Page 65 of Vile Emotion
She couldn’t hide it from me even if she wanted to.
45
Avoidance…
That’s what it looks like Alaric is doing. I didn’t ask him to be weird but he’s being weird. I wouldn’t have noticed before but I notice now. For the past month or so, we go to work together, he drops me off on my floor, kisses me like it’s what should be done and then gets back on the elevator.
It’s a sad thing that I’ve come to expect it. That I’m in a place where someone who I said I didn’t like and is my nightmare is being like this to me. He doesn’t get to be that. It can’t be like this.
But after work, when we’re back in the car, he’s distant. At first I didn’t notice but then it became a repeated pattern, something that had my brows raising up. If that didn’t do it, the push he kept giving me and Ricky jr. to spend time together made it more suspicious.
Now, I’m fed up with it because it’s a weekend and I’ve gotten used to spending time with my son. A son that he failed to tell me has fencing lessons today so I’m all alone wandering around this big home. I’ve never wandered to where he sleeps, not one time and maybe it was because he hadn’t changed the fact that he would sit in that menacing chair and watch me sleep.
Maybe he thought I’d escape during the night as if I was a ninja capable of hopping black tall iron bars of a so-called fence.
My feet stop when I notice where I am. I’m in Alaric’s bedroom. A room I have never seen before. One that I shouldn’t be in but my curiosity has got the best of me. It’s taking everything in me not to touch anything. My eyes survey the room and on instinct, I raise my head staring up at the ceiling,
“What the fuck?”
I didn’t think it was possible for someone to shock me like this but Alaric has taken the cake for being the cuckooest human being I’ve ever had the displeasure to encounter.
Was this my family portrait? The one I was smiling at because I thought my life was great? I don’t even recognize her.
I want to be upset with Alaric but a part of me is grateful for being able to see something I never got the opportunity to see. By then, I told my parents abouthe who shall NOT be namedand that’s when all hell broke loose.
“What are you doing in here?” Alaric asks and even though I jump from the fact that I didn’t hear him come in, it takes me a minute to realize he isn’t upset. It’s just a question.
“Why do you have that portrait of my family?” I watch as Alaric continues into his room removing his shoes and suit jacket.
“It was a reminder of the person that took every single fucking thing from me.”
There’s no bite to his tone but it still stings.
“I didn’t mean to, I wa?—,”
“I know, Juli,” Alaric says as he continues undressing like I’m not in the room.
I avert my eyes staring back up at the ceiling, I wish I could go back to that Juliana, someone that I didn’t hate.
“Why do you keep staring at it?” Alaric says and he’s so close to me that I immediately turn to face a half naked version of him.
He has on satin lounge pants and nothing else. This is the most normal I’ve seen him, ever. My eyes venture up to his face and it dawns on me that he has a stubble and his hair has grown out more, it’s almost back to where it was the first time I met him. It feels like it was so long ago.
I know so much has changed between us because we’re standing in a space where neither of us should be together and the sight of him doesn’t repulse me. He’s not yelling or threatening me which is another thing that I’ve noticed.
“Why are you talking to me like this?”
“Like what?” He asks.
“Just like this. This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know me, Juliana.”
“But I do, Alaric. You’ve shown me the real you and that’s who I know. That’s who I fear and this?” I point to the ceiling. “This is scary.”
Alaric shrugs.
“You don’t know what I had to do to cope. You can’t feel what I felt. You don’t know why I have it up there and even if it is scary, it’s not being painted over.”
