The Day the Walls Crumbled (Or Did They?)

Lockdown lifted yesterday. “Relaxed,” they said. I don’t know what that means. I don’t think they do either.

She went to her lab. Then she came here.

And God, she looked so good. The weeks of lockdown have done something criminally unfair to her body, she is thicker, softer, warmer-looking, and I am standing in my apartment that smells like regret and two-week-old instant noodles trying to keep my face neutral. She sat on my bed and for a few minutes everything was actually okay. The silence didn’t feel like a threat for once.

Then I looked at her phone.

I know. I know I shouldn’t have. But I am a pathetic, paranoid wreck and that’s just the established reality of my life now.

Call log. Empty. Not one single entry. Scrubbed clean.

She said it was a phone issue. Technical problem. Like she has a pre-loaded script for this exact moment, which, to be fair, she probably does at this point. I just nodded. I don’t even know why I nodded. I think some part of my brain just refuses to process the answer so it takes the exit ramp every time.

Later, when she was in the bathroom, I looked again. Chat folders. Both of them. Her exes. Deleted. All of it gone, wiped, nothing. She had done this before arriving. Cleaned the crime scene, showed up smelling nice, sat on my bed, and waited for me to notice nothing.

So what did I do about it?

Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. I put the phone down. She came out of the bathroom and made some joke I genuinely cannot remember and I laughed at it. We watched something on Netflix. She left around nine. I walked her to the door like a good boy .

And now it’s midnight and I’m sitting here thinking about what a spectacular, world-class idiot I am. I had the proof sitting in my hand. I looked directly at it. And I chose to act like a man who saw nothing because apparently that is easier than having the conversation that would end this.

I think I already know what I am. The guy who knows. And stays.

Dumb as a box of rocks, twice as useful.