“Harry!” I cry.
Lucy’s hand is a blur as she reaches out and slaps Harry right across the stubble on his face. “You asshole!” she hisses at him. “How dare you?”
I glare at Harry, who has a bewildered expression on his face. “Lucy, what the hell—”
“He grabbed me!” Lucy backs away from him, her eyes wild, her hand clasped over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Tess.” She shoots Harry a seething look. “You bastard.”
Harry turns to appeal to me. “Tess, I didn’t… I would never…”
“You would never?” I shout. “I just saw you do it!”
I spin on my heels and march out of the house, even though the keys are still on the floor of the living room. I can’t even think straight. I just have to get out of here, before Harry sees me burst into tears. I barely make it out the front door before a strong hand wraps around my arm.
“Tess!”
I try to shrug him off, but he’s holding on tight. Finally, I whip my head around to face him. “What? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Harry is standing there, a crevice between his eyebrows. “I didn’t do anything. You have to believe me.”
I almost laugh out loud. “You didn’t do anything? Are you joking? I just saw you kiss her!”
“I wasn’t kissing her!”
“Harry, I saw it!”
“I…” He glances back at the house, then back at me. “I don’t even like Lucy. You know that! Why would I kiss her?”
I stick out my chin. “I guess you were pretending to hate her to hide your wild attraction for her.”
His mouth falls open. “No. That is not even… come on! Tess…”
“So explain it to me. Explain to me what I just saw.”
“She grabbed me. I was so shocked, I didn’t even have a second to pull away.”
This time I really do laugh out loud. “Right. I believe that. You’re saying Lucy was overcome with passion for you and tried to kiss you?”
His eyes cloud. He knows how everything must look. Lucy is gorgeous and men are always hitting on her. And while I find Harry incredibly attractive, he’s more of an acquired taste. And so not Lucy’s type.
“I don’t know why she did it,” he finally says. “I’m just telling you what happened.”
Lucy materializes behind Harry, limping slightly in her always too-high heels. Her eyes look swollen and her red hair is disheveled. “That bastard grabbed me, Tess. I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say.
I reach from my left hand, to the engagement ring that I had only taken off to shower since the night he gave it to me. Harry realizes what I’m trying to do, and his eyes fly open. “Tess, no…”
But there’s nothing he can say. I know what I saw, despite his protests. How can I marry him after he kissed my best friend? I’ll never be able to trust him again.
“Tess, please…” I thought I’d be the one crying, but it’s Harry’s eyes that are filling with tears. “Don’t do this. I love you. Let’s talk about it…”
I keep tugging on the ring, the one I thought I’d be wearing for the rest of my life, eventually accompanied by a plain gold band. Now I just want to get it off me. I keep pulling it, trying to work it loose, but it’s stuck. It won’t come free, no matter what I do.
As I pull harder, the living room fades away. It goes white, and when the white is gone, I’m back in my brand new living room again.
But even though all the furnishings are different and it’s many years later, I’m seeing the same thing. In the moonlight pouring through the windows, I can make out my husband on top of another woman on our sofa, thrusting into her.
“What’s going on here?” I cry.
“Tess!” It’s the woman who calls out my name as she tries to scramble out from underneath Graham’s body. “I… you were asleep!”
It’s Lucy. My best friend. This is the second time I have caught her with my significant other, except this time she wasn’t pushing him away and slapping him across the face. She was having sex with him. Right on my own couch.
Graham doesn’t seem as frazzled as Lucy. He looks like he probably would have finished off if she hadn’t pushed him away from her. He still has his pants on, albeit at his knees, and he takes his time pulling them up and securing them.
“I’m so sorry!” Lucy has leaped off the couch, smoothing out her skirt. She rakes a shaking hand through her red hair, which is tangled and wild around her face. “This… this isn’t what it looks like.”