What We Don't Say

The spinach stuck between Marcus's teeth had been there for twenty minutes. Elena watched it as he explained why he needed to stay late at the office again—something about the Henderson account and how if he didn't close the deal by Friday, the whole quarter would be a disaster. She nodded, swirling her wine, the red liquid catching the light from the chandelier above them like trapped lightning.

She should tell him. A wife tells her husband when he has food in his teeth. But lately, every small thing felt like a test she was failing, or maybe a test she was refusing to take.

"You're not listening," Marcus said, his palm slapping gently against the table. The sound was so domestic, so familiar, it made something in her chest hollow out.

"I am," she lied.

He reached across the table, his fingers brushing against a loose strand of her hair. He used to push it behind her ear with such tenderness she would melt. Now the gesture felt rehearsed, like something he'd read in a manual: How To Be Present In Your Marriage, Step Seven.

"Your hair's getting longer," he said. "I like it."

"Thanks."

"You know, we could go away. After the Henderson deal. Just a weekend. Maybe that place in Palm Springs?"

She almost laughed. Palm Springs—where they'd gone for their anniversary two years ago, where they'd drank too much expensive tequila and made promises on a hotel balcony at 3 AM about the kind of people they'd be, the life they'd build. They hadn't been back since.

"Maybe," she said.

The spinach was still there. A tiny green flag of surrender.

She realized then that she wasn't going to tell him. Not about the spinach, not about how she'd been applying to graduate programs on the other coast, not about how she sometimes lay in bed beside him and wondered if they'd already had their best years, if this was just what happened next: dinners with spinach in teeth and conversations that circled the same exhausted territory.

"Elena?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you thinking about?"

She looked at him—really looked at him. The lines fanning from his eyes, the gray at his temples that he stopped dyeing six months ago, the hopeful wariness in his expression like he knew something was wrong but couldn't name it.

"Nothing," she said, and reached for her wine. "Just tired."