CHEATER CHEATER
A short while later Arun’s head was resting against her bare shoulder. As she ran her fingers on her face she could still feel the light prickle of his stubble on her cheek. It was different from Ethan. Ethan! Emily was lying naked with a man who was not Ethan. Not her husband. She sat up panting and looked at the clock. Her parents would be home soon and they could not see this. She pulled up the loose sheet around her sticky body with one hand and tore at her hair with the other. “What did we just do? I’m a married woman. What did we just do? What…what have I done? Leave, Arun. Leave and don’t come back here. Leave NOW!”
Arun began picking up pieces of clothing strewn on the ground as quickly as he could, a confused expression on his face. He had dressed partially to Emily chanting, “What have I done…what have I done…?” in the background when he stopped and held her by the wrist.
Emily felt like her flesh was on fire. She had let another man touch her, and more… What had she been thinking! She tried to loosen his grip. He wouldn’t let go.
“You did what you did because you have a husband who doesn’t care enough about you or your marriage to spend time with you anymore. You did what you did because you needed to feel desired again. You did what you did because you needed to feel happy…Emily! Emily, stop holding your arm over your face to try to block me out. You need to hear what I’m saying…”
That’s when Emily slapped him. “I cheated on my husband. I CHEATED ON MY HUSBAND! You…I never want to see you again. Get the hell out of my house!! Get the hell out of my life!!!” she screamed.
Arun stormed out and as soon as the front door slammed shut, Emily ran to the bathroom and stood under the shower. The water was boiling. She didn’t care. Perhaps it would burn off her infidelity. She was dirty. His hands, his lips, his tongue, him…she could still feel Arun on her…in her. She needed to wash off the grime that covered her and stood there scrubbing and scrubbing until she was pink and raw and still she felt filthy.
She got out of the shower and wanted to crawl into bed but stopped so abruptly it was as if she had rammed into an invisible wall. All she could see was herself and Arun, locked in each other’s arms on the bed. She tore the sheets off the mattress and flung them on the floor. She didn’t know what to do with them. The image of Arun’s naked body against her own flashed in her mind and she sprinted back to the bathroom, dragging the sheets with her. She picked them up to wash them with her bare hands and then remembered that the last time she had hand washed anything was when she had bought clothes for the baby she was robbed off. She dropped the sheets on the floor and vomited into the toilet.
She lay curled up on the cold bathroom floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, sobbing. She didn’t answer when her parents called out to her when they came home. She pretended to be fast asleep. They didn’t check on her, they trusted her. She had broken that trust. She couldn’t bear to look her parents in the eye after what she had done. She had let them down. She had let Ethan down. She had let herself down.
After what felt like an eternity of replaying the day in her head, she fell into a fitful sleep. She was awake again before dawn and left a note for her parents before setting off on a long walk to try to figure out what she needed to do next.
She fought a hard war – torn between simply not telling Ethan about what had happened and picking up a phone and confessing right then. If she said nothing, once Arun went back to America, there would be no one to carry the tale to Ethan. Except that she knew that the guilt would consume her and leave her a worse wreck than before. Ethan, who already seemed like he was not interested in their marriage, would leave her for sure. If that was to be the eventual outcome, she didn’t think she could torture herself for that long. She decided that she needed to figure out the best, least painful way to tell him what had transpired the night before and face the rage that she was sure would follow.
Emily zipped up her sweatshirt against the breeze and resigned herself to what was to come. She had done something reckless and impulsive and she would probably regret it for the rest of her life because, if nothing else, she had hurt Ethan who was a good man and most definitely did not deserve what she had done to him. She would do the right thing, even if she just had done something terribly wrong.
Emily checked the time. It was close to eight in the morning and she had been walking for over three hours. She turned to head home, hoping to get some sleep before placing that terrifying phone call to Ethan.
******
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UBC: Post 27
Filed under: Fiction, novella, UBC October, Ultimate Blog Challenge Tagged: affair, cheater cheater, cheats, Emily, fiction, guilt, novella, story, UBC, UBC October 
