My Husband Laughed at the Anniversary Dinner I Spe…

“This is much too much effort.”

Something in my tone made him finally look up. Our eyes met across the candlelight. I watched confusion flicker across his face.

He’d been expecting something else—hurt, maybe. Tears. An apology.

That was our pattern: he pushed, I absorbed, I folded myself into smaller and smaller shapes to keep the peace. What he saw in my face this time didn’t fit the script. His brows drew together.

His phone lowered an inch. I pulled out my chair and sat down. “Let’s eat,” I said.

The conversation that followed was… beige. Beige, bland, and careful. Office politics, quarterly sales figures, the latest “initiative” from corporate that everyone pretended to be excited about and privately hated.