Page 5 of Right Number, Wrong Man
I guess that’s why I got this bold.
At first, I sent harmless texts. The grief counselor I saw for a while suggested it to process my emotions. I never told her I didn’t feel particularly sad about my husband’s passing, but rather guilty over my lack of grief.
But I still tried it out. Still wrote the messages.
I wish you were still here so we could talk things through,I wrote, though I didn’t mean it.
I’m sorry, I wrote, though he’s the one who should’ve been sorry.
But it felt like Ishouldbe sad because Mike was my first everything. My first crush. My first love. My first time. The only man I ever slept with.
In school, stupid teenage me fell for his dangerous bad boy appeal. I thought he just needed the right woman to fix him. He was sweet enough when we started dating and we got married at nineteen, but as soon as the ring was on my finger, Mike changed.
He said I was smothering him and spent all his free time with friends I never met, getting high and drunk. When he came home late at night, he stumbled into bed. And when we had sex, it was quick and clinical. I never came unless I took care of myself, locked in the bathroom.
But what did I know about marriages? I figured that was how things went when the honeymoon phase was over.
I tried to break up, but Mike always begged me to stay. He said he could only get clean if I was with him. It never lasted, but I gave him chance after chance. Then begging turned to threats and he said he’d hurt himself if I filed for divorce.
So I stayed. I became a hostage in my loveless marriage.
Mike and I never sent each other texts like these. No sweet nothings, no flirting. Especially no sexting. For over a decade, I buried my needs, but now I’m single for the first time since I was eighteen.
I have some catching up to do.
After Mike’s funeral, it seemed inappropriate to start dating again right away and I wasn’t confident enough to try, anyway. Kink shaming does that to a woman.
But I still needed to reconnect with my neglected sexuality.
So harmless messages to my dead husband’s phone turned into riskier texts. Then videos like this. Over the past weeks I’ve sent dozens and with each one I reclaim a piece of my power.
It’s something I do for myself. I consider it a form ofself-care—and a gigantic middle finger toward Mike’s spirit in the afterlife, if that’s a thing. I hope it is, because knowing he’d be clutching his ghostly pearls makes me smile.
Now I need a hot shower and some TV in bed before I sleep. I found a new streaming site with underground indie horror movies that?—
In passing, I glance at the phone screen and terror paralyzes me.
Read?!
I grab the device, gawking.
Why are my messages suddenly marked as read?
3
HAILEY
I take a deep breath,exhaling in a laugh.
This must be a display error.
Mike’s brother Colton told me that he had the number disconnected, and though he’s a stuck-up prick, he has no reason to lie about this.
Apart from my best friend Andrea, Colt is the only person who knows that Mike was unfaithful. My confession was a spur of the moment kind of deal.
When Mike didn’t come home the night of his death, I called Colt in the morning. Panicked, I asked if Mike had crashed at his place. When Colt said he hadn’t seen him, my brain malfunctioned from stress and the truth spilled from my lips.
The cheating. Our fight. How I broke up with Mike and kicked him out.
