Chapter Ten Julian #2
“Julian?” Briana whispers. Her hand starts to reach for me again.
Her voice is soft. Concerned. Does she really not understand what just happened? Can she not see the war being waged inside my chest? The way my lungs are seizing? The way my heart is hammering against my ribs?
“Don’t,” I snap.
Her hand halts, suspended in the air.
I see the hurt flash across her face. The confusion. Perhaps the first stirring of anger. But I don’t care. There is no room for her feelings in the space where my guilt is expanding, filling every corner, pressing against my ribs until I think they might crack.
I shake my head. My throat closes. “I can’t do this. Not again. I won’t.”
Her expression darkens. The softness drains from her face, replaced by something harder. Something colder. Gaunt. “Julian, don’t—”
“No.” I drag a hand over my face. It feels rubbery and disconnected. My palm is damp with a cold, oily sweat that smells of old adrenaline and panic. My forehead is slick. My breath is unsteady, coming in short, shallow gasps. “It’s over. For good. There is no us.”
As she stares at me, her eyes narrow into two hard, analytical slits. Her lips press together. She is trying to decide whether to fight or retreat, whether to push or let go.
“Why?”
“I love her,” I say with conviction. “I love my wife.”
Briana’s face contorts into a mask of scorn. Her siren-like beauty, which moments ago seemed soft and inviting, now looks sharp and dangerous.
“You have a strange way of showing it. Were you ‘in love’ when you were in my bed for months?”
The words land like blows.
Each one is precise.
Each one is sickeningly, undeniably true.
I have no defense. I have no excuse. I have no explanation that will make this better or different or anything other than what it is.
My jaw clenches so tight it aches. The muscles in my temples throb. I can feel the blood pounding behind my eyes, the pressure building, a physical mass of shame rising like hot bile in my throat.
“I was wrong and made a mistake. I will spend the rest of my life making sure I never make that mistake again.”
The words are not for her. They are for me. A promise. A vow. A line drawn in the sand that I will not cross again.
Briana opens her mouth. To argue, probably. To wound, even. To say something that will make this hurt less for her and more for me.
Whatever it could be, I don’t wait to hear it.
I unlock the door and walk out before she can say anything else.
I stride straight to the restroom, shoving the door open and nearly wrenching the faucet handle as I crank the water on. The sound is violent—water hammering against porcelain, drowning out the roar in my ears. The restroom smells of industrial bleach and someone’s old, stagnant urine.
I scrub my mouth.
Hard.
I use my knuckles, grinding them against my lips until I taste the tang of blood.
The water is cold, shockingly cold, but I don’t adjust the temperature.
I want the cold. I want to feel something other than her mouth’s warmth, her lips’ softness, the familiar fit of her body against mine, as if she had never left.
I scrub until my gums sting and my jaw aches.
Until the skin around my mouth is chafed and red.
Until I cannot feel her anymore—only the sting, only the ache, only the small, punishing satisfaction of erasing her.
I need to erase her. Her scent, her touch, the poison of her words.
The scent is still in my nostrils. Floral, sugary sweet.
A smell that reminds me of hotel rooms and late nights and the taste of my own failure.
I cup my hands under the faucet and bring water to my face, splashing it over my cheeks, my chin, my closed eyes.
The water drips down my neck, soaking my collar.
I grip the cold, pitted edges of the porcelain basin. The shame is coursing through me like a pink, hot, fever. My body buckles with a dry heave, a violent tightening that tears through my chest and leaves my ribs feeling like they’ve been kicked. I try to vomit it out of me.
The retch tears through my chest, empty and violent. Nothing comes up. As hard as I try.
The shame must not be in my stomach after all. It must be in my bones. It must be in my blood. It must be in the space behind my eyes, pressing outward, threatening to crack my skull.
“Never again,” I vow into the silence, my voice ragged. “Never.”
The word echoes off the tile. It sounds like a lie.
I have said never again before. I have said it in this very bathroom, in this very mirror, looking at this very face.
And then I went back. Again and again. Because Briana knew how to find me.
Because I let her. Because some part of me—some small, rotten part—wanted to be found.
The guilt is a living thing in my chest, coiling and biting. But beneath it is another feeling. Desperate and bright.
Nora is still here.
The thought arrives like sunrise over a landfill. Sudden. Warm. Illuminating the wreckage of my shame and casting it in a different light. I have not lost everything. I have not lost her.
She saw the worst of me and didn’t walk away.
That has to mean something. It has to mean there’s a chance.
She wouldn’t stay for nothing. She wouldn’t endure this silence if there wasn’t something left to save.
It’s almost touching, her endurance. It makes me feel like someone worthy, despite the fact that I am currently scrubbing my own skin raw in a public stall.
Maybe it’s because, against all odds, some part of her still loves me.
We need to escape. To get away from the wreckage I’d made and the constant shadow of my betrayal. To be somewhere Briana’s spectre couldn’t reach us. Somewhere the memory of her hands and her mouth and her whispered promises could not follow.
The idea takes root while I stand there, still white-knuckling the porcelain sink. My reflection stares back at me with sallow eyes.
A new place. A new beginning. Somewhere far from here, where the memories cannot follow.
I still have the Bali tickets.
I bought them weeks ago, in a fit of desperate optimism, hoping that a change of scenery would change everything.
We were supposed to pick a new place, but…
Forget it.
We’re going.
The decision crystallizes in my mind, solid and certain. I don’t need her permission. I don’t need her input. I know what is best for us. I know what she needs.
There’s no need for a new destination.
Bali is perfect. Nora claims she doesn’t like the ocean, but she’s never seen this ocean.
She’s never stood on a beach at golden hour with the waves lapping thirstily at her feet and the wind sweeping her hair away from her heart-shaped face.
I love it, and I know she will too—once I show her.
Once she sees it through my eyes. I’ll be so attentive, so charming, that she’ll forget she ever said no.
I’ll make her smile again.
She’ll remember why she fell in love with me. It will all come back, slowly, over time. The trust. The warmth. The quiet, comfortable intimacy of a marriage that was not broken but merely bent.
Hope flares in my chest for the first time in months.
I can fix this. I can make everything right again.
I splash even more cold water on my face, run a hand through my hair, straighten my collar, and walk out of the office, the fantasy already settling into a plan.
On the way home, I stop at a florist. I pick lilies. They’re her favourite. They look like waxy, pale tongues, soft and delicate little things. Just like her. I drive the rest of the way with the stems clenched in my fist. By the time I pull into the driveway, my pulse is racing.
The house looks the same. The windows are dark. The curtains are drawn. The door is closed. Everything is as it should be.
I head straight upstairs, take a hurried shower, and change into a fresh shirt.
The water is hot. The soap is sharp. I scrub my skin until it is pink and abraded, trying to wash away the last traces of Briana. The last traces of the man I was this afternoon.
I dress carefully. A clean button-up shirt. Stiff and crisp with starch. Fresh pants. I comb my hair. I check my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. In the pallid light of the bathroom, and the clean clothes, I look like a man who has never done anything wrong in his entire life.
I trot into the kitchen, the bouquet held like an offering. A libation for the ghost haunting my house.
“Nora?”
The room is still.
The stove is off, the counters wiped down. No chopping sounds, no simmering pots. No water gurgling in the sink. No towel draped over her thin shoulder. No small, steady presence at the counter, stirring something in a pot.
An unusual silence hangs in the air.
Maybe she’s on the balcony.
I check.
It’s empty.
The chairs are pushed in. The table is bare. The door is closed.
Maybe she’s in the laundry room.
Also empty. The dryer is cool. The basket is empty. The detergent is on the shelf, the cap closed, the measuring cup dry.
A slow, cold dread begins to creep up my body, a thread of frost through my veins.
I walk back to our bedroom, my steps heavier.
The door is open. The bed is made. The curtains are drawn. Everything is in its place. Everything is exactly as it should be.
But something is wrong.
My eyes catch on a splash of yellow against the dark wood of my desk.
A Post-it note.
In her handwriting.
My body goes rigid, the muscles in my back locking into a painful grip.
The flowers fall from my numb fingers.
Paper crinkles as they hit the floor. Waxy white petals scatter across the rug like baby teeth. Stems snap. The sound is small, almost nothing, but in the silence of the room, it is a deafening blow to my eardrums.
It is all that I can hear.
My entire world has narrowed to that small, square piece of paper.
It’s too small. A small and pathetic scrap. It shouldn’t hold this much weight.
But it does.
It holds everything.
My hands tremble as I reach for it.