Dear Ex, See you never

Millicent’s pov

Is that… moaning? I’m sure it is. The sound is insanely familiar, it can hardly be mistaken. As I step into the doorway, the first thing i notice is the sound. Not just… breathing, but heavy, with crazy rhythm, too intimate to belong to anyone other than two people who should never be sharing oxygen. I take one step into the doorway and my world ends. “What the fuck?” I whisper under my breath

Brian, who’s my husband by the way, is inside me…no, not inside me, inside her, my best friend, Ria, skin to skin, tangled in the sheets I washed yesterday, the sheets that still smell faintly of my perfume.

Gosh, the sight of them make me want to give into my knees but not yet. His hands are on her hips like they’ve always belonged there, her head is thrown back on my pillow. My pillow, the one I slept on just last night while waiting for Brian to come home.

I freeze and my throat burns so hard it feels like I’m swallowing fire. I am. My hands won’t move because they can’t, neither do my lungs, and for a heartbeat, I don’t think I exist. Suddenly, they both see me and neither screams, neither apologizes, neither even scrambles for clothes. Shameless cunts.

Brian just lifts himself off her like he’s annoyed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and looking at me like i’m the one who walked in on something disgusting.

“Fuck, Milli,” he mutters, grabbing his shirt from the floor. “Could you not fucking knock?”

Is he? No. The words punch the air out of me. “this is…this is our room.”

“Yeah? And?” he shrugs. shrugs like this is all just a mild inconvenience. “Maybe if you hadn’t been so emotionally exhausting all the fuckin time, I wouldn’t have needed… this.”

I feel the knot in my stomach tighten. “How long? How long have you been cheating on me with my best friend?” I manage to speak.

Ria sits up, dragging the blanket over her chest as if modesty matters now. Witch! She won’t even meet my eyes and her lips keep trembling, but not with guilt. No, with fear of Brian’s reaction. She always wanted his approval more than she ever wanted my friendship. How could I not have seen it?

“Mil,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean…it just…”

“Don’t fucking talk,” Brian snaps at her, then turns that chilled, dead-eyed gaze back to me. “Listen, you’re not enough for me. you haven’t been for a long time, I don’t enjoy you anymore. I just didn’t know how to tell you. Now you know.”

The humiliation hits me in a single violent wave, making my legs shake, and my vision tilts. I grip the doorframe to stay upright.

“We have a child Brian,” I whisper. “Josh is just two. We’re a family.”

“We were,” he corrects, buttoning his shirt like he’s getting ready for work, not ending a marriage. “But i’m done pretending. I want a divorce.”

Ria flinches, fighting the smile that forms on her face, and failing. I want to scream, and break something, to claw the betrayal out of my skin, but all I can do is stand there, half in shadow, half in the light of the lamp that illuminates the bed they ruined. Our Bed.

“Why her?” I choke. “Why my best friend?”

His mouth twists. “Because she isn’t you. She’s tighter.”

He didn’t just say that. But he did, and that explains everything, or nothing. He met me a virgin and all of a sudden, I’m not tight enough? Of course he thinks i am the problem here and i should apologize for walking in on them.

I feel something inside me tear, so loud I can hear it. A mental rip like fabric tearing. I don’t say anything else, because if I open my mouth now, I’ll fall apart in front of the two people who least deserve to see me break.

I turn around and walk away, with my shame intact. At least I’ve got some, unlike Ria. I focus on breathing, one slow painful inhale at a time, until I reach my son’s room. Josh is asleep in his little dinosaur pajamas, curled up with the stuffed bunny he named “Mr. Hop.” His innocence and his safety is my entire reason for existing.

My whole body trembles as I pack, his clothes, his favorite toy cars, diapers, wipes, formula, his little shoes with velcro straps, and his blanket.

He stirs when I lift him, but he doesn’t wake, and his arms loop instinctively around my neck. I don’t look back when I walk out of the house, and I don’t wait for Brian to follow, because He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

The cold air outside hits me like a slap not bigger than the one I just received. I strap Josh into the car seat through tears that won’t stop pouring. I can’t breathe, or think, or understand how the world is still turning when mine just collapsed like a building right on top of my fuckin head.

My hands shake terribly during the whole drive to my mother’s house, the only place I have left. Each streetlight flashes across my face like a spotlight, illuminating my humiliation over and over. Well done Universe!

When I pull into the driveway, the house looks smaller than I remember. It’s older now and tired. Inside, mom is asleep on the couch, a bottle of alcohol in her hand, she passed out in front of the screaming TV, that was the usual. I put Josh to bed again, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. he sniffles once, then sighs, sinking into sleep, with no idea that everything changed tonight. I do envy him.

In the silence of my mother’s guest room, I finally let my knees give out, landing on the floor, with my back against the bed, and my clothes smelling like tears and betrayal, my skin still burning with Brian’s words.

I bury my face in my hands and cry. That raw, ugly sobbing that rips out of your chest because there’s no strength left to hold it in. My tears soak my palms, my wrists, my t-shirt, and my body curls in on itself, small and devastated.

“this is how a life ends,” I whisper to the empty room, voice cracking apart. “not with silence… but with betrayal.”