When Seth started telling Alex, he knew there was a window and that the more he spoke the more that window was going to narrow until it got so small that no word was going to slip through it for awhile or possibly ever again. While he talked, Seth watched her expression. He watched the points where the window started to constrict with skepticism and expand with the hope only to constrict tighter a moment later.
Seth kept trying to connect and make eye contact with his wife, but he couldn't reach her. He saw her trying to connect with the him that hadn't started trying to convince her about the existence of bird people, but it was too late for that. Seth couldn't go back. He couldn't make this sound less crazy and he couldn't get the look on Alex's face out of his head.
Their hearts were both beating a little too fast, but for different reasons. Alex was scared that she accidentally entered a marriage of convenience with someone mentally unstable. Seth was scared that these looks on her face were the last ones he'd see.
The more Seth looked at her, the more his throat wanted to knot, but Seth had a momentum and while he had it, even though he suspected he was headed toward a cliff, Seth had to keep riding that momentum all the way to the end of the track. He was so intent and focused on pressing forward that Seth almost missed when Alex's expression started to shift in a direction that he hadn't anticipated or braced himself for.
Almost, except Seth was looking right at her when he tried to reassure her that it was going to be okay.
Alex wasn't the sort of person who got sad very often. She was happy, or she was angry, or she was this laidback sort of relaxed that Seth didn't understand, but Alex wasn't ever sad. Even when a sad thing happened, Alex found ways to drown it out before it reached a surface. She'd go out, or focus on something else, or listen to music that she was playing just a little too loud. Maybe if Seth had known this was going to happen, he could have accommodated it in some way, but over the week when Seth had spent time anticipating Alex's different potential reactions, this hadn't been one of them.
Seth had never made his wife cry before. He'd never thought he could.
Panic that Seth had never experienced gripped him. He reached for her hand, but the disconnect between the two of them was so strong that even though Alex's hand was nearby, Seth didn't feel like he could actually hold it. He leaned in to try to get her to look at him.
“Allie...” The word was weighted and tinged with a concern that Seth didn't know how to express. He'd just said so much, but in that moment, that was all Seth could say.