Scene 24¶

✨ Keep It Clean ✨¶

[Publish]

Scene 5 ✨ Second Day ✨ [Celeste POV]

Scene 25 — Keep It Clean (Celeste POV)

At home, the quiet had a different texture.

Wardrobe’s silence was fluorescent—flat, interrogative, full of edges. Home silence had softness to it, as if the air had been warmed by the fact that nobody was currently judging your competence.

Which was, of course, exactly why it was dangerous.

I dropped my keys into the bowl by the door and heard the small clink like punctuation. Sharl’s shoes were already lined up neatly beside the skirting board—parallel, facing outward, prepared for the next day as if time itself respected organisation.

He was in the kitchen, sleeves pushed up, rinsing something at the sink. Not making noise. Not announcing his presence. Just… doing the boring thing that made the next boring thing easier.

The smell of dish soap, warm water, and coffee grounds hit me like a memory I hadn’t lived yet.

“I’m home,” I said.

He turned, towel in hand, and smiled—small, restrained, like he wasn’t sure whether smiles were a resource he was allowed to spend freely.

“Hey,” he said. “How’d it go?”

I could have answered with the practical summary. Quote sent. Assumptions logged. Deposit schedule set. Mara had accidentally sealed “Sharl” into the shop’s language and the universe had not collapsed.

Instead, what rose up first was the truth underneath all of it:

It went the way things went when he was there. Steadier. Cleaner. Easier.

And the sentence that tried to leave my mouth was the one that turned wives into ghosts.

I don’t know what I’d do without you.

It sat on the tip of my tongue, sweet and grateful and—if I let it land—dangerous as a locked door. Because that sentence didn’t just thank him. It wrote a story around him. It made his support feel like a requirement. It made the room feel like it belonged to his labour.

And once you said it enough times, you stopped noticing how much labour there actually was.

I swallowed it back.

I watched him set the plate in the rack with the kind of care that looked like nothing until you tried to live without it.

He didn’t look up while he worked, which meant he wasn’t performing. He was simply being himself.

Which made it harder.

“Good,” I said instead, and the word sounded bland even to me. I hated how bland it sounded. I hated how easily sincerity got confused with debt.

Sharl nodded once, accepting the blandness as if it were normal.

That was another thing. He didn’t demand emotional payment. He didn’t fish for validation. He didn’t do the little resentful dances people did when they wanted you to notice their sacrifice.

He was so easy to lean on that I could feel myself doing it.

I went into my room—my room; the fact still mattered—and dumped my bag on the bed. Papers. Notes. A printout with pen marks. The kind of debris that looked messy but was actually the record of thinking.

When I came back out, he’d put the kettle on.

Not because he wanted tea. Because it was what people did in houses where pressure had happened, and someone needed to come down from it.

“Do you want—” he began.

“No,” I said quickly, then softened it because I wasn’t trying to snap at him. “No tea. But… thank you.”

He nodded as if “thank you” were enough and didn’t require commentary.

I moved to the kitchen bench, leaned my hands on the laminate, and stared at the neat little universe he’d arranged without ever making it feel like his territory. The sponge squeezed out. The dishcloth folded. The bin not overflowing.

This was what wives did, historically: not because they were born to it, but because someone had to. Because leaving friction lying around was expensive, and women were trained—explicitly or not—to pay that expense with their own time.

Sharl was paying it now.

Not as a performance. As instinct. As the easiest way to be useful.

And I could feel his old provider fantasy behind it like a shadow: If I make her life easier, I’ll be worth keeping.

Even if he didn’t phrase it that way. Even if he didn’t understand it that way.

I needed to interrupt it before it calcified.

Not because I didn’t want his help.

Because I did.

But help that couldn’t be named became labour that couldn’t be valued. And labour that couldn’t be valued became expectation. And expectation became entitlement in the person who benefited.

I wouldn’t do that. I refused.

I looked at him.

He was at the sink again, not because the sink needed him, but because his body didn’t know what to do with waiting. He kept moving to keep the room stable.

“Sharl,” I said.

He turned, attentive.

I held his gaze and forced myself not to wrap it in softness that would make it easier to ignore later.

“This works,” I said, and I gestured between us—house, arrangement, day, everything. “It works because we keep it clean.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly, a question without words.

I felt the cowardly part of me want to stop there. Good job. Boundary implied. Go sit down.

No. That wasn’t clean. That was avoidance dressed as wisdom.

“I’m going to talk to you tonight,” I said.

He stilled. Not alarmed. Just… present. Ready.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

I nodded once, because the commitment mattered more than whatever tone I put around it.

“Not a big thing,” I added, because I didn’t want him spiralling. “Just… clarity. Terms. The same way we do it at Wardrobe.”

A flicker crossed his face—relief, actually. Like the mention of terms and process had given him a handrail.

“Right,” he said. “Okay.”

I exhaled.

The hardest part, I realised, wasn’t telling him to stop doing things for me.

The hardest part was admitting that I liked the support. That I was beginning to depend on it in the practical way that mattered. That if I didn’t name it now, I’d wake up in six months with a domestic system that ran on his invisible labour and a mind that had started treating that labour like weather.

That was how women got caught.

I watched him for a second longer, then picked up my papers and walked toward the table I used for study.

“I need an hour,” I said, and I didn’t apologise. “In session.”

He nodded immediately. “Yep. I’ll be quiet.”

He reached into the drawer and pulled out the small card we’d made—white card stock, black marker:

IN SESSION

He placed it on the bench where it would be visible, like a signal flag. No drama. No wounded expression. No bargaining.

Just compliance with a system that protected my future.

I sat down, opened my notes, and the words on the page steadied me.

Behind me, I heard him move lightly—one cupboard, one drawer, one soft click. The domestic machine continuing. The wife-work continuing.

But now it had a name.

Now it had a boundary approaching.

And the simple fact of that made the room feel cleaner, even before I said the rest.

I looked down at my notes, pen poised, and let my mind make a promise that wasn’t sentimental and therefore had a chance of being true:

Tonight, I would keep it clean.

Not by refusing care.

By naming it.

By pricing it.

By refusing to let it become currency.

Because I could already feel the old story trying to write itself.

And I was not going to let it.

Scene 24¶

✨ Keep It Clean ✨¶

[Publish]

Scene 5 ✨ Second Day ✨ [Celeste POV] ✨ The Operating Surface ✨

[Celeste]

I cleared the table the way you clear a bench before you do something you can’t afford to botch. Not ceremoniously. Not dramatically. Just... quietly, completely. Mug rings wiped away. Crumbs vanished into my palm. The loose thread someone had left like a dead spider got flicked into the bin. I laid everything out with that flat, clinical care you see in a good salon when the colourist lines up foils. You’re not playing at precision: you’re committing to it.

Ledger. Invoices. Swatches of linen and wool pinned with little flags. A cheap calculator with worn buttons that had seen too many rushed additions. A laptop that had survived coffee, fabric dust, and at least one rage-tap hard enough to make the screen stutter. A stack of envelopes that weren’t romantic in any way whatsoever.

It was an operating surface.

Wardrobe wasn’t dying: it was thriving. That was the danger. Thriving meant multiplying. Multiplying meant mistakes. Mistakes meant the whole thing could get infected by sloppiness and sympathy and “we’ll fix it later” thinking. And I did not build this place — Mara did not build this place — so it could be ruined by the soft, lazy part of human nature.

I drew a line down a blank page and wrote:

JAN — COSTS / INCOME / WASTE

Then another line. Then another. Reassuring, in the way locking a door is reassuring.

The first invoice I opened was for thread: ten spools, quality, not cheap. The second was for grommets. The third was for a bolt of linen that arrived like a dare.

My phone vibrated. A message from Lauren.

How are the numbers?

I stared at it, thumb hovering, and realised I’d been waiting for that question the way you wait for someone to come stand beside you at a lookout, so you can stop pretending you’re fine with the height by yourself.

Doing them now, I typed. Then, without thinking, added: We’re doing them now.

I didn’t even notice the word until it was sent.

We.

As if it was already decided. As if routing someone into “we” was as simple as changing a pronoun in a text. I set the phone down face-up, daring the universe to correct me.

Footsteps in the hallway: soft, familiar. Not Mara: Mara’s steps had a blunt certainty, like she was driving nails into the floorboards simply by walking. These were lighter, careful—someone who’d learned to move quietly in other people’s spaces.

Charlie paused at the doorway like he was checking whether his presence would be tolerated by the air itself. He didn’t look like he belonged at an operating surface. He looked like someone you’d find in the margins of a library: delicate, intent, carrying too much thought in too thin a frame. His hair was still damp at the edges, as if he’d run water over it and then forgotten to finish the job. There was a faint smear of pencil on his thumb.

He saw the table and went still.

“Is this... for me?” he asked, voiced carefully, trying to sound casual while bracing for impact.

“For us.”

Not loudly or pointedly. Just like it was the only accurate word available.

His eyes flicked up. He processed the word the way you process a new weight in your hands: is it mine to carry? am I allowed? I tapped the chair opposite mine with two fingers.

“Sit.”

He sat.

No debate. That was the thing about Charlie: he tried to be brave, but he was even better at being compliant when the rules were clear. I slid the ledger toward him, open to the column headings Mara had ruled with that severe, beautiful logic of hers.

“Read it.”

His eyes moved down the page. Movement. Stress. Failure points. Fix applied. Re-test. Signed.

“This is... intense.”

“Actually, it’s boring,” I corrected. “That’s why it works.”

He let out a faint breath that might have been a laugh if he’d trusted himself to make it.

I pointed at the laptop.

“Open the spreadsheet. Tab marked January.”

He reached for it. Fingers quick, sure. He wasn’t a finance person — he didn’t have the swagger of someone who’d been told numbers were his territory — but he had the kind of competence that comes from caring. The kind that doesn’t seek applause. I watched him centre the window, bring up the sheet, start studying the numbers.

“Now,” I said, flipping an invoice so it faced him, “tell me what you see.”

He leaned forward; a strand of hair fell across his forehead. He didn’t push it back.

“I see thread,” he said. “And... we’re paying more than last month.”

“Yes, we are.”

He glanced up again, and something in him adjusted at my emphasis. We.

This is about us. We do this. Not you. Not I’ll cover it. Not I’ll handle it like a man. Just... we.

He looked back down.

“The output’s higher too,” he said slowly. “If we’re making more garments, the thread cost scales. The question is whether waste is scaling with it.”

I nodded.

“Exactly.”

The word landed like a seal.

He went quiet after that, as if he’d been given permission to do what he was already good at: focus without posturing. He pulled the calculator closer, checked a couple of sums, then typed the numbers into the sheet with a neat, almost reverent care.

Silence formed — not empty, but weighted. Useful.

And in that silence, watching him work — head down, shoulders tucked into the task — something in my nervous system unclenched. Like a knot you didn’t realise you were carrying until it releases.

Relief.

Instinctively, the whole tension-release thing felt ridiculous. I didn’t need taking care of, not by anyone. I certainly didn’t need a man. I didn’t need anybody to rescue me from my own competence.

I had this. I was good.

And yet, having him there, on the other side of the table, quietly, steadily working, made something stop tilting that I hadn’t realised was tilting.

I watched him work and realised, with bizarre, needle-sharp clarity, that I was starting to depend on him. It wasn’t romantic. It was structural. The way you depend on a beam once you’ve built the roof.

Structural. What sort of role is that? Who fills that sort of role? Who just quietly does their job, not expecting recognition? Who doesn’t flinch when something else gets put on their plate?

The realisation made me sit up straight. It was the sort of thought one cannot argue with. It was not emotional at all. Certainly not romantic. And it wasn’t a kind thought, either. It was simply: accurate.

Wife.

He’s my wife.

There was instant dissonance. The term was so gendered it didn’t fit at all. I tried to replace it with something more socially acceptable, less stigmatising — something that carried the same shape.

Nothing else fit.

Wife, not in clothes, not in pronouns... but in function. Labour that doesn’t get a spotlight and doesn’t ask for one. Support: the kind that keeps the whole place standing while most people only notice the roof.

The part that made my stomach go so tight it ached wasn’t the thought itself.

It was that I dreaded losing it.

I realised what this meant. Sooner or later, I would have to define it: not just to myself, but to Charlie, to Wardrobe — to everyone. Spell it out. Clearly. As a boundary.

Charlie’s my wife.

The sheer enormity of what I was contemplating gave me pause. There had to be another way to name it. A safer way to frame his role. I went over the options again.

And came up empty-handed.

There was nothing else.

Wife. That’s it. The concept solidified. Positive outcomes suggested themselves. Defining the role to Charlie would go a long way in resolving a looming problem: one that would have a negative impact on his relationship with Wardrobe. I had already seen that old provider story, that old expectation of himself, trying to crawl back in whenever he sensed a need — a reflex that wouldn’t die. I could see it in the way his shoulders tensed whenever a cost spiked, as if the numbers were personally accusing him.

The provider fantasy wasn’t dead. Just dormant.

He finished entering the thread invoice and looked up.

“Do you want me to... pay this one?”

There it was.

He didn’t say it arrogantly. He didn’t perform it. But inside the practical tone was the old expectation rearing its head: I’ll buy my place. I’ll prove it. I’ll be useful the way men are taught to be useful.

My first instinct was to snap at him, because snapping is easy and I’m very good at easy when I’m tired.

But I didn’t.

I looked at him for a long moment instead — long enough that he started to fidget. He noticed himself fidgeting and stopped. Then, a second later, fidgeted again. He was trying so hard. Which mattered.

“No,” I said finally. A breath. Calm. “Look, you don’t get to buy your place here.”

His eyes widened a fraction. I held his gaze and softened the next sentence without weakening it.

“You don’t have to earn us,” I said. “You just have to work with us.”

Work with us.

Not for me. Not as my man. Not as a hero.

With.

The tension in his shoulders didn’t vanish, but it changed shape—the difference between bracing for a punch and bracing to lift a weight.

He swallowed.

“Okay,” he said. Quiet. Real. “Okay.”

He looked back down as if grateful to be given something concrete.

“Then... tell me what you want me to look at next.”

I didn’t miss the phrasing.

Not what should I do. Not how can I help. Not I’ll take care of it.

Just: tell me.

I slid the next envelope across.

“Waste,” I said. “Find me waste.”

He nodded.

As he bent over the numbers again, pencil tapping once against the table, it hit me with a certainty I couldn’t argue with: this was exactly the right time to test the water.

Not with clothes. Not with pronouns — not yet.

With structure.

With language.

With we.

Because the safest, sanest way to change someone’s life isn’t to push them off a cliff. It’s to build a room around them so gradually they stop remembering what it felt like to stand outside.

I picked up my phone and typed to Lauren before I could overthink it:

Numbers are stabilising. Waste is the target. We’ve got Charlie on it.

Then I added, almost without meaning to:

He’s good. We’ll keep him close.

Chosen-ness, delivered like a logistical note. No theatre. No confession. Just a preference stated as fact.

I sent it.

Across the table, Charlie looked up as if he’d felt the air shift. He caught my eye. He didn’t smile. He didn’t try to charm. He just waited: present, attentive, ready.

And I realised something else, unexpectedly sharp: I didn’t need him to be a man. At all. In fact, quite the opposite. I didn’t even need him to be anything at all yet.

I needed him to stay exactly like this — quiet, steady, inside the “we” — long enough for the old story in him to finally starve.

“Good,” I said once, when he circled a waste line item and drew a neat arrow.

He blinked at the word like it warmed him. Then he went back to work.

And the operating surface — ledger, invoices, swatches, calculator, laptop — felt less like a crisis.

More like a plan.