Getting Even- Contest Submission

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"Are you sure you want to do this?" My best friend, Tanya Clayton, asked me. "You don't have to be with him; you can take your girls and leave, there is no shame in divorcing your husband. He cheated on you."

I slowly inhaled a healing breath.

"Like I already told you, keeping my family together is what's best for my girls." I said as calmly as possible.

"And what about you?" She argued.

"What about me? I'm fine!" I returned. "Rashad and I can work through this."

"As your friend I want you to know that I support any decision you make, but I feel awful for setting this up for you." She confessed. "I can call Phillip and tell him that you changed your mind."

"I've already made up my mind," I said fiercely. "Now can you leave so I can take a shower." I opened the door.

"Joy." She pleaded. "I don't want you to wake up hating yourself tomorrow."

"I love you, too," I responded and closed the door. I leaned my weight against it. "You can do this." I had never cheated on my husband before, but I had to do this.

A flashback of the video from my husband's phone began to play in my mind again. In the video, he was having sex with another woman, a woman that looked nothing like me. Not only did the footage crush my heart, but it played on all of my insecurities.

I had been with my husband for seven years and physically, I wasn't the woman I once was. I hadn't let myself get sloppy, but after giving birth to two beautiful little girls, my once flat stomach held what I could only describe as a pudge. Once my best feature, my legs, even now had some cellulite lines that made me shy away from anything short. Rashad told me that none of that mattered, that he loved every inch of me anyways. And I believed him, until I saw him worshipping the body of another woman.

I shook the dark thoughts from my mind and walked towards my suitcase. I sifted through my bag to look for anything remotely sexy and found nothing. I had packed so frantically when leaving my home that I wasn't surprised.

When I confronted my husband with the video, he first tried to deny that it was him even though every tattoo on the man in the video matched his. When he finally admitted to the truth, it was something about the actual confession that killed me inside. I left and hadn't been back in a week. I made him figure out everything with our girls, while I took time to figure out what I should do moving forward.

I thought about my husband, our children, and the family we had built together. Was I ready to give up?

Forcing my thoughts back to the present, I closed my suitcase and rushed to take a shower to wash all of the remnants of our night out, from my body. The moment I was done, I heard knocking at the door. My heart began to thump inside of my chest as the reality of the moment started to settle in my mind. I was about to cheat on my husband! The moving images of Rashad with the other woman began to erase any guilt I started to feel.

I wrapped the plush white towel around my toasted peanut butter skin and moved towards the hotel room's front door, with determined steps. I was doing this. I threatened myself.

The minute I opened the door, I felt everything stop. Phillip, as he had been introduced to me, was standing in front of me looking like a home-delivered gourmet meal.

"Hey." He said. There was a hint of a dimple hiding on his left cheek. His short cut brunette hair was shining with moisture, and the fresh scent surrounding him made me guess that he too had just taken a shower. His piercing greenish-blue eyes narrowed as he began to scan the length of my body. I had completely forgotten that I was standing in front of him only wrapped in a towel.

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