Some Day One Day (Maylor AU)

Chapter 35

Chrissie tried to choke back the sobs that began to rack her body, but the task seemed impossible, especially when Brian dropped his bag to the floor and dragged himself over to the couch, lowering himself down on the edge of the cushion closest to his wife. He rested his elbows on his thighs, clasped his hands out in front of him, and hung his head in shame. "Who told you?" he dared to ask—his voice low.

"It doesn't matter who told me," she spat, bringing the cigarette up to her lips and turning the ignited end a bright orange as she inhaled deeply. Her hand trembled as she brought the white stick back down to her hip, blowing the smoke out unsteadily to the side and muttering, "Did you or did you not run away with him?"

"No!" the professor cried, Chrissie's unrelenting and glistening gaze coercing him into changing his answer to a shameful, "Yes," that he quickly tried to redeem with the desperate reminder of, "But I came back! I came back because of you; because I wanted to do the right thing!"

The headmistress pressed her quivering lips together, turning back towards the window as her vision blurred. She wiped the murky stream that trickled down her cheek with her hand that still grasped the martini glass and mumbled, "The right thing...how is this the right thing when we're both so fucking miserable?"

"I-I'm not miserable," Brian murmured, his cheeks reddening.

Chrissie chuckled and took a sip of her martini, tilting her head back to finish the drink before smashing the glass on the floor and spinning to face her mortified husband. "You're a terrible liar, Brian. You always have been, and you always will be." She staggered towards him—a drunken lilt to her steps. Towering over him, she wove her fingers into his hair and rolled his head back, looking down at him with a frown and muttering, "You think I'm a fool, don't you?"

The professor had been struck silent, only able to shake his head in response.

"Then how long were you going to play this game with me?" she asked through clenched teeth, her grip on his hair tightening and earning a pained gasp from him. "Huh? How long did you think you could pull this off? This...this 'nice guy' act of yours. How long did you expect me to believe it?"

"It isn't an act, Chrissie!" he shouted in complete disregard of the sleeping infant he believed was just a thin floor above them. He ducked out of her hold and stood up, crossing the room to create distance between him and her. "God, what has that new Sting guy been telling you, and why are you listening to him?"

"It wasn't Sting who told me about your...your fling with Roger!" the headmistress yelled back, the words falling from her lips with a bitter distaste that demanded Brian's attention. She brought her free hand up to her mouth and squeezed out a few more tears, the pain of saying the truth aloud preventing her from revealing who did tell her.

With her lip tucked under her front teeth—a sad attempt to collect herself—she sat back on the arm of the couch and sniffled, shaking her head and saying with a closed throat, "You told me you weren't like him, Brian, and you told me wouldn't hurt me like he did; that you couldn't. Yet, this entire time, you...you..." The sentence failed to see its end as she tapped the cigarette she had yet to let go of against the side of the couch, bringing the newly shortened but still burning stick back to her lips and inhaling deeply. Her slow, smoky exhale evolved into a disbelieving chuckle, the headmistress admitting, "All I can see when I think of you and him is what I saw with Timothée and him, with you lying on some cheap hotel bed and him bouncing on your—"

"Stop," Brian interrupted her, for both their sakes.

"Why?" Chrissie demanded to know, shooting a bulleted gaze in his direction, "Because it's true?"

"Because it doesn't matter," he corrected her softly. "What matters is—"

"That you're here now, right?" the headmistress guessed, "And that nothing's going to change that?" She rose from the couch and began to approach him, the professor only able to mirror her steps so far before bumping into the wall behind him and finding himself pinned between that and his wife. She was so close to him that he could smell the alcohol and smoke on her breath. It was nauseating. "Bullshit, Brian. Bull-fucking-shit." She jabbed her finger into his chest with each word. "You lied to me. You lied right to my face."

He swallowed hard, the air around him growing thin. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Chrissie laughed, her reaction bordering on delirium. "You really think your stupid sorry's going to fix this?" Brian heaved a sigh and dropped his head back on the wall, his shameful gaze moving to the ceiling. "Brian, look at me!" she shouted, smacking him on the chest. "This is serious!"

"No, it's late," he murmured, tilting his head forward and gazing into his wife's glistening eyes, "It's been a long day, so why don't we just go to bed and...and work this out in the morning?"

The headmistress bit her lip—his offer tempting. She wanted more than anything for this day to be over; for this nightmare to be over, but she knew that a good night's sleep wouldn't change things. She knew that when she woke up, she'd still be living with the fact that her new husband—the one she risked everything for—betrayed her the same way her first husband had, the exact same way her first husband had. The only difference was that she hadn't caught him in the act this time around; she'd heard about it from someone else, and the only reason she didn't question it was because that someone else was acquainted with both the homewrecking prostitute and the unfaithful professor.

"Please, Chrissie," Brian pleaded, bringing his hands up to her arms and giving her a slight, hopefully convincing squeeze, "Let's go to bed."

She stared at him for a little longer before shaking her head. "No."

"No?" he repeated, his hands falling to his sides, "What do you mean 'no'?"

"I mean, I'm not going to bed with you," Chrissie muttered, taking one final drag from her cigarette and pivoting on her heel, slowly waltzing over to the window and announcing, "I think I'm actually going to stay with my mum for a while." She smashed what was left of the white stick into the dish perched atop the windowsill and leaned against it, meeting Brian's shattered gaze and crossing her arms as she tacked on, "And I'm taking Liz with me."