He returned late that night. I was already asleep, having given up my old habit of waiting up for him.
He didn’t find me in the living room and fumbled his way into the master bedroom, sliding under the covers.
The chill from his body woke me instantly.
Ethan wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into his embrace. He smelled of alcohol and a perfume that was unmistakably Abby‘
- s. I subtly tried to pull away.
He pressed closer, his voice a warm, drowsy murmur. “Charlotte… let’s have a child, too. A daughter, as cute as Anna…”
I pushed him away, my skin crawling. This belated intimacy felt disgusting. I piled the duvet high between us, creating a wall.
He hugged the duvet all night, as if it were me.
“Charlotte, tell the housekeeper not to cook tonight. I want your noodle soup.”
The next morning, he made his request as if it were his right, his head buried in a financial report, not even looking at me.
I held up my wrist. “It’s sprained.”
He seemed to accept it. A few days later, he asked for the soup again.
I grabbed my purse and walked out the door, tossing over my shoulder, “Mrs. Kent asked me to go shopping.”
He asked several more times, and each time I had an excuse. Finally, he snapped. He cornered me in the kitchen, his voice sharp. ”
You can bake a cake, so why can’t you make me a bowl of noodles?”
As he finished, his voice cracked with a hint of genuine hurt.
I couldn’t cook, but I could make one thing perfectly: that simple noodle soup. Ethan had loved it from the first time he tried it. He
drank a lot for work, and it became my ritual to make him a warm bowl to soothe his stomach when he came home.
But I remembered the night he had shoved the bowl away, drunk and angry. “Can you stop making this? I’m so sick of it! Why can’t
you learn to cook a decent meal like Abby? You’re both lawyers, how can you be so different?”
I had silently taken the bowl of now–soggy noodles and, under his tirade, eaten every last strand, my tears dripping into the broth,
making it saltier.
I didn’t share that memory with him. I just smiled a weak smile and made another flimsy excuse, weathering his dark expression.
If you despised it so much back then, why are you so desperate for it now?
He still fell into the old habit of asking me about his company’s legal issues.
I would smile, push the documents back to him, and point to my bar license gathering dust on the shelf. “I’m not a lawyer anymore.
If you have questions, you should ask Abby. Here, I’ve already dialed her number for you.”
A surprised, happy female voice chirped from the phone, but Ethan was uncharacteristically silent.
He hung up, his fists clenched. “I was asking you, Charlotte.”
I kept smiling, but my eyes were ice. “It’s been too long since I’ve handled a case. I’m a bit rusty. Sorry.”
