The Stranger in My Husband's Phone

I bought fresh basil.

That was the thing I kept thinking about as I stood at the stove, watching the water come to a boil. I had walked two extra blocks to the specialty grocery store on Clement Street just to get fresh basil instead of the dried stuff in the little jar at the back of our spice cabinet. Because Daniel always said he could taste the difference. Because Thursday used to be our night.

The pasta slid into the pot. I turned down the heat, wiped my hands on the dish towel, and started on the sauce.

Our apartment smelled like garlic and olive oil and something almost like normalcy.

I heard the bathroom door open down the hall.

Daniel had been in there for a while — long enough that the water had come to a boil while he was gone. He was thirty-four years old with dark hair he kept slightly too long on the sides, and when he walked into the kitchen doorway, still in his work shirt with the first two buttons undone, he looked exactly like the man I had married three years ago. Tired in the same way. Familiar in the same way.

Except for something behind his eyes that I couldn't quite name.

"Dinner's almost ready," I said.

"Yeah." He nodded, but he didn't move toward the cabinet to get the plates. He just stood there for a moment, one hand resting on the doorframe. "Elena."

Something in his voice made me lower the wooden spoon.

"I think something's wrong with me." He didn't look at me when he said it. His gaze dropped to the floor tiles, then bounced back up to some neutral point just past my shoulder. "I can't... you know. Lately."

The kitchen felt very quiet. The sauce made a soft bubbling sound.

I understood what he meant. Three weeks, maybe closer to four. He'd turned away twice, rolled over once, and the last time he'd tried, the attempt had ended in silence and a closed bathroom door. I hadn't pushed. I'd told myself it was nothing. I'd bought fresh basil.

"Hey," I said, keeping my voice gentle. "That's okay. We can make an appointment. Go see someone together, or you could go on your own first if you'd rather—"

"No." He said it fast. Too fast, and then he seemed to hear himself, because he softened it. "I mean — it's probably just stress. Work has been insane. You know how Q4 gets."

"I know, but that doesn't mean we can't—"

"I'm fine, Elena." He pushed off the doorframe and finally moved to get the plates. "I just wanted to say something. I don't need a doctor."

I turned back to the stove.

We ate at the table we'd carried up three flights of stairs when we first moved in, the one with the scratch on the left corner from when Daniel's college roommate helped us move it and dropped his end. I used to run my thumb over that scratch when we talked at dinner. Old habit.

Tonight I mostly watched him look at his phone.

It sat face-up next to his fork, which we both knew was against the rule we'd supposedly agreed on. Screen lighting up every few minutes. He'd glance down, then back at me, then down again.

"Work?" I asked, halfway through my pasta.

"Hmm?"

"Your phone. Is it the work group chat?"

"Yeah." He picked up his fork again. "The usual. You know Marcus, he can't let anything wait until morning."

"Right."

I twirled pasta around my fork and let the conversation die there. The basil was good. I noticed that in a distant kind of way, the way you notice small things when you're paying attention to something else. The sauce tasted the way it was supposed to taste. The apartment was warm. Daniel was right across the table from me, close enough that I could see the slight shadow of stubble along his jaw.

His phone lit up again. He glanced at it. Looked back at his plate.

I poured myself more water.

After dinner he moved to the couch, and I cleared the table and ran the hot water in the sink. The kitchen faced the living room with no wall between them — just a stretch of open counter — so I could hear the low sound of him settling in, the soft click of the TV turning on and then off again almost immediately.

I started on the dishes.

The window above the sink faces east, and at night it turns into a rough mirror, reflecting back the warm glow of our kitchen lamp and whatever is happening behind me. I've washed dishes in front of that window for three years. I know all its angles.

I was rinsing the pasta pot when I saw it.

In the dark glass of the window: the couch, and Daniel on it, one arm resting along the back cushions, his phone tilted up in his other hand. He was reading something. I watched his reflection without turning around, soap still on my hands, water still running.

And then he smiled.

It wasn't a big smile. That was almost the worst part of it — it wasn't the kind of smile that announces itself. It was small and private and soft around the edges, the kind that happens before you can stop it. The kind that means something reached you somewhere you weren't defending.

I stood very still.

I couldn't remember the last time I had seen Daniel smile like that. Not at dinner, not at a joke on TV, not at anything I'd said or done in longer than I could honestly recall. His whole face looked different with it — younger, lighter, like something heavy had briefly been set down.

The water kept running over my hands.

I didn't turn around. I just stood there watching his reflection, that small, unguarded smile fading as he typed something back, his thumbs moving quickly, and then the smile came again, quieter this time.

I turned off the faucet.

Dried my hands on the dish towel. Set it down on the counter with more care than it needed.

The last time he smiled at his phone like that, we had just started dating. I remember because I was the one on the other end.