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“Don’t be like that, babe,” Henry says, this time sounding legitimately into the conversation for the first time. “It’s nothing, just a way to let off steam when the pressure gets to be too much. It’s easy, no strings. Not like what we have.”
He’s admitting it, at least. I won’t have to wonder if I overreacted or made it up later. I gather up the few shredded scraps of self-respect I have, knowing that I don’t deserve this. Nobody does. “Goodbye, Henry.”
I click the red circle, ending the call, and turn my phone off. That’ll prevent him from calling me back and from tracking my location. I shake my head in disbelief, remembering how many nights I stared at his dot on that stupid app, waiting to see when he left work. Sometimes, we’d talk while he drove home, or sometimes, he’d come to my place, but I always felt like he was honest because he was where he said he would be.
Never did I think he was getting his rocks off at the office.
Guess I’m the sucker. Seriously, how many soap operas have I watched where that’s exactly what happens? But I thought we were different. I thought Henry was different.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, burrowing into it. The night air hasn’t gotten any cooler, but my insides feel like ice as the adrenaline dump wears off. I don’t know how long I sit like that, replaying our conversations, things Henry’s told me, and thoughts I’ve had about him. About us.
Somehow, it’s still only ‘getting dark’ when Cole climbs the stairs to the back deck. He takes one look at me and my ugly, snotty mess of tears and silently goes inside, leaving me to my pity party. I hear him moving around in the kitchen, pans clanking and the can opener whirring, but I don’t know or care what he’s doing. Until he slides the door open again.
“Here,” he says gruffly.
I pop my head up out of my one-person blanket fort to see what he wants. He’s holding out a glass of white wine, poured all the way to the tippy-tippy top, and a deep bowl that has steam rising off it. “What’s that?” I ask, not taking it.
I made dinner. Dinner for me and Henry, and he broke up with me by phone instead of telling me before our romantic vacation, so food is the last thing I want.
“Wine. Chicken ‘n dumplings. Didn’t figure you’d want the chicken you made for the dipshit, but I turned it into comfort food.” He says it completely matter-of-factly, with zero emotion, but his calling Henry names tells me that he knows why I’m sitting alone on the back deck.
I’ve completed the curve around the stages of denial and sadness and am rounding into the anger stage, contemplating ways to bulldoze Henry’s existence. Maybe show up to his office and loudly announce his infidelity, asking if sex as a brain break is their norm. Or break into his apartment and erase the characters on his favorite video game. That’d be better than simply destroying the game system. If I did that, he could log into his account on a new one, but deleting the character in-game? Probably the thing that’d hurt him the most, which is ridiculous.
Or maybe move on and be happy. Best revenge is a life well-lived type of deal.
Realistically, I won’t do any of those things. They’ll stay in my head as ways to torture myself more than Henry, because though I stood up for myself over the phone, I don’t have the guts to actually get back at Henry in one of those song-worthy, dramatic maneuvers. I’ll simply fade into spinsterhood, living alone forever and adopting a bunch of cats that I name after breakfast dishes like Waffles, Bacon, and Cinnamon Roll.
Sighing heavily, I take the bowl from Cole. “Thanks. How can you be sure he’s a dipshit?”
He gives me a dubious look as he sets the wine on the tiny table at my side. “There you go. Let me grab mine and you can tell me all about what a fuckup Henry is.”
He disappears, coming back a minute later with a glass of wine and a dinner bowl of his own. He straddles the other lounge chair and flops to its surface. I’m worried for a second that the chair might collapse beneath him, but when it holds steady, I can’t help but laugh the tiniest bit. He seems pleased with himself for the small and momentary flicker of improvement in my mood even as I return to my self-pity wallow.
He scoops a spoonful from his bowl, blows on it, and then slurps it down. “This is based on my grandmother’s recipe. Had to change it up a little based on what’s in the kitchen, but it’s not bad,” he says conversationally, which is major for him, and any other night, I’d be off and running at the mouth with that small prompt. Tonight, I stare blankly at the bowl in my hands. It does smell good, but I’m not hungry or talkative now. “My grandmother would kick my ass if she knew I used canned biscuits for the dumplings.”
