I wandered into the kitchen and noticed two wine glasses left out on the breakfast table—one of them had red smears on the rim. What was that? Chapstick? Well, that was annoying. It would only take like another three seconds to at least put them in the sink. Plus, he didn’t even finish the first drink before pouring another.
Plucking up both glasses, I dumped out the rest of the wine—really? Wine? It was the middle of the day—before setting them down in the sink. I might need to use the table space later if I had to reconfigure floral arrangements after talking to Dylan.
Magazine firmly in hand, I strolled down the hallway. Was he in his office right now? Then I heard noises coming from his bedroom. Vigorous noises, like exercising.
Oh! That was great! Was he finally taking my fitness recommendations seriously? The wedding was still months away, enough time for him to slim down a tad—it’s not like I wanted to change him. Obviously, I love Dylan for the man he is… but the wedding pictures would look so much better if he could just tone down that beer belly just a—
I opened the bedroom door.
Dylan was not exercising.
Just as quickly, I shut the door—so hard I had accidentally slammed it—and turned to face the other way. As best as Icould, I tuned out the chaos going on behind that door—the startled shriek of a woman, the hissedget off of me,the footsteps stomping around, fabric rustling and the clink of a belt as Dylan hastily got redressed.
Like a zombie, I moved toward the kitchen cabinet and got myself a glass. I pulled out the Brita filter from the fridge and poured myself some water. With slightly shaky hands, I took a little sip.
Odd.
I’d never been cheated on before, but shouldn’t I be crying right now? Was I really so upset about this wrench in my entire floral plans that I didn’t have any mental space to be upset about anything else? Maybe I was so stressed that I was just numb.
Was that it?
I should probably be more upset by this, instead of trying not to compare my cheating fiancé’s sex face to a beached walrus. How had I not noticed that before? Was I really going to get married to Mr. walrus-orgasm-face?
Okay, that wasn’t important right now.
There were established steps to take when cheating was discovered in a relationship. The mature thing to do would be to schedule an appointment with a marriage counselor and figure out if this was salvageable.
But all of that sort of froze. Talk of therapists and sorting out whatever mess Dylan had made could come later.
I clung to my reason for walking through his door just as hard as I was clutching the gossip magazine in my hand.
Hesitant footsteps crept out of the bedroom, following me into the kitchen. A thousand emotions flickered across Dylan’s face. Desperate, hopeful, stricken, anxious, afraid and everything in between.
“Avril? Baby?” He tried to reach for my hand, the one already firmly clutching the magazine and settled for holding it awkwardly.
“I just came here to talk to you about the new issue of ‘Spill the Tea.’ I-I saw an article in it about the floral arrangement—you know the one that goes in the trellis. I don’t want it to look like I’m chasing after the next big fad. You know how I always talked about how perfect it would be to have it covered in wisteria—”
“I don’t care about the fucking wisteria, or the napkins, or the flavor of the fucking wedding cake. Babe… talk to me.”
He didn’t care about… the wisteria?
Dylan was staring at me like he was on the cusp of bursting out into tears. Butwhy?
Hewas the one who betrayedme.
Shouldn’t I be the one who was crying like my entire world got ripped apart? He had the nerve to betray me and then turn around and demand that I let him back into my heart. Tell him my thoughts and feelings and everything important to me. Spill it now, on demand…
You know what? Ihadbeen talking to him about what was most important to me. Something I had been dreaming about for years. They weren’t just flowers. Well, okay, so they were just flowers, but they weremorethan just fucking flowers.
This was my dream. My vision that I had been working on putting together for years.
He didn’t care.
Why was it that it wasn’t the literal cheating, but the fact that hedidn’t even carethat broke through the numb ache in my heart and finally shattered it?
“You want to talk to me?” Without the distraction of my doomed floral plans, all I could think of was the smeared makeup on that other girl—the girl he’d told me not to worryabout—how her face was scrunched up in ecstasy as she rode him.
Like my thoughts summoned her, she came out of his bedroom in a sleek black dress. Her tousled hair screamed—just got fucked.
