What We Said Over Spinach

The iPhone lit up on the counter, her third missed call this evening. I kept rinsing the spinach, watching the water swirl down the drain, carrying dirt and something else—patience, probably—away with it.

"He wants you back," I said, not turning around.

Silence stretched between us, thick and humid. The orange glow of sunset through the kitchen window made everything look like a memory already fading. She'd started playing padel twice a week, something about needing her own space, her own friends. I'd nodded, pretending not to notice how her phone lit up more during those evenings.

"I'm not going back," she said finally. "I'm just—thinking about things."

I dropped the spinach into the pan. It hissed and collapsed, surrendering instantly to heat. "Like us?"

"Especially us."

We'd been married eleven years. That's what happens. You become efficient. You know each other's coffee orders, which side of the bed is whose, how to navigate arguments without really touching the underneath of anything. Like swimming through water without getting wet.

I turned to face her. She was beautiful in that orange light, tired and angry and somehow more honest than she'd been in months. Her phone buzzed again—a message this time.

"Are you fucking him?" The question came out harder than I intended.

She didn't answer. She picked up her racquet bag by the door, the one with the padel club logo.

"That's answer enough," I said.

"I'm not," she said. "But I thought about it. I thought about it during every match this week. That's the problem."

The spinach burned. I turned off the stove and we stood there in the quiet kitchen, everything unsaid between us suddenly very loud, and I realized we'd been starving for years while sitting at a full table.