Second Choice: Wife By Contract

Chapter 6

I answer him first.

I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s easier. Maybe because pretending everything is normal feels safer than opening something I won’t know how to close.

I’ll be late, he texts. Work ran long.

Late still means later. Later still means something, right?

Okay, I reply. One word. Neutral. Calm. I hate how practiced I am at sounding fine.

I put the phone down and immediately pick it back up.

Celeste is still there. Waiting. I can feel it. Like a presence in the room even though she’s nowhere near me.

I pace. Kitchen to window. Window to couch. My fingers feel restless. My chest feels too tight for the amount of air in the apartment.

I type to her.

“What do you want to talk about?”

The reply comes slower this time. Thoughtful.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says. “I just don’t want to be confused anymore.”

That makes two of us.

I sit on the edge of the couch. Press my toes into the rug. Ground myself. My hands are shaking and I don’t know when that started.

“You left him,” I type before I can soften it.

There’s a pause. Longer than before.

“Yes,” she admits. “I did.”

No excuses. No defense. Just the truth, laid down neatly.

“And now you’re back,” I add.

“I didn’t come back for him,” she writes. “At least… not intentionally.”

I scoff. A small sound, ugly and disbelieving.

“Then why are you texting his wife?” I ask.

Another pause.

“Because he still looks at me like I never left.”

That one lands.

Hard.

I picture him. The way his face changes when he’s caught off guard. The way his voice softens when he’s not trying to be in control. I wonder if that’s the version she gets. The one I only see in fragments.

My throat burns.

“He’s married,” I write. “To me.”

“I know,” she replies. “And I respect that. I truly do.”

But then she adds, after a beat,

“I just didn’t realize how much space I still occupied.”

There it is again. That gentle assertion. Not cruel. Just confident. Like someone stating a fact they’re very comfortable with.

I don’t respond right away.

I think about last night. His arm around me. The way he slept so easily beside me. The way he said he’d see me later, like it was already decided.

I think about how none of that protected me from this moment.

My phone buzzes again.

From him.

I might stay out tonight, he says. Don’t wait up.

Something inside me goes very still.

Don’t wait up.

I stare at the words until they feel unreal. Like they belong to someone else’s life. Someone else’s marriage.

I want to ask where he’ll be.

I want to ask who he’ll be with.

I want to ask why he can be gentle with me at night and disappear so easily in the day.

I don’t ask anything.

Instead, I look back at Celeste’s last message.

“I’m not asking you to leave him,” she had added. “I just needed you to know.”

To know what?

That I’m second?

That I was never the first choice?

That love can exist in pieces and still ruin you?

I type slowly, carefully.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do with this.”

Her reply is almost immediate.

“Neither do I.”

I set the phone down.

The apartment feels too quiet. Too big. Like it’s echoing with things I haven’t said yet. I curl up on the couch and pull my knees to my chest. My heart feels bruised. Tender. Alive in a way I don’t want.

I tell myself I’ll be okay.

I tell myself I’m strong.

I tell myself this is just confusion and it will pass.

But somewhere deep down, a truth is forming. Quiet. Unavoidable.

Whatever this is…

it’s no longer just mine to endure quietly.

And I don’t know how much longer I can pretend I don’t feel myself slipping out of the center of his life…

even while I’m still wearing his name.