HIS SONS GIRL

Nobody tells you what heartbreak smells like. They write songs about it. Paint it in poetry. Carve it into the walls of bathroom stalls in every bar in every city in the world. But nobody ever sits you down and says: It smells like his cologne on your pillow. Like the candle you lit because he said he liked it. Like dinner going cold on a table set for two while you stand in the doorway of your own bedroom and try to understand, in the space of a single breath, that your life just split cleanly in half. I came home to the sound of my cousin in my bed with my boyfriend. That was how my Friday ended. It started with a text. I was on the train home from work, tired, feet hurting, thinking about nothing except getting through the front door. My phone buzzed. I looked down. Jade. Just her name on my screen was enough to make my jaw tighten. But I opened it anyway. It was a photo. Her photo. Hair down, bedsheet low, that smile she always wore when she had gotten something she wanted. And underneath it a caption that hit me like cold water. Jade: He’s all mine now. always wanted me more than he wanted you My stomach dropped. I typed back one thing. Sienna ? Jade omg WRONG PERSON lol ignore that!! Wrong person. Right. I stared at those two words. Then I put my phone away and looked out the window. Jade has never been one to send anything to the wrong person in her life. Everything she did was on purpose. Every word, every move, every little dig it was always planned, always on purpose. It has always been a performance for her especially in front of the right audience. I had known that since I was fourteen years old and moved into her parents’ house two weeks after I buried my mum and dad. She was thirteen when I arrived at their door with one suitcase and nowhere else to go. She looked at me, looked at my suitcase, and smiled. That was the beginning. She took my mother’s gold earrings that same month. Said she found them on the floor. Her dad believed her without asking a single question and told me to leave it for her. I learned fast in that house that I was all alone. Jade could do anything. Break anything. Take anything. Her parents would always, always take her side. Because she was theirs and I was just an obligation. The dead sister’s daughter. The charity case they had to house because there was nobody else. So she took my things. Told lies about me at school. Went after every boy I liked. Competed with me for everything right from grades, friends to attention and not because she needed any of it but because she needed me to have nothing. And her parents smiled and called her spirited and told me I was too sensitive. Ten years of that. Ten years and now this text. I told myself I was overthinking. That it was Jade being Jade. Stirring trouble for fun like she always did. She had sent that picture on purpose. She wanted me to know. The “wrong person” was just her way of watching me react from a safe distance. I decided I would not give her that satisfaction. I told myself that all the way home. The apartment door was unlocked. Cole had texted earlier — he was finishing late today and I should not wait up for him for dinner. Fine. Normal. More me time then. But the moment I stepped inside I knew something was wrong. His jacket was on the floor in the middle of the room. Shoes kicked off by the couch. A chair pushed at a weird angle. The kind of mess that came from people moving fast, people who were not thinking about anything except each other. I said it was Cole being Cole. He was always messy. But weird, Cole should not be at home at this hour. Neither should anyone. I stood very still. And then I heard it. Sounds. Coming from the bedroom. Not from the TV. Not music. It was Voices. And not quiet voices either. It was loud, careless, the sounds of two people who thought they were completely alone. Without any care in the world. I heard Cole. And then I heard the laugh. A laugh I had known my whole life. High. Bright. Satisfied. Jade’s laugh. From my bedroom. My legs moved before my brain caught up. I walked down the hallway. I pushed the door open. And I saw them. Cole. Jade. My bed. Her dark hair was all over my pillow. The two of them were so wrapped up in each other they didn’t even hear the door. I stood there. I don’t know for how long. Long enough for everything to become very real. Long enough to feel it settle in my chest like something heavy and permanent. The betrayal became clearer each moment I stood there. I looked at my pillow under her head and I thought: she knew exactly what she was doing when she climbed into this bed. She always knows exactly what she is doing. That is the thing about Jade, she does not stumble into anything. She walks into it with both eyes open and her chin up and that specific smile that says she has already decided she deserves whatever she is taking. And Cole. Cole who had said I love you in this exact room. Cole, who we had both picked this apartment together, stood in this doorway and said yes to the fairy lights I wanted on the curtain rail because it made the place feel like home. Cole who had two years of my trust and apparently spent that whole time deciding it was not worth very much. Two years with Cole. For two years I had loved him, trusted him, built a life with him in this apartment. And the person he chose to do this with was her. Of course it was her. Because it had always been Jade. Every good thing I ever had, she had always found a way to get her hands on it. My eyes stung. My throat tightened. But I did not make a sound. I did not say one word. I pulled the door shut quietly. I walked back down the hall. Picked up my bag. And walked out. The second I hit the street I called Nova. She picked up immediately. “Hey, how was your —” “Nova.” My voice broke right down the middle. Silence. Then: “I’m coming. Where are you?” “Just — come,” I said. “Please.” And I started walking. Fast. Away from that building, away from those sounds, away from two years of my life that had just turned to ash in about thirty seconds. The worst part was not even the image of them together. The worst part was the fairy lights still blinking softly through the bedroom curtains as I left. All that warm light. The place that I finally built to call home. All that effort I had put into making a home for someone who was never really in it. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I couldn’t stop.