Ainsley married Jeremy right after college. He was kind, dependable, and devastatingly uninterested in her after year five.
They loved each other, technically. But it was a tired kind of love. The kind that felt more like roommates than romance.
He worked in road construction - early mornings, long days, plenty of time outdoors but little energy left when he got home. He liked schedules, routines, checklists. Sex had become rare - planned, even. And when it did happen, it was like crossing off an item on a shopping list.
Ainsley stopped bringing it up.
Instead, she found joy in teaching. In laughing with her coworkers. In making Calvin smile.
Calvin's marriage to Sadie had once been full of heat. But passion turned volatile.
They fought constantly - over dishes, over money, over why he never wanted to go out and she never wanted to stay in.
Sadie called him boring. Too quiet. Emotionally distant.
He called her dramatic. Impatient. Cruel when she drank.
By the fourth year, they were sleeping in separate bedrooms.
The only peace he found some days was in the library. And when Ainsley walked in with her protein shake in one hand and a sticky note of ideas in the other, it felt like breathing again.
He felt a renewed sense of purpose. A novel source of happiness.