Page 51 of With This Lie

“Oh and I invited my brother,” he says. “He will probably bring his wife. I hope that’s okay?”

“Yeah, totally,” I reply. The line is silent for a moment.

“Okay, well I better go. I’m almost home,” he says.

“Right, okay. Talk to you later,” I say.

“Bye you,” he says.

“Bye,” I say. I hang up the phone and for the first time since we’ve been seeing each other, I feel like the other woman. For the first time, possibly ever, I feel ashamed about what I’m doing, about who I am. In his tone, in his words, he’s somehow managed to make me feel bad. I don’t have another word for it. I feel bad. I feel small.

I put my phone away and go back in to clean up. I make the short walk home and upstairs and given what’s happened, I don’t take my time. I get into my apartment and lock the door behind me quickly. I’m not sure what I would do if something like what happened before happened again. I don’t think I could count on Lucas. I don’t think I could manage to call the police. Maybe I could call Robert downstairs. He’s so old though, what would he do?

I shake the thoughts from my head and walk to my closet to change my clothes. I kick off my boots and peel out of my work clothes. I throw on an oversized t-shirt and stand in front of my closet for a moment, holding the door open. I stare into the back of it and let my mind wander the way it does to moments when that was the safest place I could recall. I take a step forward. I see flashes in my mind. Me as a little girl. My mother’s nightgown. I take another step into my closet. I pull a blanket from the top shelf. I see a small pink flashlight in my mind. I hear men’s voices. I can smell my mother’s perfume. Her cigarettes. I see blue lights. I sit and close the door. I wrap myself in the blanket and I can feel the rush of tears coming. I try with all I have to hold them back but there’s no escaping them. I am crying without understanding what brought it on.

I think of Lucas but that doesn’t halt the tears. I let myself feel everything I have been avoiding. I let myself drown in my emotions. Up to this point, I had only scratched the surface. I had merely entertained a fraction of what he made me feel. He opened me up. I was exposed now. And because of that, I knew he had the power to wound me. I knew I had given him the weapons to destroy me. And what’s worse, I knew he would. It was only a matter of when, not if. This was the way it was meant to be after all. This was the only outcome there could be. It’s been written since the beginning.

I fall asleep on the floor of my closet. I wish I could say it was the first time. Tears dry down my cheeks. In so many ways, this is more comfortable and feels safer than my own bed. My own brokenness is not lost on me. What sort of person feels safest hulled up on the floor of her closet? What sort of woman only fucking dates married men? The broken kind. The kind with no past to speak of. The kind with no future to want.