Adrian Doesn't Love You

“What if I were the devil? Would you still love me then?” His lips on your ear.

You can’t tell him the truth, so you lie. “No.”

You always lie.

Adrian wants to hear certain things from you. Adrian wants to hear agreement, nonchalance, cooperation, casualness. Adrian wants to hear that you don’t really love him so that he feels better about not loving you.

“It’s like you think I’m obsessed with you or something.” You make the words sound ugly and false. “I have limits, you know.”

Adrian likes this. Adrian likes to believe that if he were to cast you aside, you would be mostly fine. Not completely fine—Adrian needs to feel as if the separation would be your loss—but fine enough that he feels little to no guilt for using you.

You know this about Adrian; you know everything about Adrian.

After you drive home, you turn around and go back. Adrian’s bedroom faces the park, so you only have to slip through the dusk and scale your tree.

Adrian keeps his curtains closed for unclear reasons—perhaps he senses that he is being watched—but you like to look at his curtains anyway. Sometimes, when Adrian is feeling hot, he will turn on his fan and it will blow about an inch of fabric away from the window. It isn’t enough to see anything, but it’s enough to encourage imagination.

You like when Adrian has his fan on. You like Adrian’s curtains. You definitely like Adrian.

The only time that Adrian’s curtains open is when his wife wants to admire the stars.

She is pretty; she looks nothing like you. Her hair is dark and her skin is light, she is tall and you like to imagine that her eyes are blue.

Adrian loves her. Adrian does not love you.

Adrian says you are a mistake, but you prefer a “secret.” Secrets are fun. Secrets are exciting. Secrets don’t make you hate yourself when you hear the word.

Adrian says that secrets get you killed. Adrian says his wife will kill you. Adrian doesn’t know that you will kill her first.

You feel something crawling over your hand. A large black ant freezes over your knuckle and debates using his pincers. You squash it with your palm.

Her white Mazda pulls into Adrian’s driveway. Adrian says that he wanted to buy her something sporty, but she insisted on a SUV because she wants to start trying for a baby next year.

She disembarks her carriage and reaches over her seat for a bag. Her dress slides up the back of her legs and you can see that she is wearing red lacy panties. You wonder if Adrian will take them off of her later tonight.

After she enters the house, you readjust yourself in the branches. Adrian’s baby in your belly flutters like a moth.

Adrian knows about the baby in your belly, but he does not seem to care. Maybe he hasn’t yet grasped what the baby means.

You climb down from your tree gracelessly and head straight for Adrian’s window. You want to see more. In the distance, you hear the screeching of a quick brake and the long press of a horn. Someone must not be paying attention while crossing the street.

There’s headlights on your belly that make it look bigger than it did in the morning. The baby in your belly is growing. The more the baby grows, the more your love for Adrian grows.

At the window, you can see his wife on the other end of the room sitting at her vanity. She removes jewelry and clothes before wrapping herself in a simple robe and climbing on the bed.

You put your hands on the glass and close your eyes for a moment, letting Adrian’s energy that has seeped into the house seep into you and the baby in your belly.

You love Adrian so much, it’s hard to imagine that his wife is real and not just a figment of your imagination. She is so inconsequential to your connection that the particles of her being seem to fade the longer you look at her.

Adrian seems to believe she is very real, because he is rubbing her shoulders and massaging her scalp. There is a moment where you think that she looks right at you, but then she looks away and continues with her night.

Adrian makes a phone call and you put your hand on your back pocket expectantly. Maybe he’s going to call to say goodnight. Maybe he finds himself getting attached to you, now that you both know about the baby.

Your phone does not ring. Adrian does not care.

His wife seems tense and distracted as she flips through a photo album. Adrian paces with his phone to his ear, muffled through the glass. He looks over you once—through you—but the darkness is thick and you are unnoticeable to him.

It reminds you of how invisible you used to feel when you handed him his coffee in the morning. The way his calloused fingertips would graze your skin while his eyes were elsewhere, like he didn’t even realize it was a living person giving him the drink.

Adrian, you read on his uniform, and his badge number, 1094. And you thought, shouldn’t an officer of the law be more aware of the citizens around them? It wasn’t fair, but you just wanted Adrian’s attention. Even now, as you debate knocking on the glass, you only want his attention.

A beam of light hits your feet and you instinctively step back, but the flashlight follows you. It’s in your face now, blinding you, scaring you, the baby jumps, Adrian’s baby jumps, rough hands are locking onto your shoulders and Adrian and his wife are staring at you from inside of their bedroom.

The officer on your left points his flashlight at your chest. Adrian looks sad through the window. Adrian does not love you.

You wish Adrian would talk to you again. The words you exchanged were so short when he found you after the assault, the cup of coffee still steaming in his hand.

Ma’am, are you okay?

You clearly weren’t okay. There was blood on your legs, there were bruises blooming on your arms, and you were sitting up against a bag of trash that hadn’t quite made it all the way to the dumpster.

Ma’am, can you hear me? Are you okay?

Adrian used to care. Adrian used to hug you, to help you, to touch you as he stopped the bleeding of a scraped knee. Adrian used to talk to you, to ask you questions, tell me what happened, tell me who you are.

Now, Adrian watches from the safety of his home as one of his brothers in blue leads you around the house. He wraps his arm around his wife’s waist and she tucks her head into his shoulder. How sad, the blue-eyed spouse probably thinks, she’s so delusional. She really thinks he has some sort of feelings towards her.

But she wasn’t there when Adrian radioed in help. She wasn’t there when Adrian saved her life. She wasn’t there when a stranger with a gun put a baby in her belly.

Adrian comes out the front of his perfect house and a smile stretches across your face.

“I missed you,” you whisper when he’s close enough to hear.

He regards you without tenderness and you wonder if maybe this is part of his game, a continuation of his question, “Would you love me if I were the devil?” But Adrian never asked you that. Adrian hasn’t spoken to you since that day.

You reach for him but the officer holds your shoulder firmly. “I just wanted the baby to be close to you,” you tell him. A tear falls down your cheek. “We just wanted to feel safe.”

Adrian doesn’t reply. Adrian doesn’t love you. Adrian doesn’t love the baby inside you.

You cry.