I was still married, still chained to the corpse of a marriage that smelled worse every time I dragged it out in public, and there I was, sitting at the tequila bar, pretending life hadn’t already slipped through my fingers. I thought about that a lot back then—the slow crumble of things I swore I would never let rot. But you don’t wake up and realize you’re dead; it happens slowly, like termites in the beams, quiet, methodical, inevitable. I used to think I’d never be the guy doing shady shit, sneaking around, making excuses. But when the person you’re married to treats you like a broken tool, when you’re doing everything a man is supposed to do and you get nothing but contempt and cold shoulders back, when you start thinking you’re worthless even to yourself—it changes you. It changes everything. She stopped being a wife, so I stopped being a husband. Strip joints. Portland trips. Easy connections, easy escapes. The tequila bar only made it easier. And there I was, another cliché with a wedding ring gathering dust in my wallet.
The mental abuse was thick, slow, drowning. I watched it happen from the day my middle daughter was born—my wife molding herself into a passive-aggressive war machine, designed to convert you, crush you, or exile you. I saw her sharpen those claws on our daughter first, and now they were carving me up like yesterday’s meat. We all had invisible folders on each other, gathering evidence, gathering wounds, waiting for the trial that never officially started but never really ended either.
One day there was a knock at the restaurant door. In walked this tall, stunning blonde asking for Annette, my accountant. The room was tiny—just me and Annette—so the woman didn’t have to ask twice. She said she needed to store a cake in the fridge for a birthday party later, something about the salsa dancer who hosted Friday nights after we closed. I don’t even remember what she said exactly because the moment she smiled, everything else blurred. Cat eyes, soft voice, a presence that made the world look better for five stupid seconds. She was in town visiting friends. She caught my eye and melted whatever ice had been left inside me. Then she was gone.
Later that night, salsa classes started, music bumping, and the bar turned into a swirling mess of bodies and laughter. I sat drinking whiskey with a friend when she came back, asking me if I wanted to dance. Me. I hadn’t danced in twenty years and had no goddamn business dancing now. But there I was, nodding like a fool. She pulled me out onto the floor, trying to teach me a few moves, pretending I wasn’t stepping all over myself like a drunk learning to walk again. She let me hold her waist. Soft. Athletic. Smelling like every bad decision I ever wanted to make. And the whole damn time—she never stopped looking at me. Locked in. Like I was still a man worth noticing.
She told me about a party later at Victoria’s house, said she hoped I’d come. I thanked her, pretended I wasn’t falling apart inside. She left. Roberto, my manager, saw it all happen. He came up behind me, said, “Let’s go.” I told him I shouldn’t. He insisted. Truth was, there was nothing to stay home for anymore. My wife wouldn’t notice if I was there or not. Hell, she had already given my driver’s license to the cops, told them I was a danger to myself, told them to keep an eye out for my black Dodge, license plate and all, because she was “worried about me.” Worried. Like a hunter worried about a wounded deer.
We got to Victoria’s. They’d turned the garage into a dance floor. Music, whiskey, bad decisions dripping off the walls. I grabbed a drink, tried to disappear, but she found me again. Stacy. Drunk. Smiling. Radiating heat like a bonfire. She dragged me out to dance, and even though I had no business being there, I went. After a few dances, after a few more drinks, she claimed she lost her phone and asked if she could use mine to find it. I handed it over like a rookie. She “called” herself, found her phone immediately—but now she had my number saved in hers. Clever girl.
Later she tried to kiss me. Right there. Public. No shame. I turned away, stumbled out into the street, called one of my waitresses to drive me back to my truck. I cruised past state cops and sheriff’s deputies, half-expecting the trap to snap shut around my neck. I’m sure my wife would’ve loved a DUI on my record to feed her court case, paint me as the unfit father. Hell, she had already tried setting it up. I even confirmed it with the police department; they told me straight—she had called, described me, gave them my license, and told them to “keep an eye out.” Said it sounded like a setup. Sounded like a marriage.
After that night, Stacy and I started texting. Long, reckless, bloody conversations typed out in the dark of my room while the marriage rotted behind closed doors. And this time it was me having the emotional affair. It was me reaching for something, anything, that felt alive. One night she asked me to meet her in Redmond. I didn’t even blink. Hopped in the truck, sped down the highway like a man chasing his own ghost. She took me to this dry riverbed, holding my hand, running through the tall grass, her hair whipping in the wind, her summer dress flashing little glimpses of skin and freedom. I stopped her, squeezed her hand, and asked like a goddamn child, “Why do you even like me?” She laughed, spun around, said, “Because you’re strong. You’re confident. You’re kind. You’re a real man.” And she ran ahead, laughing, free. I stood there, crying like a fool. Twenty years of marriage rotting inside me, and here was a woman seeing things in me that my own wife hadn’t looked for in a decade.
The twenty-year anniversary came a week later. I had planned everything. Lincoln City. The same little inn where we first promised each other a lifetime we couldn’t deliver. Fireplace. Patio. Salt air and crashing waves. I booked the same room where she’d asked me to marry her, thinking maybe, just maybe, we could find something left worth saving. We barely spoke. We barely touched. We fumbled through half-hearted sex, two ghosts clawing at each other out of duty, not love. I spent half the night in the bathroom reading long, wild texts from Stacy about how she wanted me, loved me, needed me. Meanwhile, my wife barely noticed I was alive.
The next morning, I asked my wife if she just wanted to go home. She said yes without blinking. We stopped for fish and chips at a firehouse-themed diner, barely spoke, then drove ninety miles an hour back to Bend. I dropped her off like a UPS package. No kiss. No goodbye. Nothing.
I drove straight to Victoria’s house. Stacy was waiting. The garage was empty this time, just the two of us. Candles flickered. The world spun. We exploded into each other like dying stars, hands and mouths and desperation colliding until nothing else existed but the fact that we were finally alive again. It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about futures. It was about survival. It was about heat. It was about forgetting.
We didn’t sleep together that night. I stopped it. Some piece of me—the last one, maybe—stopped it. Told her maybe later. Told her sorry. Told her everything and nothing all at once. But the die was cast. There was no saving the marriage after that. Not that there ever really had been.
Later, after the separation, Stacy and I would try again. There’d be no great love story, just two broken people using each other to feel the heat one more time before the cold came back. She was my second after Little Red Riding Hood. Two women. Two comets crashing through the ruins of my life, leaving fire and ashes and just enough warmth to remember what being a man felt like.
The twenty-year marriage collapsed under its own weight. I had been building castles out of sand, pretending love was enough, pretending sacrifice meant something to someone who never wanted to be saved. In the end, it wasn’t about betrayal. It wasn’t about mistakes. It wasn’t even about right or wrong. It was about two people who had stayed together out of fear, out of convenience, until the thing we called love turned into a sword we used to cut each other down.
Maybe it was never love.
Maybe it was just two people clinging to each other to avoid drowning, dragging each other under in the process.
