Jess and Sarah were her closest friends from college, and I liked them well enough when we first met. Jess was exuberant and opinionated, the kind of person who could turn buying toothpaste into a group event; Sarah was quieter in crowds but seemed to know everyone's private business by the end of the night. I never expected Chloe to drop those friendships for me, nor would I have respected myself for asking. The difficulty came when the people around her began to celebrate any boundary she crossed as proof of independence. If I questioned a plan that affected both of us, Chloe sometimes repeated their verdict before I had finished explaining why it mattered.
There had been a period when she told me what she was doing because she wanted to share her day. She would send a photograph from a café or ask whether I wanted anything from the bakery near her office. Later, I found myself hearing about plans only after they had become impossible to change, and there was an edge of challenge in how she announced them. It was as though my disappointment had become part of the evening's entertainment, a reaction she expected and could then describe to her friends. I didn't know whether she understood how that felt, because when I tried to tell her, she was usually already defending herself against a different accusation.
Around the beginning of summer, she joined a gym across town with Jess. I was glad she had found a routine she enjoyed, especially since work had been stressful for her and exercise seemed to help. A few weeks later, a new name began appearing in stories about classes, playlists, and the smoothie counter: Mark. He was apparently funny, knew the instructors, and had a habit of offering unsolicited advice about lifting technique. None of that was automatically suspicious, and I reminded myself of the fact whenever I caught my thoughts moving faster than the evidence.
Then I started seeing the name on her phone when she set it down beside me. A message would arrive, her mouth would lift into a private smile, and the screen would turn facedown when I entered the room or asked an ordinary question. Sometimes she mentioned Mark without prompting, then became irritated if I asked how she knew him so well. I couldn't tell whether she was protecting an inappropriate relationship or simply enjoying attention she didn't want examined. The uncertainty was its own form of exhaustion, because I had never wanted to become a man who spent his evenings interpreting someone else's notifications.
Once, while we were grocery shopping, I told her exactly that. We were standing near a refrigerated shelf, debating whether to buy vegetables for a meal neither of us seemed interested in cooking, when I said I missed being able to talk without feeling foolish for asking a question. She stopped the