Ten Thousand Quiet Collisions
Language: en
Bennett Hayes and I met through our parents. We were both turning thirty, drowning under familial ultimatums, and pragmatic enough to treat matrimony like a sensible merger. We met for coffee three times, exchanged polite resumes of our lives, and signed the marriage license. I didn’t go into it looking for fireworks. Bennett was a tenured associate professor of modern literature—refined, impeccably educated, and steady. I figured mutual courtesy would be more than enough to carry us through the decades. What I hadn’t anticipated was that Bennett wasn't just reserved; he was an absolute…