The Sliver Between Us

It was a Tuesday when I realized I didn’t love him anymore. A half-dead tulip sat wilting in the glass bottle on our table, and he was laughing, one of those drawn-out belly laughs he reserved for things he found far funnier than I did. I should’ve laughed too, or at least smiled. But I didn’t. I just watched his mouth move and thought: I want to be alone.

That thought bloomed slowly, not like a flower but like a bruise. I told myself it was stress. Hormones. The apartment. His socks on the couch again. I told myself a lot of things.

I didn’t tell him.

We had plans. Big ones. A wedding next June, two kids (maybe three), a house with lemon trees out back. Plans with capital letters, like they’d been typed out on a shared Google Doc called Forever. But my heart had started misfiring, skipping beats every time I saw his name light up my phone. I used to feel warm. Now I felt caught.

Still, I couldn't leave. I tried to, in my head. Drafted conversations, imagined fights, dreamed of freedom. But every path out felt too steep, too cruel. He loved me. He looked at me like he believed in me, like I was the only true thing he’d ever known.

And I-I had already cheated.

It happened one rainy night in October. I was away at a conference, lonely and raw. A man I barely knew told me I looked tired in a beautiful way, and I didn’t stop him when he leaned in. I told myself it didn’t count because it was quick, because it wasn’t love. But it did count. It haunted me in the quiet hours. In the spaces where I should’ve confessed. I carried it like a shard in my chest. Always there. Never bleeding out.

I kept smiling. Kept planning. Kept saying yes to cake tastings and floral arrangements. I let the current of obligation carry me, thinking maybe love was a choice and I could just keep choosing. But the part of me that used to ache for him had gone quiet. Maybe even dead.

Then came the slip-up.

A friend, let’s call her Mira, messaged me on a blurry Sunday morning. “I need to talk,” she wrote. That kind of text you feel in your bones.

I already knew before she said it. Something about the way he’d started showering before work. The cologne I didn’t recognize. A new shirt I hadn’t picked. Intuition, maybe. Or guilt, sniffing out its twin.

She cried when she told me. Said it only happened once, swore she didn’t mean for it to, didn’t want to hurt me. I listened, hollowed out. Said I forgave her even as my stomach turned. He came clean that night, said it was a mistake, said he felt lost and stupid and sorry. And I nodded, tears burning hot behind my eyes, not for the betrayal, but because now I had a reason.

Finally, I had a way out.

I broke it off three days later, not in a fit of rage but with a stillness that unnerved us both. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said. He thought I meant the cheating. He didn’t know I meant us.

People rallied. They said I was strong. Brave. That I deserved better. And I played the role, The Woman Who Walked Away. I let them stitch that narrative onto my skin, even as my own guilt bubbled beneath it. Because I hadn’t been innocent. I hadn’t been honest. I had left the relationship long before I packed my bags.

There’s no word for that kind of grief. The grief of knowing you were both the villain and the victim. That you used someone’s worst moment as a bridge to your own freedom.

But still, life opened up.

I moved into a small studio with a crooked sink and too much sunlight. I took long walks without checking my phone. I went dancing. I kissed someone new and didn’t flinch. I even laughed again, real laughter, the kind that surprises you. I remembered what it felt like to be mine.

And yet.

There are mornings I wake up and feel the weight of it all pressing against my ribs. The lies I told. The truth I buried. The moment I stopped loving him and didn’t say a word.

Sometimes, I replay it. Wonder what would've happened if I had confessed first. If I had told him about the other man, owned my mistake instead of waiting for his. Maybe we both would've ended things with a little more dignity. Or maybe it would've shattered him.

Maybe I was just scared to be the one who broke the perfect thing we’d painted.

I think we both were.

Now, when people ask, I say we just "drifted apart." That we were young, not ready, wanted different things. It's easier than the truth. The truth has sharp edges. And I’m still learning not to bleed on it.

But I am healing. Slowly. Honestly, this time.

I know now that endings aren’t always clean. That sometimes we stay too long because it’s easier than choosing ourselves. That love can die quietly. That infidelity isn’t always a fire, it can be a flicker, a slip, a slow erosion.

And still, we carry on.

Even with the shards.

Even with the S’s that should’ve been us.