As I sit up, a blinding pain wraps itself like a vice around my temples and my sore eyes bring the memories of yesterday back with grim clarity.
I peek at the clock. 10.28 a.m.
Shit.
I’m not usually a late riser. I must have passed out sometime around 5 a.m. I turn over and glance at Jack’s side of the bed and see a note.
Gone to work, baby. Call me if you need anything.
Yours, always.
Jack.
The tender words sting.
I pull myself out of bed, leaning on the thick wooden headboard to steady myself as blood rushes from my head, leaving me momentarily woozy. By the time I hit the shower, a surge of adrenaline is fueling my every move, leaving me wide awake and determined to get the hell out of this apartment. I scrub myself furiously and brush my teeth clumsily before shoving a comb through my dripping hair.
As I exit the bathroom, a thought hits me: the gym bag.
As if to check whether what I saw yesterday was real, I head back to Jack’s closet and reach up to grab that wretched bag, only to find that it’s been pushed to the back of the shelf and out of reach. Rivulets of water trickle down the curves of my naked body as I pull the teal armchair standing next to the mirror across the closet, stand on it, grab the bag and zip it open. I feel inside for the phone as well as for that golden broach I saw, frantically checking every pocket. Nothing.
“He must have taken them,” I mutter. My voice is hoarse, but it’s a relief to find that my shock-induced selective mutism seems to have come to an end.
I sit studying the empty bag, wondering what he’s doing with the phone. I’m somewhat comforted that this source of poisonous energy is out of my apartment, and yet the thought of my husband having access to that phone, of him using it to text those women—if you can call them that—sends a surge of jealous rage through me.
I throw the bag back onto the shelf, pacing around the bedroom restlessly as I think about calling my friends. My friends love me enough not to judge me, but the thought of letting someone else know about Jack’s infidelity makes me despair; once I say the words out loud to someone else, there’ll be no going back. My friends would never forgive Jack. Kevin might have some compassion and Maddie too at a push, but certainly not Stella. I’d never hear the end of it if I were to take him back after him cheating on me so many times. I’m supposed to be the strong, take-no-prisoners gal, not some pathetic moron wife who sticks her head in the sand out of fear of being alone. The reality is that I can’t shake this insidious fear I have that I won’t have the guts to do what I should and leave the man that I have loved so deeply.
I dial Maddie’s number with shaky hands as I steel myself to cross the point of no return.
She picks up. “Hey, sweetie. How’s my girl doing?”
Desperation tears words from my throat. “Mad, I… I need help.”
Her voice darkens instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s happened… with Jack. It’s bad. What time do you finish work? I need to stay with you tonight.”
3
LATER THAT EVENING, I find myself studying the stern faces of my three closest friends in the world as they flick through the images I took with my phone, occasionally lifting their eyes to glance at me or each other in silence.
Stella, Madison and Kevin aren’t exactly wallflowers and seeing them silent like this ties a knot of anxiety inside me. I trust my friends as much as my own family, though that does little to dampen my skin-crawling humiliation as I show them the messages and pictures that unmask the ugly truth about the perfect marriage everyone thought I had. I think back to our big night out a few weeks ago, just before the operation on my ankle, and cringe as I remember gushing teasingly about my god of a husband and our surreal, passionate life together. What a joke that seems now. I have to admit that I also feel an unexpected sense of relief—relief that I’ve actually shared the story without my whole world ending like I suspected it might.
Kevin suddenly gets up from this chair and sits himself next to me on Maddie’s tatty purple couch. As he puts his skinny arm around me and kisses me on the temple, his wiry, rusty-brown hair tickling my face, I try not to allow tears to spill onto my cheek.
“Fucking bastard. I’d like to flay him alive,” he hisses, his words uncharacteristically violent for the live-and-let-live Kevin. “Seriously, I could beat the shit out of him!”
I place a hand on his designer jeans and smile at the idea of my slim, slightly effeminate friend—who is at least five inches shorter and a good thirty pounds lighter than the muscular Jack—squaring up to him, especially in light of how proud Kevin is of his handsome face, designer stubble and expertly coiffed hair, the work of a famous New York barber that every gay man I know raves about. Kevin has seen too many things, had too many out there life experiences to judge other people. Somewhere along the path his life has taken, through the gay-friendly “spas” that he regularly frequents for some “groping action”, as he calls it, or the heterosexual relationships that he has attempted during a short bi-curious phase with women who knew there was a good chance he was gay but adored him so much they were willing to overlook it, he has become extremely tolerant of the whims and foibles of other people. The guy is as far from the cast-the-first-stone type as you can get, which is precisely why it’s so unnerving to see him looking this pissed.
“He’s an arrogant piece of shit!” he snarls, jumping to his feet and lighting up a cigarette which he puffs on furiously, his espresso-colored eyes wild with anger. “I’d like to beat the crap out of that smug prick.”
“Hey, don’t go giving yourself a stroke over him,” I urge. “Or fucking lung cancer.”
I turn to see Stella and Maddie both puffing on cigarettes, visibly fuming in every sense.
“Hey, you two!” I protest. “Let’s put down the death sticks, okay? I won’t be able to tell you anything if you’re gonna light up every time.”
As the words come out, I realize I’ve never wanted a drag more and eye the packet lustfully. I haven’t touched one since the spring my thesis was due just over three years ago, just before I started dating Jack, when through stress, exhaustion and a desperate desire to finish my degree in three years instead of four, I developed an unhealthy caffeine and cigarette habit that took me another six months to kick.
Stella and Maddie have both been casual smokers all the years I’ve known them—Maddie usually when she’s stressed out and Stella mainly as a post-coital indulgence, which does mean that my lady gets through a fair few, I must admit. Like Kevin, Stella has had more than her fair share of non-traditional life experiences, making her very rarely judgmental, but she still looks pale as she scrolls through the catalog of X-rated evidence on my phone.
“No, sweetie,” she says, grabbing the packet off the table, most certainly reading my thoughts of toxic-smoke heaven. “He’s not taking your health away from you as well.”
I raise an eyebrow at her as she puffs away fervently, her ashy-brown pixie cut as messy and wild as she clearly feels tonight.
“Yeah, I know,” she shrugs, taking a feisty drag that would put an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner to shame. “I’ll quit tomorrow.”