Chapter Thirteen
Harrison
The morning sun didn't stream into the apartment; it crawled in, gray and sickly, highlighting the dust motes dancing over the pile of unpaid bills on the counter.
Harrison woke up on the living room rug. His neck was cricked at a forty-five-degree angle against the base of the sofa. His mouth tasted like copper and dead whiskey.
For three seconds—the blissful, merciful three seconds of semi-consciousness—he didn't remember.
Then, his brain rebooted.
Sarah.
The memory hit him like a shovel to the face. The sex. The climax. The shout. The look on Emily’s face.
Harrison groaned, rolling onto his back and covering his eyes with his forearm. He hadn't just slipped up. He hadn't just muttered a name in his sleep. He had screamed a declaration of love for his ex-wife while inside her sister.
He had nuked the bunker he was hiding in.
He lay there for ten minutes, listening. The apartment was silent. No TV. No running water. No footsteps.
The silence was worse than screaming.
He forced himself to sit up. His head throbbed with a rhythmic, dull ache. He grabbed the edge of the coffee table to hoist himself up, his joints popping. He needed water. He needed aspirin. He needed a time machine.
He walked into the kitchenette.
Emily was sitting at the small round table. She was fully dressed—black leggings, an oversized sweater, hair pulled back into a severe, tight bun. She wasn't eating. She wasn't looking at her phone. She was staring at a spot on the wall, her hands resting on her pregnant belly.
She looked like a statue carved out of ice.
Harrison cleared his throat. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room.
"Emily," he croaked.
She didn't blink. She didn't turn her head.
"I..." Harrison started, then stopped. What was there to say? I'm sorry? I was drunk? It was a slip of the tongue?
"Don't," she said. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. It lacked the shrillness of her usual tantrums. It was flat, dead, and heavy.
She turned her head slowly to look at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, but dry. The makeup from last night was scrubbed clean, leaving her face pale and stark.
"I thought," she began, picking at a loose thread on her sweater, "that if I just loved you enough, I could fix you. I thought if I gave you this baby, if I gave you a home, you would forget her."
Harrison leaned against the counter, the nausea rolling in his stomach. "Emily, I was wasted. I didn't know where I was."
"You knew exactly who you wanted," she cut him off, her eyes snapping to his. "You weren't fucking me, Harrison. You were using my body to get to her. I was just... meat."
Harrison looked down at his bare feet. He couldn't deny it. To deny it would be a lie, and he was so tired of lying.
"I can't turn it off," he whispered. "I spent five years with her. She was my wife."
"And I am the mother of your child!" Emily slammed her hand on the table, the first crack in her composure. "I am the one here! I am the one living in this dump with you! She is gone! She is happy! She is probably sleeping with someone else by now!"
The thought pierced Harrison’s chest, sharp and agonizing. Sarah with someone else.
Emily saw the flinch. She laughed, a bitter, jagged sound.
"That hurts you, doesn't it?" she sneered. "You can't stand the thought of her moving on, but you expect me to sit here and let you scream her name while you finish inside me?"
She stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the linoleum. She walked over to him, stopping inches away. She smelled of soap and cold fury.
"Here is the new deal," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I am done playing the understanding girlfriend. I am done waiting for you to get over it."
She poked him in the chest hard.
"You are going to get a job. Any job. I don't care if you're scrubbing toilets. You are going to bring money into this house."
Poke.
"You are going to stop drinking. If I smell whiskey on you again, I will lock you out."
Poke.
"And you are going to stop saying her name. You are going to bury her. Because if you ever disrespect me like that again... if you ever make me feel like a substitute in my own bed..."
She let the threat hang there. She didn't say she would leave. She couldn't leave; she had nowhere to go either. They were two rats in a bucket.
"I will make sure this child knows exactly who you are," she hissed. "I will poison him against you before he can even speak. I will make you a stranger in your own house."
Harrison looked at her. He saw the hatred in her eyes—hatred born of humiliation. She didn't love him anymore. The fantasy of the "great romance" was dead. Now, it was just a hostage situation.
"Okay," Harrison said, his voice hollow.
"Okay?"
"I'll get a job. I'll stop drinking."
"Good." Emily stepped back. She walked to the fridge and opened it, pulling out a carton of orange juice. She poured a glass with a steady hand.
She took a sip, then looked at him over the rim of the glass.
"Go take a shower," she commanded. "You smell like a distillery. And you smell like her."
Harrison didn't argue. He turned and walked into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it.
He turned on the shower, cold, full blast. He stepped in, clothes and all.
He sat on the fiberglass floor of the tub, letting the freezing water hammer against his head, trying to wash away the hangover, the shame, and the name that was branded onto his soul.
He was sober now. And the reality of his life was crystal clear.
He had traded a partner for a warden.