Emma shook her head hard, trying to dislodge the impulse, trying to break away from what was clearly the fragments of a nightmare. She was not a violent person; she did not think like this.
But she also did not get cheated on.
She’s just a fat dumb slut, and nobody will ever want her again.
The voice reverberated in her head and she jerked her neck, twitching to shake it free. She realized she must have looked insane.
“Emma, are you okay?” Justin leaned in closer and moved to encircle her shoulders with his other arm.
Emma faced away from him. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was deep asleep. I’ll just meet you in bed.”
Justin flipped on the TV and dropped to the couch as she moved into the bathroom. Again, that flash of stabbing him hard with the fireplace poker blazed over her sight. Her entire body seized and fluttered at the vision of the blow. She squeezed her eyes shut tight until she saw patterns of light bursting behind her eyelids. Then she squinted into the mirror.
She scarcely recognized her reflection. Looking at her gaunt and puffed face, she realized that she was not carrying on any deception. Even Justin could not be so dense as to not be able to tell she had been crying all day, to see the utter weight dragging down her features, to notice the absence of any light in her eyes. Even if he did not love her anymore, he could not be that oblivious.
Emma placed her hand on the glass to obscure her reflection and closed her eyes. Those hot tears burned at her eyes again, brimming up against her lids. She did not know how she could have so many tears to cry, how they could continue and never relent.
She wanted to know. She needed to know one way or another. Justin’s betrayal would be a relief compared to the awkward limbo where she was presently tormented.
He never came to bed that night. Emma woke alone on their cold mattress with the sun ripping across the room. She nearly felt hungover from how all the crying had drained her, from all the fluids she had wasted. She caught herself comforted by his absence, liberated in not having to feign being okay, even if it also took a stab toward proof. Why would he not come to bed with her? So he would not have to sleep with her after having been with someone else?
She found him on the couch where she left him the night before. He had shed his shoes and pulled a blanket over himself to pass out on the cushions. The TV still droned in the background. He opened his eyes as she shambled into the room.
“Why didn’t you come to bed?” she asked.
“I passed out down here, watching some stupid show.”
He sat up and discarded the blanket, picking up his phone from the table, typed away at the keyboard, then placed the phone back on the table. Face down.
Justin had always been potentially more married to his phone than to Emma, constantly clicking or swiping, perpetually chatting with this superficial friend or making plans with that one guy he knew. Still, in their torrid relationship, he had never been secretive. He openly took calls and returned messages and read emails when he was in the middle of a meal or conversation with Emma.
In all that, he never put the phone face down.
In the suspended silence, the phone vibrated, muffled against the wood. Justin snatched it up to his face, unlocked it, and typed in a response. Then he again placed it face down on the table. Very deliberately, not in the normal fashion he would toss it on the closest surface.
Emma felt her eyebrow rising then snatched it back down.
Justin tapped his fingers on the back of his phone, smiling lazily at Emma. “I’m going to hop in the shower. I’m meeting the boys to shoot some hoops before heading in to work today.” He stood from the couch.
And I am going to check your phone to find out what you are hiding, Emma thought.
Justin took a step then froze, reaching back to gather up his phone. He moved forward and kissed her on the forehead like a father to a toddler. Emma’s heart sank a little as he walked away with his phone in his hand.
Why would he need his phone while he was in the shower now? It was on there. The proof she needed was on that phone, she was sure.
With the sound of the shower running and Justin’s music blaring over it, she searched out her own phone. She already had four texts waiting for her from Ronnie.
Ronnie: Well that was a worthless day of work.
Ronnie: How are you feeling?
Ronnie: Are you alive over there?
Ronnie: WTF? Hello, Emma?
Emma was somewhat surprised Ronnie had not shown up to check on her considering she was throwing cuss words in acronyms at her. Perhaps she knew her well enough to know she had retreated into sleep to escape.
Emma: I’m alive.
Ronnie: Took you long enough! Sleeping it away?
Emma: Yeah.
Ronnie: So how is it today?
Emma: Still bad. I’m finding it hard to fake it around him.
Ronnie: So don’t.
Emma: I need the proof. I need to know.
Ronnie: I think you already do. Where is this proof going to come from?
Emma: His phone. He’s being super shady about it.
Ronnie: You think he’s dumb enough to keep cheating texts? Don’t go snooping on his shit like one of THOSE girls. Just confront him. Leave.
Emma: I’m looking on the phone. Whenever he leaves it.
Ronnie: I don’t think it’s a good idea, but do what you gotta do. Call me after.
Emma: K.
It must have been easy for Ronnie to always confront everything, to not give a care to what she might lose and always dive into her problem headfirst. What did she know about a relationship? Terrence hovered in the peripheral of all her stories ever since the wedding, but what did she know about being married? Or about possibly ending a marriage? It could not all be so simple.
Emma’s fingers felt anxious again, shifting nervously against her leg. She imagined Justin’s phone in her hands, the screen against her fingertips. The answer she needed was right there, if he was not guarding it so closely. It was surely why he was guarding it so closely.
Her fingers froze as the thought broke across her mind. What would she do with the answer? If she had proof, what then? Would she leave? Would she forgive him and work it out?
The realization shattered over her mind that she had no idea what she wanted anymore.
Chapter 5
It would be weeks before Justin abandoned his phone. Long strings of nights passed where he never showed up in their bed and Emma would find him sleeping on the couch, still in his clothes from his shift at the bar. Clumps of hours of watching him type away on his phone and keeping it face down in front of them or secured in his pocket.
So much time passed that complacency made a home in the back of Emma’s skull. The distastefully awkward marriage gradually wore on her senses, grinding its way into becoming the new normal.
If nothing changed, Emma did not have to make a decision. If she did not know, she could continue on in this suspended animation, this limbo where it all might not be real.
If Ronnie would stop asking her what she was going to do, perhaps she could even convince herself to ignore that malignant little bikini.
It was like she had a roommate. She surely did not have a partner. Justin made brief cameos into her life between playing basketball with the boys, working closing shifts at the bar, attending any concert that would come through town, driving up to go hiking in the mountains on his days off. When she actually thought about it, the scarcity of their overlap was not much of a change, barely a deviation from how they existed before the bikini.
When had they stopped being husband and wife? When had he stopped being in her life at all? She felt like she was support staff to his life, always complacent in whatever plans he wanted to make, in whatever he wanted to go do without her, always accommodating for whatever he wanted for her. Never rocking the boat.
The devolution of their relationship must have happened so slowly, incrementally, as if Emma was sitting in a
pot as the temperature gradually climbed. She had not noticed anything until the water around her started to writhe and bubble, until she found some woman’s wet bikini on the floor of his car.
The marriage she saw when she opened her eyes disgusted her. She remembered loving him when they got married, but when she actually considered Justin now, she scarcely knew him, much less felt any connection with him. Was this going to be the father of her children he no longer wanted? Were they going to march into old age as roommates wearing rings?
When she thought about it, Emma’s heart sank and her head throbbed. Every time Ronnie asked her how she felt, what she was going to do, or when she was going to leave, Emma wanted to punch her in the face.
If she did not think about it, she did not have to decide. She did not have to change absolutely everything about her life. She did not have to reveal the failure and now sham of her marriage to the world and everyone.
Then Justin forgot his phone.
Emma walked into the kitchen after he had departed for work, savoring the quiet in the house and the lack of pretense she found in being alone. The coveted device sat lonely on the counter. After so much fixation, so much fantasy of holding it, Emma was left stunned immobile. She blinked to ensure the phone truly sat unprotected on the kitchen counter.
She brought her hands anxiously into her chest and wound them around each other. She stepped out of the kitchen and looked out the front window to verify Justin’s car was gone. Then she crept back into the kitchen and slunk over to the phone as if she was being watched, as if she could be discovered at any moment.
Not knowing how to be sly, she bumbled over the blending of doubt and excitement in her chest. She looked around guiltily again then snatched up the phone, curled her fingers around it, and brought it close to her face.
No passcode.
Moron.
With a flush of exhilaration she unlocked his phone and opened his messages.
Justin had saved every text message he had ever received on the device.
Moron again.
There was a conversation with her, left neglected for weeks, one with his mother, a barrage from his many friends. One stood out at the top. The most recent.
Jessica.
It was just a shot girl from the bar, Justin’s voice echoed in her head. She was way too drunk, and I gave her a ride home. That’s it. And when she had asked again later who the bikini belonged to, I don’t know. She’s just a shot girl from work. I don’t know her name.
Who the hell was Jessica? Emma already knew the answer as she opened the conversation.
Her tongue swelled in the back of her throat; her heart pounded in her ears. The world around her contracted and closed to the breadth of the phone screen. Every nerve and synapse in her body pointed toward her eyes, waiting reluctantly and impatiently to read the proof. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she lifted a shaking finger to scroll the conversation.
Jessica: What time do you get off tonight?
Justin: I’m first cut so maybe around midnight.
Jessica: I’m off. You coming over?
Justin: Hell yeah.
Justin had told Emma he was closing. Again. A wave of nausea undulated from the pit of her stomach and came slamming into the back of her throat. Her cheeks contracted; her lips pursed. She scrolled farther back.
Justin: You left your bikini in my car.
Jessica: Oops.
Justin: My wife found it.
Jessica: Oh shit!
Justin: I told her you were drunk and I just gave you a ride home.
Emma’s vision flickered out. Her fingers seized and she dropped the phone to the floor, sprinting to the bathroom to puke until dry heaves shook her body.
Proof. The proof Emma had wanted and did not want at the same time. He had preserved their entire incriminating conversation history, like he wanted to get caught. Like he wanted out.
She knew about me. She knew he was married. She knew he was lying to me.
When Justin burst back through the door, Emma sat stoically on the couch, tapping his phone against her knee. He must not have even made it to the bar before realizing his error. The tears and the nausea had faded, and Emma posed like a statue, numb and overwhelmed, done waiting for him.
Justin slowed when he saw Emma waiting with his phone, eyes still wide when she stood up and extended it out to him. Gingerly, he squinted and reached out to take it.
Emma felt the fireplace poker in her hand again, saw another flash of the blood coming out of his chest, felt the impact in her fingertips. Every fiber in her body wanted to take that step backward to retrieve the weapon, wanted to heave it up and through him. Holding his phone out to him felt wrong. Everything that was not killing him right now in their living room felt wrong.
Justin tucked the phone in his pocket and stood looking at her.
“Emma, I—”
“Tell Jessica to keep better track of her swim wear,” Emma said robotically.
“You went through my phone?” Justin threw up anger first. She could see him mentally indexing the contents of his phone. “Emma, look, I can explain.”
“Can you, Justin?” Emma glared at him. “Go to work. We have to pay Credit Financial this week. I am working eight goddamn shifts this week. We will talk about this when you get off. Midnight, right?”
Justin’s eyes and mouth hung open. “Right,” he said softly and confused.
He kept staring at Emma with wide eyes as he walked slowly toward the door. Emma kept thinking about how the fireplace poker would feel so right against her palm. And in his chest cavity.
When the door closed behind him, she collapsed to her knees and sobs wracked her body again.
Justin did not come home that night. He was not sprawled out on the couch when Emma rolled over and stumbled out of their bedroom to check at 2 am.
***
Emma knew the bed beside her was still vacant before she opened her eyes. Her hip felt like it was levitating at the all-too-familiar absence of his weight on the mattress. She did not want to open her eyes. The light was bright, and seeing it would make the day real. Once her eyes dilated, this collapsed mess would once again be her marriage and her life.
She brought her fists to her eye sockets and rolled them gently over her swollen and crusted eyelids. So many layers of tears were dried on the tender skin. She did not want to touch the raw flesh any more than she wanted to deal with the problems causing it. She took a deep breath, letting the air fill her chest and push her lungs against her ribs. Even her sides felt sore from sobbing.
Emma was slowly becoming unable to distinguish the pain in her heart from the pain on her nerves.
She peeled begrudgingly from the sheets, even as every cell in her body cried for the denial she could find in sleep, the escape. She stood on unstable legs, her toes sinking into the carpet, and felt the thin dehydration stretching along the inside of her skull. All those tears down her cheeks, bleeding her eyes. She floated drunk or hungover or somewhere in between, lost in a detached haze.
When she opened the bedroom door, Justin was sprawled out on the couch. He had snuck back in the wee hours. His leg dangled off the edge of the couch, tangled in a blanket. His mouth hung open, drooling and stupid. All the physically enticing features she always saw in him, that she prioritized in him, dimmed as something hot and acidic bubbled at the back of her mind. He began to look more unrecognizable to her by the day.
Looking at him felt like a blow to the chest, the emotion creating an impact on her flesh. Emma steadied herself against the banister then sank down to sit on the first step where she could still see him snoring below her.
When she closed her eyes, all she could feel was the cold handle of the fire poker in her hands, her grip choking the unyielding metal. All she could see was his dumbstruck face when she plunged the sharp end into his chest. All she could hear was the wet gasp in his throat and the sucking of his chest wound.
She only sat at the top of the stai
rs in their house, cradling her head, the sound of his breathing grating against her brain like a serrated blade.
Fire poker in his chest.
It was all she could think about. It was the only thought that kept the burning pain in her chest from violently rising up to swallow her mind whole. She kept seeing it flashing over and over. Each of his inhalations was Emma pulling the poker back, winding up the blow; each exhalation the sickening puncture into his chest and his wide-eyed shock.
She wanted the pain in his eyes, she wanted the shock in his face, instead of feeling both laid hot, heavy, and suffocating on top of her.
Emma did not know how long she crouched paralyzed at the top of the steps. Her eyes were locked open, her chest rising and falling dreadfully. She wandered far removed in her murderous fantasy.
If only her flesh had the courage.
Emma remained catatonic until Justin’s waking breath rippled through the stagnant air. She gazed down to watch him stir out of the trailing end of sleep, the way he did countless mornings beside her. Mornings when she thought she could not be happier, mornings when she thought she loved him.
Emma heaved up against the crushing weight on her chest before he could see her. She felt so full she could barely move, as if she was inflated by her pain. The torrent of emotions sloshed and writhed beneath her surface, made her feel disoriented in her own skin. Her consciousness felt like a bobbing lifeboat in a dark, violent, and unfamiliar sea.
When she padded unsteadily into the room, Justin made eye contact with her. The connection triggered a flare in her. All the tumultuous wayward emotions solidified, focused, drawing a point in her wounded mind.
The Rest Will Come Page 5