The Ticket

Excerpt

"Okay, what's wrong? I can tell something's been bothering you, so just tell me." Owen is exasperated with me because I've barely said a word since he got home from work.

I shake my head. "We'll talk later." I want to talk now, boy do I want to. Actually, I want to scream. But Mia is here, and I have to wait for her sake. This is not a conversation she should hear any part of, even if she's too little to understand half of it.

As the night progresses, both Owen and I become more distant, barely looking at or acknowledging each other, though we do work together to get Mia down for the night.

The moment she's in her bed I walk to our bathroom and he follows me, closing the bedroom and then the bathroom door behind us. There is a reason I have brought him to this room. The lights are the brightest here. All of our rooms are dark in the evenings, with just a few lamps here and there. For some reason, no one ever thought to install ceiling lights except in the kitchen. I want to be able to see his face clearly, every expression.

I don't beat around the bush. This has been weighing on my mind for far too long. "Did you cheat on me?"

"What? Why would you ask that? Did you cheat on ME? Are you projecting somehow?" Owen is not surprisingly upset. He shakes his head at me, working his jaw like he does when he's under stress. But he is unbelievably quick to turn the tables on me, and it makes me all the more suspicious.

"No, I have always been faithful."

"Then what's up with you? What did I do now?" He's referring to my mood swings before he left for Chicago. Now I have two choices, I chalk it up to another bout of hormones, or I follow through with what my instincts are saying. I opt for the latter.

I pull out the little yellow note and put it on the counter. He looks at it and through the reflection in the large mirror above our sink I can see the red creep up his neck and into his face. I regret that I chose this room now; perhaps it would have been better not to see the truth so quickly.

I swallow hard. It's hard to speak. "I will believe what you tell me," I whisper, almost pleading for him to lie. Please, please say you didn't.

Owen's eyes still don't lift to mine, instead he looks at himself in the mirror, his breathing deeper. He's looking through his own eyes, into his soul I suppose. Maybe he's trying to decide if he can live with a lie. He turns to me, his eyes pained and watery. And he nods yes.

My world topples and spins and I catch myself on the sink. Even though I'd already suspected it and even though I'd played this scenario in my head a thousand times today, when it actually happens it shocks me to my core. He reaches for me but I move away.

"No! You will not touch me!"

"Please, Cris. I am so sorry. It was only one time, I swear." His voice is breaking and I know he is fighting to remain controlled.

"One time, or one night?" I spit my words at him. His lack of a response lets me know what happened. "I saw the bottles of wine you charged to your room. You don't drink wine. So that means you had her there long enough to have gone through two bottles."

"It was a mistake. I drank so much and she was working at the hotel bar. It just seemed so easy and harmless to keep talking in my room. There's no excuse other than I am stupid. It wasn't even good, like it is with you. I really wasn't even that attract..."

I raise my hand. "I don't give a shit who she is or why you did it or how you fucking felt about it afterwards!" I am screaming at him now.

"I love you, Cris. Jesus, please, I don't want to lose you. You had been giving me such a hard time about whether I still loved you that I felt insecure myself and wondered if you still loved ME." He's trying to blame me, to turn this around so that he feels justified.