Over the next few days, Ed noticed that Tracy was overly excited as she got ready to go out to meet Mike.
He saw a side of Tracy that he had not seen even with the other guys she had hooked up with in the past.
He noticed the way she checked her reflection twice and the way she quickly picked up her phone when it lit up on the counter. Mike's name briefly flashed before the screen dimmed again.
He leaned against the doorway, arms folded, watching her.
"Are you heading out?" he asked, keeping his tone even.
"Yeah," she said, not turning immediately. "I told you earlier. I'm seeing Mike tonight."
Of course, she had.
"Right," Ed replied.
A pause followed. Not long but long enough to stretch.
He wanted to ask a question about Mike bu, but at the same time, he didn't want to look like he was double-thinking the same rules they had kept for a while.
Although he wasn't in any way jealous of the attention she was giving Mike, he didn't want to seem like he was in any way. So he stopped the words that rose in his throat before he could stop them.
He swallowed them because this was his idea. His rule.
He knew this was what worked best for them. It was his way of holding onto her without ever saying he was afraid of losing her.
So instead, he nodded. "Have a good time." He said with a mile on his face.
Tracy turned then, studying him. There was something off.
Not in what he said but in how he said it.
"Ed…" He forced a small smile. "What?"
She hesitated. He noticed her hesitation.
For a second, it looked like she wanted to say something, but then she didn't.
"I'll be back later," she grabbed her bag and left.
"Yeah, tell me about it when you get back," he replied, watching her as he left.
He couldn't place his hands around it, but as he watched her leave this time, it was different. But this time felt different.
The silence she left behind wasn't just quiet; it was loud with everything he hadn't said.
Ed ran a hand through his hair, pacing once across the room before stopping.
"This is what you wanted," he muttered to himself.
Freedom, honesty, and a relationship with no lies or secrets. That was what the open relationship brought to them. He told himself and tried to dismiss everything else to the back of his mind.
So why did it feel like something was slipping through his fingers anyway? He thought to himself.
He couldn't sleep that night.
Later in the morning, Trcy came back later than usual. Talking about how he took her to a nice restaurant.
Ed was pretty much trying to catch up on lost sleep from the previous night when she walked in.
"Hey," she said softly.
"Hey."
There it was again.
That pause when she looked at him like she had something to say to him.
Only now, it wasn't subtle.
It sat between them, heavy and undeniable.
Tracy set her bag down, watching him carefully.
"You're still up."
"Yeah."
There was another silence.
Normally, this was where they asked questions about their day. It was where they shared the intimate details about their hook-ups and the sexual escapades.
But today Ed didn't speak. He didn't ask any questions. That was what finally broke it.
"What's going on?" Tracy asked. "You have been acting awkward these days."
Ed exhaled slowly, leaning back, his gaze drifting for a second before returning to her.
"I almost told you not to go tonight."
Tracy blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
He let out a short, humorless laugh. "Yeah. I almost said it."
"Why didn't you?"
Ed looked at her, then he replied, " That is because I'm the one who made this rule," he said. "I don't get to break it when it stops being convenient."
"That's not what this is," she said, her voice tightening slightly.
"Isn't it?"
The calm he always carried was shaken, just a little.
"I thought I had it figured out," he continued. "I thought… This would make things stronger. That you'd go out, do whatever you wanted, and still come back to me, and when you did, it would mean something."
"It does mean something," Tracy said quickly.
"I know," he said. "That's the problem."
She frowned, stepping closer. "What does that mean?"
Ed sat forward now, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly.
"It means I told myself this was about freedom," he said slowly. "About not holding you back. About trust."
He shook his head.
"But it wasn't."
Tracy's chest tightened. "Then what was it about?"
His voice dropped.
"It was about not losing you."
The honesty in it was raw. Unfiltered.
"I thought… if I didn't try to control anything, if I let you have whatever you wanted out there…" He gestured vaguely, "Then you'd never feel the need to leave me for it."
Tracy stared at him.
"So you built this whole thing," she said quietly, "on the idea that I might leave?"
Ed didn't answer right away.
That was the answer that Tracy needed.
Tracy exhaled slowly, running a hand through her hair as she processed it.
"All this time…" she murmured. "I thought we were choosing this. Together."
"We were," Ed said. "I just… had a different reason."
She let out a soft, disbelieving breath.
"Ed, this isn't just some arrangement anymore."
"I know."
"No yo,u don't," she said, her voice sharpening. "Because it's not just physical. Not for me."
That got his attention.
His eyes snapped back to hers.
"What does that mean?"
Tracy hesitated.
Because this was the part she hadn't fully said out loud, not even to herself.
"It means…" she started, then stopped, choosing her words carefully. "I care about you. You know that."
"I do."
"But I also need to figure out what I actually want," she continued. "Not just follow something we created because it felt exciting or safe at the time."
Ed's jaw tightened slightly. "And you think this is just… an experiment now?"
"I think it started as one," she said honestly. "Desire. Curiosity."
She stepped closer, her voice softer now. "But it's not simple anymore." She looked at her toes.
What they had was something that was built on trust and honesty for a long time. But she felt something different with Mike. It was not like her other flings. Mike wasn't just another story. After the sex, he connected with her on a deeper level.
He made her love like a teenage girl meeting her first love.
That changed everything she saw about intimacy. It made her understand that she does not have to follow a set of rules to make a relationship work.
She felt that it could as well flow naturally if it were given the right environment to grow. She had grown to love Ed, but with Mike, she found that excitement she hadn't seen in a long time.
Ed leaned back slowly, absorbing it.
For the first time, the excitement he used to feel, the anticipation, the thrill, didn't come.
Not like before. Now it was tangled with something else.
"You're different when you talk about him," he said quietly.
Tracy didn't deny it.
"That's what scares me," Ed admitted.
They both stared at each other in silence. It looked complicated, but at the same time, it was an unavoidable truth. But neither of them had completely processed their emotions.