Emotional Affair

For twenty-two years I gave my wife everything and felt nothing back. Then a woman handed me a smooth stone on a riverbank, and something I'd buried switched back on.

He swore he had blocked her months ago. Then he held his phone an inch from my face to show me a video, and a banner slid down from the top of the screen.

He swore the coworker was just a coworker. Then I found a music playlist they'd built together — and the title was their two names fused into one.

For twenty years she refused to let meat into our kitchen. So why was she whispering, at three in the morning, about how to brown a chicken thigh?