Do You Know About Me?
Because I didn’t know about you…
The one time Ben left at night, I thought it was just a fluke. Maybe he just went to the liquor store down the street for a pack of Marlboro’s. I had smelled the cigarette smoke on his collar, enough of a brand to know he had started the habit again. But I hadn’t said a word. Freelance work had been coming in less and less since the summer, so I understood the stress reaction from him. It had to bother him that we were mostly staying afloat from the stipend I had received for my graduate studies.
Maybe moving in together had been too much of an impulse move. I wanted a ring, but instead I had gotten a joint lease and half the closet space.
But then it’s a Tuesday night and I’m home early from the part-time job I’m holding down in this weird in-between period. I haven’t heard from Ben since he texted me an emoji blowing a kiss around the start of my shift. I’m lucky if I even get a sentence anymore.
When he finally comes in halfway through The Voice, he seems to stop short in the doorway. “Becca, I thought you were working a full shift,” he says.
“It was slow, so Mandy sent me home. She said she could handle closing up without me.” I look at him expectantly. “Where were you?”
