Chapter 4 Whispers in the Dark

It was a shadowed room, the street lamps that lit it softly out in the black. Amara slept in bed, her back turned to Julian's as he remained wide awake. The quiet between them was thick-heavy, unspoken, full of all that neither of them would ever say aloud.

Sheets adjusted as he repositioned, his body inches closer to hers, but no warmth. No affection. Only the still realignment of two bodies in one bed, but not as one.

Amara saw the still beep of his phone screen. His thumb moved up and down, the light flickering across his face, but he said nothing. She could hear her own heart thudding, but she was immobile. It was a waltz of evasion: pretending to sleep, pretending not to care, while she wanted to turn over and challenge him on her behalf. Challenge him on who he was texting at the moment. Challenge him on why he had been so remote, why she felt like a stranger in the home she was supposed to adore.

But she didn't. She stretched out on her back, timing out the seconds between the held breaths and the soft ping of texts. The rhythm of it, the steady thrum, was a thrum in the background to her growing emptiness. He was there, but not. She felt the tentative pull away in the way his shoulder no longer braced against hers, in the way his hand never slid to settle on her.

He swallowed hard, and Amara's eyes snapped to him, but he didn't notice. His face still glowed from the blue screen of his phone, his eyes totally absorbed in what was on the screen. She couldn't help herself. She glanced. She had to know.

The screen flashed back on, and the message was: "Is he still asleep?"

It was from Celeste.

Amara's breath was stuck in her throat, but she didn't budge. She clung to the edge of the blanket with her hand even harder as Julian replied: "Yeah. He's out like a light. I'll be in the office tomorrow all day. See you in the morning."

A knot in her stomach. She attempted to swallow it, attempted to gulp down the roil in her belly. It was not jealousy-instead, it was the piercing, gnawing reality of her own littleness, the humble comprehension that the closeness she had once known with him had now been shared by two. She had claimed her space.

Amara closed her eyes and let calming numbness wash over her. This was the fourth time this week. Fourth time he'd slept in, sending her SMS. Fourth time he'd put her ahead of their marriage, ahead of what they'd once had. She felt like screaming. She felt like asking him questions. But there was something else too-something that was evil. The voice in her head told her that it was not his fault whatsoever. She had let this happen. She had let the silence creep in, let the cracks spread and deepen.

"Are you awake yet?" Julian's voice pierced her haze, low and doubtful, but not gentle. Only obligation.

Amara rolled onto her side, muttering softly. "Mm-hmm."

The knocking on his phone ceased, and there was an undercurrent of tension in the air, taut and tense. He eventually put the phone on the nightstand, and Amara had a strange feeling in her chest. It was a strange kind of relief to be informed that he had cut it off, but it was the start of a changing, new awareness: when he wasn't gazing at his phone, he was elsewhere. Her husband, whom she had wedded, the one who wrapped himself around her in their bed, was not there.

She could sense the sweep of his arm across the sheets as he reached out to her, his hand falling upon her shoulder gently. But not the same. The pressure of his hand was strange, as if it were the hand of another man. She did not turn to him, did not nestle into his touch the way she once did. She vacated the space.

"Amara," he panted, and she could see that he was exhausted. "I'm sorry. I know that I've been distracted lately. I've been busy with everything. With work, and Celeste. I didn't mean to push you away."

Her heart hurt, but she was unable to reply. The words stuck in her throat, bitter and cumbersome. How many times had she heard him utter sorry over the past few months? How many times had he uttered that he was "sorry" but made no change at all?

She tilted her head a fraction to one side, so that their eyes met in the fading light. He was near enough that she could notice the lines of strain on his face, the exhaustion in his eyes which did not use to be there. And for a second, she was almost tempted with a rush of sympathy for him. Almost.

"I know," she whispered. "But you're apologizing because you're in trouble. Not because you're sorry. Julian, months. Months of you choosing her over me. I've watched you slip away, and all you do is apologize."

He flinched, his hand jerking back by an inch. His jaw clicking shut, and she could see the tension curling through his face. He didn't say anything for a moment, his eyes flicking away from hers as though he couldn't handle the force of her words.

"Do you want me to go?" he snarled at last, his voice thick with annoyance.

Amara blinked, surprised by the question. The finality of it. The chill.

"No," she said quietly, determination in her voice. "I don't want you to go. But I do want you to look at me, Julian. To look and see that I'm here. That I'm trying. But you're not. And I don't know how much longer I can just pretend like everything's okay when I'm being ignored in my own house."

He hadn't said anything for so long. His gaze, lost and far away, drifted over the space between them. He no longer remembered how to fill her and him. To get her to look at him. To want him.

"I don't know what you want from me," he breathed, lips against his sigh. "I don't know how to repair this."

Amara closed her eyes. The tears she had been suppressing bubbled on the surface, but she suppressed them. She was not going to cry again. Not for him. Not for this.

"I want you to try," she said quietly. "I want you to stop pretending that everything is okay. I want you to decide to choose me again. The way we used to choose each other."

But her words remained, unspoken. And within a silence of a few moments thereafter, Julian breathed low and defeated. He turned onto his side and away from her.

And Amara, as always, remained motionless in the darkness.

His phone softly beeped on the nightstand, but neither of them stirred to grab it. Neither would be so courageous.

She stretched across the room's darkness, lying outstretched upon it, and she sensed the weight of all that there was in the room around them-the unspoken things, the prayer said wordlessly, the space extending on and on. Her love for him still ached, an aching throbbing in her breast. Yet she did not know how much longer she was able to retain it if he was not so much as making an effort to meet her halfway.

And when the darkness had fallen, the distance between them had seemed to expand even more, something neither of them could bridge.

And amidst that silence, Amara understood that the most difficult part was not loving him. It was to have known that he didn't love her in the same way.