The soft glow of moonlight around the edge of the bedroom window curtains played tricks on Erin’s eyes as she opened and closed them, trying to force herself to sleep. As the crisp, blue light from her cell phone lit up the room from her nightstand, she glanced at the screen out of her peripherals. The lock screen read “12:54 a.m,” but “5 hours and 36 minutes of sleep” is how her mind instinctively read it.

Erin never slept well alone, but her mind racing as she wondered what Alex could possibly be doing, made matters much worse. As the time passed, “What could he possibly be doing?” had become “Why doesn’t he want to spend time with me?” She knew that, the longer she waited to check on him, the more upset she would be. Yet she’d been waiting for several hours, taking every moment that passed to heart. To pass the time, she instinctively kept replaying their most recent argument in her mind.

“I guess I’m just confused about how this works,” Alex brooded sarcastically. “If I suggest having a drink, it’s because I have a problem. If you suggest it and I’m not in the mood, it’s because I’m patronizing you. Is that pretty much it?”

“Actually yes,” she hissed back. “I suggest having a drink at the end of a good day, when I’m in a good mood and want to relax. You suggest having a drink at the end of a bad day, because you’d rather slip into a drunken stupor than deal with the stress. So, yeah, I wonder who has the problem.”

She remembered the way his grip on the steering wheel tightened when she said that. It was one of those times she could see the words left unspoken welling up in the back of his throat, streaks of red up and down his cheeks from holding them in. She thought that if she made him angry enough, he’d give in and tell her how he really felt. Instead, he’d explode with a boisterous “Shut up, Erin! Just stop talking!” Yet she had conducted the same experiment, argument after argument through the years, like a mad scientist expecting a new result.

Reliving his reaction over and over again finally roused her to her feet, and she tried to calm her breathing as she trotted down the stairs. The glow of the television screen peeking through the banisters created a pattern like jail bars on the opposite wall and on Erin as she walked through them. When she reached the bottom of the steps, she found Alex sitting on the edge of the ottoman with a controller in his hand, locked in.

On the screen was an intricate structure whose architecture looked to be alien, beasts who stood on two legs, covered from head to toe in armor, paced back and forth on all sides of the building. A black sniper rifle with a glowing green display appeared in the foreground and, as Alex held down a button, his viewpoint was zoomed in and a reticle appeared in the center of the screen. As he fired his first shot, Erin was making her way along the wall of the living room. By the time she entered his peripherals, he was in full-on virtual combat and his facial expression gave away his frustration that she had interrupted.

Alex shrugged the left ear of his headset off with his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the screen. “What’s up?” he shouted, hoping for a quick resolution.

“Why don’t you come to bed?” Erin, her voice cracking with residual emotion, asked quietly, not wanting to wake the kids. Alex didn’t seem to react, so she cleared her throat and forcefully whispered back, “Alex! Come to bed!”

Tazzy, the family’s 4 year old Corgi mix, jolted up from his resting spot next to Alex, and lowered his ears timidly, sensing the tension. Alex huffed and, after pausing the game, tossed his headset onto the couch and his controller onto the floor. The sound of plastic crashing against hardwood echoed. He looked up and there was a fire behind his eyes. “Erin, I’ll come to bed when I’m done.” Tazzy snuck down off the couch to make a break for Sophie’s bedroom room, as he often did when the two fought.

She could feel heat rising into her cheeks. “Well, you’ve just been saying how tired you are lately, but you keep staying up like this.”

“I don’t see how that’s your problem,” Alex said, tossing his hands up as he laid against the back of the couch. “Why are you up this late? To make sure I ‘know my bedtime’?” The sarcasm in his voice was pungent.

“I just don’t get it,” she huffed and started to walk away.

“Get what?” Alex called out. “I was working until just a few minutes ago. I needed to wind down.”

Erin stopped and turned back to Alex, who was bent over, picking his controller up. “Okay, so what time did you stop working?”

“11:45.”

“You know it’s after 1, right?” she jabbed.

“Erin, why don’t you go play ‘mommy’ with your actual kids, for once?”

Alex’s words felt like daggers in her chest. Thoughts flooded her mind. Is he implying that I’m ‘mothering’ him? Is he trying to say I’m a bad mom? Does he actually think that? Why did he marry me if he feels that way? Is he hiding something?

Erin floated back up the stairs and fell into bed without another sound. Tears fell from her eyes and soaked her pillow, but she didn’t make a sound. All she could feel was the heat in her cheeks, numbing her entire face. She finally fell asleep, completely spent.