My Husband Brought His Mistress Home for the Weekend

by

Chapter 9

THEME:
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Sometimes it feels like eating pizza on the floor because the kitchen table has not arrived.

Sometimes it feels like waking at two in the morning and reaching toward the side of the bed where someone used to sleep.

Freedom can hurt.

That does not make it the wrong choice.

Around nine, Emily picked up my phone.

"He's called fourteen times."

"Don't tell me."

"Fifteen."

I gave her a look.

She put the phone down.

"What are you going to do?"

"Tonight?"

"About everything."

"I don't know."

She nodded.

For once, that answer was allowed to be enough.

At ten thirty, a text appeared.

Please come home. Lauren left.

I read it.

Then another.

This got out of hand.

Then:

I never wanted you to feel like you had to leave.

I stared at that sentence for a long time.

People reveal themselves in the grammar of their apologies.

Adrian had not said, I should never have brought her.

He had said he never wanted me to feel like I had to leave.

As though my reaction were the unfortunate event.

I typed:

I didn't feel like I had to leave. I chose to.

I did not send it.

The next morning, sunlight came through cheap blinds and landed across boxes marked BATHROOM and BOOKS.

For a few seconds, I did not know where I was.

Then I remembered everything at once.

I sat up.

No Adrian.

No harbor.

No sound of the espresso machine.

My chest hurt.

I made tea.

I drank it sitting on the floor.

At eight fifteen, there was a knock at the door.

I froze.

Emily, asleep in the second bedroom, came into the hall.

"Did you give him the address?"

"No."

Another knock.

"Natalie?"

Not Adrian.

My landlord's voice.

I exhaled.

He had brought the spare mailbox key he had forgotten to give me.

I almost laughed afterward.

My body had become so accustomed to tension that a knock on a door felt dangerous.

Adrian continued calling through Saturday.

I answered at noon.

Not because I wanted to.

Because avoidance was beginning to feel like fear, and I no longer wanted fear making decisions for me.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"At my apartment."

"Where?"

"I'm not giving you the address right now."

Silence.

"You're hiding from me?"

"No."

"Natalie, this is insane."

"Then we don't have anything to discuss."

"Wait."

I stayed on the line.

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