On the plane to Forks I had too much time to think. Which caused me to dig deep in this last year. Everything that has happened; my mother’s cancer (her ten months, three weeks and six days’ struggle had mind-baffling – until she’d lost the war against the disease), James’ betrayal…
My entire body stung at the reminder, and I tried to stop the memory that followed.
I opened the front door.
“James, honey, are you home?”
No answer.
I dropped my bag on the floor, and knelt down to pet our dog, Jacob. He seemed uneasy, and kept looking at the bedroom door.
“What’s up, boy?”
I walked towards the bedroom. That’s when I heard her:
“Oh God, James. Yes, yes, yes! That’s the spot! Don’t stop!!”, followed by a lot of moaning.
I barricaded the door. James stood on his knees behind a redheaded girl, her hips in his hands. Their clothes were scattered on the floor, and they were fucking like animals. The girl screamed a high-pitched scream, and James started trembling – which I knew meant that he’d soon have his release.
“What the hell!!”, I yelled.
They both turned to look in my direction. James quickly slid out of the girl, and stumbled towards me, in his full naked glory.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry. It’s not what it looks like.”
Well, ain’t that a kicker.
“So, you’re saying that you and this girl were not having crazy anal sex?”
“Well, uh, yes, we were.”
“Well then, it’s exactly what it looks like.”
“I never meant for you to see this, I mean, it’s never happened before, we were just caught up in the moment.”
“Uh, James, baby…” the redhead started. “This isn’t the first time.” She looked at me. “I’m incredibly sorry, but James and I have been seeing each other for a few months. He’s never said anything about having a girlfriend. If he would’ve, I wouldn’t be seeing him. I’m sorry…”
“Yeah, is that right, James? Have you been having an affair with her? For a few months?” I asked with all the calm I could manage.
“Uh… yeah. We met down at the coffee shop, she works there. At first it wasn’t anything sexual, just a fling. But then we… had sex. And since then we’ve been seeing each other when you’re not at home.”
“Is that right? Well, I’m taking Jacob with me, and moving out. You two can continue what you were doing before I interrupted. So… you can continue your sex, and I’ll just pack up my stuff.”
The girl started putting on clothes, while James threw himself on the bed, facing the ceiling.
I stalked out of the room, to the big closet, and grabbed onto all the bags I could find. I started throwing all my stuff into the biggest bag – until I saw what bag that was. The bag that I’d brought with me when James first asked me to move in with him. I held the bag upside-down, emptying it on the floor. I picked up the next bag, but recognized the bag as the one I’d brought on our trip to his parents. After a quick glance at all the bags I’d settled for the two that didn’t have any reminiscence to James. And when I started packing I realized that most of my things also had a part of James in them. So even though I had only two medium-sized bags to fit my entire life in, I still had space over in them. So I figured that at least half of the food in the kitchen should be mine, so I raked through the fridge, and grabbed all the Hot Pockets I could find in the freezer. When I’d done that I took all cans of Diet Coke.
When I took Jacob’s leash, James put his hand on my wrist.
“Please, don’t do this. We can make this work, it doesn’t have to end this way. Please.”
His black puppy-dog eyes would have won me over, if it wouldn’t have been for the redheaded woman sneaking out of the bedroom, towards the bathroom.
“Goodbye, James.”
I was brought back into reality when the pilot announced that we were preparing to land. I wiped away the single tear that trickled down my cheek.
