Too Late to Want Me Now

After preparing dinner to suit Randy Johnson's tastes, I went to the bathroom to run his bath in advance.

That evening, he returned home two hours later than usual.

I stepped forward to greet him, took his suit jacket, and crouched down to set his slippers neatly at his feet.

"Dinner first, or a bath?" I asked.

Without lifting his gaze from his phone, he replied, "Bath."

So I went back to the bathroom, drained the water, and refilled it, adjusting the temperature to exactly how he liked it.

By the time Randy emerged from the bathroom in his pajamas, I had reheated the food.

Everything was in order, everything perfectly timed—because I had done these things countless times over the past five years.

He was long accustomed to my care.

Lately, his mood had been unusually good. He kept staring at his phone, a faintly suggestive smile tugging at his lips from time to time.

In five years of marriage, I had never seen him smile like that.

As I passed by, my eyes caught the pinned contact at the top of his screen: Jeanne Moss.

I looked away, but my heart understood.

Jeanne was his childhood sweetheart. Randy had liked her since they were young, but she had wanted to take things slowly. So he guarded his feelings for her all those years.

When he finally gathered the courage to confess, Jeanne had abruptly married another man in a whirlwind wedding and moved overseas.

After that, he drowned himself in alcohol day after day, wasting away like a fallen prodigy.

I was once a poor student sponsored by the Johnson family. When I visited to express my gratitude, Randy's mother said to me, "If you truly wish to repay us, do me a favor."

She wanted me to help Randy move past his heartbreak.

From that day on, everyone in our circle knew that there was a woman by Randy's side who loved him to her very bones.

I made it my mission to learn his every preference, to weave myself into his life.

As a child, he had dreamed of watching the sunset with his family, but his parents had been too busy with work, leaving him with that unfulfilled wish.

When I learned of it, I spent half a year searching for the perfect spot to admire the sunset and waited for him all night atop a mountain.

In the end, the sun sank and slowly disappeared. Night finally fell, yet the space beside me remained empty.

Still, I didn't give up.

Once, aboard a cruise, he made a bet with his friends: whoever brought a date who could finish all the alcohol on the table would be awarded a brand-new company project.

The table was piled high with strong liquor. For a moment, no woman dared speak.

But I knew Randy had been working nonstop for days on that very project. Without hesitation, I stepped forward and began drinking, glass after glass.

I had a mild alcohol allergy, and as the burning liquor slid down my throat, red blotches bloomed across my skin. The suffocating tightness in my chest grew worse, and just before my consciousness slipped away, I forced down the final drop.

That night, for the first time, Randy lost his composure for me.

His face, usually cold and aloof, was shadowed with fear. As he held me tightly, I could feel his body trembling.