Elowen
The next morning, I’m home alone. It’s my day off, and the house is blissfully quiet.
My mother had texted early, wanting to spend time with the kids, so I let her know they were over at Sarah’s.
Through our newly made group chat, Mom immediately offered to drive over and pick them up so Sarah could enjoy her day off, too, giving me a few rare hours entirely to myself.
Unfortunately, the quiet doesn’’’’t last. My phone won’t stop buzzing with notifications.
I ignore it for as long as I can, focusing on folding laundry instead, but the buzzing continues.
Finally giving in, I perch on the edge of my bed and grab it.
There are fifteen messages, eight missed calls, and a dozen app notifications.
Names flash across my screen. Some are acquaintances from Julian’s corporate circle, mothers from the children’s school, my new friends from the shelter, and a handful of my own business connections.
Photos? What photos?
Another message, this time it’s from a college friend I haven’t spoken to in a decade: Just saw the Pioneer gossip column. What a snake! Here if you need to talk.
My stomach drops as I open my browser. “CARMELLA RUIZ AND JULIAN PLAZA: REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD.”
The headline sits above a photo of Julian and Carmella, his hand on the small of her back, both smiling for cameras. Her black gown sparkles under flashbulbs, her perfect profile tilted toward him adoringly.
My fingers tighten around the phone as I scroll to read.
I scan the entire article, my jaw clenching. Once done, I scroll faster, each headline worse than the last.
“JULIAN PLAZA FINDS HAPPINESS”
“CARMELLA RUIZ AND JULIAN PLAZA: REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD”
“CORPORATE AMERICA’S NEW GOLDEN COUPLE STUNS AT CHARITY GALA”
“JULIAN’S WIFE HAS A ‘I’M TOTALLY FINE’ MOMENT, WHILE HER HUSBAND MOVES ON WITH CARMELLA RUIZ”
My free hand rises unconsciously to my hair, feeling the unfamiliar shortness, the natural waves Julian always insisted I straighten. I think about my simple social media post that is making our separation and my new self a mental health crisis.
I keep scrolling, masochistically consuming every word, every photo. There’s one of them arriving, her arm looped through his. Another of them at their table, heads bent close in conversation. A third of Julian pulling out Carmella’s chair, ever the gentleman.
None of the photos show what I saw in person. I watched Julian pull away from her touch and the irritation on his face when she called him “darling.”
My phone buzzes again. This time, it’s Sarah. Have you seen this bullshit? I’m coming over. No arguments. Drop a pin.
Ah, that’s right. She doesn’t know where I live. I do as she asks, but before I can reply, another text arrives from Virginia, Julian’s secretary. Elowen, I’m so sorry about the press coverage. For what it’s worth, I’m in the office every day, and that’s not how it was.
More buzzing. More concerned messages. More people who never checked on me when I was disappearing into Julian’s shadow, who are now suddenly worried about how I’m handling his very public move toward someone new.
I toss the phone onto the bed and stand, needing distance. Thank goodness the children are with my mother right now.
About an hour later, there’s a knock on my door. Once I let her in, Sarah bursts into my living room. Her copper hair is wild around her face, and her arms are full of grocery bags that clink with what sounds suspiciously like glass bottles and ice cream. I hope it’s Ben and Jerry’s.
“Thanks again for watching the kids last night,” I say, trying to inject some normal routine into the morning.
Sarah dismisses me with a quick wave of her hand, balancing the heavy bags against her hip.
“Leo and Meredith were great, and I enjoyed meeting your mom this morning. She’’’’s sweet.
” Her expression instantly hardens again, the brief warmth vanishing.
“But that absolute asshole,” she announces without preamble.
Her eyes are bright with righteous fury, cheeks flushed like she’s been fuming all the way here.
“That spineless, image-obsessed, pathetic excuse for a human being.”
“Hello to you, too, Sarah,” I say, my voice carefully neutral.
“Don’t you ‘hello’ me.” Sarah dumps her bags onto the coffee table, the contents spilling out. Yup, Ben and Jerry’s, which rolls against glossy tabloid magazines. She points at the cover, which is emblazoned with Julian’s face. “Have you seen these?”
“I’ve seen the online coverage,” I reply, watching as she yanks open a particularly lurid publication to a two-page spread of Julian and Carmella entering the gala.
“And you haven’t set anything on fire yet? Your restraint is superhuman.” Sarah tears through the kitchen, yanking open drawers in search of spoons, only pausing to glance around my apartment. “Wow, this place is nicer than I even imagined.”
I stand perfectly still in the center of the room, watching her rage on my behalf.
“Thanks, and it’s just local gossip rags,” I say. “Julian has always been strategic about his image.”
Sarah whirls on me, brandishing a serving spoon she’s found in the wrong drawer.
“Strategic? No. This is cruelty. This is him deliberately trying to hurt you.” She stabs the spoon toward a particularly intimate photo of Julian leaning close to Carmella.
“He couldn’t even wait a decent amount of time before parading her around! ”
Her words echo, too raw and too close to the pain I’m desperately trying to contain.
“I’m fine, really,” I say, the lie sliding from my lips. How many times had I said those exact words to concerned friends when Julian criticized me at parties? When he corrected my table manners in front of colleagues? When he subtly suggested my clothes weren’t quite right for the occasion?
Sarah’s expression softens from rage to concern. She approaches slowly. “No, you’re not fine. And that’s okay.” She hands me the spoon and Half-Baked ice cream. “But you will be, especially after we eat this and plot his downfall.”
The coldness of the container against my palm feels oddly grounding. I sink onto the couch and remove the lid. Then, I take a small bite, letting the sweetness melt on my tongue while Sarah continues her tirade, pacing the narrow space between the coffee table and television.
“They’re not even trying to be subtle!” She flips through another magazine, each page turn sharp with anger. “Oh, and this quote from an ‘anonymous source’ saying they’ve, ‘Reconnected after years apart’. Give me a break!”
I nod at appropriate intervals, my spoon dipping into the ice cream. My knuckles have gone white around the handle, though I don’t remember gripping it so tightly.
Sarah finally exhales heavily and drops onto the couch beside me, her own pint full to the brim. “I’m sorry. I’m not helping, am I? Just working myself into a frenzy while you sit there being all…contained and hungry.”
“It’s fine,” I say automatically. “Your outrage is actually a little refreshing.”
“Yeah?” She bumps her shoulder against mine gently. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. I’ve got outrage to spare.”
The simple contact, shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend, nearly undoes me. “He can’t hurt you anymore, El. Not unless you let him.”
But he can, and that’s the truth I can’t admit aloud.
Julian knows exactly how to hurt me. He could do it through our children, through rewriting our history to make me the unstable wife who couldn’t handle his success.
The headlines are just the beginning. Even if he had no part in writing them, he still played his part.
“Did you see the one where they called us ‘ill-matched from the start’?” I ask. “Eight years of my life reduced to a footnote in his epic love story with Carmella.”
Sarah’s hand covers mine, warm against my ice-cream-chilled skin. “People who know you won’t believe that garbage.”
“Who really knows me, though?” The question slips out before I can catch it. “I’m not sure I even know myself. Meanwhile, as far as the public is aware, Julian has irrevocably moved on with the woman he was always meant to be with.”
Sarah doesn’t have a ready answer for that. Instead, she squeezes my hand, and we sit. After a while, Sarah gathers the tabloids into a stack and shoves them back into her grocery bag. “I shouldn’t have brought these. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pour salt on the wound.”
“It’s alright. I know where your heart was at.”
Sarah stands, stretching her arms above her head. “I’ve got to run. My shift at the shelter starts in twenty minutes, but I’m coming back tomorrow with more calories and less depressing reading material. A cozy mystery, perhaps? Maybe some Nancy Drew or R.L. Stine?”
I laugh while she hugs me tightly. “You’re stronger than you think,” she whispers against my hair. “And when you don’t feel strong, I’ve got enough anger for both of us.”
The door closes behind her, and the apartment falls silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator. I stare at the half-eaten pint of ice cream in my hands, the chocolate beginning to melt around the edges. Now that she’s gone, the pressure building behind my ribs has no outlet, no release.
I set the ice cream on the coffee table with deliberate care, my hands perfectly steady. The magazines may be gone, but their images remain burned in my memory. Julian and Carmella are the perfect couple that were always meant to be.
A testament to how thoroughly I didn’t belong. I was a secretary for a wife.
My hands begin to shake first. A subtle tremor that starts in my fingers and travels up my arms, vibrating through my chest. I stand abruptly, grabbing the ice cream carton and carrying it to the kitchen like it might save me if I put it in the freezer. If only I could freeze my sadness, too.
I reach for the freezer handle, but my trembling hand misses, knocking against the refrigerator door instead.
The ice cream slips from my grasp, landing with a soft thud on the linoleum floor.
I stare at it for a long moment, watching chocolate ooze around the container.
With the mess on the floor, my legs give way.
I slide down against the refrigerator, the cold metal seeping through my thin shirt as I crumple to the floor beside the sticky dessert.
And then, finally, I allow myself to shatter.
There are no children to stay strong for, no gala, or coworkers, or neighbors to bear witness. It’s just me, Ben, and Jerry.
I curl forward, arms wrapped tightly around my knees, making myself small as the sobs wrack my body. I haven’t cried like this in years. “Real problems are solved with logic, not theatrics,” Julian would say. Now they pour out unchecked.
I weep, not just for the marriage that’s ended, but for the woman who disappeared inside it. The woman I’m still struggling to find beneath the perfect shell Julian created. The woman whose wavy hair and button nose and real smile are only now reemerging.
And most importantly, I weep for the woman who had to lose her marriage to even begin to find herself. Because at the end of it, I still love him. I still love Julian Plaza.