Angry response

The careful control you have been holding since last night finally cracks.

“I can’t believe this,” you say, voice rising despite the public table. “Six months of her telling me she’s sore, she’s tired, she’s not in the mood. Turning away every single time I reached for her. Making me feel like wanting my own wife was some kind of imposition. And the whole time she’s been out fucking other guys? It makes perfect sense now. The cold shoulder. The excuses. The way she looked at me like I was the problem. She was just protecting whatever she had going on the side.”

You lean forward, the coffee untouched between you.

“Whose is it, Tanya? I need to hear you say it. Because right now I’m sitting here realising my wife has been freezing me out of our own bed while someone else was getting what I was denied. I want the name. Or at least the truth about how long this has been happening.”

Tanya doesn’t flinch from the anger. She has always been steady with you, the same way a sister might absorb a brother’s rage without making it worse. She keeps her hands wrapped around her cup and lets you finish the full vent before she answers. The ordinary morning continues around the table, but the air between the two of you is thick with everything that has just been dragged into the open.