The other Brother

“I just don’t think this is working out, Ava.” I watched his lips move as he spoke but the words sounded muffled and time somehow felt like it was moving in slow motion. For a brief moment, I stared at him blankly, just trying to get my head together enough to grasp what it was he had just said to me. But the statement seemed too hard to digest. “I’ve moved on,” Trent added. As though a knife to the chest had not been enough and he needed to twist the blade to get his point across. “What?” It was the only word I could manage, my mouth dry. What did he mean he ‘moved on’? Trent and I had been dating for close to three years now. I did everything for him. I washed and dried his laundry, ironed his work clothes, made him breakfast and dinner, kept his bedroom tidy, and did the dishes. I was practically the live-in maid that he never had to pay. I opened my mouth to speak but before I could so much as get out a single word, there he went putting his foot in his mouth again. “Avery, look. We had a good run, okay?” He reached out to touch my arm but instinctively, I pulled away. “But we lost the spark a long time ago, we both know that.” We did?! “And I found that same spark with someone else. I think I deserve that kind of happiness. We both do.” I felt sick to my f*****g stomach. He’d been seeing someone else? Stringing me along for god-knows how long? And had the nerve to claim he deserved that happiness the other woman was bringing him? My mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour, torn between disbelief and acceptance, pure rage and the depths of heartbreak. I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or cry or punch him right in the face. “So that’s just it?” I was biting back tears now. How dare he? How dare he just act like he was in the right and he didn’t just openly admit to falling out of love with and cheating on me? “Just like that?” A sympathetic sigh left his lips and he reached his hand out to caress my cheek. “Baby,” he frowned. As if he had any right at all to be upset. As if he had any right to call me that. Baby. Though I hesitated, I slapped his hand away and took a step back. The tears that threatened to spill over had since dried up and the sadness, heartbreak and betrayal was now replaced by anger and hatred, utter disgust. “Don’t f*****g touch me,” I snapped. I watched brown his eyes widen like saucers. I’d always been so timid, so docile, a real people pleaser. I’d never snapped at him, never even raised my voice. Maybe that was what had him growing apart from me, from us, our relationship was too healthy. We never fought, we had a routine down, perhaps he had grown bored. How had I not seen this coming? “And I’m not your baby!”