"Just some little business I have to take care of," he’d told me. Little did I know that this little "business" had long flowing hair and wore a minidress the size of a postage stamp. What a goddamned fool I was. What a naïve, gullible, stupid fool.
Nailed to the floor, I watched my boyfriend chatting intimately with a girl I didn’t know. Passers-by wouldn’t have noticed but I could tell from his furtive glances that he wasn’t completely at ease. Suddenly, his eyes landed on me. I froze. He quickly turned away as though he never noticed me.
Something awoke inside me just then. Fury rushed through my veins. Lying and cheating were already more than I was prepared to handle, but a blatant dismissal as if I were nothing more than a pest in his slicked back hair? That, I would never accept.
He never looked up again, but concentrated hard on stirring his cup of coffee. I hoped his coffee would burn his throat, rendering him incapable of speech for the rest of his life. I walked out of the café and got into my car. I wanted to go home.
I drove home in silence. After the initial bouts of inner rage I’d felt when I first spotted him, I now felt nothing. The anger simmered. There were no tears, just a quiet sense of numbness.
I’d always known that all men were bastards. I guess I’ve just been proven right. I wondered if I was actually glad that I was right? After all, wasn’t infidelity supposed to hurt like hell?
With thoughts swimming in my head, I pulled into my driveway. I’d just stepped into the house when the phone rang. I ignored it for a while before deciding to pick it up. It could be someone important. It wasn’t. It was him.
His words tumbled out in a rush. Lies, apologies, lies, apologies. I hung up on him, went into my room and began throwing all his stuff into a box. I lugged the box downstairs and shoved it outside by the gate. His car came by just as I gave the box one vicious kick. He came out of the car and launched right into how sorry he was and how he’d never meant to hurt me and how she meant absolutely nothing to him.
"Go to hell," I said. I went back into the house and shut the door. I ran upstairs and peeked out through the curtains. I saw him pick up the box and make his way to the car. He took out his cell phone and started dialing. My phone rang. I ignored it this time.
After several tries, he drove off leaving a cloud of dust behind. "Good riddance," I muttered. I was glad he was gone. I was glad I’d never have to see him ever again. I hoped he’d rot in the deepest level of hell. I hoped that slut girl he was with today would bloat up to 300kg, have a sudden sprout of acne all over her delicate little face, grow a moustache and get a chronic case of oily scalp. I hoped he’d bloat up to 300kg, lose all his hair and get an incurable rash all over his left buttock. I hoped they’d get married, have a dozen really hideous children and become regulars on the Freak Show Circus. I hoped they’d wind up watching Lassie reruns every day for the rest of their sorry lives.
Feeling drained, I made myself a light snack of ice cream, nachos and hamburgers, and plonked out in front of the TV for the rest of the day. I finished every single bite and watched at least five really bad low-budget movies. I’d never felt more liberated in my life. This was how life was meant to be - doing whatever you wanted, not bogged down by some whiny, over-possessive boyfriend.
The phone rang later that evening. Its incessant ringing drove me up the wall, so I plucked out a pair of scissors and hacked the wire. The ringing stopped. The house fell silent. Sitting down on the floor with the chopped up wire in one hand and the pair of scissors in the other, I stared at my dead phone. I was truly alone.
I cried then. There was nothing good about being proven right. I wasn’t glad about being liberated, or having freedom to be by myself. I didn’t feel like a new person. All I felt were sharp stabs of loneliness and betrayal. My whole world was shattered.
I spent the night on my living room floor and woke up the next morning with aches all over. I decided to call in sick that day.
I shut all the windows and doors so he’d assume that no one was home. In case he came by to grovel again. Just in case.
He never did.
I tried to ignore the pain in my stomach. I hated him now. I hated him with every inch of my being. Why didn’t he at least try a little harder? I’d never forgive him but it would’ve appeased me a little to think that he was sorry enough to at least try. That he cared enough.
Obviously, I overestimated him.
The hurt began to go away. It took a while but as time went by, it got easier not to think about him. Day by day, it got easier to forget what he looked like. Little by little, his image started to fade.
It didn’t take as long as I’d expected to get over him. I guess it’s a lot easier to get over someone who’s not worth your time, than it is to get over someone who actually is.
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