Better in the Long Run

                I was never the type of woman who fell in love easily…especially being a model whose perks of the job are hanging around beyond picture perfect celebrities. I was a small town girl who knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to play games to get there. So imagine my surprise of feeling incredibly foolish by walking in on my boyfriend of three years and one of my best friends doing the nasty in my bed?

                That was a couple of days ago. Today, I was packing my suitcase for a well deserved two week vacation back home in Wilmington, North Carolina. Don’t get me wrong…I wasn’t going home because I was deeply hurt and betrayed by a man that I loved and possibly thought I could marry…well, that was most of the reason, but I haven’t been home in two years and I missed my family.

                I moved to New York as soon as I graduated high school. It took me a few years to actually get my foot in the door from just being a commercial print model from a North Carolina small town. But, I made it. I really liked modeling...most of the time. I was a really quiet kid. My mom always worried about me and how I only had two friends. Which by the way, was completely okay with me. When I was fourteen, my mom brought me to a Barbizon audition and about a week later, I got a callback. It boosted my confidence  a little bit, and I really liked modeling, as I’ve said before, but for a while now, something was just…missing.

                When the popular crowd at school found out about my commercial print work, I suddenly got invitations to parties and weekends at beach houses…I never went. I loved to stay at home and read and write short stories. Now here I am, at twenty-six living the glamorous life and still, something was missing. I was placing my clothes in my suitcase when a knock on the door interrupted my train of thought. I abandoned my previous task and headed to answer the door. I already knew who it was…it was Brian coming over to “talk.” I opened the door and stepped aside to let him in.

                “Hey,” he greeted.

                “Hi.” We stood in the middle of the living room awkwardly. His tan skin looked unusually weathered and he had bags under his normally alert eyes. His mousy brown hair was disheveled and it even looked like this wasn’t the first day he was wearing those clothes.

                “Tess, I just want to tell you how sorry I am—

                “How long?” He looked confused.

                “How long, what?”

                “How long were you and Hayley sleeping together?” He hesitated.

                “Does that really matter?”

                “It matters to me.”

                “I love you. You’re everything to me and I don’t want to lose you. It was a stupid mistake and it didn’t mean anything.”

                “Stop beating around the bush. How long?” He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the ground. That only made me angrier. “You claim to love me and you don’t want to lose me, but you cheated on me and you don’t even have the decency to tell me how long you were sleeping with my best friend?”

                “We started sleeping together when you went home two years ago. We continued every time you had a show when you had to spend the night at a hotel.” It felt as if every organ in my body was shutting down one by one. I was, however, determined not to let him see me cry.