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“Not Christina from Denver.” It’s not a question, it’s a fucking warning, because it had better not be Christina from Denver.
“Well, yeah,” he stammers. “I mean, she’s a key player in the merger.”
I say nothing, because honestly, I just can’t believe he’s managed to keep this fact to himself for so long.
Can. Not. Believe. It.
“Erin…” he says.
“Has she been there the whole time?”
“Well, we needed to have her here for—”
“I did not ask you, Rob, what her role is there. I don’t give a fuck what her role is there. I asked you if she’s been there the whole goddamn time.”
He huffs in irritation. “And I was trying to tell you. Yes. We needed her here because—”
“So Christina, the little whore who’s hit on you in front of me more times than I can count, is among this group of people you’re wining and dining every night.”
“It’s not like that. It’s a whole group of us.”
“And it’s taken you six weeks to share that with me.”
“It isn’t a big deal,” he says with a groan. “I’m shocked you care. You don’t even act like you miss me half the time.
“Did she go to Belgium with you?” I remember him telling me about the trip—that only a few of them went. I remember how oddly vague he was about it.
“It was a group thing. You know I’d never cheat,” he replies. His non-answer is an answer in and of itself. I can’t believe he went away with her. I can’t believe he’s been lying all this time.
“So nothing has taken place with Christina since you left?” I ask. My voice is like ice. “Absolutely nothing.”
He is silent, and in that moment of silence I realize that a whole world of possibilities exists in a place where I believed there was only one. I’ve believed so thoroughly in his loyalty that it never once occurred to me there was another option. He was the person who would always do the right thing and wouldn’t ever hurt me the way Brendan had.
I gave up everything for that, and it was an illusion.
“One night we kissed,” he says on an exhale. “I was drunk, but I stopped it, and that was it.”
“But you wanted more.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to say that, Rob. She’s hot, and the two of you are over there together and not sleeping with anyone, and you wanted to do it. And you still have an entire month more of this bullshit—”
“Three,” he interjects quietly.
“What?”
“They’re saying late August now. But I’m going to try to come home at the end of June to visit.”
I gave up myself for him. I gave up the things I loved. I hid and scurried to present him with the version of me he’d find most palatable, and this is what I get in response: lies by omission and months spent alone and him throwing me this little bone of a weekend back here, as if that could possibly make up for anything.
“No.”
The word bursts from my mouth with six weeks of rage behind it. No, Rob. No, no, no, no, no to all of it. To your stupid job and your three more months with Christina, to all of it.
“You don’t want me to visit?”
“I can’t do this. Us. I can’t do it. Not separated like this. Which you’re now telling me isn’t going to end until August. This is miserable, and you know what? I don’t even trust you right now. You kept something like that from me for six weeks, and as long as I’m here and you’re there, and we’re doing nothing but arguing, I’m not going to trust you.”
