Three Months, Maybe Four

The question hung in the room like a crooked photograph on the wall, its imbalance gnawing at the edges of comfort. She hadn’t meant to ask it. It had slipped out in the way truths sometimes did—clumsily, with all the grace of a bird flying into a closed window. 

Now it was out there, flapping awkwardly between them.

She stared at the mirror as though it might take pity and answer for her, but the reflection only offered judgment: mascara smudged like ash, hair tousled into something between a warning sign and a flag of surrender, eyes bloodshot and accusing. She probably shouldn’t have had that second drink—or the first, for that matter.

The silence following her question wasn’t still; it had its own pulse, a low hum that crawled up the walls and nestled in the cracks of her composure. She blinked, trying to smooth the furrow in her brow as if her face could be ironed flat like a rumpled sheet. But no amount of effort could stop her own reflection from telling her what she already knew.

Behind her, the man on the sofa shifted, the weight of his presence settling deeper into the cushions like spilled wine into fabric. He didn’t say anything at first—just sat there, brooding. She didn’t need to look to know. Brooding was a universal language, and he spoke it fluently.

“I didn’t think we were doing this tonight,” he said at last. His voice was low, like a dying fire, offering neither light nor warmth.

She let out a laugh that sounded more like glass cracking. “Neither did I.” She turned back to the mirror, a refuge that offered no comfort, and dragged a tissue under her eyes. The black smudges stretched instead of disappearing, making her look like the sad clown in a play no one cared to see.

“Guess tonight had other plans,” she muttered to herself, the bitterness tasting of last night’s wine.

A beat passed, long enough for her to feel the weight of it pressing against her chest. The refrigerator hummed its indifference, and the city beyond the thin walls buzzed with a life she wasn’t part of. Finally, she turned, her sharp gaze slicing through the fog of hesitation. His face was a mask—an empty, serene thing—and it made her stomach churn. “Well?” she asked, her voice too loud, too sharp. “Are you going to answer me?” His jaw tightened. He looked like a man balancing on a knife’s edge, waiting for the inevitable fall.

“Do you really want me to?” he asked, his tone tinged with weary amusement, like a man offering her a cigarette in a house already on fire.

She didn’t know. Not really. But she nodded anyway, because that’s what people did when they were too far in to turn back.

He exhaled, a long, deliberate sound that felt more like a preamble than a release. “You think I don’t notice?” he said, not looking at her but through her, as if she were a glass too empty to bother refilling. eshape the room. "You think I don't notice?" he said, his voice quieter now, almost to himself. "The second drink, the mirror. The way you ask questions like you're scared of the answer but can't live without it. Like you're already rehearsing how to survive what I'll say."

Her fingers gripped the sink, her knuckles whitening. She wanted to throw his words back at him, to twist them into something cutting, but all she could manage was silence. It hung there, thick and choking, wrapping around her throat like the scarf she’d left in the corner, discarded and forgotten.

“I didn’t mean for it to get this messy,” he said, his voice cracking just enough to make her wince. “But here we are.”

Here we are. As if they’d both wandered into this room by accident and weren’t the architects of their own ruin. She looked at him, properly this time, and saw it: the cracks in his armour, the exhaustion etched into his features like graffiti on a wall no one cared to repaint. He wasn’t a fortress; he was rubble pretending to hold itself together.

“Just say it,” she whispered, her voice thinner than she’d intended, a thread stretched taut. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

For a moment, she thought he might laugh. The corners of his mouth twitched, but no sound came out—just the barest exhale of defeat. He leaned forward, his elbows digging into his knees, a posture that reminded her of church pews and prayers unanswered.

“You’re not wrong,” he said at last. “About me. About... her.”

Her. The word landed like a shard of glass, small but sharp enough to cut. She had asked, hadn’t she? Invited this knowledge like an unwelcome guest. And now it was here, sitting in her gut like a stone she couldn’t swallow.

“How long?” she asked, her voice barely audible over the roar of blood in her ears.

“Does it matter?” His tone wasn’t cruel, just tired, as if he were pleading with her to abandon the wreckage.

“Of course it matters!” she snapped, her voice cracking like thunder in the too-small room. “Don’t you dare decide for me what matters.”

He flinched, and for a moment, she thought she saw something like guilt flicker across his face. “Three months,” he said finally, his voice so quiet she had to strain to hear. “Maybe four.”

“Maybe,” she repeated, the word falling from her lips like a curse. “You’re not even sure.”

“No, I’m not,” he admitted, his honesty cutting deeper than any lie. “Because I didn’t keep track. Because I didn’t think...”

“Think what?” she spat, the words acidic. “That I’d find out? That it would hurt? That it would matter?”

He stood then, sudden and unsteady, and crossed the room in two strides. But he stopped short, the distance between them yawning like a canyon. “No,” he said, his voice breaking in a way that made her want to look away. “Because I didn’t think I was capable of being this person.”

The irony hit her then, sharp and sour: he hadn’t thought he was capable of being this person, but he had no problem becoming him. She stared at him, her anger swirling with something darker, something nameless. She wanted to scream, to shatter the mirror that had betrayed her, to do anything but stand there.

“Get out, will you?”