The Chosen One
He said: I haven’t been honest with you and then he crushed me like a bread truck or a freight train or the compounding interest on my student loan. It had all been a lie, but I wasn’t surprised—the way I’m never surprised when the avocados on the countertop have gone off or the way it seems like everyone is probably just a little bit capable of murder.
He said: I’m married but there’s a but to it and then added: if you care to hear it. To which I said nothing and just watched as his WhatsApp status repeatedly changed from online to typing, and then back to online again. While he fumbled and made mistakes and tried to find the right words (there are no right words) I let him drown. I let the silence swallow him whole—his little bubbles of typing like last breaths. I paced my rage, the sense of betrayal, the feeling that I’d been fucked by a person I hadn’t agreed to let fuck me. He was no longer who I had thought he was. He was a stranger, had always been a stranger, but was now stranger still. Moving further away with every statement he made, I waited, mostly silent and perched, until he opened the floodgates.
He said that his marriage had been open once. Once, I scoffed.