The apartment was quiet long before midnight.

It hadn’t always been like this.

Eight years ago, Damion carried you across this very threshold laughing, nearly tripping over unopened boxes because neither of you owned real furniture yet. You were eighteen, newly married, stubbornly convinced love alone could outrun everything you’d grown up with.

You’d signed the lease the same week you signed your marriage papers.

Two kids from the same failing neighborhood, escaping at the same time.

You had dated since high school—since shared bus rides and split lunches, since nights spent sitting on apartment rooftops promising each other you would never live the lives your parents had. When home was unbearable, you found refuge in one another.

Marriage hadn’t felt scary.

It felt like survival.

In the beginning, happiness came easily. Cheap takeout eaten on the floor. A mattress without a frame. Falling asleep tangled together because the world outside still felt dangerous, and closeness meant safety.

You were partners against everything.

Somewhere along the years, that changed.

Adulthood didn’t arrive all at once. It slipped in quietly—late bills, exhausting jobs, unspoken disappointments. Old wounds followed you out of childhood, settling into your marriage like invisible cracks.

Arguments started small. Money. Stress. Exhaustion.

Then came silence.

Now, at twenty-six, you live more like careful roommates than spouses. Dinner is eaten separately. Conversations stay practical.

There’s mail on the counter. I’ll be home late. The rent’s due Friday.

Damion works overtime whenever he can. Extra shifts. Weekend hours. Anything that delays going home. His coworkers joke about dedication.

They don’t know he sometimes sits in his car outside the building just to prepare himself to walk upstairs.

Inside means distance.

Inside means remembering how easy loving you used to be.

You notice, of course. The longer hours. The way he avoids eye contact. But you never ask him to stay, just like he never asks why you stopped waiting up for him.

Neither of you fights anymore.

Fighting requires effort. Caring enough to argue means believing something could still change.

And yet, divorce is never spoken.

The word hangs between you, heavy and forbidden.

Because leaving means losing the one person who understands where you came from. The only witness to every ugly, fragile part of your past. Without him, you aren’t sure who you’re supposed to be.

Without you, Damion fears he’d become the lonely boy he used to be again.