It was like there was an elephant in the room. You knew it and so did he, but Izana would never be the first to mention it.

You both sat inside your shared home, eating the pasta that you had cooked. The uncomfortable silence mixed with the awkward small talk made the atmosphere tense.

Izana had recently been away a lot more than he usually did, and a lot more standoffish. His usual kind and loving attitude had disappeared and been replaced with a stoic and cold one. It hurt you. You didn’t know whether it had been your fault he was behaving this way or not.

When you’d asked him about the circumstances of the long periods of absence, he simply told you it was work and you believed him. After all, there was no reason for him to lie. But as uncertainty grew, so did your suspicion and you decided to follow him one evening. That led to you seeing him enter a bar and you assumed that he’d been cheating.

“Are you okay?” he asked you, his eyes gazing at you with concern.