as Eli was walking back into the living room holding his refilled wine glass.
“Hello,” Amber answered, and she sounded confused, like she was wondering why Eli would be calling after she just sent that message. Did she think he was calling to invite her to fuck again? I always wondered that.
“Did you fuck my husband?” I asked. Eli came to a screeching halt next to the couch. He was frozen in place, still holding his wine glass as he stared down at me with a look of pure terror etched on his face.
On the other end of the phone, all I could hear was Amber breathing. Every exhale was loud and labored. Through just those breaths, I could hear her regret for sending the text. I bet she thought about it for an hour before deciding to do it. She just couldn’t help herself. She needed to see how Eli would respond, and her curiosity had just killed three cats instead of one.
“Answer me!” I shouted. The scream jumped out of me with so much force it hurt my throat. Even Eli stepped back a couple feet.
“I …” Amber stuttered. “I’m so sorry.” She hung up the phone without another word, and all of my rage turned itself on Eli, but this rage was silent. It was a bubbling mass of lava still in the depths of the volcano.
We stared at each other for a minute without saying anything. I don't know what he was thinking at that moment, but my mind was blank. I suddenly felt like a messy canvas, as everything beautiful in me had just been wiped away, leaving nothing but streaks of horribly blended, shapeless colors. The real Demi leaked out onto the floor, and I became a shell of myself as the pain of it all became so heavy I couldn’t bring myself to lift my eyes up to meet Eli’s any longer.
“Tell me,” I whispered, looking down at my feet. “Just tell me.”
I could hear the emotion when it started to spill from Eli. He tried to take a deep breath, but it was halted by a sudden urge to cry, making him choke. I didn’t look up at him, but I know he had tears in his eyes. Useless, stupid fucking tears. Tears of fear. Tears of regret. Tears brought on by being caught. Tears he would never have cried if Amber hadn’t been so stupid.
“I’m so sorry, Demi,” were the first words out of his mouth. They were shaky with anguish. “I … I didn’t mean for it to happen. We were drunk. I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything.” When I didn't answer, Eli kept going, his rambling being fueled by uneasiness and a need to fill the silence. “It only happened once, and the second it was over, I regretted it. We both did. I’m so sorry. I don't love her, and it wasn't anything like that. We were just drunk. We’d gone out with one of the crews after busting our asses up in Jersey, and we had a few drinks. After we drank, we all went back to the hotel because the guys had another early pour in the morning, but I wasn't really tired. I may have mentioned that to Amber … no, she overheard me say it to John, and I guess she wasn't tired either. So, she came up to my room, and we had a few more drinks. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, it had already happened. I felt terrible. I felt like absolute shit, baby. I’m so—”
“Don't you dare call me baby,” I whispered, but the whisper hurt just as much as the scream. “You came home on Tuesday. Which day did this happen?”
Eli exhaled, long and drawn out, like he knew he was about to ruin me. “Saturday night.”
Tears built themselves up in my eyes. They stayed contained at first, but when I thought about how Eli had come home and had sex with me just seventy-two hours after sleeping with Amber, I couldn't contain the tears any longer. They fell down my face in waves, and all I remember after that is the fact that I couldn't talk, and I couldn't stand to look at Eli. His face had changed to something that broke off tiny pieces of me every time I looked at him, and it was all too much. I collapsed in on myself. A building demolished. A world in ruins.
I haven't been the same