The thing you keep almost saying

“You and your partner are lying in bed on a Sunday morning — no alarm, nowhere to be, the kind of morning that usually feels like a gift. They're still half-asleep beside you, and you're staring at the ceiling. You've been thinking about something for months: that you want to stop going to their college friends' group trips. You've done four of them now, and every time you come home feeling lonelier than when you left — like a guest at someone else's reunion. They stir, stretch, and say 'we should look at dates for the lake house trip this week.'”