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“Zoe, I asked you a question.”
I turn to him. “There is no longer any point in answering it. It doesn’t matter anymore, Mike. You know perfectly well what I’m doing: leaving,” I say, keeping my voice steady and silently thanking therapy, which has taught me to love and respect myself.
I was rejected in my orphanage years, but I don’t have to keep allowing people to do that to me as an adult.
From the look in his eyes, I think he understands that I’m not just talking about the next trip; I mean forever.
Still, he pretends we’re having another one of the many fights we’ve had in our short marriage. “You were very rude to my friends.”
“More than they were to me?” I start, but I regret it. There’s no point in prolonging this discussion when, inside my head, the decision is already made. “It’s over, Mike. We both know that.”
His face transmutes into pure hate. It’s not the first time, but it still scares me. All the veneer of a fine man, an intellectual, disappears. “Because you didn’t do anything to improve it. You never did anything for our marriage, Zoe.”
“If by doing something about our marriage, you mean diving into your kinks, yes, then I didn’t do anything for our marriage. I thought Iwas bonding with someone normal, not a man who needed . . . I don’t even have the heart to put it into words . . . someone withyour preferencesto get turned on.”
He’s approaching so fast I barely see the hard slap coming before it smacks my face and I fall over, hitting my head against the bedside table.
Even dizzy and terrified by that violent action, I reach for my phone on the bed and run to the bathroom. It feels like a replay of that day on the ship, but this time, I’m going to call the only man I trust in the world.
“Zoe?”
“Dad, I need you to come get me at home. Mike just hit me. I want to leave, but he’s outside the room.”
“Zoe, my God! Do you want me to call the police?”
“No, please. That will cause a scandal. Once I’m at your place, I’ll calmly consider what to do, but for now, I just want to get out of here.”
“I’m coming, honey.”
“Zoe, it’s Daddy. You can leave now.”
I look at myself in the mirror before opening the door. I haven’t had the courage to do so until now. My whole face hurt, so I knew it must be ugly. The area where he assaulted me is sore, and I was afraid that upon seeing the evidence of his final disrespect towards me, I would lose it.
Now, however, I see that my imagination has lost its way to reality.
The entire left side is swollen, and my eye, which is naturally slanted in the area where he slapped me, is even smaller.
My God, there’s no way I’m going to make it out of here without calling attention to my face. The last thing I want is for the end of my marriage to make the headlines in celebrity magazines.
“Zoe?”
“I’ll be right there.” I unlock the door, and as soon as he looks at me, his face flushes like a red pepper.
Instead of hugging me, he leaves the room, and I follow him because I can already imagine what will happen.
As I thought, my Dad has Mike up against a wall, and his face is already turning a little purple.
“Dad, don’t do this; I just want to get out of here.”
“Never touch my daughter again, you bastard, or I’ll kill you.”
He lets go of Mike, opens the apartment door, and waits for him to get out, but Mike still tries to get close to me. My father gets in the way.
“Zoe, forgive me. I lost my mind.”
I look at him, thinking I should have walked away on our wedding night when he waited until we were married to tell me what he wanted from me.
“No. It’s over. My lawyers will come to you with the divorce papers. The only thing I want now is for you to leave me alone.”
