Thirty eight

Thirty eight
Fallon
The text came through just as I was finishing an edit—short, casual, and completely infuriating.
Reid: Out of town for a few days. Don’t wait up.
I stared at the screen, my fingers tightening around my phone. That was it? No conversation, no explanation—just a six-word text like I was his assistant and not his wife.
The anger came first—hot and immediate. Then came the hurt, creeping in quietly behind it, unwelcome but impossible to ignore.
I shouldn’t care.
But I did.
And I hated that.
I put my phone down and tried to refocus on the article I was editing, but the words blurred together. My mind kept circling back to him, to the way he’d slipped so easily out of my life with barely a parting word. We’d never pretended this marriage was anything more than a business arrangement, but lately, the lines had gotten… fuzzy.
There had been moments—soft, unexpected ones—where it felt like something real. The late-night conversations, the quiet looks across a crowded room, the way his hand would sometimes linger on my back just a second too long.
Clearly, those moments meant more to me than they did to him.
\~~~
I waited.
An hour passed. Then two.
No follow-up text. No call.
Nothing.
The house felt too big without him—too quiet. And that shouldn’t have mattered. We had our separate rooms, our separate lives.
But his absence still felt… noticeable.
I told myself it was because I was used to his presence. The sound of his low voice on late-night calls, the occasional clink of his glass when he poured a drink in the study, the steady rhythm of his footsteps in the hallway. Now the silence pressed down, thick and heavy, and it made my skin itch.
I walked through the house, my restlessness building. The kitchen was spotless. The living room pristine. I wandered into the study, half-hoping for some sign of him. But it was perfectly in order, every paper aligned, every object precisely in its place.
As if he’d never been here at all.
That ache in my chest sharpened.
I needed a distraction.
I flopped onto the bed and opened my group chat with Mia and our friend Layla.
Mia: Sooo how’s married life today, Mrs. Callahan? 🥂
Layla: Still rolling around in piles of money, I assume? 💸
I smirked, but it faded quickly.
Me: He left town without telling me. Just sent a text.
The replies were immediate.
Mia: WHAT.
Layla: He’s so lucky he’s hot.
Mia: Girl, I would be LIVID.
Me: Oh, I am.
But it was more than that. And I didn’t know how to explain it—why this casual dismissal felt like a punch to the gut.
Layla: Maybe it’s work?
Me: He didn’t say.
Mia: You’re his WIFE. He owes you more than a text.
Mia wasn’t wrong. But this wasn’t a real marriage. And that made everything so much more complicated.
Layla: You think he’s with someone?
The question hit like a slap.
Me: No.
The certainty of my response startled me. I didn’t believe Reid was cheating—whatever this thing between us was, it wasn’t traditional, but I knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t do that.
And yet… he hadn’t told me where he was.
Mia: You gonna call him?
Me: No.
I wasn’t going to chase him.
But even as I typed it, I didn’t quite believe it.
The unanswered uestions irked me.
The hours stretched on. I paced the house. Tried to watch a show, but couldn’t focus. Every time my phone buzzed, my heart leapt—only to sink when it wasn’t him.
I told myself I wouldn’t text him. Wouldn’t chase after answers he clearly didn’t think I deserved.
But my resolve crumbled as midnight came and went.
Me: Where did you go?
The message sat there, unread.
And the longer the silence stretched, the more that ache in my chest grew.
By morning, the anger had settled in. I slammed cabinets making coffee, my irritation boiling over with every minute that passed without a response. I didn’t deserve this. I wasn’t some afterthought.
He didn’t get to just disappear without a word.
I was halfway through drafting a much angrier text when his name finally flashed on my screen.
But it wasn’t a message. It was a call.
My thumb hovered over the button, my heart pounding.
I answered on the third ring, my voice cool and controlled. “Hello.”
There was a beat of silence, and then his voice—low and rough, with an edge I couldn’t quite place. “Fallon.”
That one word broke something in me. The anger, the hurt, the confusion—it all rushed up at once.
“Where the hell are you?” I demanded.
Another pause. “I told you—I’m out of town.”
“That’s not an answer.” My voice shook, and I hated that he could hear it. “You just left, Reid. No warning, no explanation—do you even realize how that looks?”
“I didn’t think I needed your permission,” he said quietly.
The words were a knife, sharp and cold. “That’s not what this is about, and you know it.”
He sighed. “I’m handling something. It’s… complicated.”
“More complicated than your wife wondering where you are?”
There was another long silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer. “I didn’t mean to shut you out.”
But he had. And it hurt more than I wanted to admit.
“When are you coming back?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
My chest tightened. “Reid—”
“I’ll call you,” he said. And then the line went dead.
I stared at the phone, the emptiness of the house closing in around me.
And I realized something I hadn’t let myself admit before.
I missed him.
And that scared me more than anything.