The Mistress, Part Two (3 page)

The sickness had almost begun to overwhelm her, until she bent over to pick up the pieces of one of the only prized possessions she had ever had. In truth, it had been one of the only things she actually did have before she moved into the apartment.

As she ruffled through the mess to make sure she hadn’t broken off anything sharp, something caught her eye. There was a piece of folded paper sticking out of half of the frame, just behind the photograph.

Curiosity edged her forward to pick it up, but when she finally unfolded it, she wished curiosity would have jumped off a damn cliff rather than voicing its opinion. Because what she read caused her heart – which she had been trying to harden – melt into goo and sink below her feet and into an abysmal existence.

Dear Haley,

You won’t ever see this letter unless you break the frame, which you probably will. I know that I would be breaking a lot of things if I was in your position. It isn’t actually broken, I’m sure. We got this frame to assure it would never be broken. It has a hidden compartment, which is where you found this letter. It will click back together. I promise. If not, then we get to turn it in under the lifetime guarantee! So good for you! You broke the indestructible! Congrats! Feel better?

We got you this frame to tell you how much we love you and because the guest room is absolutely dreadfully impersonal. It isn’t quite appropriate for a young woman, such as yourself, to call your room – you know, being in the state that it’s in. Hopefully this will make it a little homier.

You always have a home here with us, which we have already told you. If you do happen to read this, know that we are always here for you – especially me.

P.S. – Now that you’ve found the note, click the frame back together and keep your secrets inside. No one will find them! Remember the movie we saw that said, “You can hide your weed in there”? – I thought about that when we bought this, and when I cleverly came out with it in the store, no one got it! I know you would have.

Your friend always,

Marissa

“Way to cut me where it hurts, Marissa. Jesus Christ,” Haley muttered. Guilt resonated with her all over again as tears burned the brim of her eyelids and the salty drips welled up within her. She swallowed a large lump in her throat. Nothing seemed to make sense. Not a damned thing.

She had laughed when she had gotten to the end. She didn’t even remember the name of the movie anymore, but she knew the line very well. They had gone around for days afterwards saying it about every nook and cranny that no one had noticed before. “You can hide your weed in there” had become a bit of an inside joke to the two of them. Funny how you never think of certain precious memories until it’s too late.

She knew that Marissa cared for her, but she didn’t quite know how much. She was pretty reserved for the most part and really made little effort to express her emotions outwardly. She did so with kind little gestures, and Haley hadn’t even known about this one. She knew the woman cared for her before; now she knew she cared for her even more than she knew.

Bringing her right hand to her burning eyelids, she wiped down the entire length of her face. She wanted to quell the painful sensation. Fed up, she sucked in a final breath of air and threw the picture and frame down again. She watched as the picture flopped weightlessly behind the desk and the frame hit the floor again with a bang. This time she didn’t care if it hit the floor. It was apparently indestructible and hadn’t broken. Thus, guilt didn’t plague her.

Still, she groaned, though, and stepped around the mess with an amplified pace. She didn't stop until she reached the front door of her bummy, shitty little apartment, and that was only for the brief moment where her hand met the doorknob. Turning the circular knob, she freed herself from the confines of that hellhole, the airless pit that she dared to even try and call home. Her footsteps were quick and light, almost as if she was running. Towards or away, she didn’t quite know. She just knew this wasn’t her home. And she didn’t want to be there.

She didn’t even notice taking the stairs down because the next thing she knew she was on the sidewalk, walking away from the building entirely. She sucked in the air deeply, relishing in the fresh air. Smiling slightly, she stood beside the street and let the crisp and cool wind shift through her brown hair. It tickled her scalp almost therapeutically as the strands whipped softly in rhythm with the gusts.

Though she enjoyed the fresh air, she felt a sadness still threatening to take over. She felt homeless, although she had shelter. She felt beaten and battered, although she had no wounds or injuries. She felt disgusting and dirty, although she was hygienically clean.

She felt an intense suffocation, and it seemed almost never-ending and cyclic – just like her romance with Preston had been. She knew she – and only she – had the power to control it all. She just hoped that she would listen to her instincts, unlike before, with
him
. It was her story, after all, and she had the pen to fill the chapters how she so pleased. She just hoped she could have the power to do so.

She began to cry again – for probably the millionth time since the affair began – and as if on cue, her phone rang. It was Preston. She cried harder when she saw his contact name pop up, and when she noticed she was wailing with tears once again, she cried
even harder
– until she was hysterical.

The tears made her angry. She hated it. She hated crying. Not in the typical way, though. Haley hated it so much she loathed herself when she seemed to leak even so much as a single droplet. She hated it because she knew that tears led to a lonesome life. Tears make others reject you out of annoyance, fear, and possibly just discomfort. Tears make you reject yourself out of resentment and disgust with your own vulnerability. They lead to so much loneliness that an anger envelops even in the lightest spots of our souls.

~~~

An influx of emotional terrorism invaded Marissa’s mind. Tears flowed effortlessly, and her sadness was entrapping her senses so much that she fell to the floor in anguish. It was almost reminiscent of the day her father died; the pain was all too real, and all too similar.

She wasn’t sure how it was similar exactly, but what she did know was that the distress had started to diminish all of her composure. The large spectrum of feelings she had begun to experience angered her. It was enough to drive anyone insane. Perhaps, though, she thought with some sort of humor, maybe – just maybe – she could plead insanity when she finally did look upon Preston’s face and snap.

Admittedly, she had dreamed of their happily ever after ever since the first kiss she experienced with him. As stupid and silly as it all sounded, she thought that nothing could divide the two of them. He was her best friend, after all. In fact, that had been true ever since her college years. He had always been there for her, and even though recently his presence, as well as his efforts, had been slightly – or perhaps, even significantly – lacking, she couldn’t dismiss the years he actually had been there.

Marissa fingered through the various hanging fabrics of
his side
of their shared walk-in closet. She shifted through his dress shirts with a tinge of sadness pulling the threads at the ridge of her eyes, begging for her to allow tears to fall. Sweeping the wooden hangers lightly to the side, she could smell the aroma of vanilla spice waft over her nose and into her senses. And then she remembered the day she first caught a whiff of that magical scent.

It was their first date. She remembered it all too well, actually. Most people are close enough in proximity to one another to smell the other before a date, but Preston was different. Though she had gotten close enough to him to smell your average-everyday-typical-man’s cologne, his aroma actually wasn’t of cologne. It was much more subtle than that.

They had been in one class together. With such a large difference in majors it was a miracle that they had ever met, let alone had a class together. But, she didn’t really think of it as fate or anything; they were brought together by a silly core class that she now couldn’t recall for the life of her.

They had sat next to one another and were forced into some sort of stupid group project together. And that is when they had first spoken to one another. He was charming and good looking; she remembered that all too well. And as she recalled these ill-placed memories, she remembered the infamous spell he seemed to cast over her from the very beginning.

She cringed. He always had that effect on her. He could use his looks and charm his way out of pretty much any situation imaginable. Not this time, though. This time he definitely couldn’t. She no longer trusted the blue eyes that entrapped her body and soul and charmed her heart into loving him for so many years.

Those eyes. They shined brightly with eagerness and enthusiasm when they worked together in that distant memory of so long ago. He asked for her number so that they could continue their project after class, and being the naïve college girl she was at the time, she didn’t see it as anything more than an invitation to do class work.

However, when he called her and asked her out for a dinner date that very night, she started to understand his real intentions may have been a little more hidden than she had initially thought. In fact, they were probably almost completely hidden, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not to her. Not at the time.

He was good looking, after all, and he innocently enough asked her out. She thought she would – at the very least – humor him, and there wasn’t a day that went by that she wasn’t grateful that she had. Because after her acceptance of his innocent invitation, she was able to discover that he had more than trumped what she was expecting. In fact, the evening turned into rather the staple of romantic memories that she possessed of him.

There was no promise of anything more than the company of her, and he wasn’t trying to make amends for anything. He was just being Preston. She remembered the night so well, but more than anything she remembered the setting.

He had strung up Christmas lights in his dorm room. In fact, she remembered comically musing on the idea that he must have gone room to room and compiled everyone’s spare pillows and blankets just to have enough for the huge pallet he had made on the floor. All the fabrics were mismatched, and in all honesty, it would have probably looked like a disaster zone to anyone other than an infatuated girl.

But it had all been sweetly set up, and though none of the fabrics seemed to go together, they all held one common goal: to be comfortable. They were all meant to give her comfort and support as she ate the dinner he had so graciously prepared in such a small and awkward space. 

A strange array of crockpots and rice cookers had all been compiled together as well to aid in the cooking of a dinner fit for kings, and soft music even played in the background. The source of the music came from a boom box with only one single speaker – the left one – working, and it had been tucked away in the corner of his dorm room beneath his desk. It really was a poor man’s date, but it was magical, and it held a spirit about it that she admired;
he
held a spirit about
him
.

She felt so special in that moment. Not only had he cooked dinner for her, which was more than any other man had ever done, but he also went through the trouble of creating an atmosphere. He had strung Christmas lights, set the mood with something soft and melodious, and also seemed to go through the trouble of collecting the odd assortment of blankets and pillows that were strategically placed throughout the floor of his dorm room.

There wasn’t much room in the dorm overall, but it seemed to flow well. The room was as a mirror of itself. Each side of the room held a dresser, a desk, and a small twin size bed in the exact same positioning as the other side. The blankets and pillows he had collected were placed directly in a walkway positioned in between the two beds to provide the most room for the two of them as possible, but she couldn’t help but wonder where his roommate was.

She remembered musing that the boy would have not had much room to walk through to even make it to his bed if he had come in during their dinner date. It hadn’t even registered – for even a second – that there was a possibility that Preston had asked him to make himself scarce.

They had eaten the meal he had prepared in all its hilarity over the course of an hour. He made cheese fondue, which had burnt dramatically and seized up, creating a grainy texture, and a chocolate fondue reciprocating the former almost identically. For all intents and purposes, they were disasters – but they were beautiful disasters. The taste was almost there, but the thought – which was the most important part to Marissa – was definitely there.

After they had giggled their way through the entrée of crockpot chicken and rice cooker cheese fondue, they reached for the seized up chocolate and wilted strawberries. “So, the food isn’t quite five stars – but the effort?” he asked, a smile plastered on his face instead of the smirk that she had noticed him cockily sporting in class and around campus. It was something different, something a little more sincere.

It was then that she felt the classic fluttering of her stomach and the strong pounding of her heart beating against her chest. She – not him – leaned forward and kissed him. Hard. Full of strength and longing. Running on complete impulse, she grasped at him and begged with her tongue for entrance into his mouth. And when he had granted passage to her tongue, she had soon realized that she had also – unknowingly – begged him for entrance into his life, into his heart.