Harsh reality.

Clara's POV 

I slept in my guest room, I had stood outside our bedroom door for a long time after I came in from the bar last night, my hand on the handle, and simply could not make myself open it. 

So I turned around, walked down the hall, and curled up on the narrow guest bed still in my clothes, and spent the night thinking about Cameron. The glint in his eyes while I spoke about what I loved doing, he never for once interrupted me but even encouraged me to open up. He looked at me with so much concern when I couldn't even remember a day I did something that made me happy.

Then he walked me to my car and called me beautiful, I can't remember the last time anyone ever referred to me as that.

It was heavenly.

I got up, went downstairs and started the coffee maker.

I was standing at the kitchen counter watching the coffee drip, both hands wrapped around an empty mug for warmth, when I heard the front door.

Joe looked like he'd slept on a plane, slightly rumpled and disheveled.

"Where the hell were you last night?"

I turned back to the coffee maker.

"Clara." His voice sharpened. "I'm talking to you. I come home and my wife isn't in the house, it's midnight, nearly one in the morning, where the fuck were you? You're a married woman. You don't just disappear."

The coffee finished brewing. I poured a cup, added nothing to it and took a slow sip.

"Clara."

I heard the sound of his footsteps across the marble. Then his hand, closing hard around my wrist, yanking me around to face him with a force that sloshed coffee over the rim of the mug.

"You fucking look at me when I'm talking to you."

I looked at him.

"Let go of my wrist, Joe."

"I asked you a question…."

"Let go."

Something in my voice made him release me. He stepped back, crossed his arms. 

I set the mug down before I was tempted to throw the hot liquid on his stupid face.

"I was out," I said. "With Emma. Joe, I came home yesterday evening and walked into our bedroom and found you…." My voice cracked on the word. I pressed through it. "Found you with a woman, bent over my dresser, while I stood in the doorway."

"Clara…."

"Don't." The word came out louder than I intended and I didn't apologize for it. "Don't you dare Clara me right now. Don't do the voice. I stood there, Joe. I watched you. I watched you touch her and…" The tears came then, hot and sudden and humiliating, and I hated them, hated that he got to see them. "In our house. In our bedroom. While I…."

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth.

Joe sighed. "You're being emotional," he said.

"I am being…." I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "Yes, Joe, I am being emotional. My husband brought a woman into our bed and I am being emotional about it…"

"It wasn't our bed, it was…"

"It was our bedroom!" The shout tore out of me and I let it. "It was my dresser and my mirror and my house and I am your wife…"

"Yes." He said it flatly and coldly. Like a correction. "You are my wife. And do you want to know why?" He tilted his head. "Because my parents pressured me into it. Because it was the right optics at the right time. Because you were there and you were grateful and it was convenient."

The kitchen went very quiet.

I stared at him.

"You think on a normal day…" he continued, his voice smooth now, almost conversational, and somehow that was worse than the shouting "on any given day, if I met you somewhere, I would choose you? A woman with no family, no connections, no…" He made a gesture with his hand, an elegant, dismissive wave. "I found you with nothing. I gave you everything, this house, this beautiful life. I polished you up from nothing, Clara, and put you in rooms you had no business being in, and you stand there looking at me like I owe you something?"

I couldn't speak. My mouth was open and no sound was coming out.

"You should be grateful," he said simply. "Instead you're crying in my kitchen."

The tears were still coming. I couldn't stop them and I hated myself for it. I hated that he was watching them fall and feeling nothing, hated that some diminished, conditioned part of me still wanted him to take it back, to say he didn't mean it, to be the man I had invented him as when I was twenty-two and raw with grief and desperate for something solid to hold onto.

"In fact, you know what, I want a divorce." The words came out barely above a whisper.

Joe looked at me for a long moment, then he smiled. It did not reach his eyes.

"Joe…"

The room tilted slightly.

"You can't….." I started.

"I can do whatever I like." He picked up his bag from the counter where he'd set it. "I pay for everything in this house. Everything you wear, everything you eat, the car in the driveway. You have nothing that isn't mine. Remember that."

I found my voice somewhere underneath the wreckage.

"What did I do?" It came out broken and small and I wished it hadn't. "Joe…what did I do? What did I ever do to deserve this? Four years. I gave you four years of…."

"You want a list?" He turned at the kitchen door and looked me over, slowly, deliberately, the way you appraise something and find it wanting.

 "You're not sexy, Clara. You never have been. You walk around in this house and I feel like punching you. You think I wanted that?" He shook his head. "I like my women with curves and ass. My girls have what you don't, they know how to move, how to dress, how to work a room. You…" another sweep of his gaze…. "you don't have the body, you don't have the presence, and you don't even know how to fuck. Four years and you never once made me feel anything worth staying for. You're just boring, Clara, you're passionless. A man like me needs more than what you offer."

Every word landed like a slap to my face.

“This is something I should have done ever since but I think now is the time. My lawyer will contact you.” he finished and walked out of the house.

I don't know how long I stood in the kitchen because the coffee in my hands turned cold and I couldn't even feel anything at all.

My phone buzzed on the counter above my head.

I reached up and pulled it down without looking, expecting Emma, Emma always knew, somehow, when to call me and looked at the screen.

It was not Emma.

The message was from a number I had saved last night with no forethought whatsoever, sitting in that parking lot with my forehead on the steering wheel.

Cameron Tucker.

I opened it.

Good morning, beautiful. I have a session with some 4th graders this afternoon, teaching them the basics, mostly chaos, entirely entertaining. I'd love it if you came and watched. Just thought you could use something that makes you smile today.

I read it twice, then I read it a third time.

I was still standing in the kitchen. My eyes were swollen. I was in yesterday's clothes. Joe's words were still sitting in the room like furniture, heavy, ugly, arranged to make me feel small.

I looked at Cameron's message.

Just thought you could use something that makes you smile today.

I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough for the morning light to shift through the kitchen window, gold and unhurried, falling across the floor in a stripe of warmth.

Then I typed back:

What time?

His reply came in under a minute.

Three o'clock. I'll send you the address. And Clara, wear something comfortable. 

I looked at that message for a long time.

Then, for the first time since I had walked through my own front door and heard my husband's pleasure filling the hallway, I smiled.

It was small. It was fragile. It cost me something.

But it was mine.