Chapter 2 Everything Changes #2
Handle things. Like I'm a situation. An obstacle. A loose end that needs to be tied up before he can move on to whatever comes next. Nine years and I'm something he needs to handle.
And then there's what she said. Kallie. She believed him too.
He told her he was almost finished with me.
That it was basically over. He lied to both of us.
He sat across from me at this table in this kitchen and kissed the side of my head and said "love you" on his way out the door while he was sleeping with someone else.
While he was telling that someone else that I was already gone.
I feel sick. Not the dramatic kind. Not the kind where I cry or scream or throw things.
Just a deep steady nausea that sits in my stomach and doesn't go away.
It's the feeling of realizing that the ground you've been standing on for almost a decade was never solid.
It just looked that way from where you were standing.
My phone buzzes again from the kitchen counter.
I can hear it vibrating against the granite even from the bedroom.
Kirk again probably. Wondering why I'm not answering.
Wondering if something is wrong. Maybe he's starting to worry.
Maybe he looked out his patio door and saw my car pulling away and now he's trying to figure out how much I heard.
Or maybe he didn't notice anything at all. Maybe he's too wrapped up in his own problems to think about me right now. Maybe I've always been an afterthought and it just took this long for me to see it.
I lie in bed and I don't cry. I want to. I can feel it building behind my eyes but the tears don't come. Instead I just feel hollow. Empty in a way I've never experienced before. The part of me that believed in things is just gone and everything else is still here waiting for instructions.
I think about calling Amanda. She would come over immediately. She would bring wine and anger and every "I told you so" that she's been holding back for years. But I'm not ready for that. I'm not ready for someone else's reaction. I'm barely managing my own.
I think about calling my mother. She would listen quietly and then say exactly the right thing in exactly the right way because that's who she is. But I'm not ready for that either. Not tonight.
Tonight I just need to be here. In this bed. In this house. In this new version of my life that started about an hour ago when I heard a woman named Kallie tell my boyfriend of nine years that she's carrying his baby.
The phone buzzes one more time. Then it stops.
The house goes quiet again.
I close my eyes and try to sleep but my mind won't stop moving.
It cycles through moments. All the small things I noticed and ignored.
The weekend two months ago when Kirk said he had a conference in Bridgeport and I didn't question it because why would I?
The new cologne he started wearing in January that he said a coworker recommended.
The afternoon last month when I called his office and the receptionist said he'd left early for a personal appointment.
The receptionist. That was probably Kallie.
I was talking to her while she was sleeping with my boyfriend and neither of us knew what the other was to him.
Or maybe she did know. She said he told her he was almost finished with me.
So she knew I existed. She just believed his version of what I meant to him.
What did I mean to him? What do nine years add up to when the person you gave them to never valued them the way you did?
I rearranged my life for Kirk. I turned down the promotion.
I stopped traveling with Amanda. I put money toward his truck.
I waited patiently for him to be ready for the next step.
Marriage. A house together. A real shared life instead of this half-together arrangement we've been maintaining for years.
And he was never planning any of it. He was just comfortable. I was convenient and familiar and I never demanded anything he wasn't willing to give. So he stayed. Not because he loved me but because leaving would have required effort.
I turn onto my side and pull the blanket up to my chin.
The room is dark except for the faint glow of the streetlight outside my window.
I listen to the house settle. The soft tick of the hallway clock.
The refrigerator humming in the kitchen where two bags of Thai food are sitting untouched because I drove across town to surprise a man who has been lying to me for months.
I don't set an alarm for the morning. I'll wake up when I wake up.
And when I do I'm going to start figuring out what comes next.
Not with Kirk. Not with some dramatic confrontation where I scream and he apologizes and we try to work through it the way couples on television always seem to do.
I'm not going to give him the chance to explain.
I'm not going to sit across from him and listen to him say it didn't mean anything or that he was confused or that it just happened.
Things don't just happen. People make choices.
He made his. And now I need to start making mine.
I think about what I know. We aren't married so there's no divorce to file.
We don't own property together. But we do have shared finances.
A joint savings account that I've been putting money into every month for almost four years.
Credit cards with both our names on them.
Monthly bills that overlap. Small financial threads that have woven our lives together in ways I never worried about because I trusted him.
I'll need to untangle all of it. Carefully. Quietly. Without giving Kirk the chance to hide anything or move anything or spend anything that belongs to me.
I'll need help. Professional help. Someone who knows what they're doing.
I think about Amanda. She'll know what to do.
She always knows what to do when it comes to practical things.
She's the most organized person I've ever met and she doesn't let emotions cloud her judgment the way I do.
She'll be furious. She'll want to drive to Kirk's apartment and tell him exactly what she thinks of him.
But she'll also help me figure out the next step because that's who she is.
Tomorrow. I'll call her tomorrow.
I close my eyes. My mind is still running through everything. Every conversation. Every excuse. Every night he stayed at his apartment instead of driving twenty minutes to be here with me. All of it makes sense now. Terrible sense. The kind of sense that you wish you could un-know.
But you can't un-know something. You can only decide what to do with it.
I pull the blanket tighter and wait for sleep.
It takes a long time. But eventually it comes.