- 6.
I started working out. Every morning, forty
minutes of weights, fifteen minutes of cardio.
Within two days, the housekeeper informed me the gym was out of order.
I said it was fine, I’d just use whatever worked. He told me everything was broken. Even the
lock on the gym door.
Undeterred, I rolled out a yoga mat in the living
room. Ethan, for some reason, had been
working from home lately, and he was always in
the living room, glued to his laptop.
He glanced up. “Since when did you get into
fitness?”
A perfect opening. I looked away. “I’m not
skinny enough.”
The fitness instructor on TV bent over, touching
her toes. I mimicked the stretch.
Ethan swallowed, his voice a little rough.
“You’re plenty skinny.”
く
I panted. “I want abs. Abs are sexy.”
“Who told you that?” he asked sharply.
I hesitated. Should I push it now, rip off the
band–aid? It was what I wanted, wasn’t it? But
something held me back. The atmosphere
was… nice. Too nice. It wasn’t us. Ethan and I
were always rushed, distant. Him working, me
enduring his work. We never just… sat together,
doing our own thing, yet still connected by
snippets of conversation, like a real couple.
While I was lost in thought, Ethan dismissed his
own question with a quiet, “Never mind.” He’d
just… let it go.
It was strange. We were both tiptoeing around
something, carefully preserving the fragile
thread that connected us.
A few minutes later, I went to my room to
change. A new text from Ethan. Calm, collected
Ethan, sitting on the sofa, had sent a message
to the burner phone while my back was turned:
“You bastard. I’ll kill you.”
