BETH:
"I'm home," Troy announced from the living room but I wasn't going to even give him an ounce of acknowledgement. Why was he trying to get my attention when he always sneaked into the house however he liked?
I stayed in my room while going through the picture that my mother sent to me. It was a picture of a wedding gown which had the caption: 'Do you like it?'. I haven't even reached home yet and my mother was already planning the whole event for me.
"Beth? Can you come down for a minute?" Troy called from the living room. I would ignore but it seemed he had something important to speak to me about for him to call me like that.
I walked to see him holding a bouquet of lavender. He also had with a bag of takeout. What was this? A peace offering?
"Here's for the insomnia. It should make you feel better," he said as he handed over the plant to me. I collected it while hesitating. "And this too," he said, handing the takeout to me as well.
I opened it to see that it was a box of seafood which actually made me shocked because he knew I was allergic to that.
"You know I can't eat this, right?" I said, my brows raised at him.
"My bad. I completely forgot," he said, scratching his head.
It was ridiculous to think that he would even try to give it to me when I was clearly not used to taking something like this. I guess he has really fallen out of love with me and was just tolerating my presence in his life.
He didn't need to worry for too long. I was going to leave soon and he could have his 'sister' alone to himself. I don't have the strength to be fighting for a lost cause and I wasn't even planning to do that in the first place.
But then I remembered something.
"What are your plans for tomorrow?" I asked him.
"Uhm, nothing really."
"Good," I said. "Tomorrow's your birthday. Come down from work early. I'm going to make you dinner."
As half decent of a cook I was, I wanted to cook him a meal to celebrate his birthday because I felt like it would be nice to at least spend a little time with him despite the obvious falling out we were having.
I knew he wasn't going to be so excited about that but then he nodded after a few seconds to regard my proposal.
It took a lot of strength to get me to start cooking the meal the next evening. I could tell that cooking was not my specialty and would never be but I just wanted to get something right for once. Maybe I would figure a way to understand why Troy was focusing more on the other woman.
No matter what I did, the food didn't taste any good. I got fed up a some point and just decided that it was okay to be served.
I kept my eyes on the time. Troy should be back from work by now but there was no sight of him till now.
He never showed up no matter how much I waited. Not even a text or a call to let me know his schedule.
I wanted to cry because this was not my expertise but I still cooked him a meal. Showing up would at least appreciate the effort I put into what I did.
I decided to put a call through to him and he picked up on the second ring.
"Are you coming home or not?" I asked.
"I can't," he responded swiftly. "I had to get Ariana to the hospital. She had a nasty cut."
So he was close by before and didn't even bother to check in with me. For heaven's sake, Ariana's new apartment was just right across the other street, one which he even paid for with his own money, but he still couldn't do the reasonable thing.
I was fed up at that point. Something told me he was lying so I hung up the call and went on IG to check the update on Ariana from my burner account after she blocked my main one.
On the burner account, I figured out that Troy was lying. At the moment, he was on a date with Ariana to most likely celebrate his birthday. They looked so happy together and it made me wonder what I did wrong.
"Enough is enough," I said to myself as I stood up from the chair. I carried the meal I had prepared and thrashed everything into the waste bin. It was going to waste anyway.
Over three years of commitment in this relationship and this is what I get from him. I don't deserve this. And truly, he doesn't deserve me.
