“Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over…”

-Nicole Sobon, Program 13-

“What are you doing?” I screamed as I came out from the bathroom. With one hand scrubbing my wet hair with a towel, a rare view of Chaerin in pyjama came into my sight. She was lying down on a thin mattress just beside the bed frame and texting someone on her phone.

“What?” she said as she narrowed her gaze to me. “You’re too loud. I’m going to sleep.”

She pulled up her blanket until it covered to her head and turned her back to me.

“Stop being stubborn and just sleep on the bed. What are you doing down there when we got this huge bed here?” I threw the towel on the chair and sat on the bed. My eyes were still on her.

Her stubbornness was really an incurable disease.

“And what? Sleeping with you?” she muffled inside the thick yellow duvet. “No, thank you.”

I sighed. “It’s not we’re never sleep on the same bed before? Why are you being so hard about it?”

She sat up straight, jerking the blanket away and fixed her sharp gaze on my direction. “That was different. I was drunk, I lost control. But now, with my sanity intact, I don’t think I want to sleep anywhere near you.”

Grunting, I scooped her in my arms, and she wriggled violently, hitting and slapping my chest. I hugged her tighter and tossed her lightly on the comfy bed.

“Now, sleep!” I ordered and she muted, her lips twisted in rage.

I grabbed a pillow and lay on the place where she had been a minute ago, on the right side of the bed. I glanced up to her and I saw her face was red like a tomato. And if I do not know her well enough, I must be assuming that she was blushing. But I’m sure she’s just fumed in anger, like a time bomb, waiting to explode and destroying everything around her. Including me. Especially me.

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

The time passed slowly and I felt like it has been hours since I’ve been lying down but when I glanced to the wall, the clock just showed otherwise.

2 am.

Only half an hour lapsed and my eyes were still scanning my old room in the dark. I wanted to sleep badly but I don’t know why my eyes were not tired. My brain still spinning and it kept me awake in maybe, a few more hours. I listened closely to my surrounding, and I heard nothing. Maybe she was asleep. And immediately a pang of jealousy hit me.

It’s not fair that she’s sleeping while I was fighting with the urge to stay awake. I turned to my left and wrapped the blanket closer to my body. As I squeezed shut my eyes, my mind wander to the earlier time of our marriage.

To be honest, this will be the first time we ever shared the same room. Well, it’s not that we never been force to pretend sleeping together whenever our parents visited us or when we spent the night at theirs but she always had a way to prevent it. When she was pregnant, she complained that she couldn’t stand my body odour and I have to sleep on the guess room or on the couch, wherever available. And our parents were not suspected anything. It was just a normal sight of a pregnant woman in her pregnancy days.

But I doubt that was just an excuse for not sleeping in the same room with me.

And now she has nowhere to go. No more excuse, and she stuck with me in this room until the next morning. Regrettably, she could still sleeping deeply throughout the night without having a thought about me or maybe, feeling slightly anxious with my existence here unlike me.

The butterflies were actively fluttered inside my stomach and my p