Cough-cough-miss. Mark was home.
Sarah was on the couch, her spot, left side, closer to the kitchen. The throw blanket lay folded on the armrest exactly as she’d left it that morning. The remotes were arranged on the coffee table, edges following the wood grain. She straightened them slightly — they’d been parallel, but not quite.
Through the window, headlights slid across the ceiling, then cut out. The blinds rattled softly in the thin frame — these old apartment windows never sealed right.
She heard the keys in the lock, her smile already forming.
Mark came through the door like weather — the air in the room changed. The laptop bag dropped from his shoulder, hit the floor with a thud.
Sarah looked up from her phone. “Hey, you’re finally home.”
He was already at the fridge, pulling a beer. The cap twisted off. Clattered across the counter, spinning, then still.
“Rough day?” She kept her voice light.
Mark didn’t answer. Just took a long pull from the bottle and dropped onto the couch, legs spread, head tilted back against the cushions. The beer dangled from his fingers.
She waited, then moved toward him. “Want me to heat up dinner?”
“I’m fine.”
The edge in his voice stopped her mid-step. Not angry, exactly. Brittle.
Sarah’s smile faded. She lingered a moment, then retreated to the kitchen. Opened the fridge without needing anything. Closed it. The light went out. A Pollo Loco bag sagged on the counter, grease blooming through the paper. She’d picked it up on the way home — Thursdays. An apple pie candle flickered on the windowsill, trying.
A neighbor’s dog barked twice, then went quiet.
She gave him space. At the dining table, her puzzle sat half-finished — two thousand pieces showing a farmhouse in golden afternoon light. She’d completed the entire border and most of the sky. Only the house itself remained, dark windows she couldn’t make sense of. She worked the edges instead.
Ten minutes. Fifteen.
Her eyes drifted to the bookshelf behind the couch while she waited. Their books had separated naturally over the three years they’d lived here, like oil and water finding their levels. Mark’s half was dense with worn spines: Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Discipline and Punish, Meditations with pages so soft they felt like fabric. An Introduction to Social Psychology textbook still had the community college sticker on the cover, $87.50 written in his handwriting on the inside page. He’d never finished the degree. Deployed instead.
Her side looked lighter somehow. Brighter covers. A row of Sherrilyn Kenyon novels stacked spine-out, a collection of Mary Oliver poems dog-eared at favorite passages, The Ocean at the End of the Lane with its gilt edges catching lamplight. A cookbook for 30-Minute Meals that neither of them ever used. Wedged between fiction and poetry: a worn paperback on small-unit tactics and another about competitive marksmanship, their spines creased in different ways.
In the middle, where their sections met: a travel guide to Costa Rica they’d bought two years ago, still wrapped in plastic.
Sarah grabbed her own beer from the fridge — the bottle sweating cold against her palm — and settled onto the couch beside him. Close but not touching. Her spot. Left side. The blanket was within reach if she needed it.
Mark’s eyes were fixed on the dark television screen.
She took a sip, set the bottle on the coffee table. Used a coaster this time. Mark had a bag of pretzels open on his lap. She watched him take one, crunch it mechanically.
She made the gesture — thumb and forefinger forming a little beak, opening and closing in the air toward the bag. A silent request.
Mark’s eyes flicked to her hand. He reached into the bag and placed a pretzel between her fingers.
She hummed a small “mm-hmm” and popped it in her mouth. Salt and caraway. The same pretzels he always bought. The same brand. Every time.
They sat like that. Quiet. The pretzel bag crinkling occasionally. Beer bottles leaving rings on the coffee table neither of them would wipe up until morning.
The news played on Mark’s phone, volume low. Another story about detentions, about families separated at processing centers, about courts issuing orders that went ignored.
The room felt smaller than usual. Tighter.
Sarah shifted. “So... how was work?”
“Don’t really feel like talking about it.”
Sarah picked at the label on her beer bottle, thumbnail working under the edge. A corner lifted. She peeled it back and let the scrap fall onto the coffee table.
Minutes passed. The room settled into its evening rhythm. Above them, someone walked back and forth. Back and forth. Had been for the last ten minutes. Sarah counted the steps. Twelve one way. Pause. Twelve back.
She tried again — a different approach. She set her beer down and shifted closer, draping herself across his lap, nuzzling against his neck.
“Hey...” she murmured against his neck.
Mark didn’t respond.
She pressed her face to his ear and made exaggerated chomping sounds. “Nom nom nom...”
“Sarah—” His voice carried strain, not anger.
She kept going, playful, insistent.
“Just... not right now.” He shifted his shoulder, pushing her back. Not violent, but firm. Clear.
She pulled away and settled back onto her side of the couch. Tucked her feet beneath her. Picked up her beer.
The person upstairs stopped walking.
Another few minutes crawled by.
Mark finally spoke, his eyes somewhere else entirely. “They’re not even pretending anymore.”
Sarah waited.
“The administration. They’re just... ignoring the court orders now. New directive came down today.” His grip tightened on the beer bottle. “Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here. Doesn’t matter if your kids were born here. They just — gone.” He shook his head. “And half the country cheers it on. The other half just...” He lifted his phone, let it drop. “Scrolls past it.”
Her mouth pressed flat. She placed a palm on his knee.
“Mark...”
“Miguel’s little girl is five, Sarah.” He looked at her. “Sofia. Five years old.” He wasn’t quite looking at her anymore. “And these — these patriot groups, setting up checkpoints now, ‘protecting’ the neighborhood. Posting it online like it’s the goddamn neighborhood watch. They think they’re the good guys.” His voice rose. “And nobody’s going to stop them. That’s the part. Nobody’s even going to try.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s happening fast, Sarah. It’s already happening.”
“Mark, I can’t.” The words came out sharper than she intended.
He turned to look at her. Held it a moment, then looked away.
“I just...” Sarah shook her head. “I can’t live in that headspace all the time. It steals my joy, you know? Like, I get that it’s bad. I do. But dwelling on it constantly, letting it just... consume everything...” She trailed off, aware of how it sounded. “That came out wrong—”
“It’s not about your joy, Sarah, Christ—" His voice spiked, then dropped. "That’s not — I don’t think we’re even having the same conversation right now.”
Sarah’s thumb found Mark’s paracord bracelet at her wrist, turned it around and around.
Mark pressed his fingertips to his temples and let out a slow breath. "It’s just that — the world is going to shit out there, Sarah. And nobody seems to care. Not even you."
Her eyebrows pulled together. Her mouth fell open. “That’s not — that’s not fair. I do care. I just don’t have any way to fix what’s happening right now. It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m just trying to protect the peace that I do have.”
Mark shook his head. “You ever think maybe some things are supposed to bother you? That maybe being comfortable while this shit happens is...” He trailed off. Rubbed his face with both hands. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I just need someone who can talk about this with me. Who doesn’t look at me like I’m crazy for being worried.”
Sarah felt her face flush. “You’re not crazy for being worried. I’m just saying I can’t carry it all the time like you do. It’s exhausting, Mark. You come home wound so tight I don’t even know how to—”
“How to what?” The question hung there between them.
She didn’t answer.
Her eyes wandered to the wall above the couch, where her trophies sat on a floating shelf — one area championship and several local match wins. She never looked at them anymore. They’d been Mark’s idea to display them there.
Across the room, on the smaller shelf by the door, a framed photo: Mark in his dress uniform, younger, before whatever happened overseas. Next to it, Sarah’s mother, a year before the cancer, smiling at something outside the frame.
Mark stood, fishing a cigarette from the pack on the side table. His hand hesitated over it. Then he put it between his lips, unlit, and moved toward the hallway.
“Mark—”
“Sarah, you don’t—”
“I know.” No inflection at all.
He looked at her, then headed for the front door, one hand already on the knob.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mark—”
Sarah was on her feet, crossing the room. She caught his arm, her hand gentle on his bicep.
He stopped. Didn’t turn.
She moved around him, positioning herself between Mark and the door. Her hand stayed on his arm, grounding.
He looked down at her. Some of the fight had gone out of his face.
Sarah reached up slowly, carefully, and plucked the cigarette from between his lips. She placed it in her own mouth — a woman who never smoked — and held his gaze.
Something in his expression softened.
“These’ll kill you, you know,” she said quietly. The cigarette bobbed with the words, absurd in her mouth.
Sarah took his hand, laced her fingers through his, and led him down the hall to the bedroom.