Simple Math

He's twenty-nine. He has the city, the career, the house with the bigger bathroom and the better light. He can give her almost anything.
What he can't do is be seen with her.
She's twenty-two. She teaches second grade, does her master's at night, counts the cost of a flight to a friend's birthday out loud with the girls. She posts her dinner because the pasta was good - and doesn't think twice about the hand in the corner of the frame, the bracelets everyone with a fan account already knows.
He thinks twice. He's been doing the math since the night they met - twenty-nine, twenty-two, looking for the number that makes it okay - and he's never said it out loud. Not to her. Not to his parents, who still don't know she exists.
So when the story goes up and his phone lights up, the math comes out the only way he's kept it. At her. Like it's hers to carry.
She already knew this night was coming. She's been bracing for months.