The car ride home was quiet.
Not the comfortable kind of quiet. The kind that has weight to it. The kind where two people are both thinking loudly and neither one is willing to be the first to speak because speaking means acknowledging that something happened back there that neither of them has fully processed yet.
Damien sat on his side of the car and looked out the window.
I sat on my side and looked straight ahead.
The city moved past us in lights and shadows. People on pavements living ordinary lives that had nothing to do with fake marriages and locked floors and women in pale dresses who smiled like a warning. I watched them and felt something I did not expect to feel.
Envy. Simple and quiet and honest.
Not for their money or their ease. Just for the straightforwardness of it.
