embraced her, breathing her in.
God, I had missed her.
I leaned in to kiss her but my heart sank when she abruptly pushed me back.
“Were you just coming to visit your mother?”
I realized how crappy it looked that I supposedly didn’t have time to see her this week with my workload, yet the first person I came to visit when I got back was my mother whom she knew rarely saw me anyway. I felt like an asshole.
I was an asshole.
“Yeah, I just hadn’t heard from her in a while and wanted to check in,” I said.
There was a bit of an awkward silence and Allison searched my eyes. The look on her face proved she knew something was off with me.
“I see,” she said coldly.
Feeling like my world was crumbling around me, I grabbed her hand.
“Allison…what’s wrong…talk to me,” I whispered, my voice breaking up.
“Nothing, Cedric. I am just surprised to see you, is all. You said you still felt a little under the weather when we spoke this morning when you were in New York and you texted me that you’d be working late into the night after you got back. Then, you show up here, certainly not working and you seem absolutely fine. I wonder if there is something you are not telling me?”
I seriously wanted to shit my pants.
Sounding like an idiot, I tried to buy more time before responding. “What do you mean?”
Allison’s face suddenly turned a shade of red I had never seen before and her breathing was so rapid, her chest rose up and down visibly. I knew she caught me in my lie and I began to imagine that this horrid look she was giving me now would be only a fraction of the pain she would feel when I told her the whole truth.
I needed to go.
I couldn’t do this anymore.
I loved her too much to go any deeper into this relationship.
I can’t lie to her anymore.
Then she floored me with her next question, as her eyes began to water.
“Is there someone else, Cedric?”
I stared at her in silence. My heart was exploding out of my chest and I felt my eyes begin to well up. The love I felt for this woman was indescribable and yet, I looked her dead straight in the eyes and lied through my teeth one last time as my breath hitched and my voice shook.
“Yes…yes, there is.”
Allison stared at me frozen in shock as tears fell down her cheeks. My hand trembled as I struggled to hold it in place to stop it from rising to wipe her tears away, something I desperately wanted to do, but couldn’t allow myself to. I had no idea what to do or say and just stayed there watching her cry as my own tears began to fall visibly.
Just then, the front door opened and my mother walked in. She looked puzzled as she took in the sight of Allison and me staring at each other in her hallway.
“Cedric…what are you doing here? What is going on?” she asked.
I looked over at my mother wishing again that I could disappear into thin air.
“Mom,” I said, my voice shaking.
My mother walked over to me, giving me a hug, then seemed to notice that my eyes were watery, which prompted her to jolt back.
She then immediately looked over at Allison’s sullen face, and then looked back at me. Her grim expression showed that she understood something was very wrong between us.