Chapter 29
Episode 29
I thought we were going just fine until I realized his friends and our relatives are now apart of our relationship
I thought we were going just fine. Our son was growing, our days had a rhythm—mornings of porridge and cartoons, afternoons of naps and laundry, evenings of quiet TV or me scribbling lyrics while he tinkered with something in the yard. We had found our footing after the labor, after the scares, after the graduation that felt like a second birth. I believed we were building something solid, something only the two of us understood.
But slowly, like dust settling on a shelf, I began to notice things I had overlooked. His phone buzzed more often now, and he would step outside to answer it, voice lowered. When I asked who it was, he’d say, “Just the boys,” or “My cousin checking in.” At first I thought nothing of it—friends call, family calls, that’s life. But the calls grew longer, the conversations more frequent, and soon they weren’t just calls. They were visits.
His best friend started showing up unannounced everyday, sprawling on our sofa like he owned it. They would laugh about old times, about women they used to know, about things that happened before me. I’d sit in the corner with our son on my lap, smiling politely, but inside I felt like a ghost in our own home. Then came his mother, who began dropping by with tupperware of porridge and long-winded advice about how I should raise the boy. She would look at my son’s clothes and say, “He needs more starch in his collar,” or shake her head at the way I fed him. My partner would just nod, never defending me, never telling her to ease off.
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