"No..." I whisper, my voice pathetic.
Sophie's face enters my mind, remembering the exact moment I saw the light leave her eyes when I confessed. Her broken face when I told her I cheated the day of her biopsy, when I told her I have feelings for Elise.
And then—worse—I see the other Sophie. How she would smile at me from across the breakfast table, cradling a mug in her hands while telling me about her plans for the day. That one flickers into the broken one. Then back. Over and over and over again. A reel of everything I destroyed, everything that I ruined.
"People like you," she growls, stepping closer still, her voice shaking with fury, "are the bane of my entire fucking existence. Walking around thinking love's just something that’s owed to you. Like it's not a fucking gift to be loved, to find a person who understands you in a way no one else has. A person who has seen all of you—the good, the bad, and the ugly, and still fucking stays. Still chooses you again and again. Fucking pathetic."
I clutch my stomach, feeling nauseous again. The world flips, and I use my other hand to hold onto the brick wall, needing stability, or I think I might pass out.
"You had Sophie—that sweet, wonderful, kind woman. And you let something like cancer get in the way of that?"
I shake my head, my throat closed too tight even to breathe, let alone speak.
"Do you know that I would give anything to be able to hold my wife again?"
That word—wife—spoken with such aching reverence causes tears to pool in my eyes.
"I would give anything to hear her tell me that she loves me. To tell her that I love her more than anything in this hellhole of a world," her face turns a little wistful, before it shudders, and fury overtakes it. "But she was taken from me by some piece of shit who drove drunk. She was the most precious woman in the world to me. Now she's dead."
Her words are shaking, furious, and her eyes are a glacial storm, but her mouth trembles in pain. Her partner didn't choose to leave, but I did. I chose to cheat on Sophie. It’s like I shot myself, and tossed her the gun so that I could tell myself that, “really it was her decision to end things.”
I want to say something—anything—that might justify what I did, but there's nothing.
"Why?" she asks me, shaking her head. "Why'd you do it?"
"I don't know."
My voice is thin and trembling, like I'm admitting something shameful. Because I am. I can say it was the fear. I can say I wanted an out. I can repeat it over and over until my voice is gone, but... I don't know why I chose this. I don't know why I told Sophie those horrible things about her breasts, about the cancer, about my feelings for Elise. I don’t know why I wanted someone to comfort me when I should have been the one comforting her.
This woman looks like she can see right through me, and her expression shifts into something hard, no sympathy to be found.
"The bitch in me wants to tell you that you're a useless sack of shit and that Sophie's honestly better off without you. Which is true."
Her words hurt, mostly because she’s right.
"I'll leave you with this—a word of advice—figure your shit out. I drowned myself in my grief, and it didn't do anything forme. The only thing that actually helped me was talking about it. So, get help, Paul, before you ruin your life even more."
She stomps off, shoulder-checking me as she walks past, and I stand there in that alley for a couple of minutes, absorbing her words. The parting message swirls around my head on repeat.
Get help. I need to get help. I need to be better. I need tochange.
I need to be someone who Sophie would be proud of.
Sophie was going to be my wife. We were together for six years, and I know her better than anyone. Iknowshe must still love me, Iknowthat love didn't go away. And maybe—if I figure it out, if I face what I've done, if I take accountability, and become someone worth being loved—then maybe there's still hope, still achance.
I'll fix myself, and I'll become someone worthy of being loved by her. I’ll support her through cancer, through everything. I’ll be there for her the way I should have been from the beginning.
I'll show her that I can be the one who shows up every day and chooses her every second.
???
"What brings you in today, Paul?"
Somewhere in this office, a noise machine plays rain sounds meant to relax me, to make me let my guard down, so that this woman in front of me can pry open my head to see what's broken inside.
That's therapy, isn't it?
At least, that's what Adriana had made it sound like when she spoke of her sessions. When I got back to the motel room on Sophie’s birthday, I had reached out to Adriana on social media,asking for nothing but a therapist's number. She had sent me a couple of options and then blocked me immediately. Deserved.
