I looked at him.
“Boring?”
“You know what I mean. We do the same things every week. Dinner, television, sleep, work. We barely do anything exciting anymore.”
I smiled.
“Well, we could take a vacation. Maybe visit somewhere we haven’t been.”
He shook his head.
“I’m talking about something different.”
There was something in his expression I couldn’t understand. He looked nervous, but underneath that nervousness was an excitement I hadn’t seen in him for years.
“What are you talking about, Sean?”
He leaned forward.
“What if we tried something unconventional?”
“Like what?”
“What if we swapped partners with Nancy and Alex for one week?”
For several seconds, I honestly thought I had misheard him.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You want me to live with Alex while you live with Nancy?”
“Just for a week.”
I stared at him, waiting for him to laugh.
He didn’t.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” I asked.
“Why are you reacting like that? It’s not as if we’re talking about strangers. We know them. We trust them.”
“That’s exactly why this is disturbing. They’re our friends!”
He raised his hands.
“Relax. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. I thought it might be an interesting experience.”
“An interesting experience?”
“People do unconventional things to keep their marriages alive. Maybe we need to stop pretending that everything has to remain the same forever.”
I pushed my plate away.
“Is this what you really want?”
He hesitated just long enough for me to notice.
“I think it could be good for all of us.”
That answer frightened me more than a simple yes would have.
I went to bed without speaking to him again that night.
Sean fell asleep quickly. I lay beside him, staring at the ceiling and wondering what had happened to the man who once told me that being married to me was the greatest decision of his life.
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Had I missed something?
Was he having an affair?
Was this his strange way of asking permission to cheat?
Or had he simply stopped respecting me?
By morning, my shock had turned into suspicion.
I waited until Sean left for work, then called Nancy.
She answered after the third ring.
“Hey, girl! What’s going on?”
I took a deep breath.
“Did Sean talk to Alex about us swapping partners for a week?”
Silence.
Not the ordinary silence of someone trying to understand a strange question.
This was the silence of someone who had just been caught off guard.
Finally, Nancy said, “Oh. He told you?”
My stomach tightened.
“He told me what, exactly?”
She laughed nervously.
“Don’t make it sound so dramatic, Vanessa.”
“How long have you known about this?”
Another pause.
“Alex and Sean mentioned it a few days ago.”
“A few days ago?”
“Yes.”
“And you thought it was a good idea?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you didn’t say it was a terrible idea either.”
Nancy sighed.
“Look, maybe we should talk about this in person.”
“No. I want to know one thing. If Alex asked you to spend a week with Sean, would you actually agree?”
Her answer came too quickly.
“Maybe.”
I gripped my phone.
“Maybe?”
“Vanessa, please don’t turn this into something ugly. We’re adults. Nobody is talking about divorce. It’s just one week.”
I felt a coldness settle over me.
Nancy wasn’t shocked. She wasn’t offended. She wasn’t even particularly confused.
She had already considered the possibility.
And Sean had apparently known that before he approached me.
“All right,” I said quietly.
“All right, what?”
“Let’s discuss it later.”
I ended the call before she could ask another question.
For the next hour, I sat at the kitchen table, replaying every conversation I’d had with my husband and my best friend over the past few months.
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