Chapter 7 — Friction
“You’re here, but you’re not.”
The sentence came without accusation.
His wife stood in the kitchen, drying her hands, watching him with a calm that made avoidance impossible.
“I am here,” he replied.
She tilted her head slightly.
“Sometimes,” she said.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Because she wasn’t wrong.
But she wasn’t entirely right either.
Something more complicated was happening.
“I think I’m noticing it,” he said finally.
“Noticing what?”
“How much I’m not here.”
She softened.
“That’s a start,” she said.
Friction entered their life quietly.
Not conflict.
Not arguments.
Something subtler.
A misalignment of presence.
He would sit with her, but drift mid-conversation.
He would listen, but anticipate his response instead of hearing her words.
He would be physically present, but mentally elsewhere.
Before, this had gone unnoticed.
Now, it accumulated.
One evening, she stopped mid-sentence.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Leaving.”
The word stayed between them.
He looked at her.
“I’m not trying to,” he said.
“I know,” she replied. “That’s what makes it harder.”
Silence followed.
Not heavy.
But precise.
Later that night, he lay awake.
Not thinking forward.
Not escaping.
Just aware.
Of the space between intention and presence.
Of the effort required to remain.
Of how unnatural it suddenly felt to simply stay in a moment.
He realized something uncomfortable:
He had trained himself, for years, to leave.moder
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