Afterwards

The door slammed shut behind her, and she leaned against it. Her bag hung limply from her fingers, hitting the floor before she did as her back slid down the length of the door. She brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face. 

Just breathe. In, one two three four, out, one two three four five six seven, in…

After only two rounds of this, she heard the click clack of nails against the wooden floor and felt as a cold, wet nose pushed its way between her folded arms and pressed itself against her face.

Despite herself, she let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Raising her head, she welcomed her dachshund, Charlie, into outstretched arms. A few moments later, her face and hands covered in sloppy kisses, her smile had become genuine as she pushed herself to her feet and looked around the small room. 

“Well, Charlie,” she said, “I guess it’s time to get back to work, isn’t it?”

Charlie looked up at her, wagging his tail without a care in the world. She smiled again, but already the emotion of the day was beginning to overtake her again.

“Yeah, time to get back to it,” she muttered, more to herself this time. Then she shook herself and made her way to the bedroom, with the bedsheets still mussed from her frantic exit this morning. 

She spared them barely a glance as she slid open the closet door and retrieved a pair of ratty old joggers and the first oversized t-shirt her hands touched.

Oh. She held the t-shirt in her hand for a long moment, her eyes tracing the familiar shapes of her favorite band’s logo. There was another shirt in the closet that matched this one exactly, only smaller, more her size. They’d both been bought at the same time.

Her eyes pricked, and with a burst of rage, she tossed the shirt away from her and watched as it crumpled into a pile of black and purple fabric on the floor.

She yanked a different t-shirt from the closet and laid it next to the joggers on the bed. Then she began slowly, methodically peeling off each piece of the outfit she had been wearing. The black satin blazer, well-fitted. The black dress, with its subtle floral embroidery. The shiny black shoes that had squeezed her toes for the entire two hours of the ceremony. The tights she’d bought in a panic yesterday when she realized her other ones were missing. In place of all that, she slipped into the t-shirt and joggers, still black, because that felt appropriate for the day. Comfy clothes, most people would call them, and yet she felt as uncomfortable as if she’d never taken the nice clothes off.

She turned away from the bed and closed the door behind her as she exited the room, Charlie on her heels as always.

For a few seconds, she simply stood in the hall, listening to the eerie silence of the apartment. There was no sound but that of her own breath and the faint swish of Charlie’s tail as it moved incessantly back and forth. 

Too quiet. The silence beat at her ears as she forced herself to walk down the hall toward the living room. She turned on the TV, picked something random to watch on the first streaming all she saw. Her mind was screaming for anything other than the quiet to listen to.

But once the show started, she found she couldn’t focus on it. Images moved on the screen, voices said words, theme music played, but it all blurred as she stared at the screen, absently running her hand over Charlie’s fur.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, letting episodes autoplay while her brain ran through memory after memory, but eventually, Charlie pawed at her, whining, and woodenly, she paused the show and got to her feet.

It wasn’t until she stepped back out into the cold, Charlie’s leash held loosely in her hand, that the fog started to clear. Still, she went through the motions of the normal afternoon walk, watching as Charlie sniffed at grass and yipped at squirrels, his tail still constantly moving, never stopping. She envied a dog’s ability to be happy all the time. She envied their ability to forget.

Before too long, she and Charlie found their way back to the apartment, and the numbness had taken over her senses entirely. She closed the door, unclipped the leash from Charlie’s collar, and resisted the urge to collapse again, the way she had when she first arrived back home.

Instead, she busied herself with tasks, cleaning up plates and trash that had been left out from the gathering the night before. The apartment was more of a mess than it had been in years this past week, small wonder why. She turned the TV back on, cranked up the volume to drown out the thoughts whirling through her head.

Her mother had asked her, afterwards, if she would be okay, if she wanted someone to come home with her. And she’d said no, she would be fine. How stupid that had been.

After a while, she gave up on cleaning and found herself on the couch again, staring at the screen but not seeing it until she decided she needed to sleep and got up—murmuring a soft apology when Charlie grumbled. She made her way back to the bedroom, where her messy, lonely bed awaited.

Her eyes drifted to the wall opposite the door, and the whiteboard that hung there. On it, left alone though it had been nearly a week, was the last note she’d left for her husband to find when he got home from his overnight shift that day.

Hope you had a great time at work! Love you, baby. -Carolyn

She tore her eyes away from the board and crawled under the covers to find another night of restless sleep.