Hamilton Oneshots

Hamliza: Confessions

And when they asked me what I felt when he first told me, I have no response, for that day I felt nothing. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I didn't feel, I didn't think. That day is a blur of nothingness.

    Alexander wasn't his usual self. I could tell he was avoiding me. The night before he had slept on the very edge of the bed. I didn't understand why but I didn't question him. Maybe just an off day at work, or stress, or anything. It could be blamed on anything. I could blame it on anything. When I woke up that morning, he wasn't in bed. This was rather typical. He often got up before me to work in his office.

    The morning passed by, oddly silent. With seven kids this is impossible but somehow it was achieved that morning. The air was humid and buzzing with electricity. Inside, however, it was oddly cool. When I was a girl I used to think that I had powers and could sense whenever a storm was brewing. Obviously, I was just observant. It took a fool to not realize that there would be rain that day. I sat on the porch, carefully watching the sky and feeling the restless wind. I've always liked the calm before storms. Alexander had never liked storms so it was rather odd when he joined me out there.

    I smiled up at him. "Good afternoon." The smile he gave me back was strained. I brushed it off as stress but looking back at it, he was guilt ridden. It was dragging every part of him, even his smile, down. I patted the spot next to me and he sat. As I put my head on his shoulder, he grew suddenly tense.

    "Is something the matter, dear?"

    He shook his head and quickly got up. "Can I talk to you in our bedroom," he asked. But it wasn't phrased as a question, yet not exactly a command, almost like an abrupt statement.

    "Yes, of course." I got up and brushed off my dress. I don't even remember going inside or walking upstairs. I don't remember thinking either, just the deep sense that something was terribly wrong.

    He paced across the bedroom floor, his steps rhythmic. "I've made a mistake, Betsey." He didn't look at me, just kept pacing.

    "Well, I'm sure we can fix it." I stepped in front of him and grabbed his hands, forcing him to stop.

    "No..." He cast his gaze to the floor.

    "What's troubling you, Alex?"

He bit his lip. Something was tearing him apart from the inside out. He normally had such a way with words.

"I broke our vows," he said in a rush of words. Heavy silence followed. His eyes searched my face for a reaction but there wasn't one to find.

"What," was the only word that escaped my mouth. It was cold and sharp, phrased as a dagger, not a question. "You did what?"

"I cheated..."

In one quick movement, I stole my hands from his grasp and wiped them on my dress like he was a plague I could avoid, like those hands that had promised me so much were a disease.

"Betsy... please. Hear me out." He grabbed my hands gently, cautiously.

I didn't do anything, just kept my eyes trained to the floor and took my hands away once again.

"This... this women." He began pacing. "She came to me, absolutely helpless, that's the act she had going at least. She asked for money to get away from her abusive husband and I complied, going to her apartment the next day..." I drowned out the rest of the story with one single phrase repeated over and over. This wasn't happening, this wasn't happening, this wasn't happening.

"Get out."

He looked up at me, surprised by my sudden interruption.

"Get. Out." He walked like a kicked puppy out of our bedroom. Correction: my bedroom. The last sound heard in that room was the soft click of the door being shut before the loudest silence filled it. I looked to the walls and the floor ravenously. Perhaps there was something to clean, something to do, something to fill this awful nothingness, something to help me comprehend the utmost betrayal I felt.

That's when my eyes landed on the bed and the only thing that came to mind was him and her. I didn't know who this girl was but she had to have been young and beautiful. Nothing like me. Skin soft, without the stretch marks from giving birth six times over. Long, flowing hair, without any gray from stress. I looked down at myself. What was she that I was not?

I grabbed the sheets and tore them off the bed, hoping that would cease my cruel imagination. It couldn't be true, it couldn't be true, it couldn't be true. Yet as I hold those sheets, I can almost convince myself they smell of another woman's perfume.

A crack of thunder nearly shook the foundation of the house, causing me to snap out of my train of thought and drop the sheet. The turmoil of thoughts and feelings I had felt earlier vanished. I stared off at the window a moment before walking to it and swinging it open. In order to not feel everything, I had to feel nothing. Restless wind tore at my hair and the leaves in the front yard. I had to have stared out that window for hours, watching the storm pass, willing any thoughts from my head to disappear.

    But thoughts don't simply stop coming. You must replace the unwanted ones with new ones. There cannot be an absence.