JESSA
The restaurant I’ve picked is loud, the kind of place I usually avoid. But tonight, I want noise. I want conversation and laughter and life. I want to forget that I’m contemplating leaving my life behind and to forget the exceptionally bad decisions I’ve made in the last few months, one after another after another.
Freya scopes the place out when we arrive, looking less than thrilled about my choice of venue.
“The food is good,” I promise, reading her expression. “Their dumplings are to die for.”
“They better be,” she mutters.
Her words are half-drowned out by the boisterous table of frat stars hanging out opposite us. She rolls her eyes. “I could put up with that shite if even one of them was cute. Sadly, that is not the case.”
I smile, thankful that I have someone like Freya in my life. It’s because of her that I haven’t really felt Salma’s absence quite so painfully.
Not until this morning, at least, when Salma herself had actively reminded me.
“Guess what? Salma texted me this morning.”
Freya sips on her drink and frowns. “Who?”
“Salma,” I repeat. “My so-called maid of honor.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh. Right. Shit. What did she say?”
“That she was sorry and she never meant to hurt me.”
Freya groans. “God, I hate when people say that. I never meant to hurt you. How does that even make sense? When you’re actively doing something you know is hurtful to someone else, it is, by definition, fucking hurtful!”
I smile. It’s the whole reason I’m so grateful to have Freya in my life. I love Chris to death, but he would never give me a response like that.
Sometimes, he doesn’t realize that what I want is not just to vent, but to hear him vehemently agree with me. I want him to bash the people that screwed me over and imagine creative forms of despicably violent revenge for them.
“Why are you smiling?” Freya asks.
“Just… it’s nice to talk to someone who gets it.”
“I think most females would get this situation pretty damn easily,” she points out. “You don’t steal another woman’s man. It’s black and white.”
Her eyes flash with anger. I can feel in my bones just how deeply she sympathizes with me. We haven’t really spoken much about her past since she first told me about her abusive relationship. I’ve kind of monopolized the conversations.
When dinner gets to the table, we dig in, but I notice that Freya mostly just shoves the food around on her plate. She’s contemplative tonight.
“Were you ever cheated on?” I ask Freya on a whim.
Her expression falls flat for a moment. A cloud of hurt passes over her eyes. I wave my own question away. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”
“No,” she says quickly. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I…”
I wait in silence until Freya is ready. She takes a deep breath and looks up at me.
“I followed him one day when he told me he was going to be working late,” she says. “He told me it was just a run-of-the-mill ‘business meeting’ and that he had to hobnob with important clients.”
“But you suspected something?”
“I heard some of his friends talking,” she explains. “They mentioned this club. It struck me as odd. I knew that oftentimes he would take his clients to non-traditional places and that was all well and good, but I just had a bad feeling this time. So I went to the club and found him in one of the private rooms. He was there with his friends. Surrounded by naked women.”
“Oh God…”
She shakes her head. “I accused him of cheating and he didn’t deny it. Instead, he told me that I could never give him what he wanted. So he had to find it elsewhere.”