Page 112 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight

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Thirty-Six

Faye

I thought Gray was the kind of man who would never cause me pain.

Boy was I wrong.

I curl my knees up, holding them tightly against my chest as hurt ripples through me.

As tears scald my cheeks.

As my stomach ties itself into knots.

As my heart hurts.

Then I exhale, shore up my spine…and I make a plan.

Pack my computer, my notebooks and plotting supplies. Then call for a Lyft?—

No, hotel first.

Then computer and notebooks. Then Lyft.

I need a place to evacuate all this pain, all this grief, all this knowledge of what could have been…but now never will be.

“Focus, Faye,” I whisper.

Hotel. Pack. Car.

I nod to myself, reach for my phone?—

But the moment my fingers wrap around the case, the door to the guest room flies open, slamming into the wall, sending up another tiny puff of drywall dust.

And in the opening…

My heart squeezes hard.

Gray is standing there, eyes wild, hands in tight fists at his sides, breaths coming in rapid gusts.

“I’m a liar.”

I blink. Then again.

Because that…I don’t know what to do with that.

“You’re a liar?”

He nods, lifting a hand, shoving it through his hair. “Courtney isn’t—” A deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling before his soft words reach my eyes. “I put the blame on Courtney,” he says, “but the truth is that it’s my fault.”

I frown.

“She didn’t start off as the woman you’ve met.”

“Okay,” I say gently, waiting for him to go on, knowing there must be more.

“When we first got together, she was like you—sweet and kind, super smart and thoughtful. But the longer she was with me, the more I fucked her up.”

I open my mouth.

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