Relapse
937 Words
Hale did not notice the first day he tried to call her.
His thumb had dialed her number before thought could interfere.
He lifted the phone to his ear but it did not ring.
“The number you are trying to reach is unavailable.” A familiar sentence he was getting tired of hearing.
He frowned, ended the call, and dialed again.
Unavailable.
Again.
Unavailable.
By the fourth attempt, something unfamiliar crept in.
His chest tightened, he thought he had fallen out of love with her, so why was her absence bringing him discomfort.
“She probably changed networks,” he muttered to himself, tossing the phone onto his desk as though it were the device that had failed him.
But the silence that followed did not feel technical.
It felt deliberate.
*********
Hale’s office sat on the thirty-second floor, wrapped in glass and steel, overlooking a city that bent itself around money. Everything about his life was curated — the imported marble, the tailored suits, the quiet efficiency of assistants who anticipated his needs before he spoke.
He had built his world on precision.
Yet now, sitting behind a desk worth more than the apartment Star had once lived in before they married, he could not reach his own wife.
The word landed with an unexpected weight.
That evening, he returned to the house earlier than usual.
He told himself it was because he had no meetings.
Not because he didn’t want to sit alone in that towering office anymore.
The gate opened automatically. The driveway lights flickered on. The house welcomed him with its usual perfection.
And still, it felt hollow.
He walked into the kitchen.
There was food prepared by the staff. Perfectly plated yet tasteless.
Star cooked his meals everyday, not because they couldn’t afford chefs, but because she said it made a place feel lived in.
At the time, he had barely noticed.
Now he stared at the untouched meal and thought:
Why does this feel like a hotel?
He tried calling again.
Unavailable.
He opened his messages.
No replies.
No forwarding address.
Nothing.
She had not fought him. Had not demanded anything. Had not even taken more than what she arrived with.
It was as if she had erased herself.
And that… unsettled him far more than anger would have.
“You look tired,” his mother observed the next afternoon.
Their family home was less a house and more an estate — sprawling lawns, quiet fountains, walls lined with art collected for prestige rather than love.
Hale sat across from his parents at a table that could seat twenty.
He remembered, suddenly, how small Star used to look here.
How carefully she held her teacup.
How politely she answered questions designed less to know her and more to measure her.
At the time, he had assumed she would adapt.
“She left,” Hale said, surprising even himself.
His father barely looked up from the financial paper. “You signed the divorce, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then it’s settled,” the older man replied. “These emotional entanglements are distractions. You should be relieved, after all that's what you wanted.”
“Relieved?” Hale said, letting out a wry smile.
Hale let the word echo in his head.
Is this relief?
Because what he felt when he walked into that empty house was not freedom.
It was absence.
Meanwhile, Alice had begun appearing more frequently.
Too frequently.
She arrived unannounced. Rearranged things. Tried to occupy spaces Star once held, as though replacing furniture.
“I thought you shouldn’t stay alone,” she said one night, already pouring herself wine. “You need someone who understands you.”
Hale barely responded.
Alice moved closer, lowering her voice. “We’ve always made sense, haven’t we? More than you and her ever did.”
He looked at her then.
And for the first time, he noticed the effort.
Her calculated softness and her rehearsed intimacy.
The way she watched his reactions instead of feeling anything.
It exhausted him.
For the first time, he realized Star was different from every other woman he had dated.
“I need space Alice.”
The words were calm and final.
But Alice did not retreat.
“You’re just adjusting,” she insisted, reaching for him. “You’ll see that she was holding you back. You belong with someone in your world.”
The phrase struck him unexpectedly.
Because Star had never belonged to this world.
Not the wealth.
Not the expectations.
Not the quiet competitions disguised as family dinners.
And yet…She had stayed.
That night, Hale sat alone in the living room long after Alice left, her frustration barely concealed.
He stared at the space where Star once curled up reading, legs tucked beneath her, completely unimpressed by the luxury around her.
She had lived simply in a life that was anything but simple.
And he had mistaken that simplicity for lack of worth.
He picked up his phone again.
Dialed again.
Unavailable.
“What is the f**k is your problem star?” He muttered under his breath.
Hale leaned back, covering his eyes with his hand.
For the first time in years, there was no solution he could buy.
No connection he could leverage.
No assistant who could “handle it.”
There was only a woman who had quietly walked away, a woman he had shown love and broken the love himself…
His thoughts, once so sharp and transactional, now circled a single, unfamiliar question:
When did she stop needing me?
The house did not answer, It only echoed.
- Writer
