The sun still crawls its way up the sky the next morning, just like always. I slide out from under the covers and pad groggily across to the bedroom door, like always.

Nothing has changed, as far as the world is concerned.

And if the sun continues to inch its way across the sweep of blue, bathing the world in the same warm, ethereal glow, then I can do this too. I can move on. At least, I can move my feet one by one and trudge down the winding staircase.

I'm okay. I'll be fine; I just have to think past the pain. I can do that; I've always done that. My various trainers have taught me to think past the pain during a workout; this is no different. I can suppress it, confine it into a little ball and don a mask of indifference and go about my life like normal.

Anyways, this is for the best; Misha said so himself. This way, nobody will ever find out because there's nothing to be discovered. No secret to expose. I'm no longer doing anything wrong. I can go back to being a loving husband and father, free of the burden of guilt. I can be a role model. I hope the fans are happy now.

My body moves on autopilot, shuffling almost mechanically through the morning motions. Dry-eyed and dazed, I open the cupboards and root through them for some coffee. I grind the beans and start the coffee machine. I open the fridge, pull out the eggs. I oil up the frying pan. I grab plates. Open the window. Even wipe down the counters with citrusy wipes as I cook.

The kitchen takes on a savoury fragrance as I crack the eggs and mix in fresh green pepper and Romanian farmers' sausage, the way I've watched Misha make omelettes.

Still numb, I pick up JJ's discarded toys from the living room floor. I fix the couch cushions, sweep the hallway floor. I even open the front door and shake the doormat clean of dirt and dust.

Then I set the table for the family and even manage to down a glass of water and a small portion of omelette myself. Between my insomnia and the show schedule that's thrown my circadian rhythm out of whack, I am once again the only conscious person in the house.

Still moving mechanically, I head out to my workshop. I turn on the lights and flip the switch that powers the room. The machines hum to life simultaneously with an almost defeating roar. I'm sufficiently acclimated as not to require earplugs anymore. I don my safety glasses and grab one of the shorter, wooden planks sitting in the bin I've relegated to my shed project.

I push it against the steel band of the saw, its teeth rotating on two wheels as it slices through the board. I barely even have to look at the guides and readings located above and below the blade, I'm so in tune with the machine. It's a fourteen-inch floor model, similar to the one my dad taught me how to use when I was younger. The space also contains drills, jointers, power saws, sanders, even a wooden table I built myself as one of my earliest woodworking projects.

I don't know how much time I spend working in here, trying to ignore the open, oozing wound of sorrow burning somewhere in my chest.

But it's resisting me, growing in spite of my efforts. I switch off the machine at long last and move over to the table, grabbing a hammer and a handful of nails along the way. I align the two boards I'm melding at just the right angle, lightly marking the wood with a pencil. Gripping them tightly with my left hand, I use the right to tap at the first nail with my hammer, moving my wrist in a practiced, dropping motion as the nail eases into the pliable wood.

The ring on that hand glimmers in the morning twilight.

I apply gradually increasing pressure, making sure the nail goes in straight. The loud thwacking of the metal against the wood fills my ears, and then emotion - real, raw, unprocessed, pure - overwhelms me and I'm hammering relentlessly against the planks. Even after the nail is completely driven in, I continue my vicious assault, beating at the wood with unrepressed fury. Hot tears burn like acid behind my eyes but I refuse to let them spill.

I shouldn't have listened to his pretty talk, melted under his tender touch. I should've known I felt more strongly for him than he felt for me. I was in love with him before he even started questioning his sexuality. I laid down my defences for him. All for nothing.

The hammer slips through my fingers, landing on the tabletop with a resounding clatter of defeat. My dignity is dashed upon the sawdust-covered floor that rushes upwards to meet me as I drop to my knees and claw for resistance, a foothold, a way to escape the madness.

I can't breathe in, I can't breathe out. Shoulders shaking, my cries hang in the woodsy air, ignored and neglected. I'm grateful for the cover of the machines' roaring. I'm grateful no one can hear me breaking down in this shameful manner.

I thought they would take Misha from me. I never imagined Misha would leave me of his own volition.

I whip my safety glasses off. Scalding tears pour faster than I can wipe them away, overpowering me with their sudden intensity. I'm left limp and dazed in the rush, succumbing to the pain completely. There's nothing I can do. I can't move past it, who was I kidding? I can't forget it, and I sure as hell can't forget him.

I never should've surrendered to those eyes. At the same time, I wish I could see them gaze adoringly into mine again. I wish I could feel him one last time.

Letting go.

It can happen, I know this in theory, but I don't see how I can ever really do it. I tell myself I'm okay, but it still feels like I'm drowning, like the sky is falling, like the world has stopped spinning. But if I don't tell myself this, if I don't try to pick myself up, no one else will. I'm a big boy now; I have to take care of myself. And anyway, there's nothing anyone could do to help, even if there was someone else that understood.

I stagger to my feet, wiping the incriminating tears from my flushed face, and power everything off.

Then I go upstairs to my room, and instead of telling Dani I was pounding nails into a board and sobbing uncontrollably, I feign illness and stagger into the bathroom.

We can't be broken up. My body is in physical revolt at the very notion.

I grip the the toilet tank with trembling hands as I bend over the bowl and release what feels like every meal I've ever eaten. Again and again I heave, shoulders wracking, sour bile burning its way out of my throat. There are tears, too - not many, because there's only so much water left in my body - and they scald my skin with a searing, salty heat that combines with the vomit to leave me praying for death.

And I do pray. Fervently. I pray and beg that this is a nightmare, even though I've pinched up and down both arms hard enough to leave bruises and I still haven't woken up.

My heart feels about ready to burst from my chest cavity by the time I'm finished.

Misha is the last person I expected would hurt me in this way. I thought my parents would disown me, my friends would leave me, Dani would try to kill me with her bare hands, my children would be ashamed of me...but I thought I'd always have Misha.

Stupid. I'm so damn stupid.

We're cheaters, for fuck's sake. We lie through our teeth. Did I expect that this time it would be like in the movies, that this time our vows would mean something, that we'd stay loyal to each other forever, that he would really be the one? For real this time?

In spite of the bitter pain he's causing me, I can't get him out of my mind. My body is so masochistic, clinging to his memory even though it hurts unspeakably bad.

Every time I close my eyes his image is there, seared onto my retinas, a never-ending film reel of our most wondrous moments. I see his luminous blue gaze, feel him writhe so invitingly beneath me as I lick my way down that glorious treasure trail of hair, hear his sensually charged voice telling me he loves me. I dream of him, of gentle peals of laughter and tumbling over and over in white sheets. How could he lie to me? How could he kiss me like that, so hot and primal with gnashing of teeth and duelling tongues, and then turn around and leave me? He didn't just break my heart. He flayed it open and stabbed it with a kitchen knife and then emptied a salt shaker on it, all wearing that ridiculously sexy apron of his.

Oh, just fuck. I'm going to carry my unrequited feelings to the grave. I'm going to grow into that grumpy old man who's bitter and dissatisfied with his life, waving his shotgun and yelling at the neighbourhood children to get off his lawn. People will whisper amongst themselves, pointing and staring at the former actor gone recluse who now lives in a perpetual state of drunkenness, mumbling to himself about some lost love with a weird name, and some others by the names of Jen and Sen.

The room spins, reminding me that I'm still in the washroom. I think the lights flicker, too, but that might just be my impending death.

Feeling a massive headache coming on from all the crying I've done, I strip down to my boxers and face-dive onto the bed. Then I leap to my feat again and rush to the closet. Dropping to the ground, I dig through my discarded clothes, scrabbling for Misha's sweatpants.

There they are. I lift them to my face and squeeze my eyes shut, inhaling the fabric with desperate vigour. They still contain faint traces of his sweet, musky scent, my own permeating the fabric to create a soothing concoction that almost fools me into believing that he's still here. That he hasn't left me. He's just in the bathroom and he'll be out in a minute so we can continue loving each other in bed all night and then all morning.

I'm losing my fucking mind.

Breath stuttering out of my body, I return to my position on the bed, except this time my face is buried in Misha's pants instead of the pillow and I'm dry-heaving, splintering from the excruciating emotional pain. I can't handle this. This is too much for one man to bear.

Anything else would have been better. We could have shared the burden, carried the weight of it together. Why did he have to give up on us? But that's a foolish question. He gave up because we were doomed from the beginning. Star-crossed lovers is the term, I believe. I want to bring Shakespeare back from the dead just so I can kill him all over again with nothing but a sharp quill.

Dani comes in to check on me a few times, then my mom and my dad and even JJ. I tell them I'm sick. My mom knows better, but she also knows better than to approach me in this state. They all sort of walk on eggshells around me all day. I refuse to eat, even when the tangy fragrance of lemon herb chicken cutlets and rice wafts up the stairs. To me, it smells revolting. Everything but the smell of Misha is revolting.

The hours pass in silent torment. My eyes bear dark circles underneath them come evening, and Dani's at a complete loss for how to help me. She knows me well enough to know that the anguish I'm experiencing isn't physical. Something's clearly the matter, and the solution has always been:

"Sex? That always makes you feel better, babe," Dani coos. "Come on, let me give you a BJ, make you feel good."

And here's the ultimate kicker.

The prospect of getting a blowjob from my model wife feels about as sensually exciting as jury duty.

I'm completely fucked.

For life.

Misha's ruined me.

He's no longer in my life and he's still fucking around with my emotions and my circadian rhythm and even my sex drive.

I tell her I'd like to put in a few more hours on the shed and head out the door. It wouldn't be fair to Dani if the whole time she's pleasuring me I'm envisioning every mouthwatering contour of Misha's sculpted body. Even a lowly, immoral man like me has to draw the line at using Dani that way.

Why did it have to be Misha? I met so many beautiful, sweet girls along the years. But he was different from all the girlfriends I'd had in my youth. I was good-looking, and they always wanted in my pants; then I starting coming on to Misha and he couldn't make it clear enough that he wanted to stay out of them. I became the one pressuring him to go further. I became desperate for him, all of my pride and sense of entitlement forgotten. The chase was refreshing, thrilling. He was the prize, his affection. I yearned for it. Then I had it. Now I've lost it. Forever.

I resume my tinkering in the workshop, drowning my sorrows in my tools and the loud rumble of machinery. The shifting shadows on the walls let me know when nightfall hits, and I'm not ready to go back inside.

I need a drink. Maybe a few.

Fuck that, I'm going to drink religiously until this time tomorrow.

I climb into my car, throw it in reverse and prepare to jet out of the garage to the nearest bar so I can surrender to the bottle, when my dad bursts out of the house.

I frown, rolling my window down as he jogs over to the car, hailing it with raised hands.

"Jensen," he breathes out. "Son - the babies."