Chapter 4 Proof #2
In bed that night while he's asleep I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.
The feeling in my chest is hard to describe because it keeps changing.
Anger rolls into sadness which rolls into disbelief which rolls into humiliation which rolls into a strange cold clarity that keeps all the other emotions from drowning me.
I should be crying. I should be falling apart.
But the part of me that wants to collapse has been slowly replaced over these weeks by something harder and quieter that just needs to know.
I need to see the messages. The receipts and the notebook and the social media and the mismatched stories all point to the same conclusion but they're circumstantial.
They're a case built on patterns and coincidences and a gut feeling that I can't prove to anyone.
If I confront Blake with receipts he'll have an explanation for every one of them.
He'll call me paranoid. He'll say I'm imagining things.
He'll turn it into a conversation about trust and somehow I'll end up apologizing for going through his pockets.
I need the messages on his phone. The ones from Hailey. The ones I saw a preview of three weeks ago. I need to read them and I need to see them and I need to have enough that no story, no excuse, and no amount of charm will save him.
Several days later I get what I need.
It's a Tuesday evening. I'm in the kitchen making dinner. Blake is sitting at the counter scrolling through his phone while he talks to me about something a guy on his crew said today. He gets a text and laughs at it and types a quick response. Then his phone rings. It's Ronnie.
Blake answers and walks toward the living room.
He talks to Ronnie for a minute about plans for the weekend.
While he's talking he sets his phone on the kitchen counter to grab a beer from the fridge.
He takes the beer and walks back toward the living room, still talking, and leaves the phone on the counter.
The screen is still active. He was in the middle of a text conversation and he didn't close it before Ronnie called. The phone is sitting there, unlocked, screen up, with a message thread open.
The message thread is with Hailey.
I have maybe five minutes before he finishes the call or realizes his phone isn't in his hand. Maybe less.
I pick it up. My hands are steady. The shaking stopped weeks ago. Whatever part of me used to tremble at the thought of discovering something terrible has been hardened by three weeks of receipts and notebooks and ceiling staring. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm just here for the truth.
I scroll.
The conversation goes back months. Not weeks. Months. There are dozens and dozens of messages. I can't read them all. I don't have time. But I read enough.
I read Hailey telling Blake she wants to see him again soon. Blake responding that he'll tell me he's going to Ronnie's. Hailey saying she booked a room at a motel off the highway. Blake saying he'll be there by eight.
I read Hailey asking Blake if he ever feels guilty about what they're doing. Blake saying he doesn't want to think about it. Hailey saying she doesn't either. Then both of them changing the subject to when and where they're meeting next.
I read Blake telling Hailey that he needs to be more careful because I've been asking questions about where he goes at night. Hailey responding that he should use Chase as a cover more often because Chase is easy and doesn't check in with me directly.
They've been using Chase as an alibi. Deliberately.
Intentionally. Naming a real friend, a real person who trusts both of them, and placing him in real locations to cover up the fact that Blake is somewhere else with Hailey.
Chase has no idea. He's been an unwitting part of this for God knows how long and he'll probably feel sick when he finds out.
I scroll further. I read a message where Hailey says she saw me at the salon and felt weird about it for a few hours afterward. Blake responds by telling her not to think about it. Then he asks her what she's wearing.
I keep going. There's more. There's always more.
Messages about meeting up. Messages about canceling because something came up with me or with Hailey's schedule.
Messages about close calls where I almost walked in on a phone conversation or where someone from the friend group almost saw them together.
They laughed about those close calls. Both of them.
There are messages that are sexual. Specific. Explicit. Messages that describe what they've done and what they want to do and how much they miss each other's bodies. Messages that remove every possible shred of doubt about what is happening between my fiancé and my friend.
This is not a drunken kiss at a party. This is not a one-time mistake that spiraled into something more.
This is an affair. Ongoing. Deliberate. Carefully planned and carefully hidden.
They have been meeting in motels and at bars and probably at Hailey's apartment for months.
They have been lying to me together. Coordinating their stories.
Using my trust and my love and my willingness to believe the best of people as cover for something ugly and selfish and cruel.
I hear Blake wrapping up his phone call with Ronnie in the living room.
I put his phone back on the counter exactly where it was. Same spot. Same angle. Screen still active. I walk to the bathroom and I close the door and I lock it.
I sit on the closed toilet lid and I put my face in my hands and I cry.
It's the first time I've cried since this started.
All those weeks of receipts and notebooks and cold careful investigation and not a single tear.
But now the dam breaks and everything comes out at once.
The anger. The humiliation. The grief. The loss of something I didn't even realize I was mourning until this exact moment.
I'm mourning my future. The house. The wedding.
The life I spent six years building with a man who has been lying to me for months.
I'm mourning the version of Blake I believed in.
The one who proposed in his truck with shaking hands.
The one who talked about our future like it was the most important thing in the world.
That version doesn't exist anymore. Maybe he never did.
Maybe the man in the other room has always been this person and I just loved him too much to see it.
He's going to walk back in here any minute and call me "Lar" and ask what's for dinner while Hailey's messages sit on his phone. He'll smile at me and I'll smile back and neither one of us will acknowledge what's really happening in this apartment.
I cry silently. Blake is one room away. He can't hear me. He can't know that I know. Not yet. Not until I'm ready.
I look at myself in the mirror above the sink. My eyes are red. My face is blotchy. I look tired and hurt and angry and broken and I hate every part of what I see because none of this is my fault.
I did nothing wrong. I saved money. I worked. I trusted him. I loved him. I let him hold me and kiss me and make promises he was breaking before the words left his mouth.
And he chose Hailey.
I wash my face. I press cold water against my eyes until the redness fades. I take a breath and I unlock the door and I walk back to the kitchen.
Blake is sitting at the counter again. His phone is in his hand. He looks up at me.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Fine. Just splashed some water on my face. Long day."
"You want me to order food? I don't think either of us feels like cooking."
"Sure. Whatever you want."
He orders Chinese. We eat on the couch. He laughs at something on TV. I laugh when he laughs because that's what I do now. I perform. I pretend. I sit beside a man who has been sleeping with my friend for months and I eat lo mein and I smile.
Later, in bed, Blake falls asleep within minutes. He always does. His breathing deepens and his body goes slack and he is gone.
I lie in the dark.
I know everything now. I know what they've been doing. I know how long. I know how careful they've been and how many lies they've told and how many nights Blake came home to me after being with her.
I need to get out of this apartment. I need to talk to Raina. I need to make a plan.
But not tonight.
Tonight I lie in the dark next to a stranger and I breathe and I wait. I let the cold clarity settle over me because the clarity is the only thing keeping me upright.
Tomorrow I will start preparing. Tomorrow I will call my sister and tell her everything and together we will figure out what comes next.
But I am done crying for Blake Winston.
Whatever tears I had left, I just used the last of them.