Chapter 2 | Liz

Chapter 2

Liz

T he punching bag is hard beneath my knuckles. I should be wearing hand wraps, but at this moment I don’t care. The longer I sat with the knowledge of Julian’s whatever , the more I wanted to punch something. My hands are going to hurt in the morning, but if I don’t hit the bag, I might punch Julian whenever he gets here. Sheila Sampson. Another account director. Yes, I LinkedIn’d the crap out of her. And not on private mode. Let her see her lover’s wife perusing her profile. Let her feel the worry and unease that I’ve felt since I discovered my husband’s secret email address.

I attack the bag with a jab and then an uppercut. I know enough boxing to get me through a Jillian Michaels workout and not break my wrist. Julian took it up shortly after we got married, at the suggestion of Dr. Montague. She felt he needed an outlet for his doubts. Of course, she probably meant biking, running, or an ultimate Frisbee club, but Julian picked boxing. I kick the bag, and a small scream escapes. All I ever did was love him. I kick again and follow it up with a one-two punch. Why isn’t my love ever enough?

“Babe?” Julian’s voice is loud over the sound of my very angry playlist.

I level another punch at the bag before turning to face him. Sweat drips down my face, and my breathing is ragged. A chill sweeps over me that isn’t because of the arctic-quality air conditioner we keep down here. “Welcome home.” I don’t try to hide the rage simmering beneath those words.

“Are you okay?” He takes a step toward me and then, at the fire that must be seeping out of my eye sockets, seems to rethink it and falls back on his heels.

“Who is Sheila Sampson?”

His eyes widen before narrowing to slits. He crosses his arms and looks somewhere over my shoulder. His tell. What an idiot. “You read my emails?”

I don’t flinch under his accusation. “Yes, Jules, I did. Who is she? ” I repeat because he’s clearly concerned about the wrong thing.

He steps back even farther at the change in my tone, his eyes staying glued to the floor. I resist the urge to wave a hand in front of his face and shout, “Hello!” I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I know my husband. I know him better than he knows himself. My anger is completely warranted. Because even if sex isn’t involved, Dr. Montague is. And if Julian is talking to Dr. Montague, it means he’s getting antsy. Again. Were his feet warm at any point in the last seventeen years?

“She’s a friend,” he says in a practiced, measured tone I’ve heard too many times before.

“A friend who has you contacting Dr. Montague? Who you created a new email to contact? Who drove you back to boxing?” That last part is an assumption, but the dead expression on his face speaks volumes. He’s been boxing. He kept all those scheduled appointments. Julian has a business-travel lover. And it’s killing him.

“It’s not what you think.” He runs a hand through his hair.

I bristle at the cliché and grasp the back of the couch, jaw clenched. “What am I thinking, Julian?”

“Fuck, Liz! Would you sit down and let me explain?”

I do not move an inch. My eyes bore holes into him.

He palms his face. “I will explain if you sit down.”

I walk around the couch, feigning casualness, and turn at the end farthest away from him. I burrow into the arm of the couch. My heart races. I can feel it hammering in my chest, and yet, I’m weirdly calm. All the frustrations and worries and doubts of the last few hours evaporate. One way or another, I’ll have my answer in the next minute.

“Let me start by saying this isn’t some torrid affair,” he says. When I glare at him, he coughs and holds his hands up. “Yes, we’ve met for drinks more than once, but until today, nothing physical happened.”

“Until today.” I clench my hands together. The feel of my nails biting into my skin alleviates some of the pressure building up inside me. Today? Why the hell today, Julian? Before or after you realized I saw your secret email? My stomach roils, and I will it to steady.

“She kissed me at the airport.”

“Did you kiss her back?” A part of me still wants to know exactly when this happened, but that’s not really the important piece of information here. And I can see in Julian’s expression that he is already trying to figure out how to spin the story. We’re not having illicit sex, honey. We just like to stay up late and talk. And true, a kiss is not sex, but it is most definitely still something, especially when you’ve been married for five years. How does one even go about getting into a situation that involves kissing while married?

“Do you remember what it was like when we were first engaged and I was traveling all the time? You would come with me whenever you could, and our whole life was a vacation? We were young and happy and hungry.”

His words fall short of an apology or explanation. There’s truth in them—we were all those things—but the angle is off. The period of time after we got back together and engaged in the same second was messy. We were trying to fix what Julian had so callously broken. Those trips were a blur. But the nights on the couch in my apartment—not ours, not yet—sharing popcorn and watching a movie, the entire day we spent moving Julian’s stuff into the apartment, the hours of love we made afterward, all of that is as clear in my memory as if it happened yesterday. How is it that the trips were what mattered most to him? And how did I not know this?

“And then you got your promotion,” he continues, “and the wedding was getting closer, and John told me he could move me into a more stable position in Parsippany. We found the house, and you were so excited to start our life together.”

I remember saying those words. I remember the feeling of calm that washed over me as we drove past the sold sign in the yard. Quintessential suburbia seemed like such a big and necessary step.

“You were excited too,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“Yes, I was. I still am. It’s... I didn’t even realize there was a problem until I started traveling again.”

He continues to ramble, but I can’t hear him anymore. Problem. The word hits hard. Yes, Julian entertaining thoughts of screwing someone else is a problem. A problem I thought lay with him—not with us, not with me. Why am I so fucking naive? This is the problem with marrying your first love. A part of you, no matter how small, still loves like a teenager.

“I didn’t realize how boring—complacent—I’d become. Then the traveling started, and it was like... seeing clearly for the first time.”

Wow. Julian only rolls out clichés like that when he’s in a bad way. We may have a storybook romance, but he makes sure nothing in any of his films reads as cliché, sometimes painstakingly so. Oh my god. He’s in love with Sheila.

“Because of Sheila?” I ask, my voice even despite the hurricane ripping apart my chest.

He looks at me, holding my gaze. “Because of me, and yeah, I guess, a little bit of Sheila.”

I don’t pull away when he grabs my hand, but I want to. His touch is like toxic sludge.

“My whole life I’ve never loved anyone but you. The times we spent apart... I always came back because it was you. You were the only woman I loved, no matter how hard my youthful rebelliousness tried to convince me otherwise. I’m not saying I’m in love with Sheila, because I’m not.”

“But you felt something when she kissed you.” I can barely get the end of the sentence out. Julian kissed another woman.

“Yes. And it scared the hell out of me.”

I mentally compare the dates in the emails with other dates in our lives. “That’s why you wanted to have a baby? Because you met Sheila?”

“Dr. Montague said it was an awful idea. That I’d only grow to resent you. But I had to do something, and I felt good about it at first. And then your period was late that one month, and I was scared in a completely different way.”

The calendar from this afternoon flashes into my mind, the pattern finally coming together. Bile rises in my throat. My hands twitch in anger, and I yank them from his. Julian tracked my period. If I overlaid the new calendar with his travel schedule... he planned it. He kept us from getting pregnant on purpose. Holy shit . I have to confront him, but I can’t. Not yet. I’m stunned into silence. The longer I stare at him, the more his face works. How many more truths will he unwittingly admit to? Dig your hole deeper, husband.

“I’m sorry, Liz,” he says with feeling. “I don’t know what else to say.”

I love you would be a start, but I know, somehow, that it’s not coming. I stand and walk back to the punching bag. I hit Play on the stereo and slip my hand guards on. At no point do I look at my cheating husband.

“You can sleep in the guest room,” I say and then throw my first punch.