Yours, Stepdad

MICHAELA

"It's not my dick, asshole, my dick works fine. I know because I've been using it outside for quite a while now. It's her."

I'm about to surprise Sean, my husband, with his favorite meal, chicken nuggets and pasta, thinking that maybe tonight would be different. Maybe tonight he would actually look at me.

I step inside quietly. The house smells like his cologne, the one I bought him for our second anniversary.

His voice floats down the hallway from the living room and he's laughing loud, the way he used to laugh with me before everything changed.

As I move closer, I can hear he's on speaker phone with other voices. His college friends. The ones who still call him every week to talk about sports and women and all the things men talk about when they think no one is listening.

"Bro, I haven't touched Michaela in almost a year." Sean laughs again, but this time it sounds cruel. "I literally can’t get hard for her. I've tried. It's like my dick just dies."

The air leaves my lungs. His friends laugh and the sound is sharp like broken glass.

"What about that friend of hers?" someone asks. "The hot one with the lips?"

"Lauren?" Sean's voice changes. Becomes lower. Hungry. "Lauren is different. Oh man, Lauren. I jerked off to her I*******m three times yesterday. That body? Those lips? I imagine bending her over my desk and I'm rock hard in seconds."

I press my hand against the wall. My legs feel weak. My chest feels tight. Lauren. My best friend since freshman year of college. The woman who stood beside me at my wedding. The woman who calls me every Sunday to check on me.

"What about Michaela though?" another voice asks. "She's not ugly or anything."

"She could walk in naked right now and I'd feel nothing." Sean doesn't hesitate. He says the words like they are simple facts that cost him nothing. "It's not her face. It's just her. Something about her turns me off. Honestly, I should have never married her."

I slide down the wall until I am sitting on the floor. My hands tremble against my thighs.

For eleven months I’ve been trying.

I bought lingerie that made me feel foolish. I lit candles. I set up romantic dinners. I touched myself in the shower first so I would be ready for him, wet and wanting, only to climb into bed and have him roll away from me.

"I'm tired, Michaela."

"Not tonight, Michaela."

"Maybe tomorrow, Michaela."

I believed him every single time. I looked in the mirror and wondered what was wrong with my body. My breasts, my stomach, my thighs. 

I picked each part of myself apart trying to find the flaw. I started skipping meals. Exercising twice a day. Hating every inch of myself because my husband could not get hard for me.

And the whole time, he was thinking about Lauren.

I was never the problem.

He was.

I stand up slowly. Silent tears. Controlled breathing. Something cold settles in my chest and I let it. Cold is easier to walk on than grief.

I don't confront him. I walk to our bedroom and push aside the cotton and lace in my wardrobe until my fingers find the papers.

The divorce papers have been hidden here for three months. I asked my lawyer for them one night after Sean rejected me for what felt like the hundredth time. I told myself I would never use them. That I would try harder, fix whatever was broken, make him look at me again. I told myself I was being dramatic. Ungrateful. That plenty of women survived sexless marriages.

I sign them now. My hand doesn't tremble. My signature is clear and strong.

I leave them on his pillow beside my wedding ring. The simple gold band he slid onto my finger while he promised to love me forever.

I add a note. "I heard everything. Goodbye." I give him a reason. He never gave me one.

I pack one bag. Clothes I bought with my own money from my job at the diner. I take nothing that belonged to this life, nothing from this man who spent eleven months making me feel worthless while he fantasized about my best friend.

---

The drive to my mother's house takes four hours.

I don't turn on the radio. I don't call anyone. I just drive through the darkness with tears running silently down my face and the sound of my own breathing filling the car.

Gloria's house is two towns over. Not really home, because Gloria was never really a mother, but it's the only place I have left.

The neon sign of the diner next door flickers when I pull into the driveway at three in the morning. The letters spell out "HONEY'S" but the Y is burned out. It's been out for fifteen years.

Home, I think bitterly. The only one I have left.

I grab my bag, grateful my legs still carry me after everything, and my keys are still on the ring where I left them. I unlock the door and push it open.

I freeze.

The living room is destroyed. The couch is flipped over, drawers are pulled out and emptied onto the floor. 

My mother's belongings are scattered everywhere like a tornado came through and took nothing with it.

I step inside slowly, glass crunches under my shoes. Picture frames broken. The television smashed. Someone very angry was looking for something.

I walk to the kitchen. My heart pounds so loud I can hear it in my ears.

A note is pinned to the refrigerator with a knife. White paper. Red ink. The handwriting aggressive and harsh like whoever wrote it pressed hard enough to tear through.

"YOUR MOTHER OWES A DEBT AND YOU'LL PAY IT. WE'RE COMING."

I read it three times.

Then I sink to the floor and wonder what fresh hell my mother has dragged me into this time.