One Call

There are many days that pass me by without incident or consequence. Random Thursdays in April and Sundays in June. These days bring their own quiet beauty and romantic restraint — a restraint for life.

Those days pass me by with barely a whisper uttered at the wrong time or feathers ruffled.

But some days stand the test of time, even after the specific date is forgotten.

I can’t tell you the colour of my boxers or if my hair was long or short, or whether there was a strong smell of freshly baked bread in the air of our home. I can tell you the sadness and concern that drove through me and the confusion that persisted long after the initial revelations.

Revelations of impropriety on my part. Wait. No. That would be doing a disservice to the woman I hurt so terribly. I cheated in heart and time. Maybe not physically, but had that been an option, things may have taken a turn. Long hours of delicious deception that, at the time, just felt like decadent descents toward a fantasy world as my own reality crumbled.

There wasn’t a shout or a scream. No punches thrown, but in the quiet release of my miasma of manipulation and misdirection from the truth — how it taints even the most innocuous.

Dipping myself in others’ waters, cerebrally and cardially, while my dearest took care of family duties.

Out of town but not out of range. One call. One whispered word of help me rather than what I did. A plea for understanding instead of sorrow, forgiveness before the deed was done.

It would have led us down a different path.

The understanding and the want to survive through it and get past it made the hurt I’d caused my dearest worse.

Technology has long been an aide, helping open up the world but also a crutch — exposure to the powerful vice that has chipped away at me so slowly and deftly for the last twenty years.

It was the day that all this came to a head, and the days that followed, that were the worst of my life.

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Thanks for reading

This is for the awesome Harper Lee's Show Me Your Prose! Unofficial Challenge.