ON THE TRAIN home, Bonnie tucked herself into a corner seat and ignored the strange looks the other passengers shot her way. Nobody bothered her, though. This might not be LA or NYC, where girls in flowing gowns and floral headdresses riding public transportation likely wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but this was Chicago, where people minded their own damn business.
As Bonnie walked the block from the L station to her apartment in Printer’s Row, the wind from the lake picked up. She shivered. The cloak she wore looked great with her costume but didn’t offer much warmth.
Though it was spring, the nights could still get quite cold. Snow in April was unwelcome but not unusual. She decided she’d make hot cocoa when she got home. The good kind, with steamed milk, like Gabe liked it. Maybe she’d whip up a batch of gingerbread too. While it was in the oven, she could finish grading the papers she’d been procrastinating on all week. Bonnie smiled, warmed by the cozy scene. She’d curl up on the sofa, and when Gabe got back from his meeting, he could join her for a snuggle, and things would be perfect.
The moment Bonnie entered her apartment, she knew things were not perfect. Not perfect at all. Her first hint something was wrong was the dress lying on her couch. Bonnie frowned; she didn’t own anything in that color. She hated that color. A bright pink, it would clash horribly with her red hair. She set her cloak down. As she bent to pick up the curious article of clothing, a series of muffled noises echoed from down the hall.
Bonnie straightened. Numb fingers gripping the suspicious fabric, her mind seemed to separate from her body, floating above her as she shuffled, like a sleepwalker, in the direction of her bedroom. Pushing the door open, Bonnie caught sight of her fiancé’s bare backside. She froze, transfixed in horrid fascination as she watched Gabe’s pale behind move up and down while he thrust into a woman—a naked woman who looked vaguely familiar—not that Bonnie could tell much from this angle.
The woman was lying on the bed, moaning and gripping the quilted comforter. A strangled sound escaped Bonnie, and her hands went limp, the dress falling to the floor. Her grandmother had made that quilt. Bonnie closed her eyes, shutting out the awful scene.
Candlelight flickered against her eyelids, and her brain slammed back into her body, white-hot anger and burning shame fusing thought and feeling together. She’d bought those candles herself, had spent more than an hour in a little boutique on Belmont, agonizing over which scents were less likely to give Gabe a headache, as he complained her candles often did. It was why she’d gone to that damn boutique in the first place; she thought the pricy candles with fancier ingredients might bother him less.
Well, screw him. She hoped he got a monster of a headache.
Bonnie opened her eyes and forced herself to look back at the bed. Her bed, the one she had brought from home to avoid spending money on new furniture, since keeping pace with Gabe’s education debt was already eating up so much of their budget.
The bonking couple still hadn’t noticed her standing in the doorway. Obviously, more important things demanded their immediate attention.
Rage trembled in Bonnie’s fingers and toes, raced up her legs, her arms, her spine, finally gathering in a red-hot ball of fury pounding at the base of her skull. She stepped across the threshold of her bedroom, and despite the trembling of her vocal cords, roared with the power of a former theatre major who could deliver skeins of iambic pentameter with scarcely a breath between stanzas.
“WHAT.”
“THE.”
“HELL?”
Her fiancé stuttered to a halt mid-thrust and looked over his shoulder, eyes widening, first in surprise and then unmistakable terror. He released the hips of the woman underneath him. As he stepped back, the details of the scene slammed into Bonnie, a sickening kaleidoscope of images that made her want to puke.
Swallowing bile, she looked away, attention snagging on the gleam of light bouncing off a silver nail file resting on the dresser. She crossed the room and curled her fingers around the cold metal, filled with a bone-deep understanding of what drove a woman to chop off her husband’s dick with the nearest sharp object. And Gabe wasn’t even her husband. Just her fiancé. Just her boyfriend for more than a decade.
Gabe instinctively placed his hands over his crotch. “Bonnie,” he said, his tone cautious, eyes on the nail file. “Bonnie, you don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Her heart splintered, and his voice slipped between the cracks. She’d known that voice most of her life, been in love with the owner of it for more than half. Bonnie swiped a fist across her cheeks. “I think it’s a little late to be talking about not hurting people, don’t you?”
A sob escaped her, but as she took him in, standing there stark naked and stock still, with his hands hovering over his junk, the sob turned into a bubble of hysterical laughter. She set the would-be weapon down and twisted the sparkling band of gold on the fourth finger of her left hand.
Gabe stepped forward. “Bonnie, wait. We can talk about this.”
The skin on her knuckle tore as she ripped the engagement ring off her finger. “You two can talk about whatever you want.” She tossed the ring onto the bed, narrowly missing the woman who sat there, mutely staring at the two of them, clutching Grandma’s quilt around her naked torso.
“But there is no we, Gabe.” Bonnie stopped and swallowed back another sob as the weight of that statement settled on her shoulders. “Not anymore.” Before she lost control of herself again, she kicked the offending pile of pink out of her way and exited the room.
Her cloak lay on the couch where she’d left it what felt like a lifetime ago. Low murmurs came from the bedroom. Her stomach churned. Hearing them talk to each other was somehow almost as bad as seeing them fuck. Bonnie quickly pulled her keys and phone from the cloak’s pockets. Focused on escape, she grabbed a warmer coat from the hall closet, along with her purse, and fled the apartment.
Outside, the spring wind tore at the flowers in her hair. She yanked the floral crown off her head and started walking, with no plan or purpose other than to get as far away from her apartment as fast as possible. She passed under streetlamp after streetlamp, not thinking of where she was headed beyond the next circle of light.
As she walked, she began to tug at the flowers in her crown.
He loves me. He loves me not.
Petals floated on the wind behind her, leaving a delicate trail of dashed hopes and shattered dreams in her wake.
He loves me. He loves me not.
Reaching the end of another block, Bonnie paused. She held up the tattered stem of the last flower, examining the fragile beauty of the lone remaining petal. Fingers now stiff from the cold, she plucked it.
He loves me.
She dropped the naked stem, cradling the last petal in her palm. He loves me?
A sense of awareness crept over her, and with a start, she realized the wind had shifted, the air growing heavy with the promise of rain. As she glanced around the deserted street corner and gathered her bearings, fat icy drops began to fall, pinging off the concrete and stinging her skin.
She tilted her palm and let the wind catch the petal, watching as it rose higher in the night sky, dancing away from her, into the swirling eddies of the spring storm.
He … loved me.