Chapters (43)
“She lives in California. He moved to Hawaii after they broke up. When I looked through his phone later, I discovered that they’d started messaging each other long before we even met. They were friendly at first, but soon it got sexual. She had a fiancé. He kept wanting her to break things off with him. But she didn’t. She married him. But they continued texting and talking and sending each other videos and naked pictures.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper, wishing more than anything that I was right there with her so that I could take her into my arms.
“It’s so stupid. I’m so stupid. This has been going on this whole time and I didn’t see it.”
“He was probably very good at hiding it.”
“He was,” she admits. “All of her conversations and videos were in a special folder. He only showed it to me after we argued for hours and I basically told him I was leaving.”
“So, she flew out there to be with him?” I ask, trying to figure out the details of the story.
Sydney nods her head and buries it in her hands again.
For a moment, all I see is an extreme close up of her forehead. Her sobs reverberate around the whole living room.
“She was in New York on business so she came to visit him in our apartment. Our bed. When I finally got him to admit the truth, he said that she has been there the whole week. Staying with him during the days while I was at work.”
“What an asshole,” I say under my breath.
“You’ve got that right.”
“So…what happened?”
“What do you think? I yelled. She put her clothes on and left. We yelled some more. Then we talked. Then I cried. Then I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
I guess that’s about it. That’s pretty much the anatomy of a breakup.
She lets out a big sigh and buries her head in her hands.
“Will you stay with me here for a while?” Sydney asks.
“Yes, we can talk for as long as you want.”
“No, I don’t want to talk. Let’s do something else. How about watch Netflix?”
“Sure. What do you have in mind?”
“Something dark and painful. Something we’ve seen before.”
I know what she’s going to suggest even before she says it. I put it on my TV and she starts it up on hers. When the opening credits start and sync up, we both start to laugh a little.
“There’s nothing like watching someone else go through hell when things get shitty in your life, huh?” I ask.
She nods and we start to watch the first episode.