51. It’s Supposed to Be Me #3
He looked happy. Truly, deeply happy. I looked at Alyssa, cuddled in his arms, and a hot, burning fire of jealousy ignited in my gut. It consumed me, eating away at my rationality, because she had everything I wanted.
That should be me. I thought, the words repeating in my head like a mantra. It’s supposed to be me. My vision blurred with heartbroken tears.
I hated her. I hated that bitch for taking what was mine, even though deep down I knew he had never really been mine to begin with.
I stayed there for another hour, frozen in the dark, watching them sleep, torturing myself with the sight of their perfection, until my legs could no longer hold and the silence of the room became deafening.
I had to leave. Had to get out before I did something stupid, before I burst out of that closet and screamed until my throat bled.
I did not have a clock. My phone was in my coat pocket in the foyer. I had no way of measuring how long I waited. I waited until I heard the sound of their breathing in sync, and then I waited longer, because I knew if I was wrong about them being asleep I would be caught.
Finally, I opened the closet door, one millimeter at a time.
I needed to get the fuck out of there. If Julian caught me I would be beyond mortified.
Knowing him, he’d probably have no mercy and call the police and have me arrested.
He wouldn’t understand that my intention was not to watch him and that woman fuck.
I thought they were over. How was I supposed to know?
I slipped out of the closet and held my breath, crossing the bedroom on the balls of my feet, with my heels in my hand. I tiptoed out into the living room, and took my coat off the rack. I was surprised they didn’t notice it when they came home. Lucky me.
Then I realized, the chime would sound if I opened the front door. I could not leave.
Morning was going to come and I heard him say they would go for a run. I just needed to be in a part of the condo where they would not find me and wait for them to leave in the morning.
I turned around and walked toward the kitchen, the clock on the microwave said two fifty-six in the morning. I had been in his closet for nearly five hours.
I needed to find a room he was not going to walk into in the morning. The penthouse had guest rooms, so I went to the first one, and pushed the door open.
I immediately realized it was a child's room.
I panicked, until I realized no one was in there.
The bed was made up, a navy comforter with race cars on it.
There was a small desk against the wall with crayons in a cup and a coloring book open to a half-finished page.
There was a basketball on the floor next to a bookshelf, and the bookshelf had children's books on three of the four shelves.
There was a framed photo on the dresser.
I picked it up to see it was a photo of Julian, a boy I recognized to be his nephew, and Julian’s arm around another little boy I did not recognize.
I looked closer and realized the boy resembled Alyssa.
This was her son? Julian was looking at the camera with the face of a man with a family. The face of a man with a son. Hers.
He had given this room to a child who was not his. I had been at his condo a few times over the years, and I had not been invited past the kitchen.
I began to see red.
I closed the door of the room and walked further down the hallway until I found the laundry room. I went inside and closed the door. I sat down on the floor with my back against the dryer, pulled my robe tighter around me, and I stared at the wall.
I sat like that until I started to shake.
She just got here. What did she have that I did not?
She had a child. Scandal. Debt too, I’d heard. She had a body that had been used, a name that had been in the news, a life that had been picked over by strangers on television. She had failed at her first marriage. She had lost her house. She had —
She had nothing.
She had nothing that I did not have. She had less than I had. I was a woman with my own brand and my own following and my own income, and he had given her the only thing I had ever wanted from him.
What was the difference between her and me? I did not have an answer. I sat there and tried to think of an answer and the only answer that came to me was that there was no answer.
She was beautiful, but I was beautiful too. She was successful, but so was I. She seemed smart, but I was smart too.
She had a child, but a child was not a good thing to a single man with none of his own yet. A child was a thing in the way. A child was supposed to be the reason a man like Julian would not be available to a woman like her.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and sat racking my brain.
I had not been wrong. Something else had happened. Something had been done to me by her. I had been the one to soften him. I was the one who had patience and who wore him down for years, pushing him to the space where he was open to more… open to love.
I had earned that from him and this bitch skipped her broken ass into town and stole him from me.
I sat in the dark, in the laundry room, shaking, and I waited for the morning.