In Distress

I can't believe this is happening. I have absolutely no words, so I just stare at him.

"I understand this is awful, but I don't want to be a liar or hide things," he continues, sighing. My delicious chicken Alfredo is now forgotten, because my appetite has gone to hell, "I wasn't ready to tell you this yet, though, I needed to think about it some more."

I take a deep breath and open my mouth to speak, but I stop when I hear big steps approaching. Bobbie. Farrow gets up and takes a seat again, before she asks questions.

"I decided to eat, but just a little bit," she says when she enters the kitchen and sees us sitting at the breakfast table, then she frowns, "What? The vibes feel very weird in here."

"Nothing. Here, have this," I say and offer her my mostly untouched food, "I'll go get another plate. We're having a serious conversation."

"Oh, serious," she mocks me before grabbing the plate and leaving again. In a while, she'll come back down to grab something to drink. And then again to return the plate.

"Can we put a pause in this conversation?" I ask, returning my eyes to him. I feel a huge hole in my stomach, but the hole is not empty… it's filled with fear and dread, "You’re right, you should think about this a bit more."

"Yeah," he says and his shoulders relax with relief, "I don't want to hurt you. At all. And like I said, this could be a quarter-life crisis. And I think it started around a week ago when Randy was telling me about his son, I felt so old. Like, I already went through all that... thirteen years ago. Do you know what I mean? Did you feel like that with Emily?"

I don't know what the fuck he's even talking about, I'm not actually present here anymore, but I mumble something. I hope it made sense, but if it didn't, I don't care that much.

Farrow keeps eating while talking about random shit and he doesn't even ask if I'm going to get more food or not.

He's not present here either.

Once he finishes his food, I grab his plate, just to have something to do with my hands.

"Go ahead and take a shower, I'll wash the dishes," I say, because I need space. I can feel my tears coming and I don't want him to see them.

"Alright," he sighs and leaves with heavy steps. Once I’m alone, I grab a clean cloth and put it up against my mouth to drown my crying, but I still try my best to control it because if I let go, I won't be able to stop.

This has never, ever happened before. Farrow has never even looked at another woman for too long, he always repeats I'm all he wants, he's never complained about me being the only woman he's slept with. On the contrary, we've talked about how sweet it is that we both haven't even kissed another person, just each other.

Fuck, this is horrible.

That girl must be extremely pretty. Extremely hot. I don't even want to look at her, I know I'll never stop comparing us.

I’ll never recover from this.

"Stop, stop," I tell myself, forcing myself to take a few deep breaths, "Stop. It's fine, it's just a bump on the road."

He's probably just… being a man. His masculinity must feel threatened because he hasn't fucked around with lots of different girls like his best friend Nicola or the other guys he works with. This is probably just the quarter-life crisis, like he said.

I manage to calm myself and I clean a bit to gather my thoughts and waste time. Just like I thought, Bobbie comes running to leave the plate in the sink, grab a bottle of water and run back up, thankfully without giving me too much attention.

Every step I take to our room feels heavy. I don't want to get there and see Farrow because I don't think I can keep this calmness once I see his face.

And what is going to happen when we get in bed? The norm for us is to have sex every night unless I'm on my period or one of us is sick or too tired. But right now? I don’t think I’ve ever felt less aroused before. I don’t want him to touch me at all.

I take one last calming breath before walking inside. Farrow is already lying down in bed with his hair wet and he's wearing pants. The last time he wore those pants to bed was five months ago when he had the worst fever he's ever had. Other than that, he wears his boxers or nothing.

And he's texting so intensely, it takes him a few seconds to notice I'm here.

I bet he's talking to that girl.

But I just swallow that hard pill and decide to say nothing about it because, again, I'm filled with fear. Fear of confrontation and fear of the unknown. We've never had a big fight before, we've never broken up, not even for a few days. And we've never been away from each other for too long.

I don't know myself without Farrow. And I don’t want to.

If we take a break and he leaves, that means I'll have to live here with Bobbie and find a way to go through my days without him. That's too scary to even consider, so I slightly shake my head to get rid of those thoughts and I walk to the bathroom, without saying anything to Farrow.

It's not like he cares, I can hear him typing on his phone again.