Page 56 of Indulgence
My anger kicked up a notch when Penelope told me she had just landed back in Seattle after having been in Portland for the last two days. After learning that, I wasn’t leaving without confronting Natale. I gladly sacrificed an hour of my time waiting for her to get home from the airport.
I didn’t get what I came for. If anything, I just felt worse as I stared at the front door to Penelope’s house a few moments past Natalie having already gone inside. Pen stood there looking at me with her eyes full of sadness.
Penelope was extremely empathic, and I knew this was hard for her. Even if she was Natalie’s friend first, she was just as close of a friend to me as she was to Natalie. She had texted several times over the last few days to check in but left out that Nat wasn’t there in her messages. It felt like a sucker punch to the balls to find out Natalie had flown out of town without so much as a word. She just up and left and I wanted to smash my hand through Pen’s glass coffee table as she spoke while I waited.
Natalie’s words sat heavy on my chest all the way home and to the restaurant. She couldn’t separate the reality and the fantasy any longer. I knew the movie she was talking about.Freddy Vs. Jason.It was always part of the Halloween movie marathon that Jackson loved to watch every year.
Brooke brought everything from the darkness into the light. Natalie didn’t want the two to mix, she didn’t want to acknowledge that it all existed in the same room. That was what she didn’t understand. Whether it was a dream or nightmare, it wasourlife. We needed to deal with the consequences of our actions together. Only then could we separate the two again. But truthfully, were they ever separate to begin with? We are who we are. We want what we want. We enjoy what we enjoy.
All of the want and indulgence tasted like ash on my tongue.
I was begging for forgiveness while Natalie acted as if I went out of my way to hurt her. When it felt like the exact opposite, like she was trying to punish me.
I couldn’t put into words how that felt.
Each day I sat alone, painfully aware that I was one more day closer to knowing the fate of this awful situation, waiting, hoping for a call from Brooke telling me that we could put the monster back into the box. If the news was anything other than we had nothing to worry about, I wasn’t sure my marriage would survive it. And, shit, did that hurt.
I’d been trying to convince myself that Natalie wasn’t doing well with the unknown. I knew she was scared of history repeating itself. Nat was on the pill in college. We were the .01%. We knew all too well how anything could happen. I kept saying that, so long as Brooke didn’t turn out to be pregnant, we could get through this. But if that wasn’t the case, I was seriously starting to worry my life would never be the same.
* * *
Brooke’s nameflashed on my phone screen. I sat alone in my empty house the next day packing a bag to head out for a trip to meet with our new clients. Last night, my boss informed me that I was being promoted from consultant to senior consultant. We were heading to Florida for three days to meet with our new client, see their business plans, discuss policy options and rates.
Being bumped up to senior consultant and spear-heading this new client with Barry was a massive accomplishment for me.
One that could be overshadowed by the news of this call.
My heart hammered in my chest. I knew what this call was for. I’d anxiously been waiting for it. I just didn’t know if I could handle the results. Logically, my brain kept telling me I knew she was on the pill, she took the morning after pill, and it was just a week ago tonight. She couldn’t be pregnant with my child even if she was. Right?
I wanted nothing more than to turn to Natalie and confirm my thought process, but she wasn’t here. My teeth gnashed together remembering how alone I was in dealing with this. Anger rose up from my gut, but it was squashed back down when the phone vibrating in my hand took over my focus.
A buzzing filled my ears as I answered the call. “Hello?”
“Hi, Matteo.” Brooke’s voice was light and airy, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Thank god she was great throughout this whole thing. The situation could have been a thousand times worse with someone else.
I swallowed the lump in my throat down. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she replied. “I just wanted to let you know I started my period this morning. We don’t have anything to worry about.”
A numbness surged through my body. It was as though I was feeling so much leading up to that news that it all shut off as soon as I had my answer.
Relief was euphoric. The chains of uncertainty and purgatory released their hold on me. All I wanted to do was turn to my wife, tell her the good news, and pull her into my arms. As bizarre as it sounded, this was a moment I wanted to share with her. We could move forward without any tethering to our disastrous night.
Except she wasn’t here. I loved her unconditionally, and the longer I didn’t feel that in return, the angrier I got.
No. I wasn’t angry. I was downright furious with her. It was time she heard how I felt.
* * *
The next morning,I stomped up to Penelope’s door and knocked. I didn’t give any thought to the hour. It wasn’t early exactly, but if Penelope had just gotten home from work this morning, she was about to be woken up.
For a moment, I thought about coming over here last night, but I was mentally exhausted. I didn’t want to confront Natalie tired and angry. I had a lot to say and I didn’t want to do or say something I’d regret.
The hushed whispering behind the door brought all that fury right back to the surface.
“Tell him I’m not here. Tell him I already left for work.”
“I’m not lying to him.” Penelope hissed.
