The nightstand was in the wrong place.

The bathroom seemed farther away even though it obviously wasn’t.

The light beneath the bedroom door looked different from that angle.

David, meanwhile, fell asleep almost immediately.

The next morning he asked,

“How did you sleep?”

“Terribly.”

“Give it a few nights.”

That bothered me.

Not the sentence itself.

The confidence behind it.

Why was he so determined to make this permanent?

The second night, I suggested switching back.

“No.”

Just that.

No explanation.

That was even stranger.

David was an engineer.

He explained everything.

If a kitchen faucet leaked, I received a five-minute explanation of pressure, seals, and why the manufacturer had chosen the wrong washer.

If traffic was heavy, he could explain the road design.

If our dishwasher made a strange noise, he had a theory before I had finished describing it.

But when I asked why we couldn’t return to our normal sides of the bed?

“No.”

That night, I began noticing something else.

He was watching me.

Not obviously.

But every time I shifted beneath the blankets, I could sense that he was awake.

There is a particular stillness to someone pretending to sleep.

Around midnight, I got up to use the bathroom.

When I returned, David was halfway sitting up.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re awake.”

“I thought you were going downstairs.”

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