Chapter 1: The Message That Changed Everything
1450 Words
The glow from Julian's phone turns our bedroom into a crime scene at 2 AM.
I'm not supposed to be awake. I'm supposed to be the good wife, the trusting wife, the wife who doesn't check phones or ask questions or notice when her husband's smile doesn't reach his eyes anymore. But my bladder had other plans, and now I'm frozen halfway back from the bathroom, watching that screen pulse like a heartbeat on his nightstand.
Last night was incredible, can't wait to see you again.
The sender's name is just a letter. V.
I should look away. I should climb back into bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend I never saw it. I should do what I've done for six years, what I'm so f*****g good at. Ignore it. Explain it away. Make excuses for him that he'd never make for himself.
But my feet won't move.
The phone screen goes dark. Then lights up again.
Are you asleep? I'm still thinking about what you did to me.
My lungs forget how to work.
Julian shifts in his sleep, one arm flung above his head, his face peaceful in the dim light filtering through our blackout curtains. Our six hundred dollar blackout curtains. From the Italian designer he insisted on. The same designer who did Vivian Hart's penthouse, now that I think about it. Vivian, his colleague. His business partner. His V.
I count my breaths. One. Two. Three. The way my therapist taught me before I stopped going because Julian said I didn't need therapy, I just needed to relax more, stress less, be more present in our marriage.
Four. Five. Six.
The phone buzzes again.
I move before I can stop myself. Three silent steps across our plush carpet. My hand closes around the phone and my thumb finds the screen and I'm reading, I'm reading everything, I'm reading six months of messages from V and others, so many others, women with full names and women with initials and one labeled Blonde from Miami conference and I'm reading and reading and my hands are shaking so hard the words blur.
"Sera?"
His voice cuts through the dark like glass.
I drop the phone. It lands on the carpet with a muffled thud that sounds like a bomb going off. Like the end of the world. Like six years of my life hitting the floor.
"What are you doing?" Julian sits up, and even in the darkness I can see him calculating. Not panicking. Calculating.
"Who's V?" My voice comes out steady. I don't know how. Inside, I'm screaming.
"What?"
"Who. Is. V."
He reaches for his phone. I kick it under the bed before he can grab it. The violence of the motion surprises us both.
"Seraphina." He uses his reasonable voice, the one that makes me feel crazy, the one that's made me doubt myself a thousand times before. "You're clearly upset. Let's talk about this in the morning when you're calmer."
"I'm calm."
"You just kicked my phone under the bed."
"Who is she?"
Julian sighs. He runs a hand through his hair, the same gesture that made me fall in love with him seven years ago. The same gesture he probably uses on all of them. "Can you please just come back to bed? We'll discuss this later."
"No."
The word hangs between us. I never say no to Julian. I say yes and of course and whatever you think is best and I'm sorry even when I haven't done anything wrong. No is a foreign language I forgot how to speak.
He stares at me. Really looks at me for the first time in months, maybe years. "You're being irrational."
"Answer the question."
"I don't appreciate being interrogated at two in the morning over a text message you had no right to read."
The audacity of it steals my breath. "I had no right?"
"It's my phone. My privacy."
"We're married."
"Exactly. We're married. Which means you should trust me." He swings his legs out of bed, stands, towers over me in his expensive pajamas. "This jealous, paranoid behavior, it's not attractive, Sera. It's not healthy."
There it is. The gaslight. The twist. Suddenly I'm the problem. My suspicions are the issue, not the woman texting my husband about what he did to her.
I want to scream. I want to claw at his face. I want to collapse on the floor and sob until I can't breathe. Instead, I do what I always do. I freeze.
"I saw the messages," I whisper. "Multiple women. For months."
"You're overreacting."
"Am I?"
Julian moves past me toward the bathroom, dismissing me with his back. "We'll talk about this over breakfast. I have an early meeting and I need sleep."
He's going back to bed. He's actually going to brush his teeth and climb under our thousand thread count sheets and fall asleep while I stand here with my world crumbling around my ankles.
"Julian."
He pauses at the bathroom door. Doesn't turn around.
"Who is she?"
"Goodnight, Seraphina."
The door clicks shut. I hear water running. The electric toothbrush humming. The toilet flushing. All the mundane sounds of our mundane life, everything continuing as if nothing has changed, as if I didn't just find proof of his betrayal glowing on his nightstand.
I retrieve his phone from under the bed. My hands are steadier now. Steadier than they should be. I sit on the edge of our bed, the bed where we made love twice in the past year, where he turns away from me every night, where I've cried silently into my pillow more times than I can count.
The phone is locked, but I know his passcode. Our anniversary. The irony nearly makes me laugh. I scroll through the messages again, slower this time. Taking screenshots. Sending them to myself. Watching six years of "I'm working late" and "Client dinner ran long" and "Conference in Miami" transform into a different story entirely.
V sends another text.
I miss your hands already.
Something inside me breaks. No, not breaks. Breaks implies violence, sharpness, pain. This is different. This is a lock clicking open. A door swinging wide. This is permission.
Permission to finally, finally, stop pretending.
Julian emerges from the bathroom. He looks at me holding his phone. His jaw tightens.
"Give it back."
I set it on the nightstand, screen up, V's message glowing between us like evidence at trial.
"Over breakfast," I say quietly. "You wanted to talk over breakfast. So we'll talk."
I walk past him out of the bedroom. Down the hallway lined with photos of us smiling, us on vacation, us at our wedding where I promised to love and honor and cherish. I walk into the guest room and close the door and lock it.
Then, finally, I let myself shake.
I sink onto the guest bed and pull my knees to my chest and the shaking becomes trembling becomes full body convulsions as six years of swallowed doubt comes rushing up my throat. All the times I told myself I was imagining things. All the times he made me feel crazy for asking questions. All the times I chose to believe him because believing him was easier than facing this.
I'm not imagining things.
I'm not crazy.
I'm not the problem.
And tomorrow morning, over breakfast, in our designer kitchen with our marble countertops and our organic coffee and our carefully curated life, I'm going to watch him try to explain this away. I'm going to watch him smile and smooth talk and make this somehow my fault.
And for the first time in six years, I'm not going to let him.
My phone buzzes. The screenshots I sent myself. Evidence I never thought I'd need to collect. Evidence of a marriage that died long before tonight, I just didn't want to see it.
Another buzz. A text from Maribel, my best friend, my only friend anymore after Julian systematically isolated me from everyone else.
You up? Having weird anxiety. You okay?
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I could tell her. I could type out everything and hit send and let someone else carry this weight for a moment.
Instead I write: I'm fine. Talk tomorrow.
Because I've gotten so good at lying. Even to myself.
Especially to myself.
I lie back on the guest bed and stare at the ceiling and wait for morning, wait for breakfast, wait for the conversation that will either save my marriage or end it.
Deep down, in a place I'm only now brave enough to look, I already know which one I'm hoping for.
- Writer
