Maybe marriage does not erase old hunger. Maybe it only reveals it.
By the time I was eight months pregnant, that hunger had begun to change shape.
Pregnancy did that to me. It stripped away vanity first, then patience, then the illusion that emotional exhaustion is the same thing as endurance. I found myself noticing details I had once ignored: how often my mother interrupted me but listened fully to Claire, how my father praised Daniel’s ambition but called Ethan “pleasant enough,” as though goodness were a charming but unimpressive hobby. I noticed the way Claire’s hand drifted protectively to her wineglass whenever family conversations threatened to acknowledge my life too directly, as though my happiness might stain her if handled carelessly.
Most of all, I noticed how different Ethan was from all of them.