Truths and Lies
He greeted me with a familiar smile and a kiss on the lips in the airport lobby, reached for my bag and wheeled it out to his truck. My heart leapt at the sight of him. Butterflies scattered underneath my skin and danced in my stomach, and I thought, sitting next to him in a cab that smelled of cedarwood and cigarettes, that I could never love anyone like I loved the boy beside me.
An alert dinged on his phone. A message, from a girl – one whose name my memory identified as belonging to his best friend’s girlfriend. Lips in a firm line, he tucked the phone into his shirt pocket. I tried to ignore the seed of uneasiness that bloomed in my gut. We’d been down that road before – the one where I questioned him – and it hadn’t ended well. I didn’t want that again, didn’t want to upset him. Dread spun a lump in my throat and I swallowed it down.
We dressed up, went to dinner. We hung out with friends. We had a few drinks. He put up a good act, played his role almost perfectly.
Almost. His discomfort was discreet, almost imperceptible, but I felt it. Doubt wove threads in my thoughts and inked questions on my lips.
“Are you sure everything is okay? There isn’t anything you want to talk about?” The inquiry sparked denial that flowed smoothly from his lips, lies from a silver tongue that shamed me into silence.
While he slept that night, suspicion got the best of me. I looked at his phone. I saw the messages. I saw what he’d denied, what he’d sworn wasn’t true.
My brain, sorely programmed, framed me in blame’s crosshairs.
He’s cheating because of you. Because you’re not good enough.
Internal gravity multiplied and my stomach fell to my knees. Breath hitched in my chest, in the hole where my heart used to be.
Misplaced trust insisted I’d missed something, that somehow a loophole would appear and let innocence reign. By morning, I’d let that voice convince me to confront him, sure he’d rid me of my greatest fears, take me in his arms and tell me we were forever.
Misplaced trust insisted I’d missed something, that somehow a loophole would appear and let innocence reign. By morning, I’d let that voice convince me to confront him, sure he’d rid me of my greatest fears, take me in his arms and tell me we were forever.
No. Evidence of my distrust led to anger, not love. Blame, always blame, never forgiveness. He hollowed me out, so completely I was just a shell, took my heart from my chest and crushed it with his bare hands. My eyes burned with tears that soaked my skin, my hair, my clothes. Shaking hands reached for him as I whispered a final plea. He choked out a laugh.
“Look at you. Why would I want you? You’re pathetic.”
“You said you loved me. You said…you said…” It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.
“No one will ever love you.”
With my heart ripped in two, my skin soaked in tears, and my limbs shaking with loss, I thought he had to be right.
He was always right.
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