“I’ve got to make a call to my boyfriend.Are you okay to watch Petey and Tracker for a minute for me?”
“I got them.”
I stood and held up my phone to try to get better signal.I walked around the corner from the bank of cages out of eyesight but not earshot.It was almost eight-thirty, which meant Jay would be watching TV.
The phone rang five times before his sleepy voice answered, “Who’s this?”
I almost identified myself but in the background I heard a woman’s whiny voice say, “Tell whoever it is that you’re busy.Hang up if it’s work.Come back to bed.”
Bed?He had another girl in bed with him.My bed?
“Who the hell is in my bed with you?”I yelled.
“Babe, it’s the TV.It’s nothing.”I detected the panic in Jay’s tone.
“Don’t you darebabeme.My father and stepmother died in a horrific accident.While I’m dealing with funeral arrangements and their personal affairs, you decide to fuck some other woman in my bed?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Sounds like it’s exactly like that.”
“Now, Erika?—”
“Get out of my house.We’re done.Move your shit out of my condo by the time I arrive back on Sunday, or I’ll call the cops on you for breaking-and-entering.”
Jay rushed before I could start my next sentence, “If you’d have let me in, if you needed me, then I might not have needed to look elsewhere.Erika?—”
“If there’s anything of yours left inmyhouse,” I interrupted, “I’ll throw it on the street.If you’re there, I’m calling 911.”I hung up.
My phone immediately lit up with texts from him.
I texted him one reply:Get out.
My knees buckled and I hit the floor, the phone slipping from my hand and skidding across the linoleum.I buried my face in my palms as the sobs ripped through me—raw, ugly, unstoppable.Tears poured down my cheeks, hot and relentless, blurring everything.
How could I have been so stupid?
Iknewhe was bad news.Sarah told me.My gut told me.Every instinct I had screamed to run.He wasn’t even good in bed—not once—not ever.He’d come after me twice when angry, landing solid hits on me and then making me believe it’d been my fault.And the way he controlled everything, like I was a thing he owned instead of a person?I hated it.I hatedhim.
So why had I stayed?
Because it was easier than starting a nuclear war at work.Easier than facing the fallout.Easier than admitting I’d let myself drown in something I should’ve walked away from a long time ago.
This week was turning into a full-blown disaster—an avalanche I couldn’t outrun.
My dad was dead.Gone.Just like that.
My shitty boyfriend had cheated on me.Inmybed.And not with some random one-night stand.With a woman he’d clearly chosen again and again over me.
Relief washed through me—sharp and immediate—but it tangled with a colder fear.What if he refused to leave?Or worse, what if he decided to make things messy at work?
Those were things to deal with in the future.Here, my high school ex wanted me to throw away everything I’d spent years building—everything I’d bled and clawed and fought for—so I could be trapped in the nightmare I’d spent my whole life running from: life as a farm vet in the middle of nowhere.
On top of all of it, I suddenly had Vinny.A kid who needed someone to figure out how to be a parent when I could barely hold myself together.
The weight of it all crushed me.The tears kept coming, uncontrollable, burning hot trails down my face.I couldn’t stop them.I couldn’t stopanything.It was like trying to hold water in my hands, every part of me slipping through before I could catch it.
Small arms wrapped around me.“He sounded like a jerk.”
