Finding Us Again

PROLOGUE

“Why do you keep telling me to call Dr. Sasha? We don’t need a therapist. By the way, he is the one who messed up since you have long forgotten!”

Michelle screamed into her phone, her voice echoing in the bathroom walls. She was losing patience with her mother’s bantering. She had sent her several therapists' emails for the past few months to reserve a session with them.

“For chrissake, what’s wrong with you, Michelle? Don’t you want to kMeep your home together? There’s room for forgiveness. What about the girls? Have you for once thought of them finding out that they’re parents are most likely going to get divorced?”

Michelle sighed, wondering if her mother-in-law was pestering her son as her own mother was. "I've told you to stop using the children as bait in all of this. There will be no marriage therapy session, much less will I be the one to look for. If Michael wants to keep frolicking with his mistress, then he’s damn welcome to do so.” Then she ended the call.

Michelle leaned her head on the wall and closed her eyes briefly, as if wanting to shut herself from the whole world. Her phone pinged. She lazily opened her eyes and brought the phone ot her eye level. It was Kera, her close friend.

It’s crazy, Michelle, Amelia is literally no longer hiding the affair from the world.

The notification read. She hesitated a bit but opened the message anyway, which redirected her to an i********: page.

It was a picture of Amelia—her once upon a time best friend—with her arms wrapped around Michael, with the caption Just me and my man, in line with the throwback pictures she had been sharing for a few weeks. Michelle’s lips pursed as she looked at the picture on her screen, her chest constricting at the sight of Amelia’s face nuzzled in the crook of Michael’s neck as she took the selfie. Never one for pictures, Michael’s smile was awkward and almost reluctant, but the hand resting on Amelia’s waist looked anything but unwilling.

Her eyes zeroed in on Amelia’s face. Why did you have to come back, you f*****g b***h. She thought as she continued to stare at her golden features.Deciding she’d had enough self-torture, Michelle blocked both Amelia’s account including Michael’s.

Blowing out air from her mouth, she set her phone at the edge of the toilet sink, shut her eyes, and tried to will away the familiar feelings of hopelessness and despair that arose when confronted with the reason her twelve-year-old marriage had collapsed; her husband’s infidelity. It was easier when he was away. It was easier to work towards recovery when she didn’t have to see him.

After blocking and muting any social media accounts that could have updates about him, it was easier to begin her journey to self-recovery. But with Michael’s return to New York, it was going to be a whole lot harder. And that was proven the one and only time she’d seen him since his return.

After intentionally avoiding any occasion of running into him since his return in January, her sister-in-law’s Fortieth birthday party three weeks ago was the first time she’d set eyes on him in almost a year. And if the panicked look on his face was any indication, he was just as unenthusiastic about seeing her as she was about seeing him.

Their greeting had been awkward and brief and had left her with a racing heart that triggered an anxiety attack the moment she was alone in the bedroom they’d once shared when she got home that night. But, for some reason, that same meeting had given Michael’s mother hope, and even though the woman had been sending her messages, asking on how the girls were doing also indirectly asking her if she was okay since Michael moved out a year ago, after her birthday.

The image of Amelia’s latest post flashed in her head and Michelle scoffed. Beautiful Union indeed. No therapy or counseling will ever make her see light in Michael, to forgive what he did exactly a year ago. Because he’d done that willfully.