Page 24 of These Tears

‘Hey, Leah,’ she says and looks at Anna. They both go quiet, offering me a particular look that raises my hackles.

My weight shifts to both feet at that. ‘What happened?’

They look at me, then at each other again.

‘I thought you should know—’ Marina murmurs. ‘I’ve declined a job.’

Something cold and rotten claws up my neck even before she supplies the rest – Marina never declines jobs.

‘It’s Ron’s wedding.’

For a second, the world loses sound.

I see him in the kitchen of our old place, phone turned face-down the instant I walked in. Ron coming home late. Ron kissing my forehead and telling me I worried too much.

Me, believing him.

Sure, I left him, but leaving isn’t the same as being free of it; I still carry the ruin with me, even after learning to breathe around a wound that never quite closed. And now he’ll be standing somewhere in a pressed suit and polished shoes with his hand around hers, promising forever.

The same fucking word he gave me.

My next breath stops halfway in. I try again and get even less air.

‘Sit down!’ Anna says, rushing towards me and guiding me into the sitting room. ‘Feet on the floor. Slow breaths. You know this.’ She continues rambling, but my ears are ringing too loudly to make out the words.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, then repeat it. And again. The couch cushions suddenly feel as though they’re about to swallow me whole.

‘Well,’ Anna says, too brightly, ‘would it help to know he’s already moved on to woman number three?’

I blink.

‘What?’

The chiming in my head swells until Marina’s voice reaches me as if through several feet of water. ‘He’s marrying the mother of his child,’ she says, giving me a pointed look. ‘But people saw him with some waitress last Friday.’

Something inside me drops clean through the floor.

Woman number three. Or twelve.

They say it as if I’m meant to be grateful that he’s that much of a bastard; as if that somehow refunds what he took from me.

Ten years suddenly open behind me like evidence. Late meetings. Boys’ nights. Calls he forgot to return. Showers the second he got home to wash off the truth. Silences I called tiredness because tiredness was easier to process.

How many?

I start counting backwards through our life like an idiot archivist of my own humiliation, lifting every memory to the light and finding it stained by someone else.

And the part that burns? It’s the question that comes slithering in anyway: what was wrong with me that I didn’t see it?

What the fuck was I doing while he was making a fool of me for a whole decade?

Loving him.

Defending him when Anna raised an eyebrow.

Making excuses when Marina ranted.

Choosing paint for our home.