making it hard to trust the relationship, and that I needed us to decide whether we both still wanted it. I didn't ask to read her messages or tell her she could never see Mark. I asked if she could meet me in the middle and tell me something true about what was going on.
She leaned against the kitchen counter and gave a sigh that seemed older than our entire relationship. "God, not this again," she said, rubbing her forehead as if I were a task she had forgotten to complete. "I'm just living my life, Alex. Do I need to file an itinerary with you every time I go somewhere?" I told her no, but that an explanation given willingly was different from an itinerary demanded under threat. She said she couldn't keep proving she was trustworthy to someone determined to be suspicious, and then she went to bed.
I slept badly that night, turning from one side of the mattress to the other while she breathed steadily beside me. At three in the morning I considered checking her phone, which would have been easy because I knew the passcode from the years when neither of us concealed anything. I didn't do it, partly because I hated the kind of person I would become while looking and partly because I knew a search might leave me no better informed. If I found nothing, I would still have to explain why I felt dismissed; if I found something, the relationship might already be beyond repair. The problem was no longer the existence or absence of proof about Mark but the way we had stopped treating one another as partners in the same conversation.
The following days were deceptively ordinary. We paid our share of the rent, argued about whose turn it was to take out the recycling, and exchanged messages about an electrician who needed access to the apartment. Chloe asked whether I wanted takeout on Wednesday, and we ate noodles on the sofa while an old comedy played on television. I looked at her laughing at a familiar scene and felt a wave of affection so sudden that I almost forgot the week before. It frightened me how a good hour could make me willing to postpone an important truth.
On Thursday morning, I woke before my alarm and found her side of the bed empty. She was in the bathroom choosing between two pairs of earrings, talking into her phone in a voice she lowered when I passed the open doorway. I heard Jess's name, a reference to a reservation, and something about Mark knowing the place. I did not hear enough to conclude anything beyond the fact that plans were being made. Still, I carried the unease into work, where I kept making mistakes in a set of drawings that normally would have required my full attention.