After I left, He Regretted Everything

The Cold Side of the Bed

The alarm went off at six thirty and I was already awake.

I had been awake since four, lying on my side of the mattress with my eyes open and the city was buzzling with cars. I wasn’t thinking about anything specific. Just awake in that particular way, where sleep was something that happened to me briefly and then left before I was finished with it.

I reached across to Ethan's side without thinking.

Cold, sheets undisturbed and of course pillow untouched.

He had slept in the guest room again.

I lay there for a moment with my palm flat against the cold sheet and stared at the ceiling and did the thing I had trained myself to do, I did not make it mean something. I did not build a case out of it or add it to the list or let it sit in my chest and grow. I just noted it the way you note the weather, it gets cold today, might rain and eventually move on.

I got up as I always did, made the bed neat, automatic efficiency of a woman who had been making it alone long enough that the other side no longer felt like an absence. Just the normal side of the bed.

I told myself that every morning.

By six fifty I was in the kitchen.

I made coffee, strong, the way Ethan liked it, and set his cup on the counter and started on breakfast. Eggs, toast, the particular brand of orange juice Diana had decided last month was the only acceptable one and which had somehow become a permanent fixture in our refrigerator without anyone asking me. I moved around the kitchen quietly, not because I was trying to be quiet but because quiet had become the texture of my mornings. No music, no television. Just the sounds of the city waking up outside and the coffee brewing and my own footsteps on the kitchen tile.

Vanessa's door was still closed.

Her door was always closed in the mornings, which meant the mornings were the only part of the day that still felt like mine. Six thirty to eight, roughly. That window where the penthouse was just a penthouse and I was just a woman making breakfast in her own kitchen and nobody needed anything from me and nobody was watching and I could stand at the counter with my coffee and look out at the skyline and breathe.

I held onto those mornings more than I admitted to anyone.

Ethan appeared at seven fifteen. Already dressed, the charcoal suit, the white shirt, the cufflinks he always did up standing at the kitchen counter because he said he could never get them right in front of a mirror. I watched him from the corner of my eye, the way I had started watching him, the way you watch something you are trying to memorize and mourn at the same time.

The way his hand moved with focused, practiced certainty. The small crease between his brows when something didn't sit right. The particular way he tilted his jaw slightly when he was concentrating.

I used to kiss that jaw every morning.

I couldn't remember the last time I had.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning." He picked up his coffee without looking at me and checked his phone with his other hand.

I set his plate on the counter. Eggs, toast, the orange juice. Everything exactly as he liked it.

He ate standing up, scrolling through something on his phone, his coffee going cold beside him because it always went cold when he was reading something. His brow furrowed once, he typed something. His jaw tightened slightly at whatever the response was.

I ate my own breakfast at the table and watched the window.

"The Harmon signing is today," he said, not to me specifically. Just out loud, the way he sometimes processed things, like I was a convenient presence rather than a person he was choosing to speak to.

"I know. You mentioned it last week."

He looked up briefly. Something moved across his face, not guilt exactly, more like the mild surprise of a man who keeps forgetting the furniture can talk.

"Right." He looked back at his phone.

Vanessa emerged at seven forty in a silk robe with her hair loose and her face already composed in that effortless way she had, like she woke up ready. She moved to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup and leaned against the counter and looked at Ethan's plate.

"You didn't finish your eggs."

"Not hungry." He was still on his phone.

"You need to eat before the signing." She picked up his fork and pushed the eggs toward him with the easy authority of a woman who had decided she had the right. "Diana called this morning. She wants you to wear the navy suit, not the charcoal."

Ethan looked down at himself. "I'm already dressed."

"I know. I told her I'd mention it." She shrugged one shoulder and sipped her coffee.

He looked at his suit for a moment. Then he set his phone down and said "Give me ten minutes" and walked back toward the bedroom.

I sat at my table with my coffee and watched him go.

Vanessa refilled her cup. She moved to the window and looked out at the skyline with her robe trailing slightly behind her and her hair catching the morning light and she looked, standing there, exactly like the woman who lived here.

I picked up my plate and carried it to the sink.

"Leah." Her voice was pleasant. It was always pleasant. "Can you have the dry cleaning picked up today? Ethan has the charity dinner Thursday and his other suit needs to be ready."

I turned the tap on. "I'll arrange it."

"And Diana's coming for lunch on Thursday as well, so…"

"I'll handle it, Vanessa."

A pause. I felt her look at the back of my head.

"Of course," she said, pleasantly, and went back to her window.

I washed my plate and dried it and put it away and stood at the sink for a moment with my hands wrapped around the edge of the counter and looked at the drain and breathed in and breathed out and told myself what I always told myself.

It's fine. You're fine. This is just how things are right now.

Ethan came back in the navy suit. Vanessa looked up and smiled and said "Much better" and he straightened his jacket and picked up his phone and his keys and his coffee, still cold, still half full and headed for the elevator.

He paused at the kitchen doorway.

For one moment, one brief and almost unbearable moment, he looked at me. Really looked, the way he almost never did anymore, like something behind his eyes was trying to find something it half remembered losing.

My breath caught.

And then Vanessa said "Don't forget Adrian needs those files before noon" and Ethan looked away and the moment collapsed so fast it was almost like it hadn't happened.

Almost.

"Goodbye, Leah," he said, already moving.

The elevator doors closed.

I stood in the kitchen alone and listened to the silence he left behind and pressed my palm flat against my sternum and felt my own heartbeat there, steady and quiet and stubbornly, exhaustingly intact.

Vanessa

set her empty cup in the sink for me to wash.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't need to.