The Green Between My Teeth

The hotel pool shimmered like liquid turquoise, but Marcus hadn't looked up from his iPhone in twenty minutes. I watched his reflection in the water—two versions of my husband, neither one present. The real one sat in a lounge chair beside me, scrolling through emails with that practiced intensity he'd developed since his promotion. The reflected one rippled and distorted, barely recognizable.

"You have something," he said finally, not meeting my eyes.

"What?"

"Spinach. Between your teeth. From lunch."

I ran my tongue along my front teeth, felt the stubborn green wedge. He'd noticed. He was paying attention, just not to anything that mattered. I excused myself to the restroom, leaving my phone on the towel beside his.

When I returned, his iPhone had lit up with a notification. Not work. A message from someone named "A" that read: "Did she see anything?"

I should have asked him right then. Instead, I waited until midnight, when his breathing settled into that familiar rhythm. His phone unlocked with my thumbprint—we'd shared everything once. The messages went back six months. Photos of me at home, at work, at this very pool yesterday. Notes about my "patterns," my "suspicions," my "threat level."

Marcus wasn't having an affair. He was worse than unfaithful. He was my husband, and he'd been hired to spy on me by my own company's competitor.

The spinach in my teeth. He'd noticed. He was always watching, just never loving.

I slipped the phone back on the nightstand. Outside our room, the pool glowed in the darkness. Tomorrow I'd play the part he expected. Tomorrow I'd let him think his cover was intact. But first, I needed to understand exactly how much he'd sold me for.