He didn’t hesitate for a moment. He simply grabbed the orange juice and poured more into it.
‘Alyssa,’ I said louder. ‘Your trainer.’
‘Yes, Paige,’ he said, leaning against the counter. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you for a while.’
‘What do you have to tell me, Cole?’ I demanded.
He took another sip of orange juice as if he were watching sports.
I’ve wanted to tell you for a while.
“That I am with Alyssa now. She makes me happy! You let yourself go, and that is your mistake.”
‘Are you with her?’ I asked.
“Yes.”
The second ‘yes’ hurt the most, because it meant he had practiced this, and I was the last to hear that my own life had been replaced.
And that was it. No excuses, no shame. He spoke as if the truth was a minor inconvenience I just had to learn to live with.
Are you with her?
‘She makes me feel alive again,’ he said, as if he were auditioning for a monologue about a breakup.
Alive?
‘We have six children, Cole. What do you think this is, a coma?’
‘You wouldn’t understand that,’ he said. ‘You don’t see yourself anymore. You used to care about your appearance. About how we looked.’
I stared.
He kept going on. ‘When was the last time you put on real clothes? Or wore something that wasn’t covered in stains?’
And what about ours?
He stood with his back to him, his shoulders stiff.
‘I can’t do this with you, Paige,’ he said. ‘You’re making a mess of it.’
I choose my own happiness.
