Un-Tying the Knot {h.s.}

Chapter 46

Eleanor's office building stands tall over Wilshire Boulevard, the fancy windows reflecting a mixture of the downtown skyline and ocean quite clearly in the late morning sunshine. It's still warm for late winter, the March air blowing with a crisp freshness. But the breeze doesn't help me much, eliciting an unwilling tremble that slides through my body as I stand still, stoic — staring pensively at the office building looming before me.

I've been standing here for almost twenty minutes now — my legs like lead, my throat dry. The large clock on the front of the building shows forty past eleven, and it's all I can do to try and swallow the lump in my throat that's preventing me from moving.

Last night...

I can't even finish the thought, the memories a blur of hands and skin and rapid heartbeats — the moment suspended in my mind forever. I can still feel the dull ache between my legs, my body still so unaccustomed to such an intrusion. But outside of the ache, my body hums, satiated and content like a plant that's finally been watered after months of drought.

Now, if only my mind were at peace and the guilt could be quelled.

I don't remember a lot of what happened afterward in the stairwell, just that I scrambled for my clothes and stammered a few helpless goodbyes, much like Harry had done our first time together. I don't even think I allowed my eyes to meet his before I scurried down the twenty three flights of stairs, not bothering to take the elevator. The weight of what we had done didn't even hit me until I reached my apartment building that night.

I had sex with Harry.
In the stairwell.
After he got back together with his fiancé.

I cringe, feeling horribly exposed in the bright morning sunshine. It's as if everyone can see my secret, the invisible giant scarlet letter etched permanently on my forehead on display like a neon sign in Las Vegas.

I'm a cheater. A mistress. A terrible person.

I had sat on the sofa for a good twenty minutes when I had gotten home last night, just replaying the entire situation over and over again in my head; not just the act, but what led up to it — my frustration with him, with her, my angry outburst at her terrible treatment of the man I loved, followed by her ability to strip my insecurities from my core and bring them to the surface in front of him.

Most of all, though, I can't stop reeling from his dismissal for the two weeks prior, the sudden absence from my life after sleeping together tearing my heart open little by little with this new suture. Instead of dealing with it directly, I had opted for avoidance instead of forcing him to discuss what happened, allowing BOTH of us to behave as if we had never slept together while he was single, that he had never uttered words of disdain or unhappiness for his life with his now-again fiancé.

And then what?

I hadn't slept. My mind furiously went over everything — every detail — replaying our intense escapade in the middle of the stairwell of his fiancee's office building. This exact office building that I'm staring up at, absolutely petrified of walking into.

How could I have let this happen? After everything I'd gone through the weeks before — our first kiss, the silence and awkwardness that followed, our intensely intimate rendezvous at my house, and his abandonment. To what? To this?

After everything, I'd gone and opened myself up even more. I'd let him in and given him a piece of myself I couldn't get back — moreso than the first time, because this time? This time he wasn't single. This was not just two people ripping through confusing emotions and carnal desires that had built up over months of knowing each other. This was...this was cheating.