Cheater

She heard the words. She absorbed the words. She felt the words wash over her skin like acid rain. She felt the words rip through her insides like glass in her veins. She felt the words filling her lungs with the desire to scream at the top of her lungs, yet she remain motionless.

She stared straight ahead, sitting on the edge of the bed with her feet flat on the floor. Her posture was straight and her hands folded in her lap. In that moment, everything shattered. She was a new person, a miserable person. But she didn't react.

The reverberation of his confession was sending shock waves through her brain, ringing in her ear drums, louder and louder until she was deaf from it. "I cheated on you."

Those were the last words she would ever hear. She was sure of it. He moved closed to her, sitting next to her on the bed. Put an arm around her. A hand over hers. His forehead resting against her temple. She continued to stare forward. She didn't feel his touch. Her skin was on fire. He was nobody anymore.

Maybe a minute passed, maybe an hour passed.

"Baby, I'm so sorry." He was crying softly. His voice was cracked, choking on tears. His face also a casualty of tears with a single moist line dripping down his face, creating a stream that glistened it's sadness also reflected in his tear-filled, devastated brown eyes.

"Please, say something. Please. I love you so much. I'm so sorry."

Maybe he said it in that order. Maybe the same words in different places. Maybe he said one sentence at one moment, and the other part not till an hour had passed.

Time stood still even though the painful quiet of the apartment offered no noise but that of a ticking clock on the wall.

He got off the bed and kneeled in front of her. On one knee, the way he had proposed. Except this time there was no ring in his hand. It was empty, just like the promises he had made when he gave her the ring only six weeks ago.

He inched closer, wrapping his arms around her torso and pressing his head into her stomach. He wasn't outright sobbing, but his sorrow still dribbled from his eyes, squeaked in his voice, trembled in his hands.

They stayed like that for a while, she was sure of it. Because she liked the way it felt, him cradling her like a newborn clinging to it's mother. He needed her, couldn't live without her. Found solace and life in the body he clung to.

But you don't have sex with another woman when the woman that you need in order to survive is the only one you vowed to be intimate with for the rest of your life. You can't break her heart and expect her to still nurture you.

"Get out."

Her voice was scratchy, as if she'd smoked 20 packs of cigarettes in the time they'd been sitting there.

He pulled pack, looking up at her. "What?"

"You heard me."

For the first time, she looked at him. For the first time since she heard the words "I cheated on you", she looked him in the eyes. And he wasn't the same man she'd been staring in the eyes for the past two years.

"Please..."

He berated her with pleas, desperate begging, endless apologies.

"Let's talk this out. Please just give me a chance to talk to you."

She stood up, forcing him back on his heels. He struggled to stand up, his face a mess of watery tears and bone-chilling sadness.

She stared him in the eyes sternly. "I don't want to hear the details of who you fucked, where you picked her up, how you fucked her, how you knew I was at home the whole time with this fucking ring on my finger." She held up her ring finger in front of his face, the diamond ring sparkling so beautiful as it did every single day.

Her voice became more clear until it was outright malicious. She wasn't screaming, but she was speaking from a place only a broken heart knows how to sound. She started to take steps towards him, shoving the ringed finger closer to his eyes. He stepped back.

"I don't want to hear a god damn thing about what you were thinking - or how you weren't thinking - and how it was one time - and you're sorry and you'll never do it again. Or how having sex with her was compared to me. I have it picture perfect in my head, don't you fucking worry about that."

She lowered her hand, but now her face was right in his. He was afraid - not physically afraid, but terrified of how abrasive she was becoming. It was sinking in into every atom of his being how bad this was.

"I have a perfect picture of you naked, entwined with another naked body that's not mine, but you're fucking her just the same. She's watching you the same way I used to, and it feels fucking great, so she doesn't care that you've got someone back home. And it feels great for you, cause you got to stick your dick in another fucking hole and show some other sweaty, naked, writhing, yearning body how fantastic you are, how mind-blowing it is when you make a girl cum, how just your lips kissing hers or any part of her glistening body is enough to make her cum again and she screams your name, and you scream hers, and her fingers are scratching at your back and your hands are tangled in her hair and your bodies are so close, you're inside her, you're fucking her, you're having sex with her, WITH HER."

By now she was sobbing, but still screaming. Screaming loud, but if the neighbors called 911, she didn't give a crap.

He simply took it, looking more and more terrified, tears streaming down his face at a faster pace and his body trembling with more rigidity.

"You undressed her, didn't you? And she undressed you. You probably went down on her, huh? Ate her out, tasted her. Maybe she sucked your dick, and you told her how great it was because it doesn't matter if it's me or her, it's a fucking mouth around your dick. And maybe you used all the positions. Maybe you moaned loudly, she moaned loudly, you didn't even try to hide it because you didn't care in the bliss you were caught up in. You didn't FUCKING CARE about ANYTHING in that moment because what you had was the most FANTASTIC FUCKING FEELING to ever exist, and you didn't have it with me. You had it with her. And now she has that forever. And so do you."

She was quieting down now. She looked down at her ring, and pulled it off. She held it out to him.

"Take your fucking ring and get out of my life."

He stepped away from the wall she had cornered him into. He paced around the room shaking his hands and head 'no'. "Don't give it back, no. Please, just give it time. That ring is yours, forever. Baby..."

She shook her head in disgust and threw the ring at him. "Get out."

The ring hit him in the chest and he watched it fall and hit the ground. Hit the wooden floor and bounce back up, spinning and hitting the floor again until it was finally done twirling with a prolonged, loud, but sincere thud. Then silence.