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“Evelyn, what I’ve done to you is wrong.”
What had he done? What was he talking about?
I tried to stand up but my legs wouldn’t support me and so I dropped back down in the chair. “Phil, what is going on?”
“Evelyn, I feel awful about all this.”
A vein in my temple began to throb. “Awful about what?”
“About not telling you a long time ago that I don’t want to get married.”
He wasn’t giving me any options. “This doesn’t make sense, Phil. How do you know that I want to break up over this?”
There was no answer and that only meant one thing. “There’s someone else. Right?”
He sighed heavily. “Yes, there is. I’m really sorry, Evelyn.”
There was no feeling anywhere in my body. “How long have you been seeing her?”
“A long, long time.”
My fingers sprung loose from the edge of the table and flew to my pockets. Where the hell was my gun? It wasn’t there. Because I was still in my bathrobe. I jumped up from the table and headed upstairs to my bedroom to get it and put every single bullet right through his lying, cheating heart.
Phil grabbed me on the landing. “Evelyn, calm do
wn. It’s not like you think. Please let me explain.”
I struggled against his strong grip. “Let me go!”
“Evelyn, it’s not another woman.”
“But you just said . . .”
“I said it was someone else. I didn’t say it was a woman.”
My frenzied thrashing gave way to absolute and utter shock. “WHAT?”
He released me and used his body to block my climb upstairs. “Evelyn, you know how it is in the department. I had to lie. I still have to. You know that. Believe me, if I did anything else for a living, things would have been different. All this sneaking and hiding and deceiving everybody would never have happened.”
Phil was blocking the path to the gun but we had a drawer full of knives in the kitchen. I took off and when I turned to face him again, it was with a butcher knife in my hand. He just stood there looking sad but I knew he wasn’t going to let me hurt him. We were at an impasse.
“Gay? How long have you been gay?”
“All my life,” he said simply.
“So I was just a beard?”
He took a step toward me. “Evelyn, you’re smart, funny, beautiful, kind. You’re the most wonderful woman on earth.”
If this son of a bitch ended with “and any man would be lucky to have you” I would lunge at him with the knife and somehow, even though he was stronger, manage to plunge it right through his heart.
“Shut the fuck up, Phil! How could you do this to me for six whole years? And how did you manage to sneak away to meet men when you were always at work or with Saundra or over here?”
He looked startled. “Sneak away to meet men?”
“Yes. Or did you order them by mail?”
“Oh, no! I haven’t been cruising men . . . I . . . it’s just one person. . .”
