He didn't talk about that bad nights. Ever.
He pretended they didn't exist.
And that was easiest. It was always easiest acting as if nothing was wrong with his life.
Because on the bad nights, nothing was wrong with his life. It made sense to him that way. While the good nights seemed awful, they could be so much worse. So it was easiest to pretend the bad nights didn't exist so he could appreciate the good nights.
It was the only way he fell asleep at night.
After hours and hours of tossing and turning, of ignore the cries for help, and the sobbing, and the sounds of things going thump against the wall.
He knew what was going thump against the wall, and he'd usually wake up at six in the morning to her at the kitchen table, a pack of Marbolo's nearly finished, cheap wine nearly empty, and blurry eyes staring at the compound around her. Her body had tell tale signs written all over it, and he'd go over and hug her to make it all better, but she either didn't feel his frail arms around her or didn't want to.
He liked to think it was the former.
Something inside of him told him it was the latter.
