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Having nightmares and waking up screaming doesn’t seem like the end of the world anymore now that my nightly terrors have decreased. I wake up from a dream that leaves me feeling restless and unable to move. In the dream, I was sitting by the river in one of the restaurant boats close to downtown. The fourth beer made my head spin, and I suddenly remembered I needed to drive home. I stormed out of the restaurant and to my car parked down the road. No parking ticket. I quickly started the engine. Driving home, I felt like I had left something behind. I looked around the car and saw my purse, wallet, and jacket resting on the passenger seat. Through the rearview mirror I saw a brand new sturdy car seat.
“Fuck! My baby is still at the restaurant.”
It’s over. I promise. This time it’s different. I’m filing the divorce papers on Monday.
The snoring man’s text message makes my whole face blush red with anger. I squeeze the phone so hard that the duct tape holding the battery comes loose on the left side of the phone. It takes all my willpower not to throw the phone at the bedroom wall. There’s a faint scratch and a crack on the wall from the last time I threw the phone. It’s impossible to break Nokias. Sometimes the screen takes some damage. Many times, after throwing my phone on the ground, instead of breaking, it just keeps on ringing or beeping. Maybe I should drown it?
Please? I love you.
He only uses the “L” word in times of extreme desperation and neediness. He must have gone grocery shopping with his wife, or she kicked him out of the house again.
My answer is no. You can’t come over.
I send the message, rip the duct tape off with one quick movement, and let the battery fall out. No more desperate messages and no more needy phone calls full of promises with him saying this time things would be different.
It’s late and the night would soon make everything dark and cold, if it hadn’t been dark the entire day already. The drunkies argue on the street near the pub, swearing and talking nonsense to one another. The bedroom window is open, letting in fresh, freezing air so I can breathe a bit easier. I get up, leave the warm, cozy bed, and walk to the fridge, hoping Harri brought food over and I have simply forgot about it. No such luck. The fridge is empty, except for three cans of beer that are not my favorite brand. The snoring man must have left them behind. We rarely drink or eat together; there’s usually not enough time for that. We do talk for hours, nearly every day, but it’s always on the phone. The snoring man travels a lot and uses his spare time to call me, planning our future together. The one that would start “any day now.”
The can makes a hissing sound when I open it and let the dark beer stream into my dry mouth. In a split second, I spit the beer out and throw the can into the sink as if it turned into a rattlesnake about to bite my hand.
“I can’t be fucking drinking. Not with this thing inside me,” I mumble as my left hand lands on my flat belly. I hold my breath and feel the panic attack rising deep in my chest, climbing toward my throat. The kitchen walls spin as I leave the room. The coat hangers fall off the rack when I desperately dig for my cigarette pack in the mudroom closet. There’s a quiet knock on the door. It must be my crazy neighbor asking if I’ve seen his cat that runs away nearly every night. The door downstairs automatically locks at nine o’clock in the evening, so the person on the other side of my door cannot be Harri bringing me pickles and frozen pizzas.
None of my coat pockets have cigarettes in them. I run to the balcony and dig through the ashtray, trying to find a butt long enough to light up again. This time luck is on my side and I find a cigarette, broken in half. I quickly light it up, inhaling as if my life depends on it. The nicotine goes straight to my knees and I fall down on the balcony floor.
“I guess this should be forbidden now as well,” I mumble, and fight my left hand from wandering back to my belly. The thing inside me must be the size of a pea, and it is already fucking with my mind.
The balcony floor is freezing cold when I wake up to a sharp tapping sound. The nicotine and sudden panic attack must have knocked me out, despite the frigid weather. Spring is supposed to begin this week, but it feels like it may start snowing anytime. Another tap on the balcony window. Maybe instead of snowing it has started to rain?
Tap, tap, tap. A small rock lands next to my thigh and rolls toward the balcony door. I slowly get up and lean forward to see over the balcony edge.
“Can you please just throw me the key? It’s fucking freezing,” the snoring man says, standing straight under the balcony window. He’s carrying two medium-sized duffle bags and a tiny suitcase covered with Disney characters.
The key burns in my pocket and I squeeze my fist around it so hard it leaves marks on my palm. Sighing deeply in frustration, I throw down the key and walk inside, heading straight to my dimly lit bedroom.
The morning light feels odd in my eyes. It’s weird waking up without a hangover, and my head not bouncing or spinning. The front room light is on. I slowly sit up on the bed and see the snoring man pull on his shoes. The white antique chair next to the front door creaks faintly when he switches his weight from one side to the other. The unopened duffle bags are still in the same spot beside the chair where he dropped them late last night. He tries to move quietly so the creaking doesn’t wake me. Tying his shoestrings seems to be a nearly impossible task, as he keeps picking up his iPhone from the floor so he can reply to incoming text messages. The sound is off, but the screen keeps blinking, distracting him and delaying his silent escape.
His phone blinks for an incoming call. He jumps up in a hurry and places the phone between his teeth, so he can free his hands and lift the duffle bags. When he opens the door, he turns around and our eyes meet. His escaping body freezes. Staring at me, the phone still wildly blinking in his mouth, he looks so ridiculous it makes me scoff before I turn away and pull the blanket over my head.
The sudden tears are just as surprising to me as they would be for Sigmund, if the old shrink were here. But there’s no one here. No snoring man, no Dad, no Sigmund. They are all gone, cooking dinner for their kids, reading a book by the fireplace, or living their happy afterlife, playing guitar and singing, without a worry.
I’m all alone, except for the little unwanted pea stuck inside me, making me scared I’ll go crazy, become schizophrenic, cut myself open and remove the uninvited guest.
The blanket weighs heavy on my body when I curl up into a fetal position, rocking slowly under the covers. He is gone. Just like hundreds of times before. There will be no divorce papers filed, and he will never open and unpack those duffle bags. Bringing the bags is a trick he pulls whenever I try to cut him loose, fighting my addiction, demanding us to quit our secret moments spent together.
We met just after my dad had passed, when I couldn’t have cared less about men, dating or romance. One night I ended up talking to him at the bar. We exchanged phone numbers and soon talking to one another became a habit. He had been miserable and depressed, just like me, but for very different reasons. Talking to him had made me feel like he was the only one who understood how broken and alone I was. His admiring gaze and burning touch had made me feel a bit of hope, which would always fade as the morning came, turning into self-hatred and guilt. But it was something to hold onto. When he wasn’t there, my whole body ached. Sometimes I shook in the balcony corner, just waiting for the numbness to come back so I wouldn’t miss his touch so badly. One time, he had laughed and said I’d need to leave the country for him to give up on me. And even then, he’d come and find me because we belonged together.
“You’ll just need to be patient. Just wait a little bit longer....”
And then he’d abandon me. Leave without a word. Until he would be back again.
I bang the back of my head on the headboard of the bed.
“What the fuck did you think would happen, you little pathetic moron,” I repeat to myself.
Hands wrapped around my knees, I rock back and forth, my nails digging deeper into my skin. A sizable bump rises on the back of my head, and for a second I wonder if I’m bleeding.
The phone’s ringtone sounds distant as if I’m in a nightmare, knowing that I’m dreaming but unable to wake up. Incoming call from Gaylord, according to the broken screen. I let it go to voicemail. The phone rings again. And again. Finally, I give up and tap the green phone icon on the old Nokia.
“Oh good, you haven’t starved yourself to death. Turn on the oven and find your bottle opener. We’re day drinking, biatch.”
“And then we went to see the movie, again! Fucking third time! I mean, who does that?” Harri’s laugh sounds like a teenage girl’s giggle, and his eyes shine bright when he talks about Jan and their fifth or sixth date together. He pops open a beer bottle and tosses the opener next to me on the bed. The chair under him moves a few inches when he throws himself back on it, lighting up a cigarette. The six-pack he has brought with him is placed between us on the bedroom floor. One of the bottles waits on the nightstand for me to open it up and empty its contents into my dry mouth.
“He is so fucking sophisticated, it’s not even funny. Seriously, I could listen to him talk for hours and hours.”
Harri looks so dreamy it nearly makes me gag. We’ve always made fun of dreamy people, the ones who use words like love, soul mate, destiny or relationship. Not that we had never been in love. It was just usually with completely wrong people.
“I thought that was the brand you like?”
Harri nods toward the unopened beer bottle getting warm on the nightstand. I nervously laugh and dodge Harri’s questioning gaze.
“Don’t really feel like having a beer,” I say.
Harri’s eyes darken and he tries to catch my wandering eyes. Suddenly he jumps up, nearly choking on his beer. He loudly swallows the liquid that is stopping him from talking.
“Holy... fucking... shit balls,” he says, carefully pronouncing the English words with a nearly perfect British accent. “Whose is it? Must be the snoring numb nuts, right? Fuck-is-that-the-time is the father?”
Harri’s eyes are as wide as the bottom of his half-empty beer bottle. Shrugging my shoulders, I look out the window and muffle Harri’s wound-up questions until it’s all just a blur, like background music one doesn’t really notice until it’s gone. My heart beats too fast, and from the corner of my eyes I see a dark shade arriving, slowly narrowing my eyesight, taking over the light and my vision. This time the blackout is not frightening. I welcome it with gratitude. Before passing out, I realize the birds are back from their winter travels, building a nest for their unborn babies in the tree branches next to my bedroom window. They are probably lucky enough to know who their unborn baby’s father is.
Sigmund’s office door is wide open, and the waiting room is empty of other patients. It’s the spring holidays, and I assume Sigmund’s colleagues are taking some days off to be with their children. That’s what normal people do on a spring break. Family vacations to the spa, or if they are really brave, they pack their bags and kids into their Volvos and head up north for a nerve-racking skiing vacation, where at least one of the family members would take a nasty fall and need to see the resort doctor.
I stand by the door, unsure if I’m supposed to walk in or sit down on the couch and wait for Sigmund to holler for me. He never calls my name, but he has finally stopped formally shaking my hand whenever I’m called in. Being formal with someone who knows everything you’re trying to hide from rest of the world feels unnatural and awkward.
I sit on the waiting room couch and try to hear if Sigmund is moving around in his office. Maybe he’s skiing down the hills up north and simply forgot to cancel our Wednesday appointment. My gut makes a sudden and sharp flipping motion, and the surprise of this reaction makes the pain in my stomach continue a few unwanted seconds longer. This is the first time I feel disappointed for possibly not being able to sit opposite to Sigmund for the next forty-five minutes. It would make sense though, him forgetting about me, maybe even giving up on me. I’ve been a little shit in that office so many times, rolling my eyes, replying to his questions with a nasty wit. Who would want someone like that around, even if it is their job to help them?
The bald head peeks into the waiting room and Sigmund gives me a warm smile.
“There you are! Please come in, we can begin.”
Sigmund leans forward. His fingers are crossed, pointers upward, leaning lightly on his lips. A deep frown has appeared on his face after hearing my story of the pills, duffle bags, and the fear of slicing my torso open. He stares at a spot on the floor, listening to me carefully, soaking in every word. When I stop talking, Sigmund remains quiet for so long, it makes me shift nervously and move my weight from one side to the other.
“Could it be that you are so attached to this man because he entered your life just as your father unexpectedly passed away?”
Sigmund’s straightforward question startles me. It’s not typical for him to provide readymade options or answers to my questions.
“I... guess. But I’ve met other people as well, ones who were available and wanted to be with me. They emptied their closets for me, begging me to stay when I said I didn’t want to see them anymore. None of them made me feel anything.”
“This man... you knew he was married when you met, yes?”
I nod and instantly feel a suffocating, crawling sensation rising from my stomach toward my throat. Every inch the guilt climbs, my heart races faster, making it impossible for me to breathe. I’m afraid I’ll pass out.
“Take a deep breath. I’m not guilt tripping you. Try to set yourself aside for a second. Tell me about him and you two meeting like you would tell someone else’s story. Step back and just watch yourself tell me the story.”
Normally Sigmund’s words would make me scoff and roll my eyes. This time, I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and obey his words. In my mind, I take five steps away from the chair I sit on, and then just watch myself sit there, holding my breath. I hear my own voice tell Sigmund how I met a guy who could look so deep into my eyes, I felt like the gaze would drill permanent holes in my body. I describe the time when he called and woke me up one night, telling me he wanted to be with me, that if it was okay, he would stay for good. The tears burn my eyes, and I hope Sigmund won’t jump up and celebrate his final breakthrough when a tear travels down my cheek. He doesn’t. The serious bald man sits quietly, listening and frowning, his face in deep thought.
“Do you wish he is the father? If you could decide, would it be this man?”
Holding back the burning tears gets my sinuses going and I stare at the tissue box in the middle of us, placed just close enough for me to effortlessly reach for a napkin. My sleeve is soaked with tears, but I will not give in to the box in front of me. I blow my nose on my shirt sleeve and roll it up, so I won’t feel the wet snot spot on my skin.
“I honestly don’t know. This is not what I wanted. I don’t want it, but I can’t kill it, either. All options feel wrong.”
“You don’t need to decide anything right now. You don’t even need to tell one soul about this. Set yourself a time limit. I don’t care if it’s two days, two weeks, or two months. Let yourself be. Set yourself small goals every day and celebrate when you achieve them.”
“What kind of goals?” I laugh a little and look at Sigmund. I’m filled with gratitude and surprise. He has made me feel better in a situation where I didn’t think it was possible to feel anything but suicidal. He has given me hope.
“I’ll get you started. Today, I want you to go home. Prepare yourself a frozen pizza and drink two glasses of water. If preparing the pizza in the oven is too much for you, throw it in the microwave. You don’t need to eat the whole thing. Your goal is to go to bed not feeling hungry.”
The laughter is sincere, and it bounces up deep from my belly. The sound is foreign to me, like I’ve forgotten what laughter sounds like. Sigmund smiles, but it’s easy to see he’s not joking. He hasn’t told me to tell anyone about the baby. He didn’t tell me to call and confront the snoring man or any of my one-night stands who are also potential father candidates. Sigmund didn’t even ask if I was going to keep it. He has sent me home to eat a shitty, cheap frozen pizza, prepared to perfection... in a microwave.
Harri was surprisingly understanding when I told him Sigmund’s plan of taking things one step at a time. My impulsive and dramatic friend is everything but the patient kind, and I know he’s desperate to know two things: who the father is, and will I keep the baby. If I end up solving problem number two by getting rid of the bean, problem number one wouldn’t really matter anymore. It’s tempting and seems like the right decision to make. Or it would, if I was thinking about the problem and trying to find a solution to it.
The pizza Sigmund asked me to prepare has become a nightly habit, and I rarely go to bed hungry anymore. The beer cans Harri left sit in the fridge, untouched, until I’m ready to make some decisions. Smoking is too much to give up in this state of mind, but I’ve been able to decrease from one-and-a-half packs to ten cigarettes a day. I’ve written a smoking schedule on a sticky note, which is glued to my balcony door. It isn’t for the baby, really. It’s time to cut down on the cancer rolls anyway.
Sigmund has not touched the subject since we set a schedule for my “time-out” away from my problem. It feels good not being forced to decide, and I feel a bit more like a sane person after I learned to step aside and let myself be for a while. Breathing exercises help my anxiety, as much as I hate to admit it. The yoga mantras and exercises have always made me roll my eyes, but after the daily asanas, I have to admit how much the body work has helped my mind. Eating daily doesn’t hurt either.
“You’re shitting me. Why do you want to go to the pub?” I ask after hearing Harri’s excited request over the phone to meet at the drunkies’ holy place down the road.
“I just want to see if it’s as bad as it seems!” Harri yells at the phone, way too excited about his random idea. Sighing deeply, I agree to meet Harri in ten minutes—at the local hellhole I thought we’d never set a foot in.
The air is thick with smoke, and the light is so dim it’s hard to find the counter when I walk into the small pub. Spring has brought more daylight with its comeback, and walking into the slightly stinky bar makes me feel like I’ve just entered a cave where desperate bears go to hibernate. It always seems so loud when I look at the place from my balcony. The drunkies all sit at their own tables; only a few of them have joined others, but there’s no talking. Everyone sits quietly and stares at their half-empty beer pints. There’s an old depressing song playing, where a woman sings how she’s doomed to always wake up alone.
“Hey, dude!” Harri says right behind me, making me jump and turn around with my fist ready for a punch.
“Wow! It’s me! Don’t shoot!”
“Shit, Harri. I thought one of the drunkies was about to mount me. Don’t fucking do that!”
“Jeez, sorry! Let me buy you a beer—” Harri stops talking and his eyes peek at my flat stomach for a split second. “How about apple juice?”
He doesn’t wait for me to nod before marching over to the bar. Harri moves around like he has come to this god-forsaken joint every day for all his short life. One of the drunkies lifts his head and curiously stares at the pentagram on Harri’s black-and-blue hoodie. I hope no one tries to talk to us. In this kind of a crowd it’s nearly impossible to get rid of any drunken chatters who decide to join your company. Harri walks over and shoves a pint of apple juice into my hand, spilling a fourth of it on my shirt. Without noticing his clumsiness, he sprints over to a free table in the middle of the pub.
“Let’s sit here!”
Walking slowly toward my adventure-seeking friend, I decide to add Harri and his extempore ideas on Sigmund’s “time-out” list. There is no need to figure out my best friend; he will always remain weird and unpredictable.
“I figured it would be good to get you out of the apartment for a bit. And I know you will never in a million years run into any of your... um... old friends in this dump.” Harri smiles at me sincerely. There is some order to his chaos after all. His thinking about my well-being is not surprising, and I welcome the gesture with gratitude. Even if Harri is hoping I break the time-out rules and start talking about the father candidates, or keeping or not keeping the baby, he only means well. Harri loves to gossip, but he also knows how to keep a secret. I just need to ask him to keep his mouth shut, and what I tell Harri always stays with Harri. We have decided not to tell anyone about my pregnancy until I make up my mind about keeping the baby.
“Well, their apple juice is divine, my friend.”
“Only divine drinks for my divine biatch,” Harri says and takes a bow. “Did you see Sigmund today?”
“Yup. He was as healing as ever.”
“He still prescribing Hawaiian pizzas or are we finally changing the toppings?”
“Don’t fix something that is not broken. The pineapple has come to stay.”
“It’s so gross. Why would anyone put pineapple on their pizza? What’s next, peanut butter?”
“Oh, whatever, Mister Anchovy. You have no say.”
The laughter is sincere and it comes as a surprise to my tired brain. Without the exhaustion, I would actually describe feeling somewhat normal, almost happy, at this moment. The scene is so surreal, a place where I have never been before, and it makes me feel relaxed and free. Free of worries and my life. Just having beer and somewhat warm apple juice—which must have sat under the counter for years—with my best friend. This is what normal people do with their spare time.
“And what was the score for Sigmund twerk bingo this time?”
Harri loves making fun of the bald, old therapist. We usually laugh and come up with funny scenarios about the poor guy, mocking his habits and mannerisms. Today it doesn’t feel right to me. I surprisingly feel like defending Sigmund, telling Harri to shut the fuck up. Is the old shrink growing on me?
“Nah, I gave up on the twerk bingo. The man’s not half bad when I think about it. He makes funny jokes and shit.”
Harri looks up and his face is full of surprise. He smiles a bit and clearly decides to leave sarcastic comments of Sigmund alone. While taking a big gulp of beer, he glares around the pub.
“Some fine gentlemen we got here. Too bad my gay ass is not single any longer.”
“Is the radar blinking?”
“Nah, but I can turn straight guys into gay guys in the blink of an eye. What’s your superpower?”
“Mine? That’s easy. I can pound down vodka like it’s second nature, sleep with at least three guys in one night, get knocked up, and have no clue who the father of my fucking baby is.”
Harri doesn’t look at me but smiles, staring at his nearly empty beer pint for a few seconds.
“I like my superpower better.”
“Me too. I told Sigmund once that I’m afraid my brain will burst, and one of these days I’ll cut myself open and remove the fucking thing.”
“Did he prescribe you two frozen pizzas that day?”
The laughter makes warm juice burst out of my mouth and land on Harri’s fake serious face. He tries to look upset when he wipes his face on a napkin someone has left on the pub table.
“Good god, woman! Say it, don’t spray it!”
“Jesus, Harri, who knows where that napkin has been? Use your sleeve, ding dong,” I say, trying to stop the hysterical giggling.
We sit at the stinky bar for hours, coming up with stories about the drunkies around us, who are slowly pairing up and starting to exchange words with their comrades. Instead of making fun of them, Harri and I come up with tragic stories of them losing their families and jobs, but then ending up winning the lottery, or re-finding their first loves. Coming up with a variety of happy endings makes me feel better and more normal than I’ve felt in months, maybe years. Maybe things will work out after all and I’ll come up with a decision that’ll create a happy ending for me as well?
The phone vibrates in my spring coat’s pocket but I don’t want to check it. Harri’s in the middle of a story where one of the older ladies has kicked out her imaginary cheating husband, and found a boy toy, hot as the summer sun, from an online dating site called “Grannies in Love.” Harri’s eyes laugh but his face is dramatically solemn as he describes how the boy toy ends up falling in love with the cougar granny, who just happens to get millions out of her divorce. Eyes full of tears from all the laughing, I dig out my old Nokia because it won’t stop vibrating. All the text is written in caps and every other word is WHORE or SLUT. I don’t recognize the phone number, but it’s evident who the furious sender must be.
Someone has opened the building’s locked front door for him. The snoring man sits on the stairs by my apartment door, folded in half, holding his head between his hands. He slowly looks up when he hears footsteps approaching. Without stopping, I walk over to my door and unlock it. We walk in without saying a word.
The sticky note rips off a bit of paint on my balcony door, and for a moment my thoughts get distracted. Who the fuck designs sticky notes with super glue? Imagine what this piece of paper on steroids would do to another piece of paper if it is strong enough to peel paint off the walls? I crumple my cigarette schedule into a small paper ball and toss it over the balcony edge. One of the neighbors would find it and arrange a meeting about the dangers of littering, and suggest we add extra trash cans by the apartment complex’s playground.
“I told her we’ve only seen each other once or twice. That you became obsessed with me. She read through my phone and found a few of your text messages I thought I had deleted,” the snoring man says, standing by the balcony edge, facing away from me. I keep smoking and slide down to sit on the floor. At least two of my neighbors have cracked their balcony doors to eavesdrop on the snoring man’s monologue.
“You need to lie to her, back up my story. I’ll email what I’ve said and you simply say the same. I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for the kid. Think about the kid.”
His words make me sneer but I refuse to say a word. The tears burn my eyes like acid, but I refuse to show him the agony his words are causing. All warmth between us has vanished into thin air, and his demeanor is cold and distant. It’s clear that this is the last time we would ever meet.
“Got it? Good,” he says, and turns on his heels to leave the balcony, my apartment, and my sad little life. It makes me feel like he has just crumpled my whole existence into a small paper ball and tossed it off the balcony so it can slowly die next to my smoking schedule on the pavement. My breathing becomes short and shallow and I gasp for air. Concentrating on the air flow is challenging. I force myself to inhale deeply and hold the oxygen in my lungs long enough to feel the pressure in my head ease off a little. Exhaling relaxes the tension a bit more, and I abandon the unlit cigarette, tossing it to the balcony corner. Inhale. Exhale. The more my body relaxes, the clearer my mind becomes. The tears have vanished and I feel a new emotion taking over. I’m furious. The rage makes my body shake on the balcony floor, forcing me to start the breathing exercise all over again.
It’s neither surprising nor predictable the way my secret lover is reacting to his wife finding out about our affair. It has always been a matter of time, and he’s trying to make the best out of a shitty situation, putting as much blame on me as possible. Deep in my gut, I have always known he’d never leave his family and start a life with me. His bluffing and promises have grown old a long time ago. I just simply didn’t have the strength and willpower to let go of him. And the times I forced myself to do so, he always showed up at my doorstep with the good old duffle bags.
Snoring man’s raging wife has every right to be angry. It doesn’t make me angry or scared. If anything, I feel bad for the wife, and wish I would have had the decency to break up the affair a long time ago, before the poisonous relationship had really even started. If the woman I met at the park some time ago comes knocking on my door, beating me to death, it will solve more things than complicate them. Maybe a punch in the face is exactly what I need to dig myself out of the hole I have buried myself in over the years. But being violently murdered seems unfair. That way I wouldn’t have to face the consequences of my actions. Dying would only bring me the much-needed rest, freedom from all the decisions to be made, and it would finally end the loneliness I feel every given moment. Even when I’m with Harri, I feel like there isn’t a person in this world who would actually understand my restless, rotting mind. Or, there is one person... but he has just tossed our moments and so-called relationship over the balcony, without even feeling sorry about it. He is only sorry we got caught. But that sorrow has nothing to do with us never seeing each other again. No more “L” words, and no more hours of talking on the phone about everything and anything between the dark depressing heaven and the freezing cruel earth. Loneliness has come to stay, except for the little uninvited visitor, patiently waiting for me to make up my mind about letting said visitor live or die. My left hand automatically finds its way under my sweater and slowly pats my flat stomach.
“Nobody here but us chickens,” I whisper and let the burning tears win this round. How could I have been so stupid? So naive and desperate. All my self-respect had faded along with the obsession and addiction toward a person who, in the end, didn’t give a fuck about me. I had been a toy, something he had used to take his mind off the real world and his inflamed marriage, slowly dying and rotting like a tumor that feeds on negativity, lies and fighting.
How am I supposed to lie to this woman? Lie to someone who has been deceived, already lied to, betrayed... and now that we finally have a chance to make things even slightly right, I’m supposed to lie? Say it only happened a couple of times. All my fault. My mischievous, calculative self had mind-fucked this woman’s poor husband into bed. Maybe I drugged him. Or blackmailed him to come and spend nights at my house, to lie about the business trip lasting a day longer than it should have.
“Fuck that,” I mumble.
There would be no more lies. No more running away from my mistakes and betrayal. I’d tell the wife everything, anything her betrayed mind wanted to hear. Not for revenge, but because it is the right thing to do.
The strangling feeling around my throat eases off as I breathe deeply, trying to make the exhales as long as the inhales. The yoga class I once took had talked about the mind and body being connected with one another, and how it’s possible to control something as powerful as panic attacks by simply breathing correctly. I had snorted to the teacher back then, rolled up my yoga mat and left the building. Maybe it’s time to give the class another chance. This deep breathing crap seems to work wonders.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I carefully flip it over to see a familiar but unknown number, blinking, for an incoming call.
“Hello?” My voice is steady and calm.
“I know he was with you just now. Just wait until I find your sorry ass. I will stone you to death!”
“And it serves me well. Just be aware that you won’t be killing just my sorry ass. Instead of one murder charge, you will be facing two.”
