Sydney woke before the sun again.
Not rested. Just awake in the way a body wakes when it’s been carrying too much for too long. Her husband’s back was turned toward her, rising and falling in a rhythm untouched by anything she was feeling.

Once, that sight made her feel safe.
Now it made her feel… replaceable.

She slipped out of bed quietly and padded into the kitchen. The house was still, the kind of quiet that tells the truth. She wrapped her hands around a mug of coffee and stared out the window at the barely-there line of daylight trying to push its way in.

And, without meaning to, she thought of him.

Not the kiss exactly.
But the feeling right before it.
That moment when Ryan looked at her like he saw color no one else could see — like she was something he’d discovered, not someone he’d ended up with.

She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest against the cool glass.

“It shouldn’t matter,” she whispered into the window.

But it did.
It mattered in a way that terrified her because she hadn’t felt anything matter to her in a long time.

The kids eventually tumbled into the kitchen, carrying noise and crumbs and requests that never stop coming. She moved through it all on muscle memory — tying shoes, slicing strawberries, wiping faces.

Her husband walked in last.

Noticing nothing.
Asking nothing.
Scrolling through his phone like the morning existed for him to pass through, not participate in.

He didn’t ask how she slept.
He didn’t even look at her long enough to read the answer.

Instead:

“Did you sign that permission slip?”

Not rude.
Not warm.
Just… informational.

She handed him the paper.
“Yeah.”

He didn’t say thank you. Just tucked it away and finished scrolling.

It was such a small moment.
Insignificant on paper.

But the contrast hit her with surprising force:
One man had once kissed her like she mattered.
And the one in her kitchen talked to her like she was a shared calendar.

When she had finally arrived at work, Sydney stood in her classroom, hands braced on her desk, breathing like someone trying not to break.

She wasn’t miserable.
She wasn’t abused.
She wasn’t drowning.

She was just… fading.

And when she thought about Ryan, it wasn’t the romantic piece that shook her — it was the version of herself she had been with him. The one who laughed loudly. Who felt interesting. Who felt wanted without having to ask for it.

Somewhere along the way, she’d misplaced that woman, like a favorite sweater shoved into the back of a closet and forgotten until winter.

“I don’t think I fit in my own life anymore,” she whispered, so quietly she almost didn’t hear it.

Except she did.

And once she said it out loud, it didn’t go back in.

---

Her husband came home tired and distracted.
She cooked dinner.
He talked about work.
She nodded, smiled appropriately, kept the machine running.

But something in her had shifted — and even if he couldn’t name it, he could feel it. The absence of effort she’d always given freely. The silence that held more truth than any fight they weren’t having.

He didn’t ask what was wrong.
Maybe because he didn’t want to know the answer.

Later that night, lying beside him, staring into the dark, she realized something with a calm, steady certainty:

She hadn’t fallen out of love.
She had just fallen out of belonging.

And the memory of Ryan — the warmth of it — flickered again behind her ribs.

Not bright enough to burn.
But bright enough to show her that she’d been living in the dark for far too long.