Not Her Husband

Jonathan raked his fingers through his hair as he sat on the brown leather couch. Letters were scattered all around him and He was getting more and more frustrated and confused by every passing minute. Jonathan hadn’t moved from the hospital for two days straight. Him and Alice quietly taking turns to go to the washroom or taking a nap. They still hadn’t spoken a word to each other after Alice’s outburst. After two days of starving, Jonathan had fainted and the doctors had sent him to rest at home. Still shaken up by the accident and Alice’s outburst Jonathan had managed to come back to his house and had collapsed on his bed. However, he had been unable to sleep.

In the beginning, the memories which he shared with Liza kept haunting him, and then when they began to fade his mind began playing the words that Alice had said, replaying them over and over again until he couldn’t take them. The accusatory tone of Alice echoed in his ears and he was reminded of the sins he had done. Unable to sleep he had begun reading the letters. It felt as if he was reading something that he shouldn’t as if he was stealing Liza’s memories, taking them without her permission but right now they were the only things that tied him to Liza. So as he sat once again in his room, with his head in his hand he pondered upon the possibilities and circumstances which could have made Alice say those things to him. ‘You know what you have done, Jonathan’ said the voice in his head ‘and apparently Alice knows it too’.

Jonathan had never felt so insecure, his sister was angry at him and was blaming his failed relationship on some mistake he didn’t even know about. He wanted to believe that no one knew about his sins, that it was something else that Alice was talking about, there had to be something else. So he went through the past few days over and over again. His face turning sour as he remembered the pictures of Liza in some man’s embrace. He tried hard as he racked his mind for something which could have turned Alice against him but could come up with nothing except that one thing.

He began remembering the strange behavior of Liza in the past few months, it was what had prompted him to hire a private investigator to follow her. He remembered her leaving the house without telling him where she was going and whenever he asked her she gave him some vague answer. He remembered her coming late to the house and telling him that she was at some friend’s house. He remembered Liza trying extra hard to do something romantic as if she was guilty of something and was trying to make up for it ‘Are you sure it’s not your guilt that you are speaking about?’ piped up his consciousness. How had he been so sure about Liza’s infidelity? He hadn’t seen anything even remotely inappropriate and yet he had blamed her. He had jumped to conclusions without even considering that maybe something else was bothering Liza, that maybe she really was speaking the truth.

He wondered if it had been his own mistakes that had led him to push down the blame on Liza. Maybe he just wanted to justify his own acts by blaming Liza for doing the same. Was it all just to assuage his guilt? Did he really leave Liza for nothing but baseless suspicions? Jonathan realized that his sins had left an impact on him. They had destroyed his belief in faithfulness, he himself due to his own acts had forgotten what love really was. He stood up and went over to the window and shivered as the cold air hit him.

The sun was already down and now there was only a pinkish glow in the sky left as a mute reminder of the bright day. He began picking up letters from the ornate box that was kept on the black glass table under the window and began going through them till he found a letter dated three months back. He looked at the letter curiously, it was written in sloppy handwriting and had tear marks on it. He wondered what had happened to Liza on that particular day. He took the letter and settled down on the floor resting his back to the bed and began reading it.

‘16th August 2015

To Jonathan

I don’t know what to say, Jonathan, I really don’t. I am not sure what to believe in and who to believe in. It’s like the world has suddenly gone dark and I can’t find my way out. It’s suffocating me, strangling me, and making me wish that I had never seen the light because now that I have seen it and felt it, I know what I am missing out on.

When you told me that you will love me, hold me and cherish me every single day of my life, I had really believed you. I thought that you would keep your promises but I was wrong. I guess you got bored of me in past 6 years. Tell me Jonathan, is my heart so worn out now for you to hold, that you threw it away like trash. I believed you when you told me you love me, I believed in you when you kissed me and held me, I believed in your dreams and your soul but I guess it was all for nothing.

I should have known that our happily ever after was too good to last. When did you start your affair with that girl? How long have you been kissing her with the same lips with which you kiss me? I watched you come home late every night, telling me that there was some urgent meeting and I stayed up every single night waiting for you. Every time you smiled at me it was a little less bright, more fake, and more forced. I watched you distance yourself from me every day and I used to console myself saying that maybe it was stress catching up with you. But I never in a million years thought that maybe you were kissing someone else or holding someone else. The second I saw you kissing some blonde, her sitting on your lap I could hear my heartbreaking and you were so busy with her that you didn’t even see me there.

I don’t have any energy left to say anything to you, Jonathan. I should be angry at you, I should shout at you, I should slap you hard and I should pack my bags and leave this house and your life but I will stay for now because I know that what we had was real and I am not ready to give that up without a fight. I am not going to tell you that I saw you with her Jonathan instead I will prepare your favorite dinner and wait for you to come home, back to me.

Eternally in love with you,

Yours and only yours

Liza’

By the time Jonathan had finished reading the letter his eyes were red, tears were flowing through his eyes and his face was pale. The fact that Liza knew about his infidelity was all that he could think about. He knew that he shouldn’t have done it, he also knew that what he had done was so wrong that he couldn’t make up for it even if he spent his entire life asking for forgiveness. But what hurt him the most was that Liza had stayed, even after everything he had done, after everything she had seen, she had still stayed. She had stood by him even after all this and continued to love him ‘And what did you do Jonathan? Leave her for something which is in most probably not even real?’ his conscious taunted him. Could he even claim that he loved Liza? Had he really stopped loving her and broken his promise? No, he thought to himself and shook his head, he really did love Liza and still did. Even when he had cheated, he had loved Liza.

It had started out as a drunken kiss and then had escalated quickly. Between the stress and pressure of the company and the lack of time with Liza, he had started this torrid affair. Soon he began spending more time with that girl and started pulling away from Liza. He felt guilt every time he touched her, every time he kissed her Liza’s face flashed in his mind but by then he had gotten so used to it that he pushed it in some deep corner of his mind. He knew that he never cared for the girl and he also knew that he loved Liza with all his heart.

He had once promised Liza that he would never let her go, that he will do whatever it takes to keep her for eternity and then he had gone ahead and lost her for some girl he didn’t even care about. He had even lost the right to say that he loved her now because he realized that he was nothing but scum compared to Liza, he had broken her when she had given him strength, he had given her tears when she had given him nothing but smiles, he had left her when she had stuck by him even after knowing about his sins, waiting for him to come back to her.

Jonathan didn’t know for how long he sat there on the floor. Soon the pink sky turned dark leaving him in the darkness. Jonathan got up and switched up the small antique night lamp that Liza had bought. His hands were shaking and there was nothing steady about him except for the guilt in his eyes.