So I sat.
I kept my bag on my lap like I was prepared to flee a minor fire.
He noticed.
Good.
He started talking too fast, the way people do when they know they have a narrow window and a terrible case. He said he was not there to pressure me. He said he just needed me to hear the truth from him once, which was funny because I had, in a way, through a partially closed curtain.
According to Marcus, it had not been an emotional affair. Not a relationship. Not ongoing in the serious sense. It was physical, he said. Isolated. Stupid. Meaningless. A woman he knew through freelance work. Someone with a “reputation for discreet situations.”
I did not ask her name.
I did not want it.
Knowing who she was would not change what he had done. She was not the person who had promised me forever. He was. She owed me nothing. He owed me everything.
He used that phrase—discreet situations—like he was discussing weather patterns instead of admitting he had been sleeping around in the lead-up to our wedding.
He said he had gotten in his head about marriage, permanence, choosing one person forever. He said he panicked and wanted to get “curiosity out of his system” before the wedding.
That phrase was so rotten and selfish I felt the air go thin around me. Not because it shocked me by then, but because he still expected language like curiosity to make it smaller, like what he had done was a pathetic bachelor impulse instead of deliberate betrayal.
I let him talk.
That was probably my mistake.
Silence encourages men like him. They start mistaking your restraint for openness.
He said he never stopped loving me. Said it was never about replacing me. Said the wedding was real to him. Said he planned to end it and commit fully and bury the whole thing.
Which, wow.
How lucky I was almost allowed to marry into a secret cleanup operation.
When I finally spoke, my voice surprised even me.
Calm. Flat.
