#stack moore angst

You also try to tell yourself the lie that you hate her — Mary. Her name burns in your throat like the whiskey Stack likes to drink. But how could you hate her when you’ve seen the way he talks about her when he thinks you’re not listening? How his eyes glaze with softness when he says her name in passing. How he stops calling her “my wife” and starts calling her “my girl” when he’s drunk enough to forget you're someone else.

You learn things about her you were never supposed to know. Her favorite kind of wine, the song she hums while she cleans, the scar on her thigh he once kissed after a bar incident a few years back. You gather these things like trinkets — little heartbreaks in your jewelry box, tucked between strands of pearls he bought you after missing your birthday.

You tell yourself you are not in love. That this is just something to fill the quiet. Something to do in the in-between. But that lie only holds weight until 3 a.m., when he rolls off of you and mutters her name in his sleep. You stare at the ceiling and pretend it doesn’t gut you. 

What do you get, really? The evenings after the sun has gone down, when even the city’s most ruthless start to tuck in. You get cold dinners, unreturned calls, and bruises that bloom like violets. He always says he doesn’t mean to grab so hard.

Mary gets his mornings. She gets his coffee orders and Sunday paper runs. She gets his tired feet in her lap and his laughter over breakfast. You get his apologies. You get his guilt.

Sometimes, he says he’ll leave her. Sometimes, he says you’re everything he’s ever wanted. That she doesn’t understand him the way you do. That he’s never felt more alive than when he’s with you. And for a second, you believe him.

But the next morning, he’s gone before the first light hits your skin.

You stop asking him to stay. You stop asking him anything at all.

And yet — when he knocks, you open the door.