She Faked Everything to Trap Me

On my wife's birthday, the dinner table was ringed with people. There just wasn't a seat for me.

"You've been running around all day. You must be tired."

"Go keep the baby company first. Come to the table later."

Tired wasn't the point. The baby wasn't the point.

The point was that this table had no place for me.

The wet apron balled up in my fist felt like it was burning. I swallowed the anger and made myself speak.

"Jacqueline Henson, you know I've been working alone all day. And now I don't even rate a seat at the table?"

The laughter in the living room stopped. Everyone set down their bowls and chopsticks and looked at me.

Jacqueline knotted her brows and snapped, "Don't go making trouble!"

"Get lost!"

The word sent all the hurt and misery rushing up through me. I bit my lip, turned, and walked out.

I'd just reached the door when I heard someone inside telling her to go smooth things over with me.

"A live-in husband doesn't need coddling. He's got nowhere to go."

"Relax. He'll be back inside the hour, good as gold."

Every word out of Jacqueline's mouth choked the air out of me.

A few light, careless sentences, and eight years of us were buried in the past.

...

I walked down the street, watching the neon lights of this city.

Jacqueline's two lines kept circling in my ears.

The alley mouths we'd once walked hand in hand, the shops we'd lingered in, the parks we'd strolled through, all of it turned strange in that moment.

Whatever sense of belonging I'd had vanished without a trace the instant those words left her mouth.

A live-in husband?

I came running to her for love, and that made me a live-in husband?

In the end I walked a full loop and wound up right back downstairs from our building.

Looking up at the light in our window, the ache spread numb through my chest.

What hurt was that Jacqueline was right.

I had nowhere to go.

In this city that wasn't mine, I couldn't even have a fight and have somewhere to go.

I hadn't brought my phone. I didn't even know how long I'd been out.

Standing outside our door, listening to the noise and life inside, I drew a deep breath and pushed it open.

The noise cut off at once. Everyone turned and looked at me, meaning in every stare.

"You're back?"

Jacqueline set down her wine glass and gave me one flat, unbothered glance.

"The baby was crying just now. Go check if he needs feeding."

"You really don't know how to behave, do you? All I said was eat a little later. Was that worth picking a fight with me in front of all these people?"

I looked at the wrecked table and the bottles knocked over on the floor, and my fist tightened.

The cake in the middle had been dragged through until it was ruined.

I looked at the smear of frosting still on Jacqueline's face and could all but picture how much fun they'd had messing around with it.

That was the cake I'd made with my own hands. I hadn't gotten a single bite.

And they'd used it to smear each other, playing.

"Jacqueline, don't talk to Ethan Matthews like that. He's a man, he's got his pride."

"Ethan, come on, sit here by me!"

The one speaking was Jacqueline's assistant, Nelson Dickerson.

Also the boy she'd grown up with.

I shook my head. "No. You all eat."

I walked into the room, looked at the crying baby, and changed his diaper.

But the hurt churned inside me, wave after wave, every feeling rising up until it felt like it would swallow me whole.

"Jacqueline called it. He really did come back."

"Yeah. Half an hour, and here he is..."

"He came back with Jacqueline not long after he graduated, no circle of his own here. A man like that is the easiest to keep in line."

"Not just that. An out-of-town live-in son-in-law like him is the easiest to push around."

"You've really got to hand it to Jacqueline. Wasn't he a Bayport local? How'd you ever get him to follow you back to a little fourth-tier town like ours?"