Blue Light at 3 AM
The iPhone screen glowed like a dying star in the darkness of their bedroom. Sarah watched David's chest rise and fall, his breathing deep and rhythmic, while her thumb hovered over the message that had arrived two minutes ago: "You up?"
She knew who it was. Emma from accounting — the one with the perfect hair that always smelled of coconut shampoo, the one David had mentioned three times in the past week, twice too many. Sarah's own hair was thinning at the temples, silver threads she'd stopped bothering to pluck because what was the point? At forty-two, she'd earned every gray strand.
The phone buzzed again. "Miss you."
Sarah slid out from beneath the duvet, her bare feet silent on the hardwood floor. In the kitchen, she loaded the blender with spinach, kale, almond milk, protein powder. The machine roared to life, drowning out the thoughts she didn't want to think. How David had started going to the gym three months ago. How he'd stopped texting her during lunch breaks. How he'd come home last Friday smelling of coconut.
She drank the green sludge standing at the counter, staring at her reflection in the darkened window. The spinach tasted like bitterness, like the truth she'd been swallowing for months.
Back in the bedroom, David stirred. "Everything okay?" he mumbled, eyes half-open.
"Fine," she said. "Just needed some water."
He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. "You smell good," he murmured, his breath warm against her neck. "Like home."
She almost believed him. Then his iPhone lit up again on the nightstand, and she watched his hand move to silence it before she could see the screen.
"Go to sleep," she said, turning away.
In the morning, she packed a bag. David found the note on the kitchen counter beside the half-empty bag of wilted spinach: "I'm not your second choice anymore."
He called eleven times that day. She let every call go to voicemail, watching her hair in the rearview mirror as she drove away, catching the light, turning it into something silver and new.