I found men's lubricant in my wife's bag. I didn't make a fuss. I just secretly replaced it with super glue. What happened next?
You know how they say hindsight is 20/20? Well, let me tell you something. Sometimes foresight can be pretty damn clear, too. Especially when your gut's been screaming at you for months that something's off.
But did I listen? Hell no. I was too busy being the good husband, the trusting fool, the guy who actually believed his wife when she said she was working late for the fourth time that week. It was a Tuesday night, which should have been my first red flag because nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday.
I was sprawled on our king-sized bed, the one we'd picked out together at that overpriced furniture store where the salesman had the audacity to suggest we'd make beautiful memories on it. Yeah. Well, turns out Marissa was making memories. All right, just not with me.
I was drifting in that weird half-asleep state where you're not quite unconscious, but your brain had already started playing those bizarre pre-dream movies when I heard the shower kick on again. This was her second shower of the day, which struck me as odd because Marissa wasn't exactly what you'd call a cleanliness freak. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't gross or anything, but she was more of a shower-every-other-day-unless-I'm-going-somewhere-important kind of woman. So, two showers in one day.
My subconscious filed that away under things that make you go, "Hmm." The water was still running when something caught my eye. Her handbag was sitting on the chair by our dresser, looking like it had exploded. The thing was unzipped, and half its contents were spilling out onto the floor like some kind of suburban crime scene.
Lip gloss, receipts, hair ties, and what looked like half the travel-size section scattered across our hardwood floor. Now, I'm not usually the type to go rifling through my wife's purse. That's like the cardinal sin of marriage, right up there with leaving the toilet seat up and forgetting anniversaries. But the mess was bothering me, and I figured I'd be the considerate husband and clean it up before she came out and started stress-cleaning at midnight like she sometimes did when work got crazy.
So there I was, playing good Samaritan, picking up tampons and breath mints and wondering why women need 17 different lip products that all look exactly the same, when my hand brushed against something that definitely didn't belong in the normal-wife-stuff category. It was small, cool to the touch, and had that sleek metal feeling that screamed expensive and purposeful. I pulled it out and held it up to the lamplight. A silver tube, maybe four inches long, with this minimalist design that looked like something Apple would make if they got into the personal-lubricant business.
The whole thing was covered in Japanese characters, bold and black against the silver metal. It looked expensive, the kind of thing you don't just pick up at the local CVS between buying milk and cough drops. My first thought was medical. Maybe she had some kind of issue she was embarrassed to talk about.
Women's health stuff can be complicated. And God knows Marissa wasn't great at discussing anything that made her uncomfortable. But then again, if it was medical, why was it Japanese? And why hadn't she mentioned it?