“No. I’m done.” He threw the blanket off and stood beside the bed, rubbing both hands over his face. “Every night, Mara. Every single night. You toss, you sigh, you get up, you come back, you drink water, you go to the bathroom. I can’t live like this.”
I stared at him.
“You can’t live like this?”
He pointed toward the hallway.
“Go sleep in the laundry room.”
For a moment, I thought I had heard him wrong.
Our apartment building had a shared laundry room on the ground floor. Cement walls. Two old washers. A flickering fluorescent light. A bench bolted to the wall beside a vending machine that ate quarters.
I gave a small, stunned laugh.
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Caleb, I’m eight months pregnant.”
“And I’m exhausted.”
“There’s nowhere to sleep down there.”
“There’s a bench.”
I stared at him, waiting for shame to cross his face.
It didn’t.
Instead, he walked to the dresser, grabbed my cardigan, and tossed it onto the bed.
“Take your pillow. You’ll be fine for a few hours.”
The baby shifted inside me, slow and heavy, as if even she had gone quiet.
“Are you serious?” I whispered.
Caleb leaned closer.
“I pay for this apartment, Mara. I need to function. You get to stay home all day now. I don’t.”
There it was.
The sentence he had been circling for weeks.
I pay for this apartment.
As if my body was not paying.
As if my sleep, my health, my fear, my pain, my pregnancy were all just inconveniences he had generously tolerated.
My eyes burned, but I refused to cry in front of him.
So I took the cardigan.
I took my pregnancy pillow.
And I walked barefoot into the hallway.
Three floors down.
At 2:27 in the morning.
With one hand on the railing and one hand under my belly.
By the time I reached the laundry room, I was shaking.
The fluorescent light buzzed above me. Someone had left a wet sock on the floor. The air smelled like detergent, metal, and damp concrete.
I sat on the wooden bench and tried to arrange my pillow behind my back.
It was impossible.
My hips ached. My stomach pulled. Every position hurt.
At 4:11 a.m., I finally dozed off sitting upright.
At 6:03, Caleb texted me.
You can come back now.
Not sorry.
Not are you okay.
Just permission.
Like I was a package he had stored downstairs overnight.
The worst part was that I went back.
Quietly.
Carefully.
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