luck for the night - rl.

27. when the husband is out of town.

"I was twenty at the time," I started, not knowing what else to say about it. I was scared of telling this story, even if I knew I had nothing to be afraid of.

But some stories seem to be better when they are hidden: buried deep into the soil of someone's being. What does it matter if the flowers grow to be rotten, because the roots are feeding off darkness?

Remington's eyes went up to me and immediately back down to his hands. My phone's screen had turned black again, slipped into the sheets somewhere, forgotten.

I knew I had to say something, anything to the man across from me, but I had no idea what would comfort him. The truth felt slippery on my tongue, but something held me back. I did not want him to say the words I was so terrified of hearing, what part of me still believed: that I had deserved what had happened.

So I was quiet, grasping at words in my mind that would begin to explain the complexities of my love life when I was twenty.

"Wait," I said, realising that Remington probably thought I was married. "I'm not married, if that's what you think." I sighed again, "but I don't know if the truth is any better."

He looked up at me again. His eyes were dark, sad, and somehow... hopeful.

No. I closed my eyes for a second. I was just making that up. He was my friend. Just a friend.

"So I'm not just your side piece when the husband is out of town?" A slither of a smile around his lips.

"No, not at all," I assured him, trying to smile. But I could not, the flowers of my insides wilting and rotten, spreading a thick, putrid air in my lungs, spewing the truth on my tongue. "It's more of a... When the ex-fiancee is out of town situation."

"Ex-fiancee?"

I nodded, but my gaze went down to my hands, not sure how to act, now that he knew at least a little part of my past.

His fingers wrapped around my hands, laying limply on my lap. "Do you want to talk about it?"

The softness in his voice was enough to make tears come to my eyes, my voice became raspy. I hated it. After all, people had gone through much worse. Why did it still hurt me this much? But still, I nodded. Maybe, it felt good to have this out in the open.

"I was nineteen when I met him," I started my story again, now starting from the actual beginning. "He was a few years older than me. Not too much, but just enough to be a little step ahead of me, in life." A tear rolled over my cheek, and I kept my eyes on our hands, fingers intertwined. I did not want to see the empathy in his eyes,. I did not really deserve it.

Remington was silent, his thumb running circles on the back of my hand. A distraction? An encouragement? I took a deep breath, "We moved in together after a few months of dating. I was desperate to get out of my parents' flat, and he made that possible." My voice was getting shakier and shakier, but I could not stop this truth from seeping out now, even if it was the mouldy, rotten truth that had been hidden in my heart for so long.

"I would have done anything for him, back then. He asked me to stop going to school, to take care of the house. I did. He asked me to stop taking the pill because he wanted children early in life. So I did."

I cringed at the girl I had been back then. Naive, influenceable, alone. But mostly, I felt sad for what she thought she had to do to be loved by a man as fickle as my ex. My almost-husband.

"I was twenty when he proposed. He was twenty-three. It all seemed too good to be true: At twenty, I had a nice flat, and a nice fiancee, who I thought loved me dearly. Enough money. A wish to have kids. For the first time in years, I actually had a future."I could not hold back anymore, my breath uneven, my eyes full of tears. "I'm sorry," I muttered, as all the sadness came out.