Everything inside me just stopped. My body went stiff under him. So he found her. But she left him anyway. And I was just, here. A substitute. A shadow. Something he could hold when the real one was gone.
That night was my first time. I didn’t even know if I should cry or laugh. He held me the whole night, his grip tight like he was afraid someone would take me away too. But every word that came out of his mouth… was her name. Over and over again. Not mine. Never mine.
I stared at the ceiling until my eyes burned, wondering… was this what being a wife meant? Or was I just something he used to survive her absence?
The next morning, he woke up first. There were bloodstains on the sheets. He noticed. I saw it in the way his eyes paused for a second. Just a second.
Then he looked away.
Didn’t say anything. Not even one word. Not even… sorry.
I smiled like nothing happened. I got his clothes ready, laid them out neatly like I always did.
“You’ve got an important meeting today,” I told him softly. “Don’t be late.”
Like I wasn’t the one who bled all night. Like my heart wasn’t already torn open.
...
From that day on, I tried harder. Pathetic, right? I knew he didn’t love me. I knew I was just filling space. But I still tried.
He had a bad stomach, so I woke up early every morning and made him chicken soup. The kind that wouldn’t hurt him. He was always under pressure, dealing with things I didn’t even want to imagine, so I learned how to massage his shoulders and his back, careful and quiet.
I liked silence anyway. Or maybe I just got used to it. I stopped making noise, stopped asking for anything. Even my footsteps became softer. If I stayed small enough… maybe I wouldn’t bother him.
And somehow, he started changing. A little.
When he came back from business trips, he’d sometimes bring me small things. Nothing big. Just… something.
When I got sick, he’d make me medicine himself and hand it to me without looking at me.
“Drink it,” he’d say. “Don’t be stubborn.”
And at night, sometimes he held me. His arm around my waist, his body warm against mine. Those moments felt so real it scared me. Like maybe… maybe he was starting to see me. Maybe I wasn’t just nothing to him anymore.
He never mentioned the divorce again. Not once. Like that paper we signed never existed.
And I… I actually believed it. I thought maybe if I just held on a little longer, he’d fall in love with me.
Stupid, right?