Chapter Twenty-Two Nora #3
She moved to the bag, hesitating before she picked it up and opened it, the ziplock making a loud noise over the top of all the beeping in the room. Announcing to the world: I can’t trust my husband.
But she couldn’t.
He’d put them in this position. He’d abandoned her. As Sam had said, he’d left her alone while he’d dealt with his issues, but he hadn’t done a thing to include her. She’d been trying to be . . . open minded or cool.
No.
She’d been trying to not be a bother.
The realization stopped her in place. She’d have never said that was her.
She’d been so sure she was herself—her brash, bold self—all the time.
But not with him. She’d left her personality confined to her office.
She hadn’t told him it hurt her that he was leaving.
She hadn’t even let herself feel the hurt.
She’d told herself she had to be okay with it.
She’d prioritized his feelings, his needs, over her own because she’d convinced herself she was too damaged to be allowed to have the final say in anything.
That he was the one who knew how life, marriage, and relationships were supposed to be because he’d grown up in a situation that was functional and she hadn’t.
She’d convinced herself that he was whole, and she was half.
That she would always have to follow him because he knew how to walk on a road that wasn’t broken.
But she hadn’t listened to herself. To her own needs. To her own intuition.
She’d buried it.
Heart in her throat, she took the phone out of the bag and held it in her palm. It saw her face and tried to unlock, shivering because it didn’t recognize her and asking for a pin.
She entered it—his mom’s birthday, it had always been that.
It unlocked, and she looked at the screen. At the bright-red notifications on his messages numbering in the hundreds now. At the apps and icons. His D&D app. His bird-watching app. The little weird things that made him him.
Then she opened the messages.
Tara.
That was the top name, the most messages.
That was her name. Examine meee Tara.
With her heart in her throat, Nora clicked on the name and looked at the messages.
I just need to know if you’re okay.
I know you said not to message you but I’m so worried.
They won’t tell me anything because I’m not on any of your paperwork. They just took you away and I have no idea if you’re even alive.
Divorced from the context of all this, Tara’s messages were sort of sad. But she wasn’t on any of his papers because Nora was on them. Because Nora was his wife, and Tara was a woman he’d met only a month or so ago. Because Nora had given Ben years of her time, her love, her body.
She scrolled up blindly until she hit a photo. Not explicit. Just the two of them. Tara was holding on to him and gazing at him with adoration. Love ya!
The accompanying message was enough. She didn’t need to see any more.
She stared at the picture, trying to see what Ben was thinking, feeling. She didn’t see the same level of adoration in his eyes that she saw in Tara’s. He looked like Ben. It made her feel sick. Was she Tara? Gazing at him in utter, total adoration while he looked . . . fine?
While he looked like he was just . . . going through the motions of their relationship?
Even the affair didn’t make him look adoring or giddy.
It was a weird thing to be upset about. But God, if he was going to sleep with another woman, shouldn’t he be beyond control? Enraptured? Enchanted? Something?
Instead, he just looked like some guy. Standing there with any woman.
It was maybe worse than seeing a video of them screwing.
Seeing him look at Tara like he’d been married to her for ten years. Seeing the disparity between her adoration and his, like she was looking in a mirror of her own life.
She’d been so happy. Was she rewriting the truth now to make it hurt less? Or had she really been with a man who just didn’t see her or love her the way she’d loved him?
She scrolled up just one more screen length and could see that he’d . . .
Sent Tara a picture of his dick.
She threw the phone down on the bed. God.
Why were they all the same? Why? Why were they all like this?
Soraya’s good-Christian husband and her hipster-atheist husband and Daisy’s blue-collar construction-worker husband.
Why? Why had they given so much for so long to these assholes who took more pictures of their junk than they’d ever taken of the women who loved them?
She sat in a chair near the bed, head in her hands. She wasn’t crying. She was just . . .
Ben groaned, and she jerked her head upward in time to see him fidgeting beneath his blanket.
She stood and moved to the bed, his eyelids fluttering as she stared down at him.
Every movement he made pissed her off even more.
Because it was evidence he wasn’t dying, which cleared the field for her fury.
His eyes fluttered more and then opened.
That was when her fury exploded. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “It’s time to wake up. Our marriage is over.”