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With both hands cradling her mug, she leans back in her seat and gives me a small smile but doesn’t reach for any food. She doesn’t say anything either. All she does is wait. I wish I had something better to offer her than what’s going to come out of my mouth.
“I want a fresh start … and the marriage we were supposed to have,” I say as I push a fork through the pancake on my plate, but I don’t eat it. I’m already sick to my stomach.
A heavy breath leaves me and I rub my forehead to get out some of the tension. I can’t tell her everything, but I can give her something that has killed me for years; a truth I wish didn’t exist.
My skin’s hot and my throat’s dry. It’s been years, and I never intended on telling Kat. I didn’t want her to know and it was before things changed for me. Before my mother told me she was dying. Before Kat came to me and showed me she was the personI needed in my life forever. It happened before I realized she was mine and I was never going to let her go.
“You okay?” Kat asks and there’s genuine pain in her voice. Sadness and concern I wish weren’t there. She’s too good for me. I’ve made so many mistakes and this is going to crush her and hurt her more than it should. It meant nothing to me back then, but it’ll mean everything to her right now. And I hate it.
“There’s something I have to tell you.” As I say the words I look Kat in the eyes, and her expression changes. The corners of her lips turn down and a deep crease settles between her brows. She has this way of hiding her emotions, but it doesn’t last long. She offers me a hard stare with her lips pressed into a thin line. She gives it to me all the time, but I know the second I give her silence, Kat’s mouth will open and every emotion she’s feeling will show. She can’t hide it from me.
“When you asked me about Samantha, if I’d slept with her …” I have to break off from my thought and pause to take in another breath.
The clink of Kat’s fork hitting the plate makes my chest feel tight. She lets out a small sound, almost like a sigh but weighted down with a bitter hopelessness.
“I told you the truth, that I haven’t been with anyone since we got married,” I say and watch her eyes, her expression, everything about her, but she doesn’t look back at me. Her shoulders rise like she’s holding her breath and waiting for a bomb to go off.
“It was years ago, Kat. Before I knew how much you meant to me.” The words come up my throat as if they’re scratching and clawing to stay buried down deep inside of me.
Her expression crumples the second I hint at the affair. If you can even call it that. “I felt like I was lying to you. Every. Single. Time.” I bang my fist on the table and the plates rattle with each word and make Kat jump, but I can’t help it. “I feltlike a bastard when I looked you in the eyes and said nothing happened, because you should have already known.”
“When?” Kat asks me.
“I swear that night in the papers was about something else. Something that has nothing to do with that woman or sleeping with her. It was?—”
“When?” She screams out the question as her eyes gloss over. She doesn’t stop staring at me, but the emotion I expect to see isn’t there. It’s only anger, a furious rage that stares back at me. “When did you sleep with her?”
“The night I got the call from my mother.” I swallow thickly and add, “I was with her.”
“The night she told you?” she asks me with a morbid tone and I nod, feeling that acidic churning in my stomach as my clammy hands clench. “You were at the company party?” she asks instantly, although it’s more of her recalling that night than an actual question.
“You were supposed to take me out that night afterward,” Kat says and each word sounds sadder and sadder as she looks away from me. “You were fucking her while at work.”
“It was a one-time thing. A mistake. I didn’t know who she was and things were getting serious with us, Kat. You don’t understand. It wasn’t how it seems.” I stumble over my words. Leaning closer to her and reaching for her, she abruptly pushes away from the table, slamming her palms against it and scooting the chair back.
My hands fly into the air, keeping them up. As if I’m not a threat. Trying to keep her here with me to give me a chance to explain.
“Look, we were getting serious and I needed … I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You didn’t want to be with me anymore so you went and slept with the first girl to bat her eyelashes at you?” she asksalthough it’s less of a question and more an accusation, a bitter one at that.
I can’t explain how pathetic I feel as she looks at me like I’m the devil. It was a game back then. I wish I could change it. If I’d known what Kat would mean to me, I’d have put a ring on her finger the moment I laid eyes on her. I never would have done anything to risk what we had. Lies. So many lies, a voice in the back of my mind whispers. If that was the truth, I wouldn’t have needed to call Samantha with my eyes on a lifeless body in the corporate hotel room. If she knew everything, she’d hate me.
“I messed up and I made a lot of mistakes,” I say and lean toward her, but she’s not having it.
“How many women have you fucked since I’ve been with you?” Her voice is hard and full of nothing but bitterness.
“Just her, just Samantha and just that once. Please, Kat.” My voice begs her for mercy as I lean forward but she’s quick to stand up, nearly toppling the chair over just so she can get away from me.
Regret consumes me. I wish I hadn’t told her. Fuck. I don’t know what to wish for anymore.
I swallow thickly and try to remember everything else I was going to say and the point of bringing up the past. “It’s why I feel so guilty about these allegations and why I didn’t say anything to the press. I needed them to think it’d happened and it kind of did, just years ago.”
“Why were you in the hotel lobby with her at three in the morning?” she asks me—for the dozenth time—as she crosses her arms over her chest, bunching the shirt and finally letting her gaze trap mine.
I have to swallow the hard lump in my dry throat before I can answer her. “I needed an alibi.”
“Are you fucking serious, Evan?” she says, spitting out her words as she looks at me with more disgust than I’ve ever seen on her face.