"That's not a mistake."
She stared at me.
I added:
"It's a sequence."
She had no answer.
I went to the closet.
Pulled out my suitcase.
Her eyes widened.
"What are you doing?"
"Packing."
"You're leaving?"
"Yes."
"Adam."
"I can't stay in this room."
"Where will you go?"
"I'll figure it out."
"We're four hours from home."
"I own a car."
"We came together."
"I know."
She started crying harder.
"Please don't leave me here."
The sentence angered me.
"You didn't seem alone yesterday."
Her face changed like I'd slapped her.
I regretted saying it instantly.
Not because it wasn't true.
Because I did not want to become someone who enjoyed hurting her.
I stopped packing.
Took a breath.
Then continued more quietly.
"You can stay here."
"The reservation is through Monday."
"I'll get another room somewhere."
"Adam, please."
She stood between me and the suitcase.
"I'll block him."
I stared at her.
She pulled out the phone.
"Right now."
She searched.
Blocked Cole.
Then held up the screen.
"Done."
I looked at her.
"You think Cole is the problem?"
"No."
"Then why are you showing me?"
"I don't know what to do."
"For once, neither do I."
That was the truth.
Seven years.
We had met when I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-seven.
A mutual friend's birthday.
She spilled red wine on my shirt.
I made a joke about billing her.
She gave me her number because she said repayment should include coffee.
For the first three years, loving Lauren felt easy.
Not effortless.
No marriage is.
But easy in the sense that choosing each other felt obvious.
We bought a small house outside Jacksonville.
Painted the kitchen ourselves.
Argued about furniture.
Adopted a mutt named Simon who destroyed two rugs and somehow became the center of our evenings.
When Simon died unexpectedly two years ago, Lauren slept with his collar under her pillow.
I remember holding her while she cried.
Those things were real.
That was what made betrayal confusing.
People imagine discovering cheating suddenly reveals the entire marriage as fake.
Mine didn't feel fake.
It felt contaminated.
Real memories still existed.
Now I no longer knew where the contamination began.
I zipped the suitcase.
Lauren sat on the bed.
"Are you going to divorce me?"
I looked at her.
"I don't know."
"Do you still love me?"
That question broke through my numbness.
I hated that she asked it.
Because the answer was yes.
Love doesn't disappear fast enough to protect you.
"I don't know what loving you means right now."
Her face crumpled.
"I love you."
I stared.
"Yesterday you told another man we were practically finished."
"I was lying."
"Which time?"
Silence.
I picked up the suitcase.
At the door, she said:
"Adam."
I stopped.
"I'm sorry."
I looked back.
I believed she was sorry.
That didn't help.
"I'm sure you are."
Then I left.
I found a motel twenty minutes inland.
Nothing fancy.
One-story building.
Old air conditioner.
Parking lot facing a highway.
It was the opposite of the resort.
That helped.
I turned my phone off for two hours.
Sat on the bed.
Stared at the wall.
Then the shaking started.
I had been calm because my body was saving it for later.