I starred, mesmerized, at the phone it in its charger, as the all too inviting signal “HANS” blinked on the screen. I shuddered at how badly I wanted to answer. Just by pressing the digits of my phone number he still held the power to push my buttons a year after our break up. The last time I’d seen him we’d slept together while his girlfriend was out of town. I couldn’t imagine that answering his call would lead to anything more “appropriate” or “platonic”.



Once upon a time I’d loved him very much. So much so that when he broke up with me, I used to write him love letters in a special notebook. I’d had the delusional notion that one day I might eventually show it to him and share how much I’d loved him all along. I was under the impression that for the pure at heart there could and would be some kind of karmic redistribution of love for enduring the suffering and that fate would bring him back to me. I was confused in the way only a sudden breakup can make you and making sense of the world in the same nonsensical way you’ve been treated. Of course the torn pieces of that notebook are buried somewhere in a landfill along with the sentiments.

Still it was impossible for me to resist an invitation to dinner, just dinner, and to see this new love nest he’d built with the woman he’d chosen over me. While I’d always coveted him as a live-in boyfriend I found it was hardly my Barbie Dream House. The townhouse’s oversized façade was like that in an old, western movie, which given its latitude on the moral compass I half expected to read “Saloon” in the daylight. The stairwells and hallways were snug like alleyways, the ceilings were low enough to change a light bulb without a ladder and the most exciting view in the entire house was from the bathroom. The whole apartment felt uncomfortable and tight like a cheap suit. The solid lime green paint gave me nausea like a bad hangover from drowning inside this dreadful Appletini of a bedroom.

It was finally seeing her picture that startled me the most. Even though I’d never scaled myself, I was positive this girl was a two. I scanned two photos of her, back and forth, over and over, searching for something impressive. She was undeniably ugly. For all the times Hans had assured me “You’ll like her she’s blonde and she’s hot!” I begged to differ. Her hair is an ashy brown and she’s unattractive. The fact remained he’d chosen her over me.

When he left the room I stood to examine myself in the full-length mirror. My expertly highlighted hair fell atop my silky V-neck top cut suggestively into tanned, ample cleavage, with a belt cinching at a tiny waist and Bermuda shorts revealed toned, shapely calves ending in sexy six kitten heels. Like a cruel comparison in a fashion magazine, I considered her a “Before” and me an “After”. Maybe we were just not the same. How does your penchant for lemon sorbet become a preference for Rocky Road?

If she were an attractive adversary I might have accepted defeat and left that night without looking back. But there was something intolerable about hearing him comment endlessly about how “terrific”, “wonderful” and “nice” she was in light of her physical appearance. It haunted me that he might have considered it a worthwhile tradeoff to downgrade in looks for an upgrade in personality, and what did that mean for me? I thought I had a good package. Wasn’t I enough? Was this what she had on me? The thing that no matter how much I pinned, no matter how many whims of his I indulged, I could never overcome: that she was just a better person. So I embraced that, and from this typical place of insecurity, right where he wanted me, I fell into his seduction.



I wanted to cheat with him like I wanted to break a window! It was the need to break the pretty glass with an ugly rage. I was just like another rioter looting storefronts with no claim to what’s on display but riding that collective, destructive momentum that tells you it’s OK to do it anyways. That brief feeling on invincibility took hold. You see yourself bursting the glass because you can and this time you will, if anything for all the times you’ve held back. I arched my brow, I arched my back, knowing the destruction my behavior could cause. I felt a release from all the anger against the people who wouldn’t hire me, befriend me, or love me. I took it all out on that window of opportunity.

It was only after that I realized that I’d punched through the window with my own fist, and that the hand I’d played was all cut up and dripping in blood. I was the only one who was going to hurt from this experience, because I was the only one sick enough to relish the truth. The “happy couple” were going to continue to live and love in that ugly patchwork quilt of an apartment and spend each night together in that awful, lime green, Ikea catalogue bedroom.

As I was fitting my earrings in the mirror the next morning I dropped one into a barrel of her shoes, which I was forced to sift through to find the damning evidence - and frankly a piece of jewelry too nice to leave behind. It was the gnarliest shoe collection of any woman that I’d ever seen but it was the only evidence I’d seen of her in the apartment. Where was the rest of her? Where were her travel souvenirs, scented candles, perfume, jewelry, art, stuffed animals, books, and magazines? The very kind of things that would make her real enough for me feel bad about what I’d just done. I still knew nothing about the woman I’d been so jealous of, even after making love in her bed.

I felt a wave of relief returning to my apartment and my own bed, which I sometimes called my cloud because of the abundance of down and eight hundred thread count cotton. My bedroom reflected me in every way: the hand picked, exotic Hawaiian watercolors hanging on my walls, the almost collapsing, pillared pile of hats on my dresser, my beloved bear atop my pillow and the panoramic city views from floor to ceiling balcony windows that I could only see at “my place”. It was altogether too fabulous to give into thoughts of loneliness. This was the apartment I’d always dreamed of and not the matchbox to share with a cheating boyfriend where I’d laid awake the night before.

My feelings towards Hans had reached a final straw, the new lowest. At aged forty I saw how much he’d evolved as a person, the life he was able to provide and how he could live with himself. He would take a mistress into their shared home and bed, then erase the debauchery by simply changing the sheets, and have his girlfriend come home and climb into in that very same bed to “love” her. I felt no jealousy of her now. Truly knowing is maybe all it took: what a compromise. I took comfort in the one most important thing I had over her: I know I’m the only woman who has slept in my bed. I can live with that.

Anon. (Author’s name withheld.)