Meeting Him Again

Guilt

"Sharon, darling," Harriet chimed. I shut the door behind me, the vestige of my attempts to creep in forming like a monster out of the window of the front door.

"Harriet, hey," I choked, half turning to the woman stood in the hallway. She was wearing grey joggers that fell loosely over her legs and a knitted jumper nicked from my closet. The sight of it made my eyes drop away from her momentarily, throat dry. I forced myself to swallow before flicking my eyes up and over hers. Her hair fell in curtains around her sharp face, eyes etched with confusion.

"Do you want me to run you a bath?" she asked, shoving her hands in her pockets. "You've been out at the crack of dawn and not back until ungodly hours-" I let my eyes flick to the clock, which read twenty past eleven "- for a good week now. If I were any less trusting, I'd say you're having an affair." A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth - a gesture I couldn't return, try as I might.

The joke stirred something inside me, and my heart fell right to my feet. Something must have shown on my face - I couldn't describe it, couldn't feel it - Harriet tried to approach me, but I shook my head, lifting my arms slightly as if to shield myself. Harriet's face fell ever further, which made me feel worse. I dropped my arms, trying to force a smile to my face. I must've looked like a killer whale. Or a nonce. Or both.

Technically not an affair, I reminded myself. Same person. Surprisingly enough, that mentality didn't help. That mentality had gotten me here.

"I think I'll just go to bed," I deflected, slipping off my coat. That way I wouldn't have to talk to her. "Big day tomorrow."

"Of course," Harriet mumbled. "You can always talk to me, you know... I'll be up in a bit, yeah?"

I pressed my lips together and acknowledged her remarks with a wave of a hand. I didn't look her in the eye before heading up the stairs.

When Harriet slipped under the covers later that night, laying an arm over my waist and planting a kiss on my shoulder from behind, a tear rolled down my face.

I couldn't believe I'd done that to her. I kept facing away from her, determined not to let her read me.

"Whatever's going on, you can talk to me," she promised in a whisper. "Might as well say that when you're awake."

Good, I was asleep to her. She'd done it all. Faced it all. This was why she had been so reserved. In the beginning. The pieces clicked together and she figured it out.

"So you went back in time and fucked the other version of me instead of getting to know the new one?"

At the point in my timeline, where Harriet and I were in our TARDIS, I hadn't had any sexual contact with the Harold that, to me, was in the past - I never actually fucked the dude I went back in time to see. I just figured she was exaggerating, or misremembering, but she hadn't been. I just hadn't done it yet.

And now, here I was. Crying because I'd cheated on my wife with my husband - who just happened to be the same person.

Another tear fell down my face, running over my nose and into my other eye. Anything that came of this was my fault. I couldn't run around and blame Harriet for changing; I could balme myself for not still loving her.

I did. I felt like garbage. Something that someone had thrown away because it was broken and someone else had set fire to on the street because they couldn't bear to look at how incredibly shite I was.

And that made it all worse. Why did I feel bad? Harriet was the victim in all this - and Harold came off worse. He'd had his wife come back in time and spend time with him, which would have rang all sorts of alarm bells and fucking knells in his head. Then he died. Literally died. Alone. But regenerates because, hey, he has a wife out doing the grocery shopping, and she can't come home to being a widow. And then Harriet comes along. She doesn't feel loved. Maybe she isn't. And then, because she hasn't been through enough, her wife buggars off to another man. And just when she thinks it's all put to bed, bam! The worst part of the affair occurs.

And yet. Here I was. Crying. Because I was being given a hug.

Rip my appendix out and force feed it to a goose whilst my eyes roll back in my skull. Christ on a bike.

Harriet shuffled closer to me in the bed, letting her arm slip forward so that her wrist was replaced by her elbow on my flank. I forced out a shaky breath. Her arm tightened around me, obviously thinking I was having a nightmare. I bit down on my lip to stop myself from crying out.

I slipped the hand that had been resting against the pillow, crushed underneath me, quite uncomfortably, actually, up to take her fingers in mine. A little sigh of content echoed behind me. Now she knew I wasn't asleep, and had heard what she'd said, but was also comforted, I suppose, in the knowledge that I wasn't writhing in my own mind. She cared so deeply. Each breath of mine would have been an insult. 

I couldn't keep this up. I needed advice. Tomorrow morning - as soon as it was a sociable hour - I was gonna pull out the one contact that may actually know what to do in this fucked-up, eggy mess of an omlette with bits floating of a situation.

My sister.

I let Harriet's hand slip out of mine. We were okay. We were doing well. The two of us. We were getting back to each other. And then I go and do this.