***
When Emma woke up the next morning, her eyelids were so heavy that she was well conscious prior to unveiling the world, the world she wanted no part of now that she had to confront Justin to confirm he was having sex with another woman. With other women. Cheating on her instead of giving her babies.
Every synapse in her brain begged her to curl back into the mattress, bury herself under the sheets. Self-preservation pleaded to avoid, deny, ignore. Nothing good would come of knowing he betrayed her and chose someone else over her.
She had to know. The doubt would eat her alive. She could not lie beside him, share a house with him, without knowing. They certainly were not having sex lately. She had thought it was because his reversal on children had made her cold, uninterested. Was it instead because he was being satisfied elsewhere?
It would all drive her mad. She had to know.
Emma wrenched out of bed onto doubtful legs. Justin had graced his side of the bed the previous night. She could tell from the way he left the blankets kicked to the foot of the bed with no regard to how that uncovered her. She was so deeply wrapped in her depressive coma she had not felt him enter or depart the bed. She did even bother to look at the time.
Justin was downstairs in “his” room, the spare bedroom he had claimed for his assortment of short-lived hobbies, strumming on the guitar he had picked up at a flea market the previous week. He had downloaded a slew of how to play videos the next day and was feverishly committed to them in the rare moments he was actually within the walls of their house.
The guitar case was propped up against the wall beside the plastic crate of spray paint cans from when he was going to perfect the technique of graffiti art, next to the thirty boxes of shoes from when he was going to start selling Jordans on eBay, and across from the tattoo gun and tote full of inks from when he was going to learn how to ink people. None of these interests ever endured. In less than two weeks they were left abandoned along the wall and a new hobby was introduced. They were simply more ways he did not spend time with her.
Justin stopped strumming when Emma pushed the door open.
“Good morning, beautiful wife.” He flashed those damned dimples at her. “You were wrecked. What happened to you last night?”
Emma could not even force a curl in her lips. Could not find her voice to respond. Her heart knocked hard on her ribcage.
“Hey, what’s the matter?” He stood and moved toward her. She instinctively took a step back. “Did something happen, Emma?”
Emma walked out down the hall until she reached the couch. She sat down tentatively and looked back at him. He followed her, confused and perplexed, perching beside her. She swallowed hard on the knot in her throat.
“I found a bikini in your car yesterday,” she finally said. There was no point in saying it any other way.
“A bikini?”
“Yes, a wet bikini on the floor on the passenger side.”
Justin’s eyes moved around while he held still and calm beside her. “Huh. Okay. So there’s a bikini in my car.”
“Justin, why is there a bikini in your car? It’s not mine. Whose is it?”
Emma started to quiver. The trembling started in her hands then reverberated up her limbs until it shook her face and the tears brimming in her eyes. Justin looked up at her, shocked at all the emotion she was displaying, and half-chuckled.
“Oh no. No, babe. You think I’m cheating on you? No, no, no. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Why is there some girl’s wet bikini in your car?”
“Oh, babe. No. You remember Jason? We used to work with him at Pedro’s?”
Emma nodded mechanically, narrowing her eyes.
“Jason is at the Terrace Hotel now. He came into the bar one night and hooked me up with the key to their pool and hot tub. We all go there when we get off work some nights.”
“Why did you never tell me about this? You’re going to this hotel hot tub after work and you never even tell me? Whose bikini is it? And why is it in your damn car?”
“Emma, Emma, calm down. It was just a shot girl from the bar. She was way too drunk, and I gave her a ride home. That’s it.”
“She stripped off her bikini in your car?”
Justin laughed, and Emma’s anger flared.
“No, no. She changed before we got in the car. She must have just tossed it on the floor and forgot it. She was pretty wasted. I was worried she might puke in my car.”
“Again, why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“You want to know when I give a drunk coworker a ride home?”
“Are you cheating on me?”
“Emma.” He leaned heavily on her name. “Of course not. I gave her a ride home. Come on, you know better. Come here.”
Justin snaked his fingertips into her hair and pulled her face to him. He kissed her like he had not in months. He kissed her like he meant it, like he wanted her, like he needed her. He kissed her like she mattered, the way he kissed her before she had any doubt she was the only one.
Another tear rolling down her cheek, Emma closed her eyes and kissed him back, trying to make herself believe him.
Chapter 4
Emma wanted to believe him. Every minute, she tried to believe him; she told herself to believe him. Why would he lie to her? He loved her. Why would he cheat on her? He could not find some bar skank who was better than her. He only gave her a ride home.
And he would snap out of it and want children again. His doubt was only a phase.
He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
She poured the words over her mind, hoping they would permeate her thoughts, hoping that thinking it hard enough would make it real. He had married her; that had to mean something.
A terrible weight continued to build on Emma’s chest. There was a crushing pressure each time she tried to inhale and her breath fell short. The apprehension wound its way around her heart, squeezing it tight in her compacted chest, then reached up to seize her neck. A permanent knot resided in her throat, like a fist holding her esophagus.
She could not breathe.
No amount of positive thinking or rationalizations or hopes lightened the pressure she felt sinking down heavier by the hour; nothing loosened her airway. If anything, the more she tried, the worse her anxiety became. Like picking at an angry scab.
“Jesus Christ,” Ronnie said as she walked in.
“What?” Emma said in a weak and distracted voice, looking up from the couch.
Justin had left shortly after waking up. He had some excuse about helping a friend move that Emma scarcely heard over the deafening sounds of her own thoughts and doubts. She was partially relieved that he had left her alone in their house as usual so she could embrace her unadulterated despair. She called Ronnie over to help her through it.
“What happened last night? You look like absolute hell,” Ronnie said.
“Thanks,” Emma replied sadly.
“Have you slept? Eaten?”
“I’ve slept. Sleep is easy. But eating, not really.”
“Okay. I’m going to make you something to eat. You are going to tell me what the fuck happened after I left yesterday. How did Justin explain bikini girl?”
Ronnie haphazardly tossed her purse onto the couch beside Emma and marched into the kitchen. She always moved through Emma’s house as if she lived there, without inhibition or hesitation. In this particular case, Emma was glad to let Ronnie run her home and her life. She did not want to think about food or sleep. She could not think about anything besides a crumpled, wet bikini and how much Justin’s mouth tasted like lies when he kissed her.
Ronnie buried her face in Emma’s refrigerator while Emma shuffled into the kitchen and draped on a stool at the counter. She felt so weak, drained. Everything about her was heavy. She wanted to relent to that crushing sensation on her ribs and curl into a sad little ball.
“Spill,” Ronnie said, lining up sandwich ingredients in front of Emma.
“I asked him about the bikini.”
“And? What did he say?”
Emma thought perhaps Ronnie was enjoying this, maybe she wanted to be right about Justin all these years later. Possibly Ronnie was happy to be having the conversation she always knew they would. When Emma looked at her with watery eyes, she met the concern for which she knew Ronnie. She may have hated Justin, but she did not want to see Emma suffer for it.
Emma took a deep breath and sat up to spit out his sloppily spun story.
“He said a group of them from the bar went to the hot tub at the Terrace Hotel downtown, and this girl was wasted so he drove her home. He said she forgot her bikini in the car, but she was wearing clothes, and they didn’t have sex or anything.”
Ronnie rolled her lips under and pressed down on them with her teeth. She kept her eyes on the food in front of her, assembling the sandwich.
“Say it,” Emma said.
“Well, do you believe him?” Ronnie dropped the sandwich in front of Emma and looked into her eyes.
Emma looked down at the sandwich, stared at the striations of colors and ingredients through the tears welling up over her sight. “I don’t know. I mean, what he says makes sense, and I should believe him. But…”
“Bite.”
“What?”
“Take a bite.”
“How am I supposed to take a bite and answer you?”
“Bite.”
Emma reluctantly gathered up the sandwich. It had no taste when she pushed it into her mouth. Ronnie waited patiently, folding her arms across her stomach while she watched her chew.
“You didn’t actually answer my question,” Ronnie said when Emma had finished swallowing.
“What do you mean?”
“You said what he said made sense and you should believe him. You didn’t tell me if you do believe him.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Emma, you already know the answer to that.”
“Yeah, I know how you feel about him.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question. Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma could not say she did not believe him. Even if she didn’t, saying it would make it real. Saying it would make Ronnie right. Saying it would mean everyone would know what he was and how he had fooled her. Every single person at her wedding, every single person in her life would know that he had sex with someone else, that she was not good enough to keep him.
“Okay. That’s okay. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma dropped her head to the counter again and took handfuls of her hair.
“Calm down. It’s okay. Calm down. Bite.”
Emma snapped her head up and glared at Ronnie. Ronnie simply placed her hand on her hip and stared back at her until Emma took another begrudging nibble of the sandwich.
Back on the couch, Ronnie shoved a glass of water into Emma’s hand.
“Drink.”
The food and water took the edge off Emma’s anxiety. Only the edge.
“The way I see it,” Ronnie said, “you have a couple of choices. You can believe him and move on with your life. You can not believe him, deal with it, and move on with your life. You can not believe him and try to work it out. Or you can not believe him and be out.”
Ronnie made it sound so simple.
“I don’t really like any of those choices.”
“Yet those are your choices. I know it’s awful and you never wanted to be here, but here, we are.”
Emma hated it when Ronnie was right.
She rolled her choices around in her brain for a long time, allowing Ronnie’s voice to echo off the walls of her skull so she could hear what they sounded like the second time. She pictured herself letting it go, forcing his story down her throat and pretending the whole bikini never existed. She imagined gagging on her suspicion, choking on her doubts. Then she slipped into the scenario of leaving, of dividing the Christmas ornaments, of being alone in a big empty house. Of being single again.
Nausea flared up along the back of her throat.
“Ronnie, what the hell am I going to do?” She dropped her face into her palms and let her tears wet her hands. “I can’t pretend it never happened. I can’t believe him. But I don’t want to leave him. I do love him.”
“Do you love him enough to give up having kids?”
There was the real question. Like a sucker punch to Emma’s gut, there was the ultimate question from before the sodden bikini on the car floorboard.
“I don’t know!” Emma sobbed. “All I ever wanted was children. Ever since I was a kid I wanted a baby.”
“I know,” Ronnie said, wrapping her arms around Emma and pulling her into her shoulder. “You don’t have to know now.”
Ronnie held onto Emma until the cries stopped shaking her body.
When the door closed behind Ronnie, it echoed in the seemingly cavernous house. In the silence, Emma’s anxiety welled up, and the walls began to close in on her. She could not stop the thoughts, the flashes, the pictures of a naked girl in her passenger seat, Justin biting on her earlobe like he did to Emma.
The image made her physically sick. Being alone in the house as she now feared she might always be made her physically sick, like her chest was collapsing, like she was coming out of her skin.
It was all too much.
She realized she was still huddled against the front door, palm pressed against it after shutting it behind Ronnie. She would have given anything to have Ronnie here forcing food down her throat, still cussing Justin—anything not to be trapped alone with herself.
The woman who was not enough for Justin. The woman he had to supplement. The woman he did not want.
Did he even love her anymore? Did he even ever love her at all?
She did not want to think about it, but the thoughts in her head throbbed like the sick pulse in her veins.
She did not believe him. In the quiet of their house, in the frothing pit of her stomach, she knew. Her mind insisted on throwing flares of doubt, misdirections of denial. Yet in her gut, she knew. Even in the way he had sex with her the night before, she could feel it on him. His betrayal, his detachment.
He had cheated on her with the bikini cocktail waitress. Her body would believe nothing else.
Was the bikini waitress the only one?
Emma’s skull threatened to split in half. She wanted to dig her fingers into the fissure and pull until she heard the satisfying crack of splitting bone. She wanted to rip her head apart, and then it would just be quiet.
She finally peeled her fingertips from the door and curled her hands into her chest. She staggered unsteadily and reluctantly deeper into the house, tears distorting the light around her. She coiled on the couch, pulled a blanket over her face, and shut out the world.
The light was fading from the windows when Emma was stirred by the chime of her phone.
Ronnie: What are you going to do?
Ronnie was relentless. She would not permit Emma to wallow aimlessly for a second. Emma rubbed her raw and sensitive eyes hard then drew the phone into her blanket nest.
Emma: I have to know.
Ronnie: How?
Emma: I have to find proof.
Ronnie: How??
Emma: I don’t know yet.
Emma knew Ronnie wanted to tell her to leave him, the way she had wanted to tell her to leave him ever since they started dating.
Why did she have to be right about him? Emma had been telling herself for years that Ronnie and Justin simply did not get along, that Ronnie was secretly or subconsciously jealous that Emma had life all figured out. She never wanted it to be that Ronnie knew what she was talking about.
The surface layer of her mind said she could still prove her wrong; she could prove that he was telling the truth. Doubt and denial were as comforting as the blanket in which Emma buried as sleep swept over her agitated mind again.
“Emma. Em
ma.”
The voice came out of the distance in the dark.
“Emma. Babe.”
Slowly, the voice started to take shape, become familiar. That familiarity made her cringe, made her pull her limbs tighter into her body under her blanket.
“Emma, wake up, babe.”
It was Justin, from whom she was shrinking away. She opened her eyes and made out his shape sitting beside her. She could tell from the shade of the darkness that it was late, that the night was folding over itself and beginning to ease toward morning. She could smell the bar on him. The thin, sharp edge of stale alcohol, the frayed trail of the cigarettes he smoked in the back alley.
The skin of a girl in a bikini. But maybe she was imagining that last one.
Heischeatingonyouheischeatingonyouheischeatingonyouheischeatingonyou.
The thought pulsated on her brain, and she jerked her head to shake it loose. She forced her mind above her body, shoved down her instincts and her panic. She would wait for proof.
“How was work?” Emma mumbled, her voice still groggy with sleep.
“The usual. It was a good night. A lot of twenty-first birthdays.”
“No late night swimming?”
“Not tonight.”
He unearthed her from the heap of blankets, taking her hand. Her fingers twitched and winced against his touch. She forced herself to breathe. She would have proof, and until she had that measure of verification, she would still be his wife. Just in case there was no proof to be had.
The warmth of his skin against her palm sickened to her, making her anxious. Buried in the sensation, the stark and vivid desire to pick up the poker from beside the fireplace and jab it into his chest radiated. The cool metal would feel at home in her hand, the weight shifting in the arc of her attack comforting. Her heart would exhilarate when her weapon met the resistance of his body. Over and over, she visualized the blunt tip puncturing his chest and the happy spray of blood. She would cherish the dumb look of shock on his smug, lying face.
The Rest Will Come Page 4