“Six?” The word left my lips on an exhaled breath. I glanced around the apartment and noticed how all of my things were put away and only his were out. I usually worked until midnight on Wednesdays. So this was what he did. “Get out,” I finally managed to say. I pointed toward the door, and my temper started to catch up with me as my chest rose and fell in rapid breathes from the effort of trying to hold myself together. “Get the fuck out!” I screamed. “Get out of my fucking apartment!” I threw his cologne at him, and the woman took the opportunity to dash out the door, only in panties and a t-shirt.
He dodged the cologne and held up his hands to try and placate me. “Baby, it wasn’t what it looked like.”
I grabbed the lamp and tossed it at him next. The bulb broke as soon as it hit the floor. “So, you weren’t fucking her?” I threw the Rolex watch his father got him and it slammed against the wall, right behind his head. “You’re a real piece of shit!”
“You know I love you. It’s just been always you. You know? I slipped okay. I made a mistake—” He took a step closer.
“No.” I grabbed my jewelry box, lifted it above my head, and grunted when I slung it through the air.
“Lucy! Oh my god!” The wooden box hit his foot, and he collapsed to the bed, groaning and holding his toes in pain.
Good. I hope I broke them!
“—I love you.” His words came out as a whine. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
I pressed my palms to my eyes when they started to burn. I’m going to cry. It was all catching up with me now. “You never loved me. You have been cheating on me for how long?”
He didn’t say anything.
“How long!”
“A few years,” he mumbled, tightening the sheet around his waist.
A laugh that could only be described as disbelief expelled from my lungs. “A few years?” A million scenarios played in my head. Did he have sex with all of them without a condom? How many women? I had to get tested now. It had been a few months since we last had sex, but I never thought he would do this to me. I never thought he was so cruel. “Get out. I never want to see you again.”
“Muffin,” he used the pet name he gave me ten years ago on our first date because I had muffin on the side of my mouth. “Please—”
“You don’t ever get to call me that again. Get out.”
He held his arms out for
me, and tears swam in his eyes. The nerve of him! “I said leave!” My voice broke, and he slowly took his keys in hand, gathered his wallet, and stepped over the mess of glass on the floor. “We need to talk about this. We will talk once things calm down. I don’t care how I need to fix this, but I will. I love you. It’s always been you. I fucked up.”
“You’re only sorry because you got caught,” I whispered as he stood next to me. I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes forward, hating the warmth coming from his body right now. Hating how I smelled the sweat and sex in the air. “I never want to see you again, Brian.” A tear rolled down my face, and I stepped forward, my boots crunching on the glass. I needed to get away from him.
“Lucy—”
“---Are you stupid? I said leave,” I shouted, pushing him against his chest. He stumbled backwards and out the door, his hand flew to the sheet hanging on his hips when he threatened to fall, and I slammed the door in his face. I locked the handle, the deadbolt, and the chain. I turned around and slid down the wood and finally let go and cry.
Heavy sobs wracked my body to the point where I couldn’t breathe. I thought about all the memories we shared, all the laughs, all the times he told me he loved me, and everything was a lie. My first love was nothing but lies.
The wine was still spreading, the puddle expanding as if it had a mind of its own. It got closer to me. Sadness replaced my anger again. I stood, wiped the tears off my face, and marched to the bed. Forcing my hands between the mattress and the box spring, I squatted and used my raged fueled muscles to lift.
Well, I tried to lift, but wow, I did not remember mattresses being this heavy. I grunted, trying again, but all I ended up doing was sliding it over. Sniffling, I wiped my cheek against my shirt and unzipped my purse, grabbing my phone and called my brother Logan.
It rang four times, and for a split second, I didn’t think he was going to answer. “Hey, sis. What’s up?” the voice I depend on the most comforts me instantly, but the pain from the person I loved more than life still lingered.
“Logan.”
“What’s wrong?” He was alert, and I heard his truck starting in the background. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“He cheated on me,” I sobbed, holding my hand over my heart to keep it from shattering into a billion pieces. “I saw it, Logan. In the bed. In our bed.”
“That piece of shit. I’m going to kill him.” Logan’s deadly tone made me shiver, and I knew he meant what he said. He never liked Brian. He always told me to break up with him and get away, that I could do better.
I took what he said with a grain of salt because Brian and I had been together for so long, I didn’t want to put effort into someone else. Brian was never perfect; none of us are, but to cheat? I guess Logan had been right all along. He called it. Logan said years ago that Brian was going to hurt me. I asked how he knew, and all he said was, “I can see it in his eyes.”
At the time, I shrugged it off because I didn’t know what that meant.