The Affair

“Love”

I walk in the door to country music blasting from the speakers. My darling is in the kitchen singing along, preoccupied with whatever she’s preparing. Her chestnut hair falls down her back, slightly covering her tattoo; sun kissed skin glowing in the light from the window. She doesn’t hear me come in, and I sneak up behind her giving a kiss on her cheek. Smiling, she turns around pulling me in for one on the lips. Her taste is like sweet cherries, and her smell is of tobacco. I feel her holding onto me for dear life and it pulls me into a guilt I cannot contain. That is, until my phone dings, a distraction from the woman in front of me.

Without another word to Darling, I walk out to the deck pulling out a cigarette and my phone. My pulse quickens at the picture lighting my screen. She’s a terrible person for sending me this; I’m a terrible person for responding. A smile lights up my face all the same.

I jump when the deck door rolls open. My darling pokes her head out, and I quickly close my phone. Shame runs through my body, but the feeling is nothing new.

“Sorry, just wanted to ask what you want for dinner,” she says.

“I really don’t care,” I say, failing to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

I turn away from the door and take another hit off my cigarette. The door rolls closed seconds later, as if she was waiting for more from me. I lean onto the railing and type out a quick, flirty compliment to her; something I would never say to my darling. The excitement of the moment had been ruined so I finish off my cigarette deciding that I need to see her again.

“Darling”

I lay next to my Love in bed, dark hair covering most of his face. His green eyes are shut tight, a sign of some sort of nightmare running through his brain.

In a gentle caress I run my sore fingers over his strong arms to try and calm his mind. My fingers are sore and stained pink because today I figured I would make Love his favorite, cherry pie. It's from pitting the cherries, but he didn't even notice the pie when I finished.

I wish I was in his arms now. I think my heart broke again when he turned away from me earlier today. The rare smiles and kisses are not enough to keep away the feeling of dread that’s haunted me for months. I do everything I can to make him smile but it’s never enough. Only his phone seems to be able to do that now. I choke back a sob.

Time slips by as I attempt to sleep. After one hour I’m plagued by need the need to fix this. I have to find a way to fix this. After two hours, I begin to eye his phone on the nightstand. There has to be something there that can help me understand what I did wrong. After three hours, I remember my fingerprint is in the phone so why not? This is for us, he would understand. Now, four hours later, sleep has fully left me. I need to do something. I reach over to the nightstand and grab his phone, my heart racing. I didn’t even need to open the lock screen to see it. A message from a woman named Izzy.

Thank you, Baby, it reads.

My ears ring and dizziness starts to envelope my mind. He didn't even attempt to hide it by changing her name. I barely have the courage or the control to look further but somehow, I'm able to swipe the phone open. I’m shaking, heart racing out of my chest, a lump forming in my throat.

Izzy’s messages open right away, and another woman’s body pops up. A small blonde with gentle facial features lights up the screen. Nausea rises up in my stomach as I realize my Love is replacing me with this woman. I take another look, wiping the blurring tears out of my eyes. I can’t say she’s ugly, but she is the complete opposite of me. She has a round face and soft facial features. Big blue doe eyes are almost covered by bangs of dyed white-blonde hair. Then my eyes wander lower on her body, and I realize what the biggest draw is, something that I don’t have. Her body is perfect.

Shakes rake my body as I try to keep my breathing silent. I risk a glance over at my Love and take a moment to see him sleeping in peace. Dragging my eyes back to the phone, I scroll up on the messages before I can stop myself. It goes and goes, up and up and up. Months they’ve been talking. Words said between them that I have never heard, inside jokes that I don’t understand.

Then I read a message from Love that stops me in my tracks. I’ll see you soon beautiful.

While a knife plunges through my heart at him caller her beautiful, the fact that he’s met with her before hits me even harder. This somehow shocks me. My body stills as I look back over at my Love, my reason for working so hard, my reason for feeling safe. My everything. A fire begins to burn in my chest, the fear and loss turning to ash. My Love, he wants to leave me, leave me alone.

Anger surges up inside me as I throw the phone at his face and jump out of bed. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going but I need to move before I do something I regret.

“What the hell?” I hear Love say from the bedroom.

I’m already in the kitchen, looking around for something, anything to stop this fire that fills me with pain. I begin to turn back toward the bedroom, I need to get out of here I think, I need to leave. Before I can make it to my bag to pack, however, I run face first into Love in the hallway.

“Love”

She ran into me, nearly toppling me over but just kept walking back to the bedroom. What in the hell is this woman doing. Was it another nightmare? Does she even know where she is?

“Darling, what’s going on? You’re safe here,” I say. My voice is cracking with leftover sleep.

She growls, “I thought I was safe here, but I was wrong.”

As she throws clothes into a bag, I come up behind her, grabbing her around her middle. Usually, this is her favorite thing. This time though, an elbow lands in my stomach, and it catches me so off guard that I fall back to the floor.

With a newfound anger I ask, “What is wrong?”

“You know what you did,” she says.

That’s all it takes to make my stomach sink. I look back at the bed, where she threw the phone at my head. It dawns on me all too late that my Darling has found out about her. I feel my cheeks heat and a lump form in my throat.

“It’s not what you think Darling, please let me explain,” I say.

“It’s exactly what I think; I’m not naive enough to believe that.”

She’s turned to look at me now, hope shining in her eyes as she silently begs me to do just that, to explain this away somehow. When I don’t say anything, her anger seems to melt away as she slowly falls to her knees on the floor just a foot in front of me. When tears begin to fall down her face the urge to reach for her consumes me.

“No.” She stops me.

I pull back again, cringing at the venom that drips from her words.

“Why?” she asks.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you do it? I’ve done everything I could for you. Is it the way I look?”

“No, it’s not you, you know that.”

“Then why?”

Silence fills the bedroom as I search and search for an answer to her question. Lies spin around my head, none of them good enough. I could tell her I was lonely; tell her I wasn’t getting enough physical affection. What comes out of my mouth is, “I don’t know.”

It’s easier than the truth. I don’t deserve my Darling, and she needs to know that. I’m just too selfish to let her go. The fear of losing her grips my throat tight and when tears began to rush down my face as well, I reach for her again.

This time she does not stop me as I pull her in to rest between my legs. Her back against my chest I feel her own sobs meld with mine. There, on the carpet in our bedroom, we lose it all together. Eventually the tears slow; exhaustion worming its way back into my mind, my body.

Darling breaks the silence, “I’ve begged for so long, just for you to love me the way I love you.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I say.

“Please, just tell me why.”

“I don’t know, Darling.”

She sighs and a moment later pulls herself out of my arms, dragging her body to the bed. I follow her and when I lie down, she is staring deep into my eyes, searching them for something.

“I’m so sorry Darling,” I say again, “I won’t ever hurt you again. Please forgive me.”

She doesn’t say a word as she crawls closer to me and into my arms. Pity fills my heart at the realization that she isn’t going to leave me for this; she loves me too much. As I drift off to sleep, I realize how lucky I am.

“Darling”

He’s fallen asleep already. His heartbeat fills my ears as I lay stiffly on his chest. How badly I wanted him to explain it all to me. I longed for any reasoning, any sign that he loved me enough to tell me why he did it. But he avoided the question, twice. As if I didn’t deserve the answer. I searched and searched for any sign of a man who still loved me, but his eyes were empty. His apology didn’t quench the fire in my bones; it only fed it.

The clock tells me it's been six hours of trying to fall asleep. Instead of peace for those six hours, I’ve been filled with anxiety and pain. I lay there for a while longer, trying to figure out what to do.

My body still shakes from the fear but now adrenaline accompanies it. He will never love me as I love him. He wishes to leave me, leave me alone. After everything I’ve done for him. This Izzy is who he wants. I deserve peace, and I deserve to have it with my Love.

When I finally decide that this is what’s best I quietly remove the pillow from behind my head and carefully climb on top of Love. I gently move his arms, so they are pinched between my thighs and his body. Before I can chicken out, I pull on that fear of loss and the months of neglect. I pull on that fire in my soul and slam the pillow over my Love’s face.

He’s awake in an instant; kicking and trying to pull his arms out of the way they’ve been pinned. With the adrenaline coursing through my body, it’s all too easy to keep him down.

I yell over his muffled cries, “You can’t leave me my Love, OK? I can’t be alone! I’m sorry!”

It’s been seven hours, but now I’m huddled next to my love. His arm is around me, and I rest my head on his chest. He is quiet. Without the thumping of his heart in my ear, I finally feel peace as I drift to sleep.