Chapter 2
725 Words
Back at home, I curled into the sofa, the pain folding me in on myself, cold sweat soaking the loose hair at my forehead until it clung to my face in damp strands.
My phone buzzed again, and I lifted it with effort, half hoping Sebastian had finally come to his senses and called.
He hadn't.
It was a new message in The Old Gang.
Sebastian had posted another photo, evidence, apparently, of his clean conscience.
In the picture, he stood shoulder to shoulder with the woman called Vivienne Marlowe, the roar of the stadium behind them. Vivienne was leaning in close, half pressed against him, her face radiant with happiness. And Sebastian had his arm around her shoulders, grinning openly at the camera.
That smile was even harder to look at than the one I'd seen on television.
His caption read:
Ran into an old classmate. Don't get the wrong idea, everyone.
The chat lit up at once.
Lenny: Wow, Vivienne still has that elegance about her. She hasn't changed a bit.
Lenny: Nice work, Seb! What are the odds of bumping into her there?
Wendy: Talented man, beautiful woman, ha, just kidding!
Wendy even tagged me directly.
Wendy: @Linnea, don't go getting jealous. This is what you call a wholesome old-friends thing.
"A wholesome old-friends thing." What a lovely phrase.
I looked at the photo and my stomach turned over.
I wanted to video-call him, to let him see what I looked like now, doubled over and ready to die. To let him see what his "blowing things out of proportion" actually meant for me.
But the moment I tapped his profile, a new post popped up on my feed.
It was from Vivienne.
The picture showed two cups of hot cocoa steaming on a table, and beside them lay a familiar grey scarf.
I'd taken up knitting when we got married that winter. I had knit that scarf for him with my own hands. He'd called the style too dated, never wore it once, and had shoved it into the back of his closet.
Vivienne's caption read:
It's getting cold. Having someone who knows how to take care of you, that's the real blessing of growing old.
Location tagged: a café near the UMA World Cup stadium.
In that instant, I understood everything.
It hadn't been a chance meeting at all.
He had taken the scarf I'd made him, only so that he could wrap it around another woman.
The pain in my abdomen suddenly became bearable. The dull ache in my chest had already drowned out everything my body felt.
I pushed myself up, walked into the bedroom, and dragged a dust-covered cardboard box out from under the bed.
I opened it, and there were the twenty years of us.
The first album was from just after our wedding, a day trip he'd taken me on, his smile as wide as a child's.
I remembered how thoughtful he'd been then. When my period came, he would have brown sugar ginger tea simmering for me before I asked. If I mentioned in passing that I missed the pastries from a bakery in the West End, he'd drive an hour to bring them home.
Yet, as I turned through every photograph, I couldn't find a single one in which he laughed the way he had today, that bright, that young.
His tenderness toward me had always been measured, delivered on schedule, never wrong, never a surprise.
I placed the albums back in the box, one by one.
There were also the commemorative jerseys he'd brought home from every World Cup, the ticket stubs, the mascot plush toys. I had treasured them, kept them with care, certain they were our shared memories.
Looking at them now, I saw they had only ever been a one-woman play.
Finally, I picked up the half-finished sweater I'd been knitting for him on the sofa. I found the loose end and pulled, slowly, stitch by stitch, until the whole thing came undone. The yarn pooled across the floor in a tangle, like a heap of unspoken thoughts.
When I finished, I picked up my phone again and opened that noisy group chat.
No arguing. No questions.
I simply, calmly, pressed "Delete" and "Leave Group".
This bright, lively world had nothing to do with me, not from today on.
- Writer
