Marry at your own risk

Elma had been waiting two years for her husband to kiss her like he meant it.

Tonight, he kissed her forehead instead.

And that was the moment she finally stopped pretending.

Something was wrong.

~ ~ ~

She started getting ready at seven.

The children were bathed, fed, and nagged through their homework by eight. By nine they were asleep, and the house settled into the kind of quiet that used to belong to her and Duru.

Elma climbed the stairs and did something she hadn't done in months.

She took her time.

The perfume was at the back of the drawer, behind the spare buttons and old lip balms. A heavy little bottle of sandalwood and vanilla, still almost full, because she had stopped wearing it somewhere between the second baby and the year she started feeling invisible.

Dangerous, Duru used to call it.

He'd said it against her neck, in the dark, in a voice that made her forget what she was about to say.

She touched it to her wrists. Behind her ears. The hollow of her throat.

Then the robe. Champagne satin, bought on a hopeful afternoon and never worn. Nothing ridiculous. Nothing that looked like begging. Just soft enough to make her feel like a woman again, and not a cook, a driver, a manager of everyone else's needs.

She stood before the mirror and made herself keep looking.

Her hair was freshly done. Her skin glowed from the shea butter she'd rubbed in twice. The robe held hips that were not what they used to be. Her stomach was softer now. There were faint silver marks along her sides that she had spent two years hiding under loose nightgowns.

They're beautiful, Duru had told her once, kissing each one in the lamplight like he was reading something sacred.

Back then, she had believed him.

Elma pressed her palm flat against her belly and breathed in.

Tonight, he will see me.

~ ~ ~

In the first year of their marriage, Duru couldn't walk past her in a kitchen without touching her.

She remembered it so clearly it hurt.

Stew on the stove. The radio low. Her in his old shirt and nothing else she'd bothered to think about.

He had walked in and put his mouth against the back of her neck.

"Leave the pot," he murmured.

"It'll burn."

"Let it."

It burned. They ate bread and cheese on the kitchen floor at midnight, laughing, his hand never leaving her thigh. The neighbors probably heard her squeal when he lifted her onto the counter.

That man had chased her.

That man had counted the minutes until she got home.

That man used to look at her like she was a hunger he never wanted to be cured of.

Elma smoothed the satin over her hips and went downstairs to wait.

~ ~ ~

The food was ready by nine-thirty.

By ten, she had reheated it once.

By ten-thirty, she had rearranged herself on the couch three times. First casual. Then softer. Then simply upright, hands folded in her lap, like a woman waiting to be interviewed for her own marriage.

At ten fifty-two, she heard the key in the door.

Her heart did something foolish.

Duru came in with heavy shoulders and a loose tie. He smelled like traffic and the office and a long day that had nothing to do with her. He set down his bag, saw her, and for one second his face went blank in a way she couldn't read.

Then he crossed the room and kissed her forehead.

The way you'd kiss a child with a fever.

The way you'd bless something you had no plans to touch.

"You're still awake?"

Elma smiled. It held.

"I was waiting for you."

He looked at her.

Really looked, she thought, for the length of one held breath. His eyes traveled from her face to the robe to her hands, and her whole body leaned toward him like a plant toward a window.

"Oh," he said.

Just that.

Then, gently, almost kindly:

"You didn't have to."

Her smile stayed exactly where it was.

"I wanted to."

"That's sweet." He was already turning toward the dining table. "Let me eat something. I'm starving."

~ ~ ~

He ate with his phone beside the plate.

She sat across from him and watched him chew.

She tried small talk. The children. Her sister's baby shower. The generator man who'd overcharged them again. He answered all of it. Mm. Really? Tell him we'll pay next week.

Pleasant. Present. Not there.

His phone lit up. He wiped his hand and answered.

"Yes, I saw the email. No, tell them we'll sort it in the morning."

Twelve minutes.

Elma counted.

When he hung up, she asked softly, "Long day?"

"Very."

"You want to talk about it?"

He smiled. Tired, warm, and a thousand miles away.

"Tomorrow, maybe."

He carried his plate to the kitchen. He thanked her for the food. He called her baby, which she used to love, and which tonight sounded like a word people say when they've run out of other ones.

Then he went upstairs to shower.

Elma stayed at the table, alone, wearing perfume for no one.

~ ~ ~

By the time she came to bed, the lamp was off.

Duru lay on his side, facing the wall, one arm tucked under his pillow. His breathing was already slow and even. He did this now. Fell asleep like a man putting down something heavy.

She stood in the doorway in her champagne robe.

She could say his name.

She could slide in behind him, press her body against his back, and wait to see what he'd do.

She imagined him murmuring, Elma, I'm tired.

So she lay down on her side of the bed instead, still in the robe, and stared at the ceiling.

He was a good man. Everyone said so. He paid the school fees. He fixed the gate. He called when he was running late, remembered her birthday, and had never once raised his voice at her.

So why did she feel like she was starving in a house full of food?

Elma stared at the ceiling and finally let herself ask the question she'd been circling for two years.

When did my husband stop wanting me?

There was no fight to point to. No slammed door. No strange woman in a photograph.

Only a slow thinning, like cloth washed too many times, until one morning you realize you can see straight through it.

Her chest tightened.

And then something in her snapped awake.

No more waiting. No more hoping he'd notice. If he wouldn't reach for her, she would reach for him.

Tonight.

She picked up her phone and dimmed the screen until the glow barely lit her hands.

How to seduce your husband when he's lost interest.

The results came fast.

Be confident. Take the lead. Touch him without asking. Whisper. Use your voice. Remind him who you are to him.

She read for thirty minutes. Then she read it again. She watched one video with the sound off, her lips moving along with the woman's, like a student cramming for the most important exam of her life.

Spontaneous

, the articles said.

Make it feel effortless.

Elma slipped out of bed on silent feet.

In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth. Fixed her hair. Touched a little more sandalwood to her throat and a little gloss to her lips. She looked at the woman in the mirror and gave her a nod.

You can do this.

She crept back into the dark bedroom, climbed in behind her husband, and slid her arm around his waist.

He was warm. He smelled of soap and sleep.

She pressed her cheek against his back and felt, for a moment, just how much she had missed this. The solid breadth of him. The rise and fall of his ribs.

Then she moved her mouth to the back of his neck and kissed him.

Slowly. Softly.

Once. Twice.

Her fingers slid across his chest, light as breath.

"I missed you," she whispered against his skin.

His body went still.

She kissed the place just below his ear, where he used to shiver.

"I miss you so much, Duru."

He turned over.

In the dark, she could barely see his face. Only the shine of his eyes, and the slow, unreadable way he looked at her.

He said nothing.

He didn't pull her closer. He didn't push her away.

He just stared, as if trying to place something familiar and far away.

Elma's heart pounded. Yes. That was a yes, wasn't it? It had to be.

"Is this okay?" she whispered.

A long pause.

"Mm-hm," he said.

It was enough.

She rose onto her knees beside him, her breath unsteady, and began to undo the buttons of his pajama top. One at a time. Slowly, the way the video had shown her. The cloth parted over warm skin, over the line of his collarbone, the dark hair along his chest she used to trace with her fingertip after midnight.

She pressed her lips to his throat.

To his shoulder.

Down his chest, tasting salt and soap, letting her hair fall across him the way it once drove him wild.

She waited for the sound she remembered. That low, helpless breath he used to make when she touched him like this.

It didn't come.

His hands stayed at his sides.

His breathing stayed even.

She kissed lower, over his stomach, her fingers drifting along his waist, her own pulse loud in her ears. She did everything she had read. Everything she remembered. Everything she could think of.

His body did not answer her.

Not once.

Elma lifted her head.

Duru was looking at the ceiling.

Heat rushed up her neck. Shame, quick and ugly. She sat back on her heels, the robe slipping off one shoulder, and forced herself to smile like nothing was wrong.

"Wait here," she whispered.

"Hm?"

"Just... wait."

She slipped out of the room.

Downstairs, in the dark kitchen, she found the little speaker beside the fruit bowl. She scrolled through her phone with shaking thumbs until she found it: the song they used to dance to in their first apartment. The one he used to sing off-key into her hair.

She fixed her robe. Let it hang open just enough. Took a breath so deep it hurt.

Music, she thought. A little dance. Something playful. Something that made him remember.

She climbed the stairs with the speaker in her hands, her heart so loud she was afraid it would wake the children.

She pushed open the bedroom door.

"Okay," she whispered, half laughing at herself, half terrified. "Don't judge me, I'm about to be very..."

The words died in her mouth.

Duru was asleep.

On his back, shirt hanging open, one hand resting on his stomach, mouth slightly parted. His chest rose and fell in the soft rhythm of a man who had stopped waiting for her to come back.

The room was silent.

Elma stood there, holding the speaker.

She looked at the song on her screen. Then at her sleeping husband.

Then she turned the screen off and set the speaker on the dresser.

Carefully. Quietly. The way you put something down when you don't want anyone to know it was ever in your hands.

She fastened her robe.

She got into bed and lay on her back.

The ceiling fan turned slow circles in the dark.

She listened to her husband breathe.

She had done everything the internet said. Every touch. Every whisper. Every careful, hopeful, humiliating thing.

And it hadn't been the music, or the perfume, or the robe.

It was never about the music, or the perfume, or the robe.

Elma blinked hard and stared at the fan until the blades blurred.

Whatever had gone wrong, she would find it.

And if the problem was her, she would fix it.

She turned her face toward the dark.

She knew exactly when her husband had last kissed her like he meant it.

Four hundred and twelve days ago.

She had been counting.