AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As my unsettled gaze takes in more of the room, I realise there’s nothing on the floor at all. Nothing draped across the comfy chair in the corner. What sort of neat freak doesn’t have a single object out of place?
The sort of freak I broke my oath to sleep with, apparently. I snort out an entirely inappropriate laugh.
My purse lies underneath my phone and I grab them both, holding them against my chest like treasure. There’s a connecting door out of the room and, next to it, another set of doors leading into a walk-in wardrobe. I turn on the overhead light, seeking the additional glow like it will illuminate my murky memories.
The wardrobe is partitioned into his and hers sides.
My missing shame hits me at full speed, taking my breath away with its impact. A knot in my stomach pulses with pain. This is the closet of a married couple.
He has a wife.
Tears well in my eyes, disturbing in and of themselves because I pride myself on not crying, not being one of those weepy eyed women who dissolve at the drop of a hat.
The flash of self-disgust turns a switch on my anger. I grab the nearest garment, a pretty sundress with gigantic pastel flowers, and pull it over my head. A nice fit but not enough against the chill night air. I step in farther, adding a soft cardigan in duck egg blue, then grab a pair of sneakers from the very back, slipping my feet into them and finding they gape, at least two sizes too large.
I sit on the bed, lacing them tight enough to walk in them, wondering where I lost my heels. They’re just from the ten-dollar bargain bin, but they were prettier than most pairs I’ve owned.
The lacing holds the shoes in place, and I move to the main door. My fingers clutch the copper-coloured handle and I have to will myself to turn it, only opening the door a sliver. I press my eye to the gap and see an empty hallway outside.
With a sigh of relief, I run on tiptoes along the corridor, seeking a more permanent exit.
I try another handle and wind up in the lounge. There’s a dark grand piano in the centre of the room, the surrounding expanse so large there are three separate sitting areas, each demarcated by furniture in the open-plan space.
The sideboard nearest me holds an array of framed photographs. Flicking on the light, I glance across them, some of my anxiety dissipating as I recognise the smiling face of the attractive man from the nightclub queue.
It reappears when I spot another photo, this one from a wedding, his morning suited arm around what must be his lovely wife.
I pick it up and turn it over, reading the pencil caption scrawled on the back: Conner and Saski, 19thJune.
Those tears again. I hit a fist against my thigh to stop them, then try another room, and another. One has large French doors opening onto a patio and I cross to them, not surprised to find them locked.
My phone buzzes, startlingly loud in the otherwise quiet home.
“Please text me back. I’m sorry we left you.”
I scroll back through my messages. They start off informative, a text from Brooke letting me know they’d gone. An update from Floss to say they were at the hospital, this one with an accompanying snap of Marnie’s swollen, bleeding nose. I gasp at the damage. She looks like she took a real beating.
Another helping of shame hits. While I hooked up with a married stranger, my best friend was in the hospital in pain. This is worse than the abandonment I felt when I worked out my friends had left.
The next photograph shows her with such a large bandage strapped over her damaged nose it’s like the hospital staff glued a pillow to her face.
There’s another text letting me know they’re going back to the housing block. Then the one that woke me, the one written in a more concerned tone.
“I’m fine,”I write back.“Coming home now. See you soon.”
My hunt for the exit begins in earnest. Since nobody’s responded to my thumping around the house so far, I’m guessing far-too-attractive-cheating-husband-man is a heavy sleeper or didn’t stick around.
Maybe he’s gone to collect another willing participant to bring home. His wife is probably out of town.
I imagine the harem he could collect just by leaning against a wall, looking available. The shock twist of jealousy is as alarming as the sickening thump in my head.
Lord knows what I was drinking but it must have been hella strong.
There’s a door covered with bolts in the next room, and I run to it, unlatching everything and gulping in a deep breath of fresh air the moment I step outside.
My battery sits at forty percent. It’s been draining far too quickly lately but I can’t afford another. A wispy memory of staring in dismay at the blank screen drifts close enough to see.
I press the locator app before it can go flat and feel like god’s smiling on me when it returns an address just four blocks from the school.
