“What the fuck has Brenda got to do with this?”
“Nothing! Everything! I don’t know! Just tell me what Ches said – I need to know!”
“He said I was a stupid fucking asshole for screwing a married woman who probably just wanted to get her rocks off for the summer and he hoped the fucks were worth it because my dad would beat the shit out of me when he found out. Happy now?”
He looked away from me and slammed his fist against the car door.
I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hand, refusing to cry.
We sat there in silence for several minutes, the atmosphere tense and angry.
“You’d better get to work,” I said at last in a low voice.
He stared at me coldly then flung open the door and stormed off.
I kept waiting for him to turn back or turn and look at me – some slight acknowledgement. But he didn’t.
Bile rose in my throat and I hurriedly leaned out of the car and vomited, watching my brunch slowly sink into the gravel.
I drove home feeling weak and shaky.
All afternoon I waited for Sebastian to text me, but he didn’t. A dozen times I picked up my cell to send a message, but I didn’t.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I tapped out five letters.
Sorry
Why had I forced Sebastian to repeat Ches’s angry words? Why did I continue to allow my pathetic insecurities to spoil the best thing that had ever happened to me? Was it some form of deliberate self-destruction, some way of proving that I didn’t deserve Sebastian’s love? And it must be love: why else would he put up with my ridiculous outbursts and lead-weighted emotional baggage? Because it sure wasn’t for the fun.
Feeling wretched, I tidied up the guest bedroom, my bedroom, and contemplated the sorry state of my life. I really had an amazing talent for making a complete fuck-up of everything. If the military could bottle that negative energy, they’d have one helluva weapon of mass destruction.
As I hung up my robe, a thought occurred to me: something I’d forgotten about in the whirlwind of the last three weeks. I reached into the pocket and pulled out the lock of Sebastian’s hair that I’d saved from the bathroom floor the night I’d found him at the park, the night we’d made love together that very first time. His hair was light brown near the root, bleached by the sun to a golden blond at the ends: the surfer boy he’d been when I first met him.
I took an envelope from David’s study and carefully sealed the lock inside, simply writing Sebastian’s name and the date across the corner. Then I placed it between the pages of my copy of Lolita – a book so profane that I knew David would never so much as touch its dust jacket; it was also my private joke – not that I felt like laughing. In fact it was everything I could do to keep from crying.
And I knew I was on borrowed time with David: he wouldn’t take another night of me sleeping in the guest room without some sort of explanation.
I had two choices. I could lie:
‘I’m fine, I just need some space’.
Or I could tell part of the truth:
‘Our marriage is over and I want a divorce. No, there’s no one else’.
Either way, I was scared of what he’d do. His temper was so unpredictable, I didn’t know what would happen if I pushed him to extremes. Discussing divorce certainly constituted ‘extreme’ in anyone’s book.
I wandered into the kitchen to make something for his supper. Without even being aware of my movements, I threw together a lasagna and tossed it into the oven.
It was a quarter after six and I was beginning to wonder where David was when I suddenly remembered it was his formal dinner at the officer’s mess. He was right: I really should check the schedule more often.