Found the Truth in Her Phone—And Walked Away Before Sunrise

0:00At the UPS store, re-insure your small viz stand out with a variety of high-quality paper stock options, banners, posters for stores and more. Most locations are in different leo, product services pricing and hours of operation may vary. See center for details, the UPS store. Be unstoppable, come into your local store today and get your print on. Hello, I'm welcome to cheating all the time. Glad you are here. Let's get into this next crazy cheat. It's the loft of that Gatsme first. Light, easy, the kind of unguarded sound that floats up and out from someone's chest when they don't know they're being watched. I stand just outside the kiln room at the back of the community center, one hand on the push bar door, feeling like an intruder in my own weekend. Sunlight from the high gym windows brightens the main room, but back here, it's caused the pottery wheels are cleaned, the glazed jaws stacked, just the hum of the building's ventilation and the bubble of voices behind the closed kiln room door. 10 minutes ago, Priya told me to go warm up the car. She said she needed a few minutes to center herself, a phrase that's become her new airy catch-all up there with just being present and aminding my head.

1:02I tried not to let it prickle. After all, we've been doing these classes together every Saturday for six months, partner stodger for collars days, part effort at keeping things stitched. I was the only one packing up fast today, picking up the abandoned water bottles and putting away rolling pins while Priya hung back, her hands moving slower than usual as she washed at the sponges at the sinks. She'd looked over her shoulder at me smiling, but it was practiced. The car is idling out front. In a time it takes to pick it up and circle around, I killed ten minutes thumbing through the radio news, not really listening. When I walked back in, foot steps echoing off the linoleum floor, I hear her laugh, then a muffled voice in a hush as if someone's just pressed the poles on their mood. The kiln room door is mostly closed, I think for a second about pushing it open, but I just wait. The door swings in. Priya steps out. A cheeks are high with color, her dark hair escaping its clip sure is cute at the shoulder. For a split second, she doesn't see me. There you are, I say folding my arms half a smile on my face that feels tight. She blinks then grins too big, pulling her toe back up.

2:02Well, sorry, I just lost track of time we were talking about. Ah, new glazes with Janet, she says. Sound of like a fun conversation. She just breezes past, brushing a clump of hair away from her face. It's nothing I can be just get home, I'm starving. When I glance back, someone saw a truer hand, I think the new guy sluts from the kiln room to the back all the way. I make a little note of it, not willing to admit to myself why. On the drive home, Priya hums along with the radio, acting perfectly normal. But once you notice the seam in something, every song lyric and red stoplight starts to chave. Before Saturday's meant togetherness, her leg tapping in time, her hand dropping over to rest on my knee, laughter softened inside her car. Today she taps out messages on her foam between the gear shifts. She offers nothing up for conversation, just boi's a silence with the tired wasn't class busy today and a weather update. Days blur but certain moments stick with me. Wednesday morning, she stands by the kitchen window, mug clutched in both hands, the lemon in her tea-steeping so long the water has come brown. I ask what's up, and she says, just thinking about what to do for my next pottery piece maybe

3:04something in that deep turquoise we saw Janet use. I don't tell her the class hasn't ordered new clay yet. A memory floats up while I wash our mugs, easy days. On our fifth anniversary, we bike down to the river park before sunrise, thermoses in hand, shivering in the wind, laughing at the ducks. I leaned on her shoulder, her hair tickling my face, and we shout homemade muffins, feeling like the world was a treasure built for two. Saturday pottery grew out of that habit the urge to carve out circle, a weekly ritual and stained by work email or life's exhausting details. We text through the day when we are part. We have dumb in jokes like a code word porcupine for passive aggressive co-workers and a standing schedule to attack the Sunday crossword together side by side in the living room floor. Ten years together each season pressing its mark. Prey always used to finish her pieces early, pushing for us to walk home hand in hand. She teased me for shaping the same mug every week, claim I was sculpturally risk-averse. On holidays we made mugs for everyone her parents, my sister, and between us it was understood nothing to hide, nothing to keep separate. But that Saturday after the class of my mind caught on

4:07that barely shut Kilmer room door the easy comfort starts bending. Tiny things accumulate. Prey lingers after class more, offers to help the instructor pack up even when everyone else is long gone. I find myself standing in the silent car, watching stray watercolour streaks on her jeans, noticing her quick phone glances, have had an upturn of her lips. Once I ask who she's texting. This mirror, just about arranging the next volunteer meeting, she says sliding her phone away so quickly the screen shows nothing but her lot back around her and me, back at holy last spring. Callus mirrored on her faces, arms wrapped so tight you think no one could wage between us. The more I ask the stiffer she gets. When I bring up pottery asking whether she's tried that spiral bottle technique Janet likes, or if the new glazes have arrived she answers in fragments distracted. Maybe not sure, I think it's being ordered, she says quickly gazed drifting to her notifications. One week she comes home wearing a loose white button up with streaks of color turquoise mostly and a dust humor in a long one sleeve. I almost let it pass, but the color is too bold. Did they finally break out those new color clays? I ask scrubbing my own hands at the kitchen sink.

5:11She looks away, brow creasing. No, I was just experimenting on my own, she mutters, tucking her sleeve down almost too quickly. With turquoise I thought it was all off tones left. She freezes, then snaps. You don't have to keep fact checking me every second, okay, it's just clay. Her voice, sudden and sharp, bridges the gap between us in the worst way. We've finished even quietly, has scrolling through her phone on the other corner of the couch, fingers moving fast. Other patterns shift. She starts driving her own car to class, claiming traffic court errands as excuses. I just need to decompress after some time of being in a crowd all morning leaves me cranky, she tells me, already half out the door. After class, she waves me off, saying, go on ahead, I'll catch up, errorly, phone already unlocked in her hand. She adds a pasco to her phone, a tiny change that lands like a weight in my chest. I couldn't say exactly how I know the code just noticed the numbers once, out of the corner of my eye, when she ordered take up. Around the time the starts, the cuddling in bed slows. She's gentle, always polite, but there's a coolness to the way she pats my hand or kisses my

6:11cheek goodnight. She started making new playlists on Spotify at least three in the last month, all full of indie music and Hindi love ballads I've never heard her mention. She plays them in the car, earphones and even as she's packing her pottery tote before class. A week passes with me telling myself it's all my own insecurities. Maybe it is. Everyone has a funk, I tell myself maybe work pressure, maybe hormones, maybe just spring digging its claws in. But the feeling persists prickly and alive under my skin. One Saturday, I convince myself to show up to class a few minutes early under the thin pretence I forgot my apron in the drying room last week I'm on to look for it. The air in the center is still cool, the big studio smelling of wet clay and cleaning spray. Inside, Rohan is at the sink with Priya clearing out a pile of brushes. They laugh in her head tip back, clay dust streaking her jaw, his hand hovering close to her as they scrub the same bowl. There's an easiness about it, a cocoon that doesn't include the rest of the world. Rohan glances up when I come in. He's in his early thirties stocky, with a wild mop of hair and a perpetual five o'clock shadow. A little sheepish, he smiles.

7:13Hey man, Priya just saved me from ruining all these detail brushes. Priya's smile flick is genuine, but with an edge. I was just telling Rohan about the time you ruined that entire batch of handles trying to make them extra ergonomic, remember. She gives me a look almost asking me not to push it. I laugh politely, but the moment's in. We all walk to our tables. She plops down next to mirror and not me. I can't shake the sense that something shifted as soon as I entered. The laughter is gone, replaced by small talk and a deflection of eyes. By the end of class, Priya's cleaned up and standing at the door, glancing over at Rohan while pretending to check the time. She nearly forgets her phone on the work table. That afternoon, in the car ride home, she's distracted to type in text out in bursts. The faintest of smiles killing on her lips as she stares at her lap. When I tried to break in, asking about dinner plans or how the class went, she keeps her answer is short. This tension beneath the surface, like the thumb of a kettle just before the whistle. The next week, she insists on driving separately. I just need a little more space, and besides, I might swing by the farmers market after class,

8:14or maybe meet mirror for coffee. I'm not feeling the confirmation by a seat itself in my ribs. I try to trust her I really do. But as I'm scrolling through Facebook one evening, a new post from the pottery class group pops up a group photo, everyone smiling amid clasp ladders. There's Priya, front row, hip press close to Rohan's. His arms around her, casual but not accidental, her own arm racing behind him. On the table before them, two mugs, both and finished, two half drunk coffers, one with the lipstick market recognized from Priya's favorite shade. The angle is off slightly blurry, but it's the closeness the way Helene's in, the way the others on bridging a gap that radiates out from the photo. My throat grows dry. Had she even mentioned that picture, that moment? Later that night, I bring it up off end. Saw the group photo, looks like everyone was having fun. She pulls her hair back. Yeah, it was after you left mirror wanted to mark the last week of her interclass. We all crowned together, it was so loud. Her tone is dismissive, but her eyes flick away. You and Rohan seem pretty tight. Her brow fur is just a little, a practice no one's taking shape.

9:17Don't start, she sighs, dropping her foam face down on the kitchen table. He's just the easiest person to talk to during class. Not everything has to mean something. They don't start, echoes. I let it drop, but the seed inside me is growing branches, determinedly. I start noticing receipts in the kitchen trash. Kaffir Lottes, almond-coil-sustine stumps that don't line up with his story about running errands for the studio's supply run. One labeled a Kaffir Green 127. Another from a lunch bought a few blocks over from the center. The handwriting next to her here or to go says in strong blockscript for pee. Sometimes two drinks or a sandwich that she never mentions when I ask about her day. One afternoon, I find a tiny folded receipt tucked into her purse's inside zip. I would feel wrong, but it slips out while I'm hunting for an emergency admiral. The time lines up an iron after class. On a Saturday, when she swore up and down that she just needed air walking by the river before coming home. When she comes in, I try to keep my voice light and my face open. Have fun at the cafe with me or this weekend. I ask, casual as possible.

10:18She stiffens. Are you keeping tats on me now? Jesus, jeez, seriously, track where I eat lunch. My hands go cold. It's just a question, Priya. She shakes her head, crossing her arms tight. You know what? I think I'm going to shower. This real anger there was something I'm canally close to fear. Most locations are independent. We own product services pricing and hours of operation may fear. See center for details. The UPS store. Be unstoppable. Come into your local store today and get your print on. She starts spending more time up late, hunched over her laptop, blue glare painting her features. When I turn in, she's often still awake, typing quickly, only to snap the screen close when she hears my footsteps. I'm watching a show. It's not your thing. She'll say shrugging, layering her tone to sound breezy. Pice, I hear a ping from her phone in the kitchen after midnight by the time I get up the courage to glance at it, it's been silenced and moved. Her scent changes to her faint sweetness on her clothes that's not her usual ocean or perfume. One night after class, she hugs me good night,

11:19and there's a whiff of the cologne-rohan-wares, the kind that's all sandalwood and cardamom the scent that hangs stubbornly in the studio long after he's left. For a second, an image crashes over me, their hands covered in clay, perushing up against each other, laughed to close, none of it meant for me. I want to shake it off, but I start keeping track. At dinner, she puts her phone face down, screened toward the wood. When it lights up with a new notification, she mutes her quickly, barely gонzing at me, let's press together into a thin line. A subtle division grows. She makes up excuses to not come home directly after class some new errand, some friend and need. Friday night, she spends longer out with colleagues, but she never has details when I ask about how work drinks went. She says she's tired, not up for our old board game nights, and laughs off my suggestions for a movie. Her eyes never quite meet mine for long. I try for weeks to put us back into rhythm. I reschedule work calls, cook new recipes for dinner, buy lilies for the kitchen table, remembering they were always her favorite. I suggest a Saturday night at a place we both love, a kind of small, warm beaster that smells of butter and old brick, where we use split dessert

12:20and talk for all the weeks chaos. She agrees at first. But an eye before we're supposed to leave, as I'm pulling on my best shirt, she comes into the hole I phone already in hand. I'm so sorry, I just my head is pounding, and I feel so off. Can we do a rain check? I rub her back, feeling the angles of her shoulder blades, wanting to believe her. Of course, want tea. She shakes her head. No, I think I'll just read in bed for a bit. As she walks to the bedroom, I catch the glint of her phone screen in the mirror. A message notification, wrote in, and a preview blows as she taps it away, but I can't help but decide for the fragment I see, I still feel your hands on my, my hot stutters. I stand locked in place for a moment, then forced myself to move, gathering up the uneaten snacks and trying to summon logic, anything to keep from imagining the rest of that message. I don't let myself ask, not yet. Instead, I pull myself a drink and sit in the couch with a book I can't focus on, half-listening as water runs for her bath, dreading the silence more than a fight. I now, at each Saturday morning, feels like a field test. I wake jittery, hyper-aware.

13:22I watch a pre-emore than the wheel. She keeps her phone close, only unlocking it to tie a fast message, then pitching it to the bottom of her toad. Class runs as usual, but she always picks a seat farther down the table, laughing with the others, polite but cagey toward me. One week, I forget my water bottle at a studio, and it feels, honestly, like the universe is giving me a set-up. I tell Priya I'll be right back and double back to the communities enter 20 minutes later, after class disperses. The hall was hollow, door shut, the heat settled up for the evening. From around the back by the kiln room, I hear voices soft but distinct. I pause heartbeat jackhammering in my throat. It's Priya and Rohan. The voice is a low, so quiet, I can barely pick out words unless I get criminally close to the door. I risk it. Priya is saying something about wanting to help, and Rohan's voice is etched with the need I can't in here. I wish we could just go away together, do do. Rohan says, the longing in his voice thickens sugar. I can only make else scraps, not a full conversation. There are no sounds of kissing, nothing that would clear anyone doubt forever, but when I peek through the thin window in the door, I catch them standing close,

14:25Priya's hand laid gentle on Rohan's forearm, his eyes on her mouth. The rest of the room is tidy, nothing out of place, but there between them shivers with something I refuse to name just yet. I back away as quietly as possible, grabbing my bottle from the lost and found shelf near the front lobby and driving her home with my body numb and my head alive with panic. I tell myself, maybe it's just an intense friendship. Maybe Rohan is having a hard time, maybe Priya is being her usual kind self. Maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there. That night I try to bring it up. Under the soft yellow light in the dining room, I say, you seem close with Rohan lately, is he okay? You guys always seem deep in conversation when I see you together. She tenses, tapping her knife to her fork. He's just going through a rough patch, that's all she says, not meeting my eyes. I've just been supporting him, he needs a friend, that's all it is. And the late lunch is the walking home to get the death? Before I can finish, she pushes back from her chair. Her eyes spark with frustration. What would you rather I just ignore someone who needs support? I thought you trusted me.

15:26There's a desperation in her atona plea as if I'm the one shattering something fragile. I'd back down swallowing a rising bitterness. Of course, I just worry about you about us. She nods to flee and makes herself busy with chores, telling me she's wiped out and disappears to the bedroom. For a flicker of time, things settle. We finish the week in a truce, routines cooling into lukewarm water. She's more withdrawn, chatty only about work, never about pottery or class or anything that might lead back to that studio room. But the tension doesn't drain. It only grows if coiled now in the corners of every day. I taste the house more, start to double check things I always took for granted, the Google map tap on her card dashboard, add or receipts, the timing of every call that lights up her phone. I recognize the signs I'm not proud. I go out of my way to be generous to tell myself she just wants space, that heavy marriage is crack and men again all the time. But when I clean up the kitchen and notice one of my favourite mugs chipped and shoved to the back of the shelf, I imagine pre-ociting with Rowan at some corner table, hands wrapped over pottery she should have made with me. A week later, after another class were pre-barely made eye contact,

16:28I reach adult certainty the kind that pushes you out of your own ethical boundaries. While she's showering, the water pounding in the upstairs bathroom I pick up her phone from the coffee table. I hesitate for half a second, feeling sick. But I enter the code Hinesis Berthier easy to recall and it unlocks. Inside, nothing is obvious at first. Standard homescreen at folders. But there's a hidden photo folder when I only see by searching. When it opens my breath sticks in my throat. Priya and Rowan harm in arm at the studio. The photo is blurry, faces gleaming under the terrible fluorescent light, but their expressions are raw the kind of joy you don't pretend. Another photo of them inside boothic fake green, her hand on his cheek, both of them mid laugh, completely lost in each other. There's a series of suffers one late at night, grainy camera flash, rowing kissing her neck, Priya's lits parted, one eye on the lens. The rest of the album is a compressed history, mugs wet and unfinished, clay stained hands tangle together on the worktable, one of her bare shoulder, artfully framed, picture after picture of moments stolen, as if to prove what I'd refuse to see. Then the messages. They're saved in a hidden

17:31chat folder under her old gmail handle. I force myself to read them, each line more explicit than the last, her telling him how alive he makes her feel, how she waits for Saturday all week just to see his messy, beautiful hands, him calling her his wild heart, talking about how he can't stand seeing her walk away at the end of each class. There's a video shaky and intimate of them working together after class alone in the studio. They giggle smashing clay together, then he draws her in arms around her waist, and she whispers, I could stay like this forever. He answers something I can't hear, the video ends with her head on his shoulder, eyes closed, her smile a secret kept from me. The horror and the grief slice me open, but I snap her phone shut by instinct the second the shower shits off upstairs. She comes down, hair wet and loose, humming that indie ballad I never knew the words to. She looks at me and smiles, easy like nothing's wrong, like the world hasn't already been peeled under my feet. I stare at her, everything's suddenly obvious and raw, the way her eyes bounce away from mine, the tremble in her hands, the way she clings to the illusion of our home, our routines, our very decade of trust. I know, now no too much, but I don't move yet.

18:33I sit, motionless, caught between rage and heartbreak in the deep, nauseating fear of what comes next. I wait for a time to speak, and as the evening stretches before us, thick and silent, I imagine the confrontation as a wall, implocable, leaving just beyond the lusts of her routine, the world that will break where I finally step through. Dinner is a quiet, miserable affair. I push vegetable career around my plate, trying to swallow. Preachats about her work, something about the mayors, new campaign to repaint the town playground and asks after my weak as if nothing has split open between us. She offers to pour more rice on my plate. I nod silently, feeling the strange pressure for foreman's in my own kitchen. Her fingertips brush my wrist as she passes, the bolt of me, her nails painted the same rune shade as saw street to cross her sleeve last week. It takes everything I have not to flinch. After, she heads to the living room with her book, legs tapped underneath her. I try to focus on emails, but my eyes trail back to the glow of her phone each time it lights up in her lap. She types a reply quick as a thief, her thumb moving in elliptical sweeps. I pretend to scan his spreadsheet. She shifts slightly, angling the screen away. A hundred invisible threads run between us,

19:38too fragile to pull, but too numerous to ignore a slight upturn at the corners of her lips. Lower when she is with me, the way her laughter comes bright and round in the studio, but things to a third beside at home. I try to remember the last time she sought me out just to share something small. It's been weeks, maybe months if I'm honest. Now I trail her through our routines, as if I'm studying a species gun feral, hoping to catch a flicker of the animal I once knew. Saturday comes again, great and moody outside, spring rains streaking the bakery windows. I get to the center early this time, telling myself I just want to finish my mug from last week, the real reason no less silent all teeth. Prey's car is already in a lot, a little silver smudge in the puddles. Inside, the studio feels cavernous. Rohan and Prey are at the sink, bent close over a slab of roclay. When they see me, warmth fanishes from the air. Rohan tries to play it off. Hey, man, Prey is explaining the difference between undiglazed and slip again to guess I've got a learning curve. She laughs, but hides her mouth behind the back of her hand. My spot at the table is conspicuously empty, she's placed her bag in the

20:38seat next to mirror. Morning, she calls over bright, not coming near. I take my old seat. For the rest of class, Prey keeps her gaze fixed on the bowl she's turning, shoulder-squared away from me. Rohan jerks with Janet about glazed thickness, pre-members ascent. Occasionally, she leans into Rohan to joke privately as if they have a language no one else speaks. I catch her hand brushing his elbow by accident, or maybe not. Mirror sees it too, I browse pinched. At cleanup, I wait by the door, keys jangling, watching Prey and Rohan hover together at the back as the rest of us pack away our gear. This day, rearranging shelves talking low. When I step closer, the conversation breaks off mid-word. Rohan clears his throat, swipes a flick of clay from Prey's cheek she lets him, then laughs shyly ducking her head. I'm heading out, I say, voice louder than I intend. Prey jumps. Okay, I'll be right behind to just need to finish helping Janet with some bulb labels for the kill in five minutes, Max. But it's 20 before she comes out. My car is still running, deathboard fogged. She hops in, snapping her seatbelt without looking at me. Silence radiates

21:43between us for three full blocks before I break down an ask. That was a long cleanup. Janet sure puts you to work. She nods, pulling her hair up. The kill was acting up just trying to get the schedule sorted. You know Janet, she worries about the next batch of firings. Yeah, but you left your own stuff half packed up. It's not always about me, you know, she says, voice icy. I gripped the wheel tighter everywhere now, scab. We ride the last mile home soundless, the third of wipe is Mark and Tine. Later that afternoon, when I take out recycling, I spot her phone on the steps, screen a glow with a chat notification, Rohan's contact photo, a little smirk, the message read Monsieur Clever hands already. I feel heat flush up my neck. When I go back inside, Prey is right there, scooping up her phone, measure a smile pin to her face. That evening, I try again, do you want to walk like before, down past the park? The hope in my voice is embarrassing. She closes her laptop slowly, like her physically hurts. It's raining, she says. We can take umbrellas. She sighs. I just want to finish up some things,

22:43you go all donate her promise. I force myself to walk alone, counting every squalch through the puddles, last weighing each step. When I circle back, Prey is still inside, feet cold under her, eyes distant behind a wall of unreadable calm. Days pass. Each morning, our old sunrise coffee ritual, once automatic, becomes a lesson in restraint. She's up first distracted, already texting before her tea bag is even out of the mug. The first few times, I try to reach over, run my thumb along her palm, but she reels back just slightly, apologizing as if I'm crowding her. All I taste is the culpritang of dread. I keep replaying the video, the kisses, the messages in my head, because I can't look again without the urge to held the phone across the room. I go through motions, work, meals, sleep, pretending at normality. At the studio the following week, I watch Prey from a distance, unable to stop myself. She glances at Rohan constantly. He seems to jump here around me now, smile extra-wide, eyes not quite meeting mine. He makes too many jokes about the legendary pottery couple, and when Mira asks Prey if she wants to try to stay in glass workshop with her on Sunday, Prey fumbles for an excuse, then quickly glances

23:47at Rohan. The schedule written in looks. Other things, too, receipts for new glazes, supplies I never see at home suddenly appear in her bag. A short claim note scrolled in a new hand of a lock is tucked into her phone case. I see it only by accident when it flops out with her keys. On a lark or maybe desperation, I asked Janet after class, did Prey help out much today. She always says you keep her running circuits. Janet looks up smile uncertain. Though a Prey and Rohan stayed back to mop and lock up, nice of them, honestly, I was out in the parking lot chatting with Mira, so I just left them the keys this time. Why? Did something get misplaced? I shake my head, feeling sick as she waves goodbye. At work, I break a mug and old one preamade ivory with a blue spiral handle. I scoop up the shards, unable to look at them, wondering if there will be a day when each chef and fish it doesn't feel personal. My colleague asks if everything's alright. I smile until my cheeks ache. The next Saturday, a thicker work meeting planning instead to circle the studio after class. Through the rain smeared windows, I watch as Prey, Rohan, and Mira laugh,

24:49packing up their things. When Mira waves goodbye and leaves, Prey and Rohan linger, hands brushing as they split a box of tools. They stand by the clasink, Rohan saying something that makes Prey laugh, loud and delighted. I crutch lower behind my car's dashboard. When they walk side by side toward Rohan's car, she leans in, her hand dropping to his back. He opens her passenger door for her a little court libel. I snap a photo and hate myself for it. That night, I barely sleep. I toss in our bad sheets tangled. Prey is beside me, scrolling through her phone, body turned away. I saw you leave with Rohan today, I say quietly desperate. She doesn't move. He needed a ride to pick up his prescription at the pharmacy, his car was low on gas, there's this 20 questions now, or what? She spits, low entire. It just seemed like you two are closer lately, that's all. There's a long pause. She puts her phone down, size, and rubbed her eyes. Rohan's having a hard time, he wouldn't get it, he just needs some friends, and it's nice to have someone in class who gets it, I'm allowed to be there for a friend, aren't I, or is that

25:50against the rules now? Each word falls between us with a weight I can't shoulder. I've rolled to my side, facing the wall blinking into the blue lid dock. Following week is punctuated by small cruelties. A fall Prey is laundry while she works late, and notice a new shirt white linen, slit high on the sides that isn't one of her usual pickups. I find a faint line of what looks like British Claydust alone to him. She never mentions buying it. She gets a new phone charger, keeps it at the studio. Sishe forgets her so often it's just more efficient to leave one there. It's the kind of explanation that used to make sense now at Ring's Hollow. Saturday we don't couple, having for almost a month. She taxes, she leaves, running late, forgot my wallet, don't wait a bit after. I walk to class muscle memory and bitterness in every stride. She's already a mirrors at a back table. Rowan's seated just at her left. Mid class, during a group project, Janet divides us for a team wheel for her in contest, purposely pairing me with Prey as if to force a bridge. We work in near silence. She stays in to his back from me. When I try a light

26:51joke about the old ergonomic handles, she gives a half smile, Hollow is an empty bull. After, she flees to Rowan's side, his hand at the small of her back public, but brief, almost plausible but not quite. Mirror's eyes catch mine and dart away. I wonder what rumors will circulate before long. In the following days, Prey's passing of late bedtime's deepens. She sets up her lap top at the kitchen table, headphones gluing. I bring her tea, trying to reclaim some sliver of kindness. She offers a distracted thanks, eyes never returning to me. After a week like this chasing shadows, I make a decision. I'll confront her, but not yet. First, I need to be certain to hold it in my hands, undeniable. I go through her foam when she's in the shower. It is worse than I thought. It takes me a minute to find the folder again, despite having found it before. When I open it, my hands shake so badly I nearly drop the foam. There are even more photos now, a new series at the studio, pre-with Clay on her face, Rowan making her laugh, their cheeks priceless. A recent date stamp mocks a selfie from inside Kfei Green. Sunlight's landing over

27:51Prey's exposed collarbone as Rohan's head nestles into her shoulder, whispering in her ear. Another video, recent from last Sunday, shows them behind a pottery wheel together. Her arms around his, his hands guiding hers, both giggling in that gasping weight only total comfort allows. After that, the words, hidden chats, riffs of longing and secret plans. Her soft declarations of Missy already, it is bound to about days dragging without you. Snatched shots of plans to skip class and meet out at a trail I know they must have worked together. When he writes, can't wait to see if we can sneak off next weekend, she responds, counting ire's, let's not waste a second. It hurts worse that the words are so casual, like a language built for them alone, no strain, no guilt evident. By the time Prey comes downstairs, I'm frozen on the kerch, a phone returned to the charger by sheer self-control. I look at her at the familiar arch of her eyebrows as she asks what I want for dinner, how she catches her low lip between her teeth the way she always does one word. I wonder if she feels anything, any flicker of the terror I felt. When she leans into tap my knee, her eyes are so big, so easy that the sod perfect.

28:52It feels like I'm underwater, a world on mute. Do I scream, or just let it happen, let it slide by. She suggests take a die degree. She asks if I want to pick the movie I say, whatever you want. Her smile is gentle. I want to erase it, but instead I just nod, numb. In the days that follow, I study her like a stranger in my home, rehousing the words I'll need. I play out the confrontation, imaging every response, denial, outrage, tears, maybe in indifference. The evidence sits heavy, a secret mass under the floorboards. I watch pre-oprene in the mirror for pottery, styling her hair in new way. Unaccounted as a slip of paper with Rohan's handwriting, can't wait for tomorrow's secret challenger waits, three she tucks it into her jeans pocket, hamming, and I want to crush something, anything. That night she goes out for a walk to clean my head. I watch from the window where she types a message, phone screen a glow. She slips out into the dusk, coat not quite sipped, her silhouette fluttering at the end of the drive as she disappears around the corner. Minus later, my phone buzzes with a throttle up from the credit card she's putt two coffers of kaffee green again. I give up on sleep all together. The house is quieter and you chill in the

29:56rooms. Her slippers and a whole look like artifacts. She leaves little notes for me don't forget milk to be back late, love you though love you now scribble small and practiced. One nearly morning, I catch a reflection in the glass, the two of us sitting at opposite ends of the breakfast table, each wrapped in our own glowing devices, both pretending. For a second, the business leaves me lonely exhaustion remains. I wish she'd just say it, just cut through the slow suffocation, but every time she meets my gaze her faces compose the expert liars mask. So I do nothing for now. I gather my proof, make copies tuck them away. I water gather her pottery tools, select new earrings, glance at her full. Another Saturday approaches and the confrontation moves closer as inevitable sunrise. In the meantime, Priya comes home after midnight on a Thursday looking lost in thought but humming faintly. I pretend I'm asleep. She changes quietly, slips into bed, never quite touching me. It's almost a relief finally to know. The pain is real but so is the clarity. I wait I wait for one more moment, the last piece to drop, the final shattering fall I know is almost here.

30:59I lie in bed and listen to her breath. Her back is turned to me and I can't tell if she's asleep or just pretending, holding it still as a statue. Nearer of us moves. It's almost four in the morning by the faded glow of my phone and the house is so quiet I can hear the hum of the fridge downstairs. My heart is a rock in my chest, heavy, oddly steady in the aftermath of the hurricane I've kept inside for weeks. I can't even bring myself to close my eyes, there's nothing in the dark worth finding. Outside, rain thrums weakly on the window. I feel like I'm suspended but my own life watching myself lie here, still breathing in the sigh or air of what used to be a room. Every small detail is sharpened by adrenaline, the faint smell of her camomile lotion, the indentation where her hips rest in the mattress as stray earring on the nightstand. I reach out, on autopilot, for the glass of water I keep there. My hand stutters. I don't take a sip. Don't dare to risk the sun. When the alarm finally drops, awkward and unnecessary on a Saturday, preer rolls away, stretching with a little groan. She checks her phone, thumb-fucking-to-read new messages. I watch her watch the private smile that ghost over her lips,

32:01the quick, secretive tap of her fingers. She doesn't look at me as she swings her legs out of bed. Didn't sleep much, huh? She says blindly, pulling her robe from the hook. No, what I answer, and I'm stunned at how normal my voice sounds. She moves through the motion shower, tea, finding him as matched pair of socks while I just sit, frozen, listening to each tiny moment she pretends there's nothing wrong. I know I'm about to kick out the last support beam holding up this crumbling bridge. Just not yet, not with the day so nearly awake, sky gray, everything tire. It feels like giving up a piece of breathing. At breakfast, our two mugs sit side by side. Preer bothers her toast with quiet, concentrated movements then slides the plate between us as if nothing's different. Her phone never far lights up again. She flaps it over, screened down, and starts to say something about the grocery list before trailing off into an excuse about a headache. The tension is a living thing, coiling tighter by the minute. Both of us keep to our own corners me half-bearered in the paper, her scrolling, answering a work email or probably something else entirely. The steam from the mugs drifts up, and neither of us takes a sip. She heads out to

33:03pottery not long after, her bag pat with more care than the occasion deserves. I'll see you after, yeah, she says, voice falsely light, hanging in the doorway a little too long. I look at her really looking nod. Yes, see you. She smiles then, soft, familiar to us to from out the same one she used all those years when we were still us. Then she's gone, out of the door, the car rumbling in the drive. I listen to it disappear down the block. For a while, I just sit. I can't eat, can't move. The house is cold, the walls then. Every surface feels contaminated with all that's happened to the phone charger, her jacket slung on the banister, a footort and bend rolling under the kitchen table. My hands itch with the urge to do something, anything, but there's nothing to do except wait out the eyes until I know she'll be home. It's cowardly, maybe, but I just want to meet her in a clarity of daylight, not in this wash out dawn. Around noon, I get up, move slowly through our routines as if I could still make the day normal. I fold laundry, sort the bills, wipe down crumbs from the counter. My mind moves in ugly loops, returning again and again to the photos, the messages. Sometimes a memory of pre-alafing haul and true flashes up, and I feel like I

34:08might choke. I catch my reflection in a kitchen window, eyes puffy, jaw slack, and wonder who I'm even looking at. I feel old. Too old for this. This fury somewhere under the exhaustion, but it's numb by my own sense of impotence. My phone dings, a useless work reminder. I swipe it away, stare at nothing, let time use past. I replay our last conversation over in my mind how calculated she seemed, how gentle my own voice was, how desperate. As the day wanes, I hear the familiar crunch of gravel in the driveway. For a second, I want to run to go anywhere but here to leave the confrontation waiting in the cold shadows. I steady myself instead, standing, moving into the kitchen, where I've laid out her phone in a small stack of printed photos and screenshots. I don't even need to practice what I'll say. The truth is so close to the surface now I can't keep it hidden, my hands are shaking with the effort of staying still. She comes in, kicking off her shoes by the door. Her hair is dumped from the rain, cheeks pink. Something about the side of her, so familiar, makes everything in me lurch. She glances at the table, sees the phone,

35:08sees me. Hey, she says, too careful, and I know no without question that she feels the charge in the air. I don't answer. I gesture at the table with my chin. Sit, I say, harsher than I meant. My voice cracks. She hesitates, eyes flicking to the items in front of her, realization dawning bright and violent. She sits slowly and folds her hands in her lap. What's going on? She tries. My throat is bun dry. I slide the photos closer to her. You want to explain this? My hands tremble, but I keep my gaze locked on her, forcing her to see me, to see what she's done. Her face changes first, a flicker of confusion, then dread, then a flush as she realizes what she's looking at. She shuffles through them, voice mall and pitiful. This isn't. It's not what you think. I don't let her finish. It's exactly what I think. I saw everything, Priyat, the photos, the messages, the videos. I know Rohan, Kafei Green, the studio, he lied over and over. She shouts tears, brimming, standing at the edge of an answer. It wasn't she starts, forced cracking. It wasn't supposed to

36:08get like this. I didn't. Don't. I interrupt, flat and quiet. Don't insult me by pretending it wasn't a choice. She fumbles both hands in her lap, finers twisting around themselves. For a second, it looks like she'll hold the lie, but she breaks. I'm sorry, she breathes. I'm so sorry, I never wanted to hurt you. I was just a Rohan, made me feel alive. I felt seen for the first time in years, and I couldn't stop once it started, and then I was just stuck her. I let her words pour out, listening, and disbelief, and some strange relief that the spell is finally broken. She blames the monotony, the crushing routines, says she felt neglected, craving something new. She says she never meant to destroy us, but that she couldn't breathe, couldn't say no. She describes how it happened at the studio, how it made her feel awake for the first time and forever. The rationalizations come in a river, so dense I could scarcely breathe in the middle of them. I stare at her until she starts to cry doggly, shaking sobs that make her whole body fold and on itself. She begs for understanding, for time to figure things out pleads that it wasn't about me, not exactly. I feel everything rage, grief, regret, bitter laugh to clogging my throat,

37:11but most of all, empty. The more she explains, the less I hear. When she finally stops, when the apologies slow to a sputter, I get out, moving too quietly to seem real. I turn from her, walking to the sink. The thought comes and bidden, this is happening, it's really over. She stands, inches behind me, it arms out and sure. Please don't go, not now, not like this, we can talk, we can but I cut her off with a look so cold she shrinks back. For a long moment, we don't say anything. Only her quiet crying fills the room. I go to the hallway, open the linen closet. I pull my overnight bag down from the shelf, fingers mechanical, as if they belong to someone else. I start tossing clothes in jeans, shirts, or toothbrush, socks with mismatched patterns in no order at all. Downstairs, preer silent, except for the occasional troop breath. I zip the bag. I move for each room, grabbing the things I'll need, nothing extra. I pause at the side table where her favorite lamp sits hand-lingering over the card we kept from our wedding day, still wedged between the books.

38:11I leave it untouched. She is at the bottom of the stairs when I come down, eyes red, haired around her face, standing in a frame of the front door like she's prepared to block my way. She speaks in a whisper, please, please just tuck to me. Her hands twist at the hem of her sweatshirt. I shape my head. I can't, I can't stay here tonight, I can't even look at you. She starts to sob again, one hand pressed to her mouth, body leaning forward as if swirling me to stay by gravity alone. But I edge past her carefully, reaching from my coat on the car keys. The kitchen is marked by the wreckage of our conversation her phone on the table, four doors played like warning signs, one mug toppled. For the first time, the place feels deeply unfamiliar. I open the front door, the dusk air cold on my cheek. I do not turn when she calls my name, only pause for a moment and the stooped steady my breathing. My hands are stiff on the strap of my back. The world is smaller than ever just streetlight and silence and the fact of my own feet in the porch. Preer is framed in the hallway, backlit in trunken, arms wrapped tight around herself, watching. I want to say something final, but the words are spent. I step out into the night

39:13closing the door behind me with a soft click. The sound rings out loud with an I mean it to, punctuating everything. I walk to the car, chest aching, every nerve-wrong. I slide behind the wheel, start the engine and let the shaky breath out, watching the house through the windshield one final time. Preer's face is a blur in the window dark-eyed broken. She hugs herself and stares and moving. I put the car in gear and back down the driveway, had lights sweeping across the hedge then straight out into the waiting-road. Just past the stop sign, a park for a second and sit with the engine running. The bag is heavy in my lap, digging into my thighs, my hands still locked around the steering wheel. I could call my sister, I think. I could keep driving. For a moment I don't move, just try to breathe, try not to shake. I grip the wheel so tight my knuckles sting. I realize the skin under my eyes is still damp. In my chest, something caves in, but I force myself to turn left toward my sisters, engine humming beneath me and drive into the night without looking back again. The road ahead is empty. I see the house shrink in my rear view, feel my heart pump and uselessly against my ribs, taste the loss and anger for what it is real,

40:16undeniable, carve clean as the line between then and now. It's almost a surprise to realise I'd started driving again. The trance of movement pulls me forward a block by block, past little houses with a porch lumps lit, then the shadowed front of the high school, the intersection where we used to wait for the duck parade in spring. The radio was silent. I keep picturing Preer in the kitchen window, but her outline grows fainter each time I blink, dissolving into everything I said. I follow muscle memory through town, the road's blurry with new rain. Each red light offers a pulse too short to think too long to avoid my own reflection in the windshield. It's only once I hit the main road toward my sisters, neighbourhood the day adrenaline loosens its grip and exhaustion starts to worm its way in heavy as what's at. I keep my hands at ten and two, I'll fix stare on the empty divide head. I want a scream, but all that comes out is a strange labour-breath. The phone vibrates, loud against the console and message from Preer. At first I ignore it, then, at the next stoplight, I look just long enough to see her name stretch across the lock screen, followed by a single pleading line, please, just tell me you safe. I turn the phone face down,

41:17a reflex now, profusant to write back. I picture her pace in the living room, another set of headlights passing through the blinds, her feet tapping a frantic pattern across the cream rug we picked out together. I wonder if she's searching for what was might bring me back or if she knows that none will. My sister's street is quiet, the trees along the curb dripping gently in the dusk. She's out a friend for the night, her porch lump left burning from me a ball-paler behind the glass. I park at the curb, not quite ready to kill the engine. I say there with my hands locked on my knees, debating even stepping out. For the briefest moment, the urge to turn back pulses inside me. But home isn't home now. There's no real direction before it. I gather to bag from the passenger seat, take one steady breath, and make my way up the steps. The spare key is still under the faded flower pot by the door. I open up, step inside her tidy hallway, and allow the quiet to swallow me. I don't bother turning on any lights. I leave the bag beside the hall table, shoes kicked off half-hazardly in the entryway. There's a hollowness to the space, but it's clean and burdened and not a single artifact of my life cluttering the corners.

42:18I don't check my phone again. I move to the guest room, drop onto the made-up bed without removing my jacket and stare at the ceiling, hands folded across my chest as a bracing for impact. Somewhere, fridge coils hum. A while passes, or maybe just a few minutes. I realize I can still make up pre as broken voice the engine had defiance. The waiver is everything finally crashed down the sound of her pleading, asking for understanding, for forgiveness, stumbling in her own sorry logic. It swells in my head with each nausea tick of the old walk-lock. The images cycle over and over her hunched at the kitchen table, foretoes scattered her hands frantic. Was there ever actually a moment she would have chosen not to lie? I wonder. Was there ever split seconds doubt in her mind before she crossed over to secret, then betrayal? The teak settles in the pit of my stomach, but sleep doesn't come. I sense the shift from acute pain to a kind of dollic the reality that I can't escape the next stage, that time will move forward, whether I wanted to or not. My mind conjures the string of consequences, inaudible unpacking, the conversations that will need to happen with family, spitting of routines and property and all the little things of a shared life. I picture her,

43:21still sitting alone at our kitchen table, her solbs echoing down the stairwell, the tremor in her hands growing worse and the emptiness are left behind. I force myself to imagine her without Rohan too, the affair exposed, the shine worn away, nothing left but the cold debris. My phone lights up again and non-committal pain, another message from Priya, then another. I switch it to silent and place it half under a pillow. For a moment, I consider blocking her, but the act feels final in a way I'm not ready to absorb. That to try. Let the words pile up, unread and unreturn. There's nothing left to say and everything that might have mattered about the past 10 years now collapses under the weight of her choices. Still, I know this is only the first night. Consequences, hard and unavoidable will come for both of us. The next iron blows. I walk through my sister's kitchen pour a glass of water, then pour out and touched. The lamp above the table goes softly, luminating neat stacks of mail, a bowl of keys. I wonder whether I'll ever see our home the same way if I'll ever sit at my own table without pressing any of the fractures in the surface because I can't sign down. Finally, I return to the

44:21guest room, twitching the little bit side lamp and sit on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. The only thing I know for sure is that nothing in me wants to patch what's broken. The energy to rage to confront her again to chase closure on mercy is spent. But last time, I check the phone, Priya's final message hangs and acknowledge little pixel of her desperation, I can't tell which. I turn the screen off, let the device slide into the side pocket of my bag, then fold down the blankets, climb beneath, and stare up into the heavy dark. I imagine how sempty but for her presence, her guilt, her tears replaying the same patterns on a loop. For the briefest moment, an image, my own outline, visible in the glow from the street light reflected in the window, moving forward and away. Somewhere in the quiet, morning will arrive. But for now, trust lies buried under the ruin of small, ordinary lies, and the space between what was and what's left John's wider than ever. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one.