Not Even A Good Night

The sheets were still warm when Chriss pulled away.

Toria lay still, her heart racing, her fingers searching the mattress for his hand. They found only cooling cotton.

She stared at the ceiling, listening to the faint hum of the air conditioner. Her breathing was uneven, and her body felt strangely heavy. She had imagined this night differently. She had imagined tenderness, whispered words, perhaps even a kiss on her forehead afterward.

It was their eighteenth month of marriage. Surely, by now, she deserved something more than this.

He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her. She counted his breaths. Four. Five. She waited for him to turn. To say her name. To touch her hair, the way husbands did in the films she watched when the house was empty.

“Don’t move,” he said.

Not are you all right. Not stay.

“What?”

“Stay on your back. Knees up.” He checked his watch like a man leaving a meeting. “It improves the chances.”

The air left her lungs.

“The chances of what?” She knew. She needed him to say it.

“A son.” He pulled on his trousers. “I want a son, Toria. I’ve never hidden that.”

“You said it like I’m a field you’re planting.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look guilty.

She swallowed, trying to push down the humiliation crawling up her throat. She had spent months convincing herself that things would eventually become easier between them. That perhaps Chriss simply needed time. That once they had a child, something inside him might finally soften.

But listening to him now, she wondered whether he had ever considered what she wanted.

Something inside her went quiet. Not broken. Broken was loud, and she had done that in the bathroom with the tap running. This was a door closing from the inside.

“I want a divorce.”

Chriss stopped, his shirt half buttoned. Then he laughed. It was low and amused, and it hurt worse than a slap.

“You always mean it at night.” He sat beside her, close enough that she smelled his cologne and her own perfume on his skin. “Remember the girl who waited by the window when my car was late? Who ironed my shirts herself?”

“That girl was an idiot.”

“That girl adored me.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. The gentleness was the cruellest thing he had done all night. “She’ll be back by morning.”

Toria caught his wrist. Her hand was shaking, so she gripped harder. “Look at me. I’m not her anymore.”

For one heartbeat, something flickered across his face. She couldn’t name it and didn’t trust it. Then it smoothed away like a wrinkle from a tablecloth.

“You came into this marriage with a suitcase,” he said, “and a father who couldn’t wait to be rid of you.”

She flinched. He saw. He always saw, and he always pressed the bruise.

She hated that he knew exactly where to hurt her. He knew about the arguments with her father, the years of feeling unwanted, and how desperately she had wanted to build a home where she would never have to feel that way again.

Apparently, she had chosen the wrong man.

“And Lisa?” he added pleasantly. “Such a charming bookshop. The lease, the stock, the renovation last spring. Funny how much of it I paid for.”

Her blood turned to ice. “You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have to. I’d only have to stop. Money is quiet that way. No one shouts. It just stops arriving, and by Christmas, six years of your cousin’s dream is an empty room.”

“That’s not generosity,” Toria whispered. “It never was.”

She looked at him, searching for something. An apology. A sign that he understood how cruel his words were. Anything that might convince her that the man she had married was still somewhere beneath the coldness.

There was nothing.

At the door he paused, one hand on the frame. “Goodnight, wife.”

Click.

The sound of the door closing seemed louder than it should have been.

Toria remained where she was, staring at the empty space he had occupied only moments earlier.

She remembered Lisa last spring, a smear of yellow paint on her cheek, crying when the loan came through. You’re an angel, Lisa had said, hugging her so hard her ribs ached.

An angel. Or a leash.

She remembered how happy Lisa had been that day. How she had talked endlessly about expanding the shop, introducing new collections and finally having a place of her own. Toria had been happy for her too.

Now, even that happiness felt contaminated.

She pressed her face into the pillow and finally let it break, silently, so the house would never know.

Morning came as if nothing had happened.

Sunlight lay in neat squares across the breakfast table. The toast was cut into triangles. Chriss sat behind his newspaper, ankle on knee, a man with nothing on his conscience but the weather.

The housekeeper had prepared breakfast as usual. Everything was in its proper place. The silverware was polished, the curtains were drawn neatly, and the coffee smelled exactly as it always did.

Only Toria felt different.

She had imagined he might look different. Tired. Sorry. Something.

His tie was perfect. His hand didn’t shake.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Morning.” He didn’t look up.

Eighteen months, and a night that had taken her apart, and the whole of it was morning.

She lifted a piece of toast. Set it down. The jam glittered, red and indecent, in its little glass dish. Her phone buzzed against the table. Lisa: Sunday dinner?? Bring Chriss! Love you, angel x

Toria turned the phone face-down. Her wedding ring caught the light, and she twisted it, once, twice, like a tooth she wanted to pull.

She wondered how many times she had sat at this same table, waiting for him to finish breakfast so they could spend a few minutes together before he left.

How many times had she mistaken his presence for affection?

“You’ve eaten nothing,” Chriss said.

Her head snapped up. His eyes hadn’t left the page.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You weren’t yesterday. Or the day before.”

She stared at him. He turned a page.

He was never home for dinner. He barely looked at her across a room. Yet he had been counting her meals, silently, privately, and he had never once said so.

A crack in the wall. Tiny. And Toria hated herself for the way her heart leaned toward it.

Perhaps he did notice her after all. Perhaps there were things about her that he paid attention to, even when she wasn’t looking.

But she quickly pushed the thought away.

She was tired of searching for affection in the smallest things he did.

She stood. “I won’t be home today.”

The newspaper lowered an inch. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Toria.”

She kept walking. In the driveway she switched off her phone and watched the screen go black, and a small, wicked thrill ran through her, like stepping off a ledge she had stood on for years.

For once, she wasn’t waiting for him to decide whether she could leave.

She wasn’t waiting for permission to breathe, either.

The front door opened behind her.

“Midnight,” Chriss said. His voice was perfectly calm. “Be home by midnight.”

She didn’t turn around. “And if I’m not?”

He didn’t answer.

That was the part that frightened her.