She said it as if it had ever been that way.

“That or we’ll develop teleportation and just zap him here.”

“Honestly, that’s probably more likely.”

They shared a knowing look.

“Now,” Lisa said, “my grim life is getting me down. What happened last night?”

Cora slid deeper into the beanbag, a loud groan escaping her lips. Last night, all she had wanted to do was fall into a heap with her best friend, and now she wanted to forget everything. Couldn’t she just do that? That’s what she and her husband normally did, just went on as normal. Cora and Alec—dream team at avoidance.

Why did he have to throw that glass?

“Cora? Hello?”

Maybe Cora could just keep her eyes closed and stay in the softness of the beanbag forever. Sink into it like it was a cloud and watch Friends reruns and eat ice-cream. Wine flavoured ice-cream.

“Cora, you’re not a bloody ostrich. Keeping your eyes closed doesn’t make me go away.”

“We just had another argument.” There. She spoke. Her eyes might still be closed, but it was something.

Lisa was silent. That couldn’t be good.

The silence pressured Cora into speaking again. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Then why did you leave the house?”

Her friend knew her too well. There were things, though, things that went beyond this argument with Alec, things that Cora hadn’t told her. For a moment, with Lisa’s sincere, dark eyes staring at her, Cora considered coming clean: about all the other fights she didn’t come crying to Lisa over, the anger, the way that she and Alec flared up at each other all the time, or more how Alec flared up at her and how lately, Cora had started responding in kind. The way Alec hated her having anything in her life that wasn’t about him, and how he made it feel like Cora’s fault. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d sat together, at ease in their own company. She’d finally voiced that she wanted out, and he was ignoring it, and she was happily letting him because she didn’t know what she really wanted.

A twist of nerves and embarrassment in her gut put her off such confessions. Lisa was so…together. To tell her what a mess her marriage was, to admit she was failing at something that should be easy—it was all too shameful. All the gory details felt private, drenched in something that stopped her from wanting to talk about it.

“Just another shouting match. I can’t even remember what it was about anymore.”

She really didn’t. Not what started it. Not how they ended up on opposite sides of the room again, yelling absurd words that fell heavily onto each other.

And instead of retreating, or backing down, she’d looked him square in the eye and said she wanted a divorce. And even now, she didn’t know if she’d meant it.

The glass had shattered right over her head before she’d even seen it coming.