I can’t sleep.
I tried reading. I downloaded three separate books onto my Kindle, but none of them held my attention. I peed twice. I watched a few videos on YouTube, but I heard screen time is bad for sleep so I shut it off.
And that’s when I got out of bed and started pacing.
Unsurprisingly, this pulls Sam from sleep. He sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes and yawning. He turns on the lamp by the bed and stares at me in disbelief. “Abby, it’s two in the morning.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, I gathered that.”
There was a stressful time I had at work four years ago, which coincided perfectly with the peak of our infertility issues. I had a lot of trouble sleeping then too. I’d routinely be up at two in the morning, pacing our bedroom.
I have to give it to Sam—he was great about it. He used to get up with me, and the two of us would sit in the kitchen together, talking and drinking warm milk. That’s how I knew he’d be a great dad to a newborn. He didn’t mind getting up in the middle of the night to make me milk. And somehow, that made it even worse. Because I wanted a child not just for me, but also for him.
“I screwed up a meeting today at work,” I say, as I perch down at the edge of the bed. “A really important meeting. I put up the wrong images. It was a disaster.”
“Oh.” Sam rubs his eyes again. “So… what? Are you unemployed now?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll make it right again. You always do.” “What if I don’t?”
He shrugs. “Well, we’re going to have a baby soon. You can stay home if you want.”
“You know I don’t want to do that! I’ve worked really hard to get where I am!” I put my hands on my hips. “Anyway, you don’t earn enough
money on your own. We’d have to start going through my savings.” “I earn enough for us to get by.”
“Not really.”
He gives me a look. Sam rarely seems resentful of the fact that I earn twice as much as he does or that we had to use my trust fund to put down money on our condo. But sometimes I get the feeling it bothers him more than he lets on.
In any case, this isn’t making me feel any better. I pace across our small bedroom, my heart pounding in my chest. Why can’t I shut down my thoughts? What’s wrong with me?
“Don’t you have those sleeping pills?” Sam says. “From when you were having trouble sleeping before?”
“Maybe…” I think they’re still in the medicine cabinet. “But they’re four years old. They’ve probably expired.”
He yawns. “Maybe tomorrow you should call your doctor to get another prescription.”
“I don’t want to rely on pills to sleep.”
“Yeah, you just want to spend the night pacing the apartment.” He has a point. “Okay, I’ll call my doctor tomorrow.”
Sam rubs his eyes again. He looks so sexy right now, his dark hair disheveled, the stubble on his chin—also, he sleeps shirtless. So there’s that.
I can think of one thing that might relax me…
“Hey.” I climb back onto the bed, but this time onto Sam’s side. “You feel like fooling around…?”
“Uh…”
I frown at him. Is the answer not yes?
He looks a little uncomfortable. “I mean, yes, of course I do. But… well, I’ve got an eight a.m. lecture tomorrow and…”
Oh my God, is Sam blowing me off? He’s never blown me off! Not in all our years of dating and marriage has he ever refused a request for sex. Never. It’s made me feel guilty in the past because there have been times he’s wanted it and I turned him down because of (ironically) an early meeting. But Sam always says yes. Even when he had an early lecture, he was always willing to trade sleep for sex. Always.
Why isn’t he interested anymore? Does it have anything to do with the text messages he’s still getting regularly on his phone?
“Okay, fine,” I say as I roll off him. “Whatever.” “I’m sorry, Abby.”
Now he’s apologizing to me for blowing me off. If anything could make me feel worse, it’s that.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Tomorrow night,” he promises. “Yep.”
He looks at me for a moment, then shakes his head and shuts off the light. He rolls over, trying to get back to sleep, and after a few minutes, the sound of his soft snoring fills the room.
Sam’s phone is plugged in and resting on the windowsill. I know his password by heart. It would be very easy to go over there and check his text messages. See what he and Monica have been discussing so enthusiastically these last several weeks. But that would be a major betrayal of his trust.
I couldn’t do that. Or could I?
Sam isn’t interested in sex with his wife. Isn’t that a sign of another woman in his life? I’ve certainly got probable cause here.
But I can’t do that to Sam. I trust him. He wouldn’t cheat on me. He
wouldn’t.
I’m still staring at his cell phone when I eventually drift off to sleep.
