max held everything so close to his chest. so close, in fact, that his inner circle was more of a pin-dot on an ever-expansive canvas. eloise had managed to remain in that circle, maybe a result of her demeanor, or her intelligence. regardless, there were things that max couldn’t even tell his wife... but he told eloise. like now, when he’d squirreled away in her office, closing the door behind him. “ hey. it’s been a night. ” a night in which he woke up in a cold sweat with his wife beside of him sleeping soundly. she was lying there, and he’d been lying next to her, and he felt like maybe he’d been lying to her this whole time, because he wasn’t okay, and the war was still so fresh, and he felt that the military had lied to him, and he was just this empty shell of a fucking man who his wife should have hated but didn’t somehow, and he just... needed to fuck someone and forget about it.
he’d found that someone on a dating app. he and his wife had a tacit agreement about it so he didn’t wake her. didn’t tell her. just slipped out, met up, got fucked, and for some fucking reason, felt even worse. he slumped into the chair in eloise’s office, across from her desk, worry furrowed into every crease of his brow. “ one of these days, she’s going to be so sick of my shit. ” [ @professvur ]