Colin was glad Stacy finally took a weekend for herself until she came home from Nashville wearing long sleeves in brutal heat. He tried to ignore the uneasy feeling in his chest, but one careless moment revealed something that made him question everything.
My wife, Stacy, had her first girls’ trip in years.
I was the one who encouraged her to go.
For months, she had been walking around like a phone stuck at two percent, still working somehow but ready to shut down at any second.
She taught third grade, handled most of her mom’s doctor appointments, and still came home every evening trying to smile like she was not running on fumes.
So when her old high school friends invited her to Nashville for the weekend, I told her she had to say yes.
“Colin, I don’t know,” she said the night the message came in.
She sat at the kitchen island in one of my old T-shirts, her hair twisted into a messy knot. “It feels selfish.”
“Selfish?” I asked. “Stacy, you haven’t had a REAL weekend away since our honeymoon.”
She gave me a tired smile. “That’s not true.”
“Name one.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
I pointed at her phone. “EXACTLY. Go. Drink something with fruit in it. Wear the boots you never wear. Sing too loud. I’ll be fine.”
She looked down at the group chat again, and I watched her face soften.
There was a younger version of Stacy in that smile, one I remembered from when we first started dating. Back then, she laughed with her whole body and talked with her hands.
Lately, life had been squeezing that out of her.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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