The water began to boil while Dererick looked at me.<\/p>\n
I could hear it bubbling in the pot, but neither of us moved to turn it off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw you wearing gloves in the bedroom,\u201d I said again.<\/p>\n
He glanced toward the stove, then back at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other night.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat were you doing awake?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was not the question I had expected.<\/p>\n
I had imagined him denying what I saw, laughing it off, or giving me an explanation so ordinary that I would feel foolish for worrying.<\/p>\n
I had not imagined that he would ask about me first.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn't fully asleep,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He leaned one hand against the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you were.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The answer came out more quietly than I intended.<\/p>\n
I reached for the stove knob and turned down the heat.<\/p>\n
The movement gave me something to do with my hands.<\/p>\n
Dererick watched me finish adjusting the flame.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn't you say something that night?\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the pot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn't know what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have asked me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his forehead.<\/p>\n
For a second, he looked less like the person I had been watching in the dark and more like the tired man who sometimes stood in the kitchen trying to remember why he had opened the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
That familiar expression made everything harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn't want to assume something,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you thought something was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lowered his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you think was wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
I had been afraid of this question for days.<\/p>\n
Now that it had arrived, I realized I did not have a clean answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know,\u201d I said. \u201cThat's why I'm asking.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n
Then he turned off the stove.<\/p>\n
The sudden quiet made the kitchen feel different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't understand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither do I.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pulled out a chair and sat down.<\/p>\n
I remained standing beside the counter.<\/p>\n
He looked up at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome sit.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat opposite him.<\/p>\n
The table between us was the same table where we had eaten breakfast that morning.<\/p>\n
There were a few crumbs near the edge, and the dish towel lay folded beside the sink.<\/p>\n
I found myself noticing those details because I did not know where else to look.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat exactly did you see?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
I took a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were wearing those pale gloves. The disposable ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou picked up a small black bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat bag?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one I hadn't seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked down at the table.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to say he knew what I meant.<\/p>\n
Instead, he asked, \u201cYou saw me carry it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of the bedroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.<\/p>\n
I watched the movement.<\/p>\n
It was a familiar habit, one I had seen countless times when he was thinking.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what he was thinking now.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you follow me?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you look inside the bag?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you see anything else?\u201d<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
He leaned back slightly.<\/p>\n
I could not tell whether he was relieved or troubled by my answers.<\/p>\n
That uncertainty made me want to fill the silence with every thought I had carried.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him about the tea.<\/p>\n
I wanted to explain why I had started refusing it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to confess that I had watched his hands so often that I sometimes forgot to look at his face.<\/p>\n
But I had decided to begin with what I knew.<\/p>\n
I needed to let the conversation take its own shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy were you wearing gloves?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
For the first time since I had spoken, neither of us seemed to be waiting for the other to ask something.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know what you're asking me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I felt my shoulders tighten.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were wearing gloves in our bedroom in the middle of the night. You picked up a bag and left the room. I want to know why.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked away toward the window.<\/p>\n
The glass reflected the kitchen light, so I could not see much outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to think about how to answer that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The words landed heavily between us.<\/p>\n
I had expected an explanation, even if it was one I did not believe.<\/p>\n
Instead, he had asked for time.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He looked back at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm not trying to avoid you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn't say you were.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you think I might be.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pressed my palms against my knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don't know what to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded once.<\/p>\n
That was the first answer he had given me that felt entirely honest.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke for a while.<\/p>\n
The pot on the stove had stopped making noise.<\/p>\n
Somewhere outside, a car passed along the street.<\/p>\n
I could hear the faint ticking of the kitchen clock.<\/p>\n
Dererick stood and moved toward the stove.<\/p>\n
\u201cDinner's going to be late,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I almost laughed.<\/p>\n
Not because anything was funny, but because the ordinary sentence seemed impossible after what we had just discussed.<\/p>\n
Then I realized he might be trying to give us both a moment to breathe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat's okay,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He checked the pot and stirred its contents.<\/p>\n
I watched him without trying to interpret every movement.<\/p>\n
When he asked me to pass him the spoon, I did.<\/p>\n
Our fingers touched briefly.<\/p>\n
Neither of us pulled away sharply.<\/p>\n
We finished cooking.<\/p>\n
We sat down and ate, though the conversation remained thin.<\/p>\n
He asked whether I wanted more.<\/p>\n
I said no.<\/p>\n
He cleared his plate and took it to the sink.<\/p>\n
I stayed at the table for another minute.<\/p>\n
The conversation had not solved anything.<\/p>\n
But something had changed.<\/p>\n
The question was no longer locked inside my head.<\/p>\n
He knew what I had seen.<\/p>\n
I knew that he knew.<\/p>\n
And neither of us could return to pretending that I had never noticed.<\/p>\n
After dinner, I washed the dishes while he dried them.<\/p>\n
We worked carefully around each other.<\/p>\n
When the last plate was put away, he folded the dish towel and laid it on the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'll talk to you about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
He seemed to consider the question.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask him to be more specific.<\/p>\n
I wanted to insist that I had already spent too many nights waiting.<\/p>\n
But I could hear the strain in his voice, and I did not know what it meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He touched my shoulder lightly before leaving the kitchen.<\/p>\n
I stood beside the sink after he was gone.<\/p>\n
I had wanted to ask him for an answer.<\/p>\n
I had finally done it.<\/p>\n
Now I had to decide what I would do with the space between asking and knowing.<\/p>\n
I turned off the kitchen light and followed him upstairs.<\/p>\n
We got ready for bed without discussing the conversation again.<\/p>\n
When I lay down, I could still hear his words.<\/p>\n
I need to think about how to answer that.<\/p>\n
They frightened me because they left so much unknown.<\/p>\n
They also gave me something I had not had before.<\/p>\n
A conversation that could continue.<\/p>\n
I did not know whether the truth would make me feel safer.<\/p>\n
I only knew that I could no longer pretend the question did not exist.<\/p>\n
The water began to boil while Dererick looked at me. I could hear it bubbling in the pot, but neither of us moved to turn it off. \u201cI saw you … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36744,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36724\/revisions\/36744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}