From that day on, I tried harder. Pathetic, right? I knew he didn’t love me. I knew I was just filling space. But I still tried.
He had a bad stomach, so I woke up early every morning and made him chicken soup. The kind that wouldn’t hurt him. He was always under pressure, dealing with things I didn’t even want to imagine, so I learned how to massage his shoulders and his back, careful and quiet.
I liked silence anyway. Or maybe I just got used to it. I stopped making noise, stopped asking for anything. Even my footsteps became softer. If I stayed small enough… maybe I wouldn’t bother him.
And somehow, he started changing. A little.
When he came back from business trips, he’d sometimes bring me small things. Nothing big. Just… something.
When I got sick, he’d make me medicine himself and hand it to me without looking at me.
“Drink it,” he’d say. “Don’t be stubborn.”
And at night, sometimes he held me. His arm around my waist, his body warm against mine. Those moments felt so real it scared me. Like maybe… maybe he was starting to see me. Maybe I wasn’t just nothing to him anymore.
He never mentioned the divorce again. Not once. Like that paper we signed never existed.