We arrived at my apartment, and Andre helped me inside. I collapsed on the couch while Andre conducted in the middle of the room. “Who’s Simone, Martin?” he asked, eating up the floor with his long legs.
“Van Laar showed me this painting, Andre, and it was you, only as a woman. Her name was Simone. I think I’ve dreamed her.” I remembered when he’d told me he had trouble sleeping. Could he be having the same visions as me? “Have you ever dreamed about her, Andre? Or about me?”
Andre grabbed at his collar, trying to loosen his shirt. “That whole place was creepy as hell. We shouldn’t have gone there. You shouldn’t have made me.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“It feels like I’m choking.”
“On smoke?” I asked. “Do you dream of a fire?”
“No.” He glanced over at me, stricken. There was something he wasn’t telling me.
“What is it, Andre?”
He began stripping off his coat and tie, unbuttoning his shirt. He ran upstairs and came back down wearing his jeans and a T-shirt, a white one, just like the first time I saw him.
“Where are you going?” I asked frantically. I didn’t want him to leave me, especially not now.
“I have to get out of here.”
“You can’t do that,” I shouted with more anger than I’d intended. “You can’t leave me.”
“I have to.” He clawed at his throat. “I can’t breathe. You’re choking me.”
He headed for the door, and I chased after, watching him take off down the street on his skateboard. I felt like I was possessed. I ran back inside and grabbed my car keys. There was no way I was letting her get away again.
Him.
I followed Andre in my car, a few blocks back so that he wouldn’t notice or hear me creeping behind him. I felt guilty but also justified. If he were more honest with me, I wouldn’t have to go to such measures to see where he spent all his time.
He stopped by a cantina first and ordered some food. He was eating it at an outside table when he pulled out his phone and began texting. I pulled out my phone to see what he was sending me, but my phone stayed silent. It wasn’t me he was texting.
Who could he possibly be texting at this hour?
He dumped his trash and hopped back on the skateboard, cruising along the sidewalks with an easy grace, hips swaying back and forth, arms loose at his side. I was so busy admiring his lean form that I didn’t realize the neighborhood. I recognized it soon enough, though, the shithole apartment he’d rented from Fang when he first arrived in Miami. At first I thought perhaps he’d come back here to buy weed, but when he rode up to the old apartment, I realized he’d come there for a purpose.
To meet someone.
My stomach dropped and for the second time that night I thought I was going to be sick. Andre kicked up the skateboard, pounded fists with the stairwell gang and ambled up the stairs, rapped twice on the door, adjusted his pants while he waited and smoothed down his hair, replacing his ball cap. The door opened and I saw just enough of his gut to know who it was Andre had been meeting with all this time.
Fang.
Except to Andre he was Roger. Suddenly all those late-night closings at the restaurant, all the sports trash talk back and forth, all those cooking lessons Fang had given him, all of it seemed a lot less innocent.
I’d been played.
Andre had been cheating on me this entire time. They even had their own secret hookup spot. I’d been such a fool to fall for him, to think he could be faithful to me. I sat in my car and watched the lit windows for any sign of movement, but the blinds were shut. I imagined Andre taking off his clothes, offering up his body. Andre on his knees in front of Fang. Andre bent over the bed with his beautiful back spread out like an offering. I imagined Fang doing all the things I did with him. Did Andre tremble with desire for Fang the way he did for me? Did he beg him for more?
Maybe he’d been faking it this whole time.
I debated walking up to the apartment and confronting them right then, but I didn’t want to walk in on something I couldn’t unsee. Honestly, I didn’t want to believe it at all. I could pretend I’d never come here. I’d put my powers of denial to the test and ignore everything I’d seen tonight.
He’s going to ruin you.
I drove home, shouting into the wind. At my apartment I collapsed on the couch and waited for my lying, cheating boyfriend to return home. I didn’t call or text him. I just sat there stewing in my own anger and shame and stupidity.
Just like Simone.
