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Pete offered steadiness. College applications. Savings accounts. A plan. I still knew I wasn't meant for college, but Pete and a family, that sounded good. I applied for jobs, which wasn't easy for someone fresh out of high school with no real ambition.Pete didn't like the idea of me dealing cards. He wanted me home at night when he was.

One day, I received an invitation for one of the jobs I had applied to—a receptionist at a vet clinic. The pay wasn't great, but it was steady and offered health insurance. Over the years, I worked my way up to a vet tech. I never passed an exam, so I was never fully paid for the job, but I liked it.

I married Pete three weeks after high school graduation because he said he couldn't imagine a life without me, and at the time, that felt like exactly what I needed. He didn't fall for the version of me I tried to hide. He liked the serious girl who worked hard to bring her grades up and kept to the corners to be as invisible as possible.

It took me a while to fall for him. But he was patient. Steady in a way I had never known.

Somewhere between the chaos and those quiet moments, I started to love him, too. Not all at once. Not in a rush. But in a way that felt real.

After the desert, I didn't want chaos anymore. I didn't want risk, adrenaline rushes, or the kind of freedom that came with consequences I couldn't control. I wanted something solid. Predictable. Safe.

He was all of those things. Stable. Responsible. The kind of man you could build a life around without questioning if it would fall apart overnight. A man I could start a family with. Have kids. A whole dozen. Loud and chaotic.

I convinced myself that was who I was supposed to be. That if I just leaned into that version of myself hard enough, I could erase the girl who had almost lost everything.

So I tried.

I worked full-time at the vet clinic while he went to college. I packed his lunches. I proofread his papers. I picked up extrashifts when tuition went up, because that was what good wives did. What safe girls did.

What girls who had learned their lesson did.

My mother moved in two years later, after her cancer scare turned into a nodule on her thyroid, after months and months of visits to different doctors and specialists just to make surethe quacks know what they're talking about.

Between her anxiety spirals and Pete's courseload, there wasn't much room left for neon lights. Besides, most of my friends were long gone. Pete never told me to cut them off, but he didn't hide what he thought of them either, and it was easier to drift away than to defend a life I was trying to leave behind. I told myself that was adulthood. Responsible. Calm. Stable.

Now at twenty-four, I take Zoloft every morning with my coffee to dull the restlessness humming under my skin, something a doctor neatly filed under anxiety. Sometimes Xanax, too, when it gets too loud, which is more often than I care to admit. I don't dance on tables anymore. I schedule dental cleanings and remind Pete to call his mother.

I laugh again as I reread the text.Good fakes. There is something deliciously ridiculous about it. Illegal handbags in a suburban living room. Housewives pretending to be criminals over wine and charcuterie boards.

"Go," Pete encourages me again when I hesitate. "You've been working nonstop. Your mom's stable this week. I'll handle dinner. Seriously, Audra. Go have fun."

"Or," he offers with a crooked smile, "you can stay here and watch me work."

That doesn't sound like fun at all. We've had a lot of those nights in the last couple of years. I know it's not fair to complain that my husband works too much, not after everything he's doing for me. But dammit, I'd like a date night with him again. It's been so long since we've been out of the house.

He smiles at me the way he always does, like I'm something precious he's proud to own, and I make up my mind. I love him. I do. But something flickers in my chest when I read the wordsgood fakes.Forbidden. Illegal. A little wrong. It feels like someone has cracked a window in a room I didn't realize was suffocating me. I tell myself it's harmless. Just a purse. Just a party. Just a few hours of pretending I'm not the calm one. The caretaker. The steady wife.

I've been to Annette's house a few times, and it never ceases to amaze me. Six bedrooms, four and a half baths. A backyard that would put a resort to shame, everything decorated tastefully, with no expense spared. Tonight feels different, though. Not only because the party is louder than I expected. But because of all the people in it.

At least two dozen already-somewhat-tipsy housewives giggle and mingle in the living room that smells of vanillacandles and expensive perfume. Soft music hums softly from hidden speakers, something trendy and breathy. Every surface gleams: glass tables, gold accents, white couches no one actually sits on. Marble floors, a modern chandelier that is dimmed down to reflect the atmosphere of doing something forbidding. Borderline illegal.

A second group of women, some with their daughters, crowd the dining room, laughing too loudly, wine glasses tilted like props. Most of them I know or at least have seen before. In the morning, when I leave for work in my old reliable Altima, they stand at the school bus stop, watching over their offspring before they're off to the gym or a walk around the neighborhood, as long as it doesn't get too hot.

"And here she is!" Annette sings when she spots me. "Audra, finally. We were starting to think Pete chained you to the kitchen."

I laugh because that's what's expected. "He practically shoved me out the door."

It's easy. Smiling. Deflecting. Playing the version of myself everyone understands. The one who shows up. The one who doesn't make things complicated. The one who chose this. Because this is what I wanted. What I ran to. A life where a joke like thatisa joke. Where a husbandchaining his wife to the kitchenis so far outside reality that women can laugh about it without thinking twice. Not realizing that just a few miles away, things like that—and worse—actually happen.

My attention switches to my phone when it dings with a text from Mom:

Mom:

How long will you be gone?

Mom:

Does Pete know I need my tea at seven?