Pretty Girl

Content warning: the following includes vague references to sensitive mental health topics. Specifically, there are references to self-harm, emotional and physical spousal abuse, non-monogamy, and the ending of a loving relationship for one party to remain in a toxic one. This is not a happy story, but a true one.

I knew two things when I met with her that day: that I was going to see her, and that it would be the last time. I was already crying before I met with her, a hastily planned meeting that scheduled itself somewhere roughly between a routine emissions test and picking up the kids. I agreed to meet with her at a coffee shop nearby the testing facility, so she could go quickly from the test to meeting with me before going on with her day. What I had not counted on was the line.

When I arrived at the emissions testing facility, the line wrapped around and down the street. Several cars parked themselves to wait rather impatiently for the grueling process. I found myself having to wait in this same line for 15 minutes, just to get to the coffee shop.

I called her from the line. She wasn’t far ahead of me, still parked on the street. I told her that once I could, I’d pull into the coffee shop, purchase us both a coffee, and meet her in her car. This would give us time to talk, a quiet space to get the ugliness of what must be done out of the way.

In the line at the coffee shop, I ordered two drinks: one hot and one iced. It occurred to me that it might be the last time I ordered both. I never drank coffee cold, she never drank it hot, and we both loved caramel. In the past year I’d become accustomed to this order, but it was the last time I would order both coffees. I’d have to get used to ordering just one, but not today.

I walked to her car with both drinks, one burning my right hand, the other freezing my left. The air was crisp with cold and wind. I located her car in the line, which had not moved far in my ten-minute trip to the coffee shop. I knocked on the window of her Honda and was pleased to see her smiling as she reached across and opened the door for me. I loved that smile, thin pink lips and all teeth. I was going to miss it.

I clumsily opened the door with my elbow and handed her the coffee. She was pleased that I got the order right, as if I don’t know, as if it was hard. I climbed into the car and she leaned across the middle console to hug me. I pulled her in and kissed her. It was a quick kiss, a casual one, the kind I would give her if it were any other day but today.

“I wasn’t expecting that!” she blushed and turned her face shyly away. She looked confused but pleased.

I blushed too, feeling a bit foolish. “I told him I was going to kiss you goodbye today. I hope that’s okay.”

Her blush turned to a frown. “So… that was it? That was goodbye.”

I blushed again and smiled mischievously. “No, but I figured that a hello first wouldn’t hurt.”

She smiled, a sad a knowing smile, one I had come to know, not just on her face but on my own. I gave the smile back. We both knew it was over and that neither of us wanted it to be. Tears welled up in her sea green eyes and I felt them come to mine.

“Don’t cry, Pretty Girl.” I said, even as I struggled to control the sting in my own eyes. I took her face in my hand and rubbed a tear away with my thumb, pecking her on the lips again. “It will be okay.”

She only cried harder. “How can anything be okay without you?”

I started crying too. I felt the wrongness of this day building in my chest. The pain of her hurting and my helplessness to fix it was such a familiar one. “It will, darling, it will. You are so strong.”

Her face contorted and twisted. Water ran down her pink cheeks and she struggled to udder words. “I don’t want to be strong anymore. Why does love hurt so much?"

“It isn’t supposed to," I said. I was about to say more, to tell her how she would make it through this pain and heal into someone stronger, when the phone rang. Him.

I held my silence as she quickly adjusted her tone to a perky upbeat “Hey babe” and proceeded to lie through omission. She told him she was in the car, waiting for emissions , stuck in a long line. She conveniently left me out.

When she hang up the phone, I said “One of these days, you are going to have to stop lying to your husband”.

She became moderately defensive. “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell the truth.”

My eyes told her that omission was still lying. Her eyes said she knew. “I’ll tell him later. It’s all in the timing, you know?”

I did know. I knew that her marriage was a fickle thing, and so was his temper. I knew she struggled to tell the truth to him out of fear that he would snap. I knew that his snapping was a terrifying thing, violently unpredictable, and easily achieved. It was staring me in my face, the reasons we couldn’t be together.

I couldn’t be in a polyamorous relationship that began as a lie. I particularly could not do that with a woman who was terrified of her husband. I couldn’t be the reason he hurt her. I couldn’t be polite and cordial with a man like that, and I could never be 100% certain she was being honest with him, or me.

My husband, for all of his love, compersion, and understanding couldn’t bear it either. The relationship put me in a dark place. He couldn’t bare to see me battle the inner conflict of being “the other woman”. I was internally struggling with the narrative that I was a harlot that put myself between two people already struggling to make it work. Every fight they had, every hurt she endured at his hand, I blamed myself for. I couldn’t cope with the internal conflict of loving her. It was breaking me in ways that I didn’t think we’re possible, driving me to suicidal thoughts and reckless impulsivity. I’d spent the last year doing anything I could to have one more moment with her, one more kiss. Every choice I made for a year was in an effort to get one more passionate night in her guest bedroom while her husband slept off his day, and to make that morally "okay" with my conscience. The change in me was breaking my own marriage, which was something I didn’t think could break.

My husband was taking on the mantel of the bad guy, the one who said “no”. The truth was, I needed it to end too, I just didn’t want it to. I loved her, even the parts that drove me mad. I stomached the dishonesty, the helpless clinging, her persistence to honor a commitment to a man that hurt her and kept her small. We had connected deeply and passionately; in a way I that never saw coming and couldn’t explain. Even so, I was faced with the reality that I couldn’t be her lover, and I was finding it impossible to be “just friends”.

Any proximity to her was dangerous to my own mental wellbeing. I was becoming a dishonest person too. I snuck around, lied through omission, and kept secrets. Part of me hated that, so much so that my internal conflict was becoming violent, driving me to hurt myself. I couldn’t ignore that part anymore.

There was something in my silence then that drove her to ask “What?” She gave that all too familiar and flirtatious tilt of the head.

I patted her hand gently and gave it a squeeze. “You’ve already heard it.”

She took that in for a moment, then quickly changed the subject to the length of the line. We commiserated our way into other conversations. Today wasn’t the day for me to tell her things she already knew. It was a day to be here, to take her in, to know her, and to end knowing her.

We sat in the line for nearly an hour talking. We still spoke like best friends, even with the relationship’s impending end looming over us. We spoke of our children, petty gossip, and fond memories. We flipped through our phones to glance at old photos and reminisce. We remembered concerts, picnics, nights we made love. We went through the long list of reasons with each other of why it had to end; for our husbands, for our kids, for us to grow. We laughed, we cried, we hurt. We made a promise to get in touch someday, when we’re old and this is far behind us. We meant it.

Then it was ending. We were standing in the tiny booth, watching her car go through emissions, holding empty coffee cups. The smell of petrol mixed unkindly with the dwindling smell of caramel, and the ever-intoxicating scent of her. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, and neither was she.

“What are you doing with the rest of your day?” Her question felt like an invitation rather than a curiosity. It felt dangerously like a way out of saying goodbye.

“I guess I’m going home, but I have a wild hair up my ass to get a tattoo.” It was the truth. I’d been contemplating it all morning, how I would leave her and inflict pain on myself in a socially acceptable way.

“That sounds random,” she said.

“Its not.” The words and my eyes conveyed my point. I wanted a tattoo for her, some way to keep a part of her close, even if it was over. I wanted one small place on my wrist to run my thumb over when I thought of her. My eyes watered with the thought.

“I want to come with you,” she said. “I want one too.”

Minutes later we found ourselves in a nearby tattoo parlor signing waivers. A man in a grey metal band T-shirt with a bald head asked us what we wanted. We both smiled, our faces red and raw.

“Have you ever done a breakup tattoo?”

An hour later I kissed her goodbye for the last time. It was sweet and soft, a kiss deep in meaning but necessarily brief. I pulled her in and smelled her one last time, planted a kiss on the heart shaped birth mark next to her eyebrow, and whispered “That one was goodbye, Pretty Girl”. I got away as quickly as I could, before I could change my mind.

I look at my tiny teal heart on my wrist every day. It’s faded from my frequent swimming and neglect during the healing process, but it’s there forever. It’s imperfect, but beautiful. It was impulsive, painful, and now it is part of me forever. It is her.

I rub it gently with my thumb and know that somewhere there is a woman who looks at her wrist every day and sees a tiny orange heart that is me, and a man who has no idea how much that tiny little heart means. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, perhaps when we are old and gray. By then, perhaps the lust and conflict that made this mess will have faded. All that remains will be love and memories, and a little heart that fades but never goes away.