What the Router Knows

The ethernet cable lay severed across the living room carpet like a dead snake, its internal wires exposed to the indifferent afternoon light. Elena stared at it, half-empty wine glass sweating against her palm, while Mark stood across the room, his back turned.

"You cut the internet," she said, her voice flat. Not a question.

"I needed you to look at me."

His iPhone buzzed in his pocket—the third time in five minutes. Her eyes flickered to his hip, where the device's outline pressed against expensive denim. She knew who it was. The notifications had been coming more frequently lately, late at night when he thought she was asleep, when the glow of his screen illuminated a smile he hadn't worn for her in years.

"I'm looking at you, Mark. I'm looking at a man who hasn't fucked his wife in three months."

He turned then, and the wreckage between them felt suffocating. "She's just a friend from work."

"From the London office?" The spinach salad she'd prepared for dinner—wilted, forgotten on the counter—seemed suddenly pathetic. A gesture of care that had curdled into something sad. "That's quite a friendship for 3 AM video calls."

"You're paranoid. You always twist everything."

"Am I?" She set down the wine glass. "Or am I finally noticing what's been happening while I was busy being the perfect wife? Cooking dinners you don't eat. Maintaining a home you're never present in. While you pour your heart out to someone across an ocean."

The cable between them seemed to pulse with the absence of everything they'd lost. The router's lights blinked frantically in the corner—red, red, red. No connection found.

"I'm lonely," he said, and his voice cracked. The confession hung there, insufficient and devastating.

"So am I." She walked past him to the door. "The difference is, I've been lonely right here beside you."

The lock clicked shut behind her. In the silent apartment, his iPhone illuminated the darkness once again.