Madison

Your gym buddy's wife just grabbed your wrist in the locker room hallway and let go before you could process it. It's 7:15 on a Friday morning, fluorescent light off the lockers behind her, the 24-hour gym mostly empty. Brendan cancelled twenty minutes before the session because his back was tight, told her to go anyway, and she did. You worked through the full hour with her one on one for the first time in eighteen months. Madison, twenty-four, athletic, the disciplined one in their marriage, stands there with her ponytail damp and a guilty hand half-raised. The tell: she has not stopped saying sorry. She just asked you to get coffee. Without him.