Sophie found herself facing an even bigger challenge a day later—cooking. It wasn't like she was completely incompetent when it came to being domestic, but she hadn't touched a pan in years thanks to her incredibly demanding job.
Her fingers flitted through the pages of a cook book, only stopping once she identified one of her husband's favorite meals. Something simple, but it was classy and recognizable all the same.
After skimming the page, she instantly got to cooking, trying to replace the memories of her latest altercation with a list of ingredients and the specific measurements the meal required.
Hours flied by as she seasoned, fried, and chopped a bunch of vegetables with a sense of unfamiliarity following her movements. It wasn't something she was used to, but it was comforting nonetheless, bringing peace to the storm inside her mind.
Before she knew it, the clock's short hand landed on the eighth hour.
A bit late for dinner, but it didn't discourage Sophie as she set the table, lighting the table's centerpiece candle to create a romantic mood. Next to it was the black outer shell of a velvet box, her husband's dream watch resting inside.
Sophie was intent on fixing things. It was tonight or never.
She sat on her chair, watching as the red wine she matched with the homecooked steak sat unmoving inside the glass. It was hard not to reminisce about the glory days of their marriage, when everything felt golden and hearing her husband's unrestrained laugher made her feel like she could swallow the world whole.
Now, it was this, cold and empty and waiting for the disaster that was approaching. She hoped there was no disaster approaching. But it was an inevitability.
Marriage was like that sometimes.
"Where is he?" She checked the time on her phone, it was fifteen minutes past ten. She'd been waiting for that long?
The steak needed to be reheated at that point. Sophie's fingers started fidgeting in worry. It was so late. Where was her husband? Had he gotten into an accident on the way home and she'd been too deep into her daydreams to realize?
Unable to hold down her anxiety, Sophie typed out her pass code and dialed up the only contact in her phone that had a heart emoji next to a name.
It rang, much too many times, before it went completely silent. She tried again, dialing the number she could recite in her dreams. A third attempt became a fifth, a fifth became a seventh, and before she knew it, she could repeat the repetitive ringing of an unanswered call without even hearing it.
The call was finally received.
"Hello?" She cursed herself for the sheer shakiness of her voice. But who could blame her? She hadn't seen her husband since earlier this morning when he left without a word. It'd been half a day since then.
"Yesssss?" A woman's voice. A woman answered the phone. And for fuck's sake, it just had to be her out of all the billion women in the world.
"Gabriella?"
"Who else?" Gabriella's words were slurred and drawn out, the pretentiousness Sophie hated so much no longer tied to her voice, replaced by something even more infuriating—raw, sincere arrogance.
Another woman had answered the phone for her husband. As much as Sophie wanted to give Luke the benefit of a doubt, there were nine hundred signs pointing to the same worst case scenario.
No, he would never. Her husband was difficult to understand at times, but he'd never stoop so low as to... as to...
"Luke's busy. You can stop trying to call him now."
"And where in the ever loving fuck is my husband?" The lonely wife spat out, venom laced in every syllable.
What pissed Sophie off the most about this entire interaction was how utterly insane she felt, like she had no right to know where her husband was so late at night, like she had been the one invading in someone else's marriage.
"He's with me. And like I said, he's busy, can you stop being so annoying for once?" Gabriella shot back and it had Sophie rolling her eyes.
Where in the nine rings of hell did this girl get her audacity from? Must've come with the perm.
"Annoying? We've met once. What the hell do you even know about me?"
"Ha! Enough to know that Luke's sick of your insistent pestering, you gold digger."
Sophie clenched her phone harder in her hand, uncaring if the screen broke under the weight of her wrath. "Gold digger? Are you sure you're not projecting?"
"Please. Everyone knows you're just using Luke as your one-way ticket out of your pathetic commoner life. You enjoy the implications of high society more than you enjoy spending time with your husband. And now he's here with me, not you."
The certainty in Gabriella's voice kicked off a plethora of confusing emotions inside Sophie's chest. Detangling everything seemed too impossible, all she needed was to see Luke, to hear the words come out of his own mouth. Maybe then she would start properly rethinking how she'd been living these past few years.
"Where the fuck is he? Give him the phone, Gabriella. I need to talk to him."
"He has nothing to say to you anymore, gold digger." Everything burned red.
And then the call ended abruptly.
-
The door opened with a quiet creak, the movement barely making a sound in the large expanse of their penthouse. Luke sighed, every bone in his body worn down.
"Good morning, dear husband. I can tell you've had pretty shitty sleep. As for me, I haven't slept at all."
Sophie knew she looked terrible, but it couldn't possibly convey how much worse she felt inside. The wine couldn't wash down the pain that had been cultivating in her heart, couldn't drown away the grief that came with it. But damn did it make her bolder.
"You're drunk. You should go back to bed."
"Nuh-uh. I've been waiting for you the entire night. I think I deserve an explanation before I dare close my eyes. Who knows? Maybe when I wake up, you'll be gone again doing who knows what."
She dropped the wine bottle onto the floor carpet, too inebriated to tell if she did it deliberately or by accident. "I sure don't know what you've been up to lately."
"Sophie."
The hopelessness in his voice had Sophie flushing in shame. Fuck him, a single glance from Luke had her wanting to get her shit together.
"Luke." She said, returning the same look of melancholy. It turned back into anger the moment she remembered the way Gabriella had thrown insult after insult at her through Luke's number. "Luke. Fuck you, Luke."
"Sophie, we need to talk."
The tears leaving Sophie's eyes couldn't be stopped, not if she tried. Everything was so, so wrong. Everything was incredibly, confusingly, painfully wrong. And she was ready to throw hands if it came to that.
"What do you think I've been trying to do, Luke? I've been doing my damn hardest to talk."
Luke took one step and another, long legs carrying him to where Sophie was curling around herself on the couch. For the first time in months, he held her. He held her like she mattered.
Leave it to Luke to make Sophie feel as if she could forgive everything her husband had done wrong with a single hug.
"I know. I know. I'm sorry." The gentleness in his voice only made matters worse. It made Sophie feel giddy, it made her feel kind, kind enough to move on and forget his wrongdoings.
"Sorry?" Sophie paused her sniffling. That word felt so good leaving his lips. As spiteful as she wanted to be, Luke was still the light of her life, the only person she was willing to end the whole world for.
"Sorry won't fix this, Luke. Talk to me, darling. Please. I'm getting desperate here."
"I know. I just. Give me a moment."
I'm done waiting, Sophie almost let the words slip out. But she held it down, bit her tongue, waiting in desperation for an overdue explanation.
The feeling of Luke's face in her hands burned. All the pain and love and hurting and affection collectively melting into his soft skin.
They were going through a lot. The past few months were, hell, more than a lot. Finally, it would come to an end, it would staple itself as a short era of their relationship, something to laugh at when they turn old and gray. All Luke needed to do was say so.
No one could really comprehend the way time stopped the moment Luke opened his mouth to speak again. Seconds felt like centuries as he stuttered out nothing coherent, words overlapping, palms drenched. Sophie only realized then how much he smelled like alcohol.
He attempted again to form a sentence.
"Take your time, love." Sophie reassured him, knowing that Luke had never been that good at words. Scarcely did an "I love you too" leave his lips, but when Sophie met forest green eyes, warm and harboring a biome of life, she was sure it didn't matter all that much.
"I want a divorce."