Chapter 52
FIFTY-TWO
Reese
I stare straight ahead at the road growing slick with rain, where one streetlight is flickering on and off. Victoria keeps opening her mouth like she’s going to say something and then closing it again.
I have rendered her speechless for the first time in our entire friendship.
Here’s the thing that no one tells you about being good. Once people have decided that’s who you are, it’s who you have to always be. It’s the same with being weak. People see you one way and refuse to ever see you another.
My marriage to Lawrence was a runaway train that I couldn’t stop. I knew who he really was. The closer we got to our wedding, the clearer it became that his whole life would be dedicated to sucking the life out of me until I was a dry husk.
I watched what I ate, keeping track of my calories so that my body never looked any different.
I even stayed away from him when my period was due so that he would not see me bloated.
I kept quiet when we were out with other couples, sipped my drink slowly and smiled as he talked and talked and talked.
I went to visit his parents on special days instead of mine.
I agreed that I didn’t need to work after we were married because my job would be to take care of him.
I wore the dresses he favoured and never changed my hair without consulting him.
I went to cooking lessons with his mother so that I would know how to make all his favourite dishes.
I agreed that I would get pregnant right away despite telling him that I wanted to travel as a couple, enjoy our years together when it was just us.
And I knew that I would not survive my marriage to him.
I told Camilla all that on the night I met her at the bar, the night I got purposefully drunk and determinedly shed my inhibitions and boundaries.
I told her all of it and even though I was drunk, I knew she was enjoying each revelation, savouring each morsel of my misery because that’s who she was.
I don’t know if it was a conscious decision or an unconscious decision to say what I said when she put me in a taxi.
I don’t know if I planned, from my first sip of tequila, to whisper in her ear, ‘It should have been you who hooked up with him. It still should be. You can do that for me, can’t you? ’
She asked me if I was joking because she knew I wasn’t.
And then she sent me on my way. After falling asleep as I got home, without even taking off my make-up or clothes, I woke a few hours later, desperately thirsty and immediately sent her a message trying to take it all back.
I lay awake for hours, twisting with anxiety as I thought about letting everyone down, about having to cancel the wedding and what that would do to my parents, especially my father.
I messaged her again and again and I tried; I really tried to take it all back.
When she finally replied with a thumbs up emoji, I thought I had gotten through to her, that she understood.
When she asked us over for a final night of all single girls, I thought it was over.
I thought I had taken it back. Even though I never really wanted to take it back.
I asked her to do it. And it got me out of a situation that I would never have had the courage to leave.
‘I should have thanked her instead of cutting her out of my life,’ I say to Victoria after I have explained. But I couldn’t speak to her again. ‘I should have stopped you from trying to hurt her,’ I tell Victoria. ‘That’s my truth, my real truth.’
‘I just…’ says Victoria and she shakes her head.
‘But I was still young and I was, once again, in a situation that I couldn’t get out of. I let you do everything you did and I lay in my bed and wallowed.’
Victoria doesn’t say anything and I am finding her silence unnerving. I babble on.
‘So, you see, I’m not good. Maybe I never really have been. Maybe my goodness is the lie.’