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I asked my husband to take the trash out on his way, but the bag was still sitting by our door.
Meanwhile, he'd smoothly picked up the trash outside the neighbor's door.
He explained it away. "It's nothing. Besides, she's your best friend's sister."
My neighbor was my best friend's older sister.
And a single mother.
Every time he went to help her, "your best friend's sister" was the reason.
Even my best friend would take his side and tell me I was making a big deal out of nothing.
But he could only see what his neighbor's sister needed. He never saw that I needed help too.
Even when I called out for it, he didn't hear me.
Just like these ten years, when I told him countless times to take out the trash.
He never did it once.
Yet he took hers out every day, for a full ten years, without missing a single time.
Right now, I stared at the kitchen scraps that had started to reek in the summer heat.
It was just like these ten years of marriage.
I threw out the rotting garbage.
The next thing to deal with was this rotten marriage.
……
That night, I told Jayden Vance I wanted a divorce.
I'd imagined all sorts of reactions from him. This was the one thing I never saw coming.
He hurried to the living room to grab his toolbox.
"Honey, whatever it is, it can wait."
"Kay Whitney's light is broken. I'm going to fix it."
Toolbox in hand, Jayden turned to leave.
He left only one line behind. "She is your best friend's sister, after all."
I watched him go, and the ache came in sharp little waves.
Kay needing a light bulb fixed was the biggest thing in the world to him.
And me asking for a divorce, he simply couldn't hear.
I clenched my fists and snapped, "Don't you dare go!"
Jayden turned and frowned at me, as if I were holding up something important.
"Stop it, honey."
"Kay's over there all alone with her kid. Her light's out. What do you want her to do?"
There it was again.
That line again.
Moving furniture at Kay's place, grabbing her packages, even peeling fruit for her.
Jayden took it all on without a second thought.
He looked after them so completely, down to the smallest detail.
And every time, he'd say, "They're a mother and child on their own. What are they supposed to do?"
But things at home, big or small, he never noticed.
Light bulbs, water pipes, all of it, I fixed myself.
He'd always say yes, and never once actually did any of it.
And my best friend, Alison, would throw that same line at me too.
She'd say, "Oh come on, my sister's on her own with a kid, it's so hard for her. Just let your husband give them a hand."
"Stop blowing everything out of proportion, would you?"
But was I really blowing it out of proportion?
I watched the way Jayden went rushing into Kay's apartment.
It was something he never did at home.
When I cut my hand chopping vegetables,
he said, unhurried, "Just put a bandage on it."
When something heavy fell off the cabinet and hit me,
he said, perfectly calm, "You okay?"
But now, just going to Kay's to fix a light,
he was frantic, terrified of being a second too late.
I sat on the couch and waited two full hours.
Only then did Jayden come home.
The moment he walked in, I said it. "Let's get a divorce."
Jayden drank a glass of water first before it registered what I was saying.
His face went blank with shock.
"What did you say?"
"I just went to fix a light, and you want to leave me over it?"
I looked down at my knee, still scraped from the last time I fixed a light myself.
"And the trash," I said.
"You've never taken ours out, but you take hers."
Jayden laughed then, the kind of laugh that comes from anger.
"Do you even hear yourself?"
"We're in our thirties now, not kids barely out of our twenties."
"Are you really going to get jealous over something this small?"
I was about to answer.
Then the front door opened.
Kay stood outside, watching us, trembling.
Like she'd been scared out of her wits, her face bloodless.
"Jayden, are you two fighting because of me?"
She turned and pleaded with me. "Harper Floyd, sweetie, don't be angry with Jayden."
"It's because I can't do anything right, that's why I always need his help."
"If you have to blame someone, blame me."
As she spoke her eyes reddened, tears spilling down.
And I only stood there, staring at my own front door.
Kay knew our door code.
Punched it in like she'd done it a hundred times.
But how did she know it, when even my best friend didn't?
The answer was already right in front of me.
Jayden was wiping her tears away, his face full of tenderness.
