He bought the necklace for me. I watched him give it to her.
Our whole marriage was a string of stolen moments on his tour bus. A whispered conversation while the band set up. My hand on his arm while a crowd screamed his name just outside the door. I was the footnote to the main event, the quiet wife waiting in the wings.
Emil was a rock star. I was the woman who dried his tears after a bad review. But his childhood best friend, Greer, was the one he called to celebrate a sold-out show. His mother, Hester, never missed a chance to remind him I didn't fit the picture she’d painted of his life. I was the problem for wanting to be his first priority. For wanting to be in the photograph at all.
The night he told me I was being “clingy” for asking when he’d be home, while Greer laughed in the background of our call, I finally saw it. He hadn’t chosen her over me in a grand, dramatic way. He’d chosen her in a thousand small ways, until there was nothing left of us but the space I was expected to quietly fill.
How do you fight for a marriage when your husband has already given the best parts of it away? When does holding on become letting yourself disappear?
There is no cheating in this book.
