I watched him all day yesterday. He looks good. He spends a lot of time alone during the day. I wondered about that. When he heads out of the city at night, he drives a long, lean car and he talks on the phone almost from the second he closes the door.
Last week I watched him three times. All day. I watched his building when he went into the office, I watched for him to leave for lunch. I walked a quarter of a block behind him. I could have said his name and he would have heard me. I watched him leave his office at the end of the day, never at the same time. And I watch him go to the gym. Then…I watch him in his sweats…head out to where he lives.
I watch her too.
She travels a lot. She left yesterday again for a trip. She’s a consultant I know…I know this much to be true about her. I also know she’s young, pretty, looks just like I did when I was her age. Ten years younger. She’s ten years younger than he and I. He asked her to marry him six months after he humiliated me. After I’d sent out invitations, after he decided he didn’t want me anymore.
When she left it was in a town car. Expense account. She left early enough that he wasn’t up with her. He usually is. He usually walks her to the door and kisses her, lingeringly…already missing her with his hand at the nape of her neck. Once, he put both hands on each side of her cheek and kissed her on the forehead. I drove off that day fumbling with the wipers in the rain. He’d kissed me so many times just that way and the pain that shot through me watching him do the same to her almost killed me. Almost killed me…right there in front of his home in the county I’d told him I wanted to buy our first home. Right there across from his well manicured lawn.
I wonder what he would have said had he found my body in front of his house that day in the rain. I was wearing all black, Nike yoga wear. Big sunglasses, even in the rain. I didn’t have anything to identify me and I was driving the cash car I’d purchased months before and never registered. Would he have cried? Would he have remembered how much I loved him, how much I’d done to help him be the man he’d become? Would he remember the sacrifices I’d made to make sure he could finish school without any stress? Would he be sorry? Would he kiss me lingeringly one.last.time? On my cold, dead lips, my left hand still wearing the diamond engagement ring he’d given me and insisted I keep once he humiliated me. After I’d already sent out the invitations.
Would he remember that I gave him five years of loving him? Would he be sorry?
He should be sorry.
Sometimes I still smell him and I inhale way deep inside myself. I drink in his smell just as I drink in the sight of him. Even today.
I haven't been touched by another human since last he touched me and when I touch myself...I imagine it's him. My memories sustain me.
For now.
That should be our home. That should be me pregnant with our child instead of her. But our baby died. Three months pregnant. Three months of him telling me how much he wasn’t ready to be a father. Of nothing but stress until it killed my baby. And then…he felt free and I felt trapped inside my mind screaming, kicking, willing my body to die. When he told me he was moving out…I was already gone. My mind…it was already gone.
I haven’t spoken with him since. I disappeared from his life and he’s never asked anyone about me. Because he doesn’t care. Because he hates me and wishes I never existed. Wishes he could scrub his brain free of the memories of me.
So I watch him. And I watch her. But mostly…I watch him.
I watch him.
And I wait.
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