Streetlights Part 4 (fiction)

Die story, die! I'm still not done. Hopefully by the end of this week...

She waited for her pounding heartbeat to subside. She quelled the wave of anxiousness and nausea that welled up within her. She calmed her mind and let go of the myriad of thoughts that were whirling around inside of her head like autumn leaves swept up in a brisk wind.
Not wanting Thomas’s paramour to recognize her when she caught the elevator back down, she walked down the hallway away from his apartment and through a fire door, keeping it open a miniscule amount so she could peer down the hallway. She heard raised voices and then Thomas’s door opened and the woman exited, a look of grim determination and a battle hard fought written across her beautiful face. She jabbed a manicured fingernail into the elevator call button and then tapped her right foot impatiently as the elevator came up to meet her.
Letting the door close, she leaned against the wall once more, closing her eyes. She still didn’t know what to do. Confront him? He could simply say that this woman was a coworker or a friend or some cousin twice removed. She could ask him if there was anything that, perhaps, he wished to unburden to her? Maybe then he would come clean. No, she didn’t want to do that: he didn’t deserve her kindness. She could let it slide and gather more concrete evidence. That wouldn’t work either, because she wasn’t a good enough actress to be able to keep up the façade of loving devotion. She could simply get back in the elevator, retrace her steps back to her car and never speak to him again. She liked that idea; it was what he deserved, yet she wanted closure. She wanted him to know that she knew and she wanted him to know what she thought of him.
She was startled out of her reverie by a young, attractive Asian woman decked out in expensive workout gear, wearing Chanel sunglasses with a trendy workout bag slung over her shoulder passing by her, giving her an odd glance. She idly wondered if Thomas had slept with this woman as well.
Groaning, she pressed her fingertips into her eyes hard enough to see the little explosions blossom against the black of her eyelids. Today of all days, she thought. Her ironic side reminded her that bad things came in threes, so likely the “to good to be true” parking spot was quite literally that, and after telling Thomas to stuff it up his ass she would emerge onto the street, full of fury only to find that her car had been towed.
Still unsure of what she was going to say to him, or how she was going to say it (but knowing that it would be unpleasant) she picked up the bags of groceries and headed back to his apartment and knocked on the door.
He opened after a few moments, and she had an image of him scurrying around his apartment and shoving lacey bras under the pillows of his couch.
“Hey,” he said upon opening the door. “You didn’t buzz me.”
“Oh, someone exiting saw that I had my hands full so they let me in. I guess I look pretty trustworthy,” she smiled.
He glanced down at the bags in her hands and at her overnight bag and frowned so slightly that she almost missed it, and then he held the door open for her to come in.
She kicked her shoes off, as per her usual routine, and walked into the kitchen to place the groceries and wine on the counter, waiting for him to ask her why she had showed up so early and unexpectedly at his place. Instead he said nothing, and as she tried to interpret his silence she smelled the same perfume lingering in the air that she had been subjected to on the elevator. Turning around to face him she noticed two empty wineglasses in the sink and decided that he really could have tried harder to clean up after his mistress or whatever the hell she was.
“Kate, I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.
Her heart plummeted: he was going to beat her to the punch! Wildly she thought that, perhaps, if she hadn’t shown up at his place so early and unexpected, none of this would have happened: she was the catalyst. She studied his face and he didn’t look pained or upset, but instead appeared frustratingly calm.
“Do you want to sit?” he asked her, politely, gesturing towards the lacey bra-stuffed couch in the living room.
Feeling utterly fatigued and with leaden legs, she went over and sat. Should she interrupt him? Tell him she had something she needed to get off her chest first and beat him to the punch? She cast another glance at him and something about his poise and carriage and the vague touch of distant reserve made her feel that he had the upper hand. She didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that all the color had drained out of her face. This was not how it was supposed to go: she was the wronged one!
“- for a long time now,” he was saying. She hadn’t even noticed him speaking. She looked up at him and he continued. “I don’t know how else to say it and I’m sure you’d prefer that I didn’t string this out or sugarcoat it: Kate, I’ve met someone else.”
She knew now that he was going to explain how it “just happened” and that he had been “waiting for the right time” and that he was sorry to have hurt her, but she wasn’t interested.
“Okay,” she said, standing up. She enjoyed a brief respite of joy as she saw the puzzled look on his face. “I brought over some steaks – for dinner – but I’m going to take them back. I lost my job today. That’s why I’m early.”
He took a moment to process everything. She guessed that he was likely feeling somewhat guilty realizing now that he had just made her already shitty day a lot worse. And he probably felt compelled to offer some sort of condolences about her job loss, but at the same time he likely felt that she was no longer his responsibility to console, to prop up, to care about.
He opened his mouth to offer a half-hearted attempt at something (she could tell it was half-hearted because of the way he looked slightly pained and uncomfortable and not at all earnest) and she said, as she grabbed the groceries off the counter, “Fuck you, Thomas. You are one horrendous asshole,” and then she slipped on her shoes, shrugged her overnight bag back over her shoulder and walked out the door. She knew that he would not come after her because he had gotten off easy and being called a horrendous asshole was a small price to pay for having her gone, and the rest of his weekend was still free and clear to spend time with the woman that smelled good and had expensive clothes.
She started crying in the elevator. She didn’t miss Thomas, nor was she sad the relationship was over (though she knew that she would come to miss him and, indelibly, start to wonder when it all went awry and try and discern if there was anything that she could have done to make it work as though him screwing another woman was some kind of accident, like stepping on someone’s shoes in the elevator), but she was feeling sorry for herself. She had just lost her job and had gone to see a person that she thought had loved her, only to find him with another woman, and now she was crying in an elevator with a couple of bags of groceries and her bag stuffed with (what was for her) relatively risqué sleepwear, a clean pair of panties, cargo pants and a white, fitted t-shirt. Fucking pathetic.
She exited the lobby and clambered into her car, sitting for a while, sniffling sadly to herself and lamenting her overall predicament in life. Through her tears – which had mingled with her mascara and had created some viscous matter which was burning and stinging her eyes – she saw Thomas’s new “someone” elegantly exit a rather posh looking Lexus and come walking down the sidewalk. Clearly Thomas had told her that getting rid of his current girlfriend would be a rather expedient process, and that she should simply wait in her car until the coast was clear.
She waited until New Girlfriend had passed through the lobby and was taken away by the elevator before she too exited her car (though not so elegantly), walked over to the Lexus and ran the jagged edge of her house keys down the passenger side of the car, across the hood, down the other side of the car, and then over the trunk.
She took a breath and assessed her handiwork. Oh god, this wasn’t her. Petty vandalism? She felt a wave of shame and remorse sweep over her. Or… or was it malicious happiness? Yes. It was definitely happiness. She contemplated further damage to the car, but then decided she would rather cook her steak, drink her bottle of wine and fall asleep in front of some cheesy movie on television. Hopefully something with Sandra Bullock: that would just be the cherry on top.