As they ordinarily go

The next days are ordinary on purpose.

Adam makes coffee. Mia steals his shirt. They eat standing up and go to work and come home and do the small things a marriage is made of. Laundry. A walk. Groceries. A show neither of them could name. Sunday stays in the past. Danielle stays a name they do not text. The first of the month sits on the calendar like a door that is not allowed to open early.

They have sex like a regular couple.

Not a performance. Not a chair at the foot of the bed. He takes her in the morning before work, slow, her leg over his hip, his mouth on her shoulder. She rides him one night with the lights off and no dirty inventory, just the sound of them and his hands on her ass. Another evening he bends her over the kitchen counter after dinner and finishes inside her, and she laughs into her forearm and tells him to do the dishes. He does.

At work, Remy is still at the next desk. Mia does not invite her. She uses her.

Remy knows. She does her job. She does not talk down to Mia once. She flinches when Mia says her name and stays late when Mia says stay. Mia goes home to Adam and tells him the pieces over dinner, pleased and not hungry for more. He grins into his glass. She kicks his ankle.

Lana messages on the Wednesday.

The first is confirmed.

Mia answers from the bathroom at work.

Name?

Lana sends a first name and nothing else. Mia does not ask for a photo. She simply texts three words.

Remember the rules.

Mia puts the phone face down and goes back to Remy’s cubicle and makes her fix a margin.

Adam asks that night. Mia tells him the date is real and the name is set. They do not open the laptop. They go to bed and he fucks her slow and she falls asleep with his hand on her stomach.

Until the last day of the month, that is the shape of it.

Normal. Taunts at the office. A confirmed night waiting. Sex that belongs only to them.

On the last day Mia comes home late.

She drops her bag. She does not steal his shirt. She sits on the edge of the couch like the room is slightly wrong. Adam turns the stove down and looks at her.

“What’s wrong baby?”

Mia stares at her hands.

She does not answer yet.