a blank, dark canvas. On it, she projected the evening in sharp, disjointed clips. Marcus’s easy smile. The weight of the champagne flute. The approving glances in the gallery that made her feel like a piece of art herself. The competent, thorough way he’d moved inside her. It had been good. Technically, objectively good. A clean transaction of attraction and release.
So why did she feel scraped out?
A shudder ran through her. She pressed her thighs together, chasing the ghost of a different feeling. Not the smooth, building tension of the hotel room, but the raw, devastating fullness of that morning. Eli’s hands hooking her knees, opening her without asking. The searing stretch, the brutal, deep drives that felt less like sex and more like a reclaiming of territory. The way he’d watched her face the entire time, his eyes dark with a fury that felt indistinguishable from love.
A heat, sick and compelling, pooled low in her belly.
Her own hand slid down, under the waistband of her sweatpants. Her fingers were cold. She touched herself, finding the swollen flesh, still sensitive. She tried to summon the gallery, the bourbon, Marcus’s murmured praise. She circled, applying the same steady pressure he had. Her breath hitched. A faint, clinical spark of pleasure flickered, but it was distant, like watching a reaction through glass.
Frustration tightened her jaw. She closed her eyes, and instantly, it was Eli’s face above her, backlit by morning sun. It was his voice, gritty and final. My pussy. Her fingers moved faster, her back arching slightly off the mattress. She imagined the punishing rhythm, the sound of the headboard, the possessiveness that left her feeling simultaneously owned and, perversely, more herself than ever.
The climax came suddenly, a short, sharp wave that tensed her muscles and then vanished, leaving a void in its wake. It was hollow. A pathetic imitation. A bodily spasm without a soul.
She pulled her hand away, pressing her palm against her mouth as a dry sob escaped. Tears, hot and sudden, welled and spilled over, tracking into her hairline. The quiet of her sanctuary, usually a balm, now felt like a condemnation. The dog-eared poetry books on the shelf seemed to mock her; what sonnet could possibly capture this mess?
She rolled onto her side, curling into a tight ball. The half-finished paintings on the easel in the corner were blurred shapes in the low light. Faces she’d never met. She felt like one of them now—a sketch, incomplete, someone else’s lines defining her form.
“What am I doing?” The whisper was raw, torn from her throat and absorbed by the dark.
The answer didn’t come. Instead, a new memory surfaced, unbidden: the look on Eli’s face as she’d walked out the door. Not anger. Not pleading. A profound, unsettling recognition. As if he’d already seen this entire night play out, had already cataloged the hollow feeling that would follow. He’d watched her leave dressed for battle, knowing the war was already inside them.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
She froze, the tears stopping abruptly. Her breath held. It was probably just the old building settling, or Micah stirring. But the rhythm was wrong. It was a single, deliberate step. Then silence.
Her door was cracked open an inch, a habit from listening for Micah. A sliver of dim hallway light cut across her floor.
The knob turned, slowly. The door swung inward without a sound.
He filled the doorway, a silhouette backlit by the nightlight from Micah’s room. He was just in his boxers, his frame lean and powerful. He didn’t speak. He just stood there, looking at the lump of her in the bed.
Simone didn’t move. She didn’t tell him to leave. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird.
After an eternity, he stepped inside. He closed the door softly behind him, plunging the room back into near-total darkness, save for the thin glow around the curtains. She could hear his breathing, steady and low. He didn’t come to the bed. He walked to her desk. She heard the faint scrape of wood as he pulled out her chair. He sat.
She could just make out his shape, facing her, an observer in the dark.
“Did he make you come?” Eli’s voice was quiet, flat. No judgment. Just a request for data.
The question was so crude, so Eli, that it stole the air from her lungs. It wasn’t about possession now. It was an audit.
She swallowed. “Yes.”
A beat of silence. “More than once?”
She closed her eyes, shame and defiance warring. “Twice.”
He let out a long, slow breath. She heard the chair creak as he leaned back. “Good for you.” The words were neutral, but they hung there, poisoned.
“It was,” she said, her voice stronger than she felt. “It was… good. Easy.”
“Easy,” he repeated, tasting the word. “I bet. No history. No baby sleeping down the hall. No fucking… poetry on the walls.” He sounded tired. “Must have been a fucking vacation.”
Another tear escaped. She didn’t wipe it away. “It was.”
“But you’re here,” he said. “Crying in the dark.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Simone.” Just her name. It was an entire indictment.
She sat up, pushing herself against the headboard, pulling the sheets up to her chin like a shield. “Why are you in here, Eli? To gloat? To prove you knew I’d come home miserable?”
“I didn’t know,” he said, and the raw honesty in it was disarming. “I hoped you wouldn’t. I hoped he’d be so amazing you’d finally see what a fuckin’ drain I am on your ‘clear vision for the future.’” He threw her own words back at her, the ones from a fight months ago she thought he’d forgotten.
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair!” The sudden heat in his whisper was volcanic. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. She could see the faint gleam of his eyes in the dark. “You think I wanted to wake up that way? You think I like knowing the only way I can talk to you anymore is by fucking the words into you? You think I don’t see Aaliyah looking at me in class and wish, for one goddamn second, that it was easy?”
The admission shocked her. It was the first time he’d ever given a name to the tension, the first time he’d acknowledged the transfer student as anything more than a classmate.
“So why don’t you?” she challenged, her own voice trembling. “Go find easy.”
“Because!” He stood up abruptly, a sudden, violent motion. He paced two steps, ran a hand over his face. When he spoke again, it was drained, hollow. “Because I come home. I come home to him. And I come home to your shampoo in the shower and your weird tea in the cabinet and the fucking painting you did of that stupid tree you like. And it’s not easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s mine. You are mine. And I am yours. Even when you’re in another man’s bed.” He stopped, his chest heaving. “Especially then.”
The truth of it, ugly and magnificent, flooded the room. It was the answer to the question she’d whispered to the dark. What am I doing? You are building a life. You are tearing it down. You are trying to see if the foundation will hold.
She kicked the sheets off. Swung her legs over the side of the bed. The wood floor was cool under her feet. She walked to him, stopping close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin, to smell the sleep and soap on him. He didn’t reach for her.
“It was empty,” she said, the confession a surrender.
He nodded, just once. “I know.”
“I hate you for that.”
“I know that, too.”
She looked up at his shadowed face. “What do we do?”
For a long moment, he was silent. Then he brought his hand up, not to grab her, but to slowly, gently, trace the line of her jaw with his knuckles. The touch was so tender it made her throat ache. “We go to sleep. Tomorrow, we take Micah to the park. We pretend we’re okay. We fight. We fuck. We keep going.” His thumb brushed the damp track of her tear. “Until we can’t anymore. Or until we can.”
It wasn’t a solution. It was a diagnosis. A chronic condition they shared.
He dropped his hand and turned, walking back to the door. He paused, one hand on the frame. “Lock your door if you want me to stay out.”
Then he was gone, the space where he’d stood already filling back up with silent dark.
Simone didn’t move. She listened to his footsteps fade down the hall, the soft click of his bedroom door. She didn’t lock hers. She climbed back into bed, the sheets now holding the spectral warmth of his recent presence. The hollow feeling was still there, but it was no longer a void. It was a shaped space. It had edges. It had a name.
She turned toward the wall, toward her shelves of poetry and unfinished faces, and waited for the morning.
She turned toward the wall, toward her shelves of poetry and unfinished faces, and waited for the morning. Sleep never came, just a shallow, gray tide of half-dreams where Marcus’s smile melted into Eli’s scowl. The dark softened by imperceptible degrees. Streetlights clicked off outside her window. The deep blue of the room faded to a cool, dusty lilac, then a pale, watery gold that outlined every object with a sharp, unforgiving clarity.
MORNING COMES.
It arrived not with a bang, but with a muffled thump from Micah’s room, followed by his cheerful, garbled announcement to his stuffed animals. The day demanded participation. Simone’s body felt heavy, welded to the mattress by exhaustion and the residue of the night’s confession. She heard Eli’s door open, his footsteps padding down the hall to their son. The domestic script, uninterrupted.
She forced herself up. The floor was cold. She pulled on a hoodie and leggings, the soft fabric a feeble armor. In the kitchen, the scene was already in motion. Eli had Micah in his highchair, scattering O’s across the tray. The coffee machine gurgled. He didn’t look up from his task.
“‘Morning,’” he said, his voice morning-rough and neutral.
“‘Morning.’” She went to the cabinet for a mug, her movements automatic. The silence between them was different now. Not a wall, but a thin sheet of ice, newly formed and treacherous.
“Park today?” he asked, finally glancing at her. His eyes were tired. He was already dressed in sweats and a worn t-shirt.
“Yeah. If you want.” She poured coffee, the steam warming her face.
“He needs to run. We all do.” He said it like a doctor prescribing a treatment. “Weather’s good.”
It was all so terrifyingly normal. They were following the plan he’d laid out in the dark: We pretend we’re okay. Micah banged his fist on the tray, sending cereal flying. Eli crouched to pick it up, his back to her. The muscles in his shoulders shifted under the thin cotton.
“I can get his bag ready,” she offered, needing a task.
“Cool. Sunhat. The one he doesn’t rip off.”
They moved around each other in the small kitchen with a practiced, careful dance. No touching. Sentences were short, functional, about sunblock and snack cups. The specter of Aaliyah’s name, of Marcus’s hotel room, hung in the air between every clipped exchange. It was there when their fingers nearly brushed reaching for the same sponge. It was there in the way he avoided looking directly at her loose, unbraided hair.
An hour later, they were on the sidewalk. The spring sun was bright, mocking in its cheer. Micah, strapped into his stroller, kicked his legs with delight. Eli pushed. Simone walked beside him, her hand resting on the stroller’s handle. From a distance, they were a picture. Young parents. A beautiful family. Up close, the space between their bodies was a canyon.
“He said he’d be back in two weeks,” Simone said suddenly, the words out before she could stop them. She watched a leaf skitter across the path.
Eli’s knuckles whitened on the stroller handle. He didn’t look at her. “Okay.”
“That’s all you have? ‘Okay’?”
“What do you want me to say, Simone? You gave me the review. Twice. Easy.” He bit the word off. “You want my blessing for the next visit? Here. Have fun.”
“I’m not asking for that.”
“Then what are you asking for?” He stopped walking, turning to face her finally. The park noise—kids shrieking, a distant ice cream truck jingle—felt suddenly very far away. “You want me to tell you not to go? You want me to fight for you? I did that yesterday morning. And you still left. So what’s the play here?”
People were passing them, casting curious glances. Simone felt exposed, raw under the sunlight. “I don’t know the play, Eli! I don’t know anything. I just… needed you to know.”
A slow, bitter smile touched his lips. “You needed me to know he’s coming back. To keep me on my toes. Message received.” He started walking again, pushing the stroller with more force than necessary.
“That’s not it.”
“Then explain it.” His pace didn’t slow. “Use your words, pre-med. Diagnose us.”
She hurried to catch up, frustration a hot wire in her chest. “I hate when you do that.”
“What?”
“Use my ambition like an insult. Like wanting something for myself is a betrayal of… this.” She gestured vaguely at the stroller, at him.
“Isn’t it?” His voice dropped low. “You have a vision. It’s got a white coat and a fancy office. Where exactly do I fit in that picture? The baby daddy who stays home so you can chase easy?”
“Stop calling him that!” The anger flared, bright and clean. “It’s not about him. It’s about me feeling like I’m disappearing here. Like I’m just ‘Mom’ and ‘Eli’s girl’ and nothing else has room to breathe!”
He was silent for a full block. The playground came into view, a riot of color and motion. “You think I’m breathing easy?” he finally said, his voice stripped bare. “You think Political Science is some passion play? It’s a calculated bet. A bet that I can build something stable enough for him. For you. While I watch you mentally already in that office, already halfway out the door with some guy who doesn’t know what you sound like when you’re pissed.”
He swung the stroller toward a empty bench. “Swing set or sandbox?”
The pivot was so abrupt it left her dizzy. “Sandbox. Less chance of a head injury.”
He nodded, unstrapping Micah. He lifted their son out, holding him close for a second, burying his nose in the boy’s curls before setting him down. Micah wobbled toward the sand on determined legs. They sat on the bench, a careful foot of space between them. They watched their child, the one undeniable, beautiful truth they had built together.
“Aaliyah asked me to study with her,” Eli said, staring straight ahead. “Next Tuesday. In the library.”
The air left Simone’s lungs. She focused on Micah’s chubby hands packing sand. “Are you going?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “She’s smart. She gets the material in a way that… doesn’t feel like a struggle. It feels like a conversation.”
Simone understood exactly what he meant. She also understood he was telling her, not asking. A reciprocal transparency. A cruel fairness. “You should go,” she heard herself say, the words tasting like ash. “It’s just studying.”
He glanced at her, a long, measuring look. “Yeah. Just studying.”
They lapsed into silence again, but it had changed once more. The ice was still there, but it now bore their weight, a temporary, fragile bridge. Micah shoved a fistful of sand into his mouth. They both jumped up at the same time, converging on him, their hands brushing as they both reached to wipe his face. They froze.
Eli’s hand closed over hers, there in the gritty sand. Not possessively. Just an anchor. His skin was warm. “We’re a mess,” he whispered.
She didn’t pull away. “A disaster.”
He released her hand, swooping Micah up instead, blowing a raspberry on his neck until the startled cries turned to giggles. The sound was a temporary salve. Simone stood, brushing sand from her leggings. She looked at Eli, his face lit with a genuine smile for their son, the morning sun catching the gold in his afro.
The momentum of the day, of their life, tugged them forward. There was no resolution, only the next necessary action. “His hands are filthy,” she said. “Wipes are in the side pocket.”
He shifted Micah to his hip, digging for the pack with his free hand. He handed her one. Their fingers touched again. This time, it was just a touch. No grand meaning. Just two people cleaning up their child, standing together in the sun, staring at the long, uncharted day ahead.
Just two people cleaning up their child, standing together in the sun, staring at the long, uncharted day ahead. The park’s noise felt amplified now, a carnival soundtrack to their private silence. Eli shifted Micah to his other hip, the boy’s head nesting into his shoulder, sandy fingers clutching his shirt.
“He’s crashing,” Eli observed, his voice soft.
Simone nodded, watching her son’s eyelids grow heavy. “All that rebellion takes it out of you.”
A ghost of a smile touched Eli’s lips, there and gone. The path back to the stroller felt longer than the one that brought them. They walked slowly, the pace dictated by Micah’s descending weight. The earlier arguments hung between them, but they’d lost their sharp edges, blunted by the simple fatigue of carrying them.
The downtown streets were Saturday-busy. They navigated the crowd in a wordless agreement, Eli maneuvering the stroller with a subtle expertise Simone had always found quietly attractive. At the corner, across from their block, the neon sign of ‘Bell’s Creamery’ glowed pale in the afternoon light. The old-fashioned script promised a childhood neither of them had really had.
Eli stopped walking. He looked at the sign, then down at Micah, who was now fully asleep, a smear of dried sand on one cheek. “We should get him ice cream.”
Simone blinked. “He’s asleep, Eli.”
“So he’ll have it later. It’ll melt. He’ll love it.” He shrugged, a gesture that tried for casual but felt loaded. “We should stop. Before we go home.”
She understood. Home was the loft. Home was the bedroom where she’d cried, the couch that held the shape of their distance, the balcony where they used to whisper about impossible futures. Home was the next, inevitable conversation. The ice cream was a postponement. A small, sweet treaty.
“Okay,” she said. “But if it ruins his dinner, you’re explaining it to his future pediatrician.”
“Deal.”
The bell on the creamery door jingled. The air inside was cool and thick with the scent of waffle cones and sugar. It was blissfully, artificially cheerful. Pop music from a decade ago played at a low volume. A teenager in a striped apron looked up from her phone. “Hey, what can I get you?”
They stood before the frost-crusted glass, surveying the rows of vibrant colors. The normalcy of the act was surreal. Simone focused on the labels. “He’d want the one that turns his mouth the most obnoxious color.”
“Electric Blue Bubblegum,” Eli said, pointing to a neon turquoise tub. “No question.”
“And for you?” the girl asked.
Eli shoved his hands in his pockets. “Just a coffee scoop for me. In a cup.”
Simone glanced at him. Coffee was his default, his safety flavor. It was what he ordered when he couldn’t be bothered to choose something that might give pleasure. She felt a sudden, reckless impulse. “Get the salted caramel pretzel crunch,” she said. “You liked that once.”
He looked at her, surprised. It was a callback to a specific afternoon two summers ago, before Micah could walk, when they’d shared a cone and sticky kisses on a pier. A memory from a different version of themselves.
He held her gaze for a second, then turned back to the server. “Change that. Salted caramel pretzel. In a cone.”
“And for you?” the girl repeated to Simone.
Simone’s eyes scanned the options. Chocolate felt too heavy. Vanilla felt like a surrender. She saw a pale lavender one. “What’s the lavender honey like?”
“Really good. Not too perfumey. Kind of floral and sweet.”
“That. In a cup, please.”
They waited at the pickup counter, not speaking. Eli rocked the stroller gently with his foot. The soft churn of the machines filled the silence. When their order came, Eli paid, waving off Simone’s half-hearted reach for her wallet. “My idea,” he muttered.
Back on the sunny sidewalk, they stood awkwardly with their frozen goods. There was no bench. Going home now would defeat the purpose. Eli nodded toward a low, wide planter box filled with flowers at the edge of the square. “We can sit there.”
They perched on the warm stone edge, the stroller parked between them. Simone dipped her spoon into the delicate purple cream. The flavor was unexpected—herbal, sweet, and complex. It tasted like a place she’d never been. She watched Eli take the first lick of his cone. The salt and caramel glistened. A tiny chunk of pretzel fell onto his shirt.
“Damn it,” he mumbled, brushing at it.
He looked so absurdly young in that moment, just a guy struggling with a messy cone, that her chest tightened. This was the person beneath the anger, the possessiveness, the strategic political bet. The boy who liked pretzels in his ice cream.
“It’s good?” she asked.
He nodded, sucking the drips from the side of the cone. “Yeah. Thanks. For remembering.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, the ice cream a temporary, melting anchor in the stream of time. Micah slept on, oblivious. Simone finished hers first, scraping the last sweet bits from the cardboard cup. She watched Eli finish his cone, crunching the final bite.
He balled up the napkin, looking at his sticky hands. “We should probably…”
“Yeah.”
But neither of them moved. The sun was lower now, casting long, warm shadows. The imminent return to the loft pressed in on them. Eli stared at the sleeping form of their son, his expression unreadable.
“The study thing with Aaliyah,” he said, not looking at her. “It’s just a study group. A few people from the section.”
Simone nodded, folding her empty cup into a small, tight square. “I believe you.”
“Do you?” He finally turned his head. His eyes searched hers, not for conflict, but for truth.
She thought about Marcus’s hotel room, the clean pleasure, the profound emptiness that followed. She thought about the difference between something that was ‘just’ something and something that was everything, even when it was breaking apart. “I believe that you believe it’s just studying,” she said carefully. “I also believe you notice the way she doesn’t look at you like a problem that needs solving.”
He flinched, almost imperceptibly. He looked away, back toward the creamery. “You see a lot.”
“I pay attention.”
He was quiet for so long she thought the conversation was over. Then he spoke, his voice low. “I pay attention, too. I noticed you didn’t re-braid your hair.” He finally looked at her, his gaze traveling over the loose waves she’d worn for Marcus. “It looks different down. Softer.”
The observation was a hand extended, not in surrender, but in acknowledgment. He had seen her effort, her tiny rebellion, and was now naming it. Not as a weapon, but as a fact.
Simone’s throat felt thick. She reached over, her fingers brushing a stray crumb of cone from the corner of his mouth. It was an intimate, wifely gesture that felt both familiar and newly dangerous. His breath caught. He didn’t pull away.
Her thumb lingered for a fraction of a second on his lower lip, feeling the softness there, so at odds with the hard words it could form. Then she withdrew her hand, placing it safely in her own lap.
“We should get him home,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Eli just nodded. He stood, unfolding his long frame, and took control of the stroller. He began to push, then paused, looking back at her still sitting on the planter. “You coming?”
She took a deep breath, the scents of flowers and sugar and city pavement filling her lungs. She stood, falling into step beside him. They crossed the street toward their building, the shadow of the jazz club stretching out to meet them. The ice cream was a cool memory in their stomachs. The truce was temporary, borrowed time.
As he held the heavy front door open for her and the stroller, his free hand found the small of her back, just for a moment, to guide her through. The touch was light, automatic, a vestige of a thousand other returns home. It burned through the thin fabric of her hoodie.
Inside the dim foyer, he finally spoke, his words echoing slightly off the tile. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Simone pressed the button for the elevator. The machinery groaned to life above them. She watched the numbers slowly descend. “Do what?”
“Any of it.” The doors slid open. They wheeled Micah in. The confined space magnified his presence, his scent, the stickiness still on his hands. “Be the guy you need. Be the dad he deserves. Watch you walk out the door knowing another man just had you. Pretend it doesn’t feel like someone reached into my chest and crushed my lungs.” He stared straight ahead at the brushed metal doors. “I don’t know the script for this, Simone.”
The elevator climbed. Simone watched their blurred reflection in the doors—a fractured image of a family. “There isn’t a script,” she said softly. “We’re writing it as we go. And we’re doing a terrible job.”
A short, surprised laugh escaped him. It was a harsh, dry sound.“Yeah. We really are.”
The elevator bumped to a stop. The doors opened onto their hallway. The walk to their door was ten steps. Eli fumbled with the keys, his usual grace gone. Inside, the loft awaited, full of their history and their silence. He parked the stroller in the entryway, carefully unbuckling Micah, who stirred with a soft sigh.
“I’ll put him down,” Eli murmured, carrying him toward the nursery.
Simone stood alone in the living room. The afternoon light slanted across the framed vinyl records, across the couch that had seen everything. She could hear Eli’s low, rumbling voice through the cracked nursery door, singing that off-key lullaby he’d made up when Micah was a newborn. Her heart ached with a ferocity that stole her breath.
When he emerged, he closed the door quietly behind him. He leaned against it, running a hand over his face. The distance between them was only feet. It felt infinite.
“Simone,” he started.
She didn’t let him finish. She crossed the space, her steps silent on the wood floor. She didn’t embrace him. She didn’t kiss him. She simply walked into him, pressing her forehead against his collarbone, her hands coming to rest, open-palmed, on his chest. She felt his heartbeat, a frantic drum against her cheek.
He went completely still. Then, a tremor went through him. His arms came up, wrapping around her back, pulling her in tight. He buried his face in her unbraided hair. They stood there, locked together in the middle of the room, holding on as if the floor might vanish.
No words. Just the shaky syncopation of their breathing, the solid, terrified truth of their bodies aligned. The ice cream was sweet on their tongues. The night, and all the hard words it might hold, was still hours away. For this one, suspended moment, they were not okay. But they were here. And they were holding on.