The Armor We Choose

The dinner party had been going wrong before it even began. Maya smoothed the fabric of her wide-brimmed hat, already regretting her choice to wear it indoors. But the hat was her armor lately—a barrier between herself and the world, between the woman she was and the woman everyone expected her to be.

"You're not eating your spinach, darling," Marcus said from across the table, his voice honeyed with false concern. "I made it just how you like it."

The spinach sat on her plate, wilted and glistening with garlic butter. It was exactly how she liked it, which was the problem. Marcus remembered everything, even the details he claimed meant nothing. He remembered her order at their favorite restaurant, her mother's birthday, the name of her childhood dog. He remembered it all except the most important thing: she had asked him for space three months ago.

"I'm not very hungry," Maya said quietly.

"Oh, come now." Sarah—Marcus's oldest friend, the one who had introduced them, the one who now looked at Maya with eyes full of pity and something else, something sharper—reached across the table to squeeze Maya's hand. "You must eat something. You're looking so thin lately."

The spinach caught in Maya's throat like emotion. She wanted to scream that she wasn't thin, she was empty. That the person she'd been when she met Marcus had been slowly hollowed out by his careful, calculated love. His suffocating affection. His refusal to hear the word no.

"Actually," Maya said, setting down her fork with a clatter that silenced the table, "I need some air."

She didn't wait for a response. She grabbed her hat from the side table—her ridiculous, dramatic, wonderful hat—and pulled it low over her eyes. As she walked out the door, leaving Marcus stunned, leaving Sarah's uncomfortable friendship behind, Maya finally felt she could breathe again.

The spinach would be there tomorrow, and the day after. Marcus would be there too, with his careful love and his excellent memory. But maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't be.