My Perfect Marriage

Chapter22

"What's going on with you two lately? It feels like the frosty atmosphere between you is more glacier than normal, and neither of you is speaking up about it." Johnny prods Sophia in the back of the head as he passes behind her at the breakfast table. Being his usual annoying self. She tenses up, but acts flippant, not ready to share anything with him yet. If Johnny knows, he will make everything worse, and she needs to get a handle on what she's going to do when she knows for sure. She doesn't even know what to do.

"Nothing. You know how it is when we get into the new financial year. So much more stress for a few weeks. It'll pass." Sophia brushes it off and focuses on pushing oatmeal into her mouth despite her zero appetite and can barely swallow it. She's in jogging clothes as it's her day off, and her routine is an early morning workout, followed by breakfast and then a run. She's trying to stay as normal as possible to keep up appearances.

"Hmmm. Plans today?" Johnny slumps down beside her and pulls over the orange juice jug. He's still in pj's and probably going to do what he always does on a rare day off. Vegetate and stay indoors. Catch up on anime and play video games. Sometimes Sophia forgets he's only a year younger than her as he seems about ten, and she wonders if he's immature for his age or if she was forced to mature way more than twenty-six.

"A run; I might be a while as I haven't done it for a few days." Sophia doesn't want to admit that she has a meeting with the PI she hired two weeks ago, and she's sick to her stomach to look over his findings. He told her he would take a couple of weeks to stake out Leon and Miss White, and today's the day they arranged to meet at the park. She couldn't face updates daily, so she's been biding her time and praying she's wrong.

She buried her head in the sand and tried not to dig so that she could get through day to day. She tried to avoid Leon while all this was up in the air, and she thinks Leon has been avoiding her too. At work, he's polite and amicable and distant, and they dodge one another unless they have to interact. He's not made significant changes to his schedule, and these past two weeks, Sophia's started to feel guilty and backtrack that maybe she did blow it all out of proportion, and it was all in her head. She's not seen anything else to prove it either way. She keeps yoyoing between suspicion and feeling stupid, and that woman has never shown face again.

"And Leon? He left already?" Johnny picks up some oatmeal by scooping his finger in her bowl, taking a giant spoonful, and Sophia slaps his hand for being disgusting.

"He said he was going to the office today. I hope you washed your hands?" Sophia chastises him and then pushes her entire bowl his way as she can never eat food someone else has touched. He knows it too and grins at stealing her ready-made breakfast, which saves him from making his own.

"You're such a child!" Sophia lightly slaps him on top of his head and gets up to make herself another bowl. Tutting at his antics and gets a cheeky grin and wink in response that makes her mock scowl at him.

"Morning. Why are you eating in here and not in the dining room? Where's Rain? Why is she not preparing breakfast?" Their mother glides in, already dressed and polished with complete make-up and outfit for the day. She is looking ready to take on the world. She smells like cognac, and Sophia tries to ignore it.

"It's her birthday weekend; we always give her that time off." Sophia reminds her and says nothing when their mother's face pinches, and she frowns in irritation. To her, house staff are not humans, just mere tools to make their existence easier.

"Didn't you hire me a stand-in then?" She pouts, hating that she should fend for herself for an entire two days despite the fact they also have a housekeeper who can cook. Sophia says nothing, knowing she just wants to complain. This is what she does to fill up her day.

"I'm heading out. I'll be back after my run." Sophia abandons her bowl of dry oatmeal, leaving it on the counter, knowing she should escape before it's too late. Their mother can be a needy child sometimes and expects Sophia to give her constant attention when she's not at work. Sophia has no energy for her today. Her brain is full of this meeting and Leon.

"One who goes to work to avoid me, and one who goes jogging. It makes me wonder why I put so much energy into raising you two. At least Johnny will stay home and keep me company on his day off." She sulks, and Sophia dutifully walks over and kisses her on the cheek before turning and grabbing her water bottle. Not guilty about abandoning her, as she monopolizes Sophia's time as much as she can as it is.

"You know that's not true. I'll be back this afternoon, and I'll take you for dinner somewhere nice. Somewhere you can get dressed up for." Sophia panders to her, knowing that will appease her bad mood, and leaves before she gets roped into any more conversations and loses her courage.

After pulling on her trainers, Sophia quickly exits and heads out for a jog because she deliberately made the meeting point a couple of miles from home if Johnny decided to follow her. She knew she couldn't make an excuse if he wanted to come, so this was her plan. Sometimes he runs with her but has the athletic ability of a toddler and drops off after a mile to walk home alone. It also means she can run off the stress, anxiety, and nerves that are already coursing through her and face this with more courage than she possesses this morning.

She puts on her headphones, blares her music loudly, and puts her all into her run. She needs it to get her thoughts in order and feels sick as she does so. She keeps thinking about how Leon's been these past two weeks since their fight in his office, and it leaves her so confused. Neither of them has spoken directly to the other, and at home, he comes in late like always and goes before she wakes up, like always. It made her realize how little of their lives they spend in one another's company, that she can't even keep tabs on him or notice a difference in his routine, let alone get close enough to figure out if he smells of another woman. Nothing seems amiss between them, and they have carried on as before.

Sophia's asked herself why she's doing this to herself a million times. Why does she need to know? The answer is unclear. They don't have the kind of relationship that warrants her to go this far, yet she has to do this for her own sanity. She needs to know. Even though he's not hers, and they don't have any intimacy, it still feels like a betrayal to her.

She's only been able to survive this long in this way because, deep down, a part of her held onto hope that one day his warmth would come back, and they would move past things. She clung to the maybe that he loves her deep down, and once the storms settled, he would figure it out. That perhaps he cared enough in his heart to never look to another woman for physical needs while she was still there in his life.

It hit her so hard that day after seeing them and how deluded she had been and that she was living her life in a fantasy bubble. Holding on to 'one day' and figuring that if she stayed, worked hard, did everything that was expected of her, he might realize he needed her presence after all. That he was dependent on her in the way she is of him.

Sophia gets so lost in her head that she reaches the meeting place before she even notices her surroundings. She is so used to running this route that she does it absentmindedly. It's becoming a bad habit lately, walking through her life robotically and blankly and not knowing how she got there. She feels like she's been zooming out more lately, and it's linked to how much stress she's under.