P.S. I Hate You

She’s cheating on me. I know it. I can see it with my own two eyes. There she is, lip-locked with this muscled blonde guy who I don’t recognise, in the restaurant where I proposed. Work meeting, home late, she texted me earlier today. It must be a top secret meeting if they have to converse so closely that their tongues are in each other’s mouths.

I only left the house because I wanted pizza. I swear it wasn’t to spy on her. It just so happened to be that the pizza place is in the same street as the restaurant she and her tongue-battle opponent decided to be at. And I just happened to recognise her car - her shiny new blue Audi - parked outside of said restaurant, when it should have been at least twenty minutes away and nestled between a large BMW (her boss’) and a crappy junk bucket Ford (her underpaid and overworked secretary’s).
So of course I had to check it out.

And now here I am, with my nose almost pressed against the window of the restaurant, struggling to keep my breathing under control. Damn asthma. It always flares up when something emotional is going on. It’s how we met; sort of.

~

I was sitting on a bench in the park, holding my phone in my lap as tears stung my eyes. My lungs were beginning to feel clogged but it wasn’t too bad, not yet. I could hear a group of friends about my age laughing across the grass but I wasn’t paying them much attention. Their voices sounded a million miles away. Like Grandma is now, I thought to myself as I let out a sob. I shifted my eyes to the ground as I saw the prettiest girl out of the group of friends coming towards me. Her footsteps slowed down as she got closer to me. I didn’t want her to see me crying, so I didn’t look up even as she sat down beside me.

“What’s up?” she asked. I shook my head, indicating that I didn’t want to answer. My chest felt tighter and my breathing was starting to become laced with wheezing. She noticed my noisy breathing and attempted to talk to me again. “Hey, whoa, are you okay there?”

That one question brought my asthma attack into full force. I finally looked up and shook my head with desperation. “N-No. Asthma attack…” I managed to stutter out.
“Do you have an inhaler with you?” she asked.
“No.” I was beginning to panic now, like I always did.
“Hold on,” she said and took off back to her friends, shouting something I couldn’t hear. I sat there on the bench trying to calm myself down and failing miserably. The girl returned a few moments later shaking an inhaler in her hand. “I borrowed this from Sam, I know it’s not good to share inhalers but you need to get breathing again.” She shoved the inhaler in my hand and guided it up to my mouth. I used it like I always did every morning and my wheezing slowly started to calm down until I was breathing quite normally. I looked up at this beautiful stranger and showed her a weak half smile.

“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome. That was an interesting way to meet, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Soph. Come and meet my friends? I need you to tell them that I’m a hero,” she said smiling a radiant smile.
“I’m Pete, and sure,” I said, standing up and following her across the park.

~

I pull my inhaler (which I keep on me at all times now) out of my pocket and use it as normal. I’m still standing out the front of the restaurant. I may have gotten lost in my reverie, but reality was still happening all around me. Soph was still out with someone else and then there was me, her loser fiancé, still looking morosely in at them, even if I wasn’t mentally there a moment ago. One more puff of my inhaler and my breathing is back to normal, but my heart is not.

I had no idea that Soph wasn’t happy with me. I always thought we were in a good place in our relationship. We’ve been together for five years, and it’s been an easy relationship; no major issues. Sure, we have our fair share of stupid fights, but whose relationship doesn’t? I didn’t think that would be a reason to cheat on me. I wonder how long it’s been going on for. I wonder, stupidly, what he has that I don’t – but then I realise. Everything. This guy looks like he goes to the gym seven days a week, whereas I can’t put muscle on no matter how much I try. He looks tall, much taller than me. Let’s see, what else? Movie star handsome man with perfectly styled blonde wavy hair vs. weird-looking geeky man-child with stupid (and boring brown) hair? Check. Well-dressed in expensive suit vs. couldn’t even be bothered to put on proper pants? Check.

Okay. So maybe I got comfortable in the last couple of years. I thought that’s what happens to all couples in relationships. She certainly looked comfortable in the oversized Def Leppard t-shirt with about forty holes in it that she was wearing the first time we exchanged ‘I love you’s. And when she wears the old hoodie she stole from me a few years ago that used to be white but is now a light tan colour because of the amount of makeup she’s managed to smear on it from her hands over the years. She wears that hoodie all the time. Who’s comfortable now, Soph?

It takes me way too long to realise that I have two pairs of eyes on me from inside the restaurant. I go to turn and leave but I see Soph say something to her “friend” before she gets up and comes outside.

“Pete,” she says. She sounds guilty. Good. I stare at her, waiting for her brilliant explanation. “Um…”
She’s speechless. That’s a first.
“Hi Soph,” I finally say, “Work meeting, huh? How long have you been working with him, then?”
“I… Pete, I’m so sorry. You weren’t meant t –”
I interrupt her, “Weren’t meant to see that? Weren’t meant to find out? What?”
“Both,” she whispers. “Pete, I’m so sorry.”
“How long have you been seeing him?” I ask casually as though it’s not a big deal. On the inside I’m trying to hold myself together. I’ve always been the emotional one of the two of us.
She hesitates. “Um, six months,” she replies.
“Hmm, and we’ve been engaged for four. Interesting.”
“Stop being sarcastic, Pete. This isn’t all my fault you know? You haven’t taken me out to eat since we got engaged. You never compliment me. You spend all your time playing video games when you’re not working. We haven’t had sex for weeks. I hoped that getting engaged would make things better. I would have dropped Jared if they did, but they haven’t. Jared notices when I have a new dress for work or when I get a haircut or a new lipstick. You don’t notice anything like that,” she rants and I’m surprised.

She knows perfectly well why we haven’t been able have sex recently. I’ve been working 14 hour days at the café near our apartment block to get money for the wedding. Most days I’m up way before her alarm goes off and when I finally get home, she always tells me she needs to stay late at work and doesn’t get home until 10 pm or later most nights. Bit hard to have sex when we’re not even in the same vicinity as each other. I tell her this, and she blushes, realising the fault in her argument. She hasn’t had time to have sex with me because she’s too busy having sex with this Jared guy.

“Why didn’t we talk about all this stuff, Soph? I’ve never once heard you mention anything about wanting to go out to eat or if you want me to stop playing video games. I would’ve stopped. I would’ve taken you out. I just assumed you wanted to save for the wedding,” I say, making her cast her eyes to the ground and her forehead wrinkle slightly. That’s when I realise that I’ve caught her in a lie. That’s always been the indication.
“What did you lie about?” I ask tiredly. Her head snaps up and she struggles to pull an innocent expression onto her face.
“Nothing,” she says. I just look at her. “Okay, fine. I’ve been with him for nearly a year. I was going to leave you soon. Jared and I had discussed it. I want to be with him. You don’t excite me anymore, Pete. Things got too boring with us. I want adventure and excitement, not…” She pauses, looking for the right word, before she waves her hand in my general direction and says, “…this. Us. I don’t know.”
“Right… right,” I say, trying to comprehend what's happening. I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m trying not to cry. I’m surprised my asthma hasn’t flared up again. “So… what now?”
“Well… I guess now that everything’s out in the open, one of us should move out. I think that since it was originally my place, you should move out,” she says, and I nod dumbly, so many emotions going through me that I can’t come up with a reply. “I can give you a couple of days to get all your stuff out if you want. I’ll stay with Jared.”
“Fine,” I say. She nods, and it’s clearly the end of our conversation because she turns her body towards the door to the restaurant.
“Bye, Pete,” she says quietly, her eyes watering slightly, before she disappears inside.
“Bye,” I whisper back. I stand there for another minute or two before I head back to my car, completely forgetting about my pizza. Some lucky worker will get to eat it instead. I’ve suddenly lost my appetite anyway.

I drive home in a state of shock. How did I go out for pizza and come home single? I can’t believe it. Five years of a relationship down the drain, all because some dickhead noticed her clothing choice one day. I bet it wasn’t actually him who noticed. He probably heard some of the women in the office talking about it and decided to pretend it was him who picked up on it. Either that or he’s gay. I smirk to myself at the thought; Soph, leaving me for some gay guy just because he noticed her dress, and then coming back to me in a few months crying that she caught him screwing a man. It would serve her right.

The longer I drive, the angrier at the situation I get. As I park out the front of the apartment block, the only thought in my mind is I need a drink. I rush inside our – well, now it’s just hers I guess – apartment and pull out a new bottle of Jameson whiskey from the bottom cupboard where we keep the alcohol. She was going to give it to her brother for his birthday in a couple of weeks but fuck that. I unscrew the cap and take a swig, the liquid burning my throat. I ignore it and take another. And another.

Soon, I’m drunk and singing along to the song “Fuck You” by Cee Lo Green while I throw my clothes messily in my suitcase. I also, childishly, pull all of Soph’s work clothes out of the wardrobe and dump them on the floor. That’ll show her, I think to myself and giggle drunkenly.

I keep myself busy by packing up all of my stuff and making multiple trips to my car so that in the morning I can head to my sister’s house. I called her after my first few drinks and told her the news and she offered to let me stay with her. I have to stay the night here because I’m too drunk to drive anywhere, but knowing that I have a place to stay is a good thing. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.

It takes me a few hours to collect everything and have it packed in my car but eventually I’m done. I look around the living room through hazy eyes. I spot the bottle of Jameson on the coffee table and notice that I’ve drunk more than half of it.
“Maybe you should stop drinking now, Petey-boy,” I say out loud to myself.
“Okay,” I reply.

I walk into the office and sit down at the desk that’s covered in papers from Soph’s job. I pick one up. It has writing all over it but I can’t read any of it. The black writing makes swirls in front of my eyes and I realise that I must have left my glasses out in the living room. The alcohol in my system doesn’t help either. I shrug. It probably isn’t important anyway. I flip the paper over and pick up a pen. I start writing. My handwriting is messy – messier than normal – but I don’t care. I tell Soph what I really think of her and then I fall asleep on the desk.

When I wake up, the paper is sticking to my face. As I sit up, I peel it off and look at it. I must have written a lot in my mind but not a lot on paper. There are just over half a dozen scrawled sentences on the back of what appears to be a legal document of some sort. Oops. I pluck my glasses off the top of my head where I guess I left them (and not in the living room like I thought last night) and slide them onto my face. I read over the lines again.

Dear Sophia – I laugh out loud, she hates being called her full name.

I think I’m better off without you.

We were good together but now the things you’ve done we can’t undo.

I hope he breaks your heart. And that he’s gay.

I wish I never met you.

Don’t write me back.

Pete

P.S. I hate you

I grin at my words. She deserves them. I leave the note on her desk in plain sight and then I leave the room.

I take a quick detour to the kitchen for a glass of water, pick up my car keys, wallet and phone from the counter and then, with one last sweeping look at my old apartment, leave. I don’t shut the door behind me. Why make it difficult for any unwanted visitors? She shattered my heart; someone else can shatter her china. She stole my life for five years; someone else can steal her TV. Payback’s a bitch, huh Soph?