The Whisper of your voice

I had arrived late, around 5 in the morning. We played at the Jazz Band Club that night. There weren't many people there, but at least they paid us. Matías wasn't home. He got up at 6 and left for work.

Tuesdays and Fridays.

That Friday, he came home from being with her and caught me in the shower before I left. Out of guilt, I'm sure. Against the wall, penetrating me from behind, pulling my wet hair and biting my neck.

It was strange for him to do it like that. Usually, he would just lie down on the bed and wait for me to get on top of him. Now I counted the few times in those months that he took me the way I really liked, the times he came back from being with her.

He made me moan, gasp, scream.

He fucked me as if we hadn't touched each other in weeks, made me come twice, left his fingers marked on my waist. He squeezed my breasts, pinched my nipples, and came with his face buried in my back.

Did he fuck that guy's wife like that too? I cried harder. Humiliated, feeling dirty. Son of a bitch.

And that guy was firing off words, photographs. He wasn't angry, anyone in his place would have come in kicking down doors. He was overwhelmed, tired, I don't know. His eyes were burning, but he was holding back. Tall, black hair, well dressed. One of those guys you look at from afar because you know they'll never give you the time of day.

He was taken aback when I yelled at him, but he was still polite. A silk handkerchief. The rage I felt mixed with the scent of that piece of cloth, filling my lungs.

"I don't understand why you came, honestly," I said, handing him back the handkerchief.

"Because I lost what little sanity I had left. I don't make scenes like that," he stretched out his arm, "I don't get carried away. But I didn't think."

"It's obvious you didn't think," I spat.

"Would you have preferred not to know?" he asked me sarcastically.

I didn't know how to respond. Part of me hated that he had told me. The other part knew he was right. Better to know. Better than continuing to be an idiot.

"I don't know," I said. "But it's done now."

Standing there, I didn't know what else he wanted me to say. To thank him or to tell him to fuck off. I just wanted him to leave.

"I'm leaving," he said.

"Yes, go."

When I closed the door, I leaned against it. Everything that had happened in the shower now made sense. The urgency, the guilt, the way he took me as if it were the last time.

Because maybe it was.

I started packing everything I had into a bag. I couldn't stop crying. Andrea had told me a thousand times: "That guy doesn't love you, Sabrina, wake up."

But you don't wake up to anything when you feel secure, calm, not jumping from one boarding house to another, running away from two parents who had you because air was free. No, the feeling of security blinds you, convinces you that it's better not to know.

As soon as I told her, when Marcos left, Andrea yelled at me to leave right away, to kick him out, pack my things, and go to her house. The truth is, I had nowhere else to go. But she was newly married, pregnant, and was I going to move into her house?

"If you don't come, I'll come and drag you out by your hair." Get out of there, Sabrina. We'll get settled in here, she told me.

And that's what I was doing, gathering my things, when he came home from work. He saw me furiously stuffing things into my bag and got scared.

"What's going on?" he asked, approaching the bed.

"A guy came by today. A guy named Spencer Wildman."

"And?"

"He's the husband of the woman you're sleeping with, Zachary."

I was hoping to hear anything but what he said. That it was a mistake, a momentary lapse of judgment, that he hadn't thought it through. I don't know, something that would make me feel less like a piece of shit. A hint, a word that wasn't his usual selfish excuses. But no.

"I fell in love with her, Sabrina," he said as if it were no big deal. I didn't exist in his life; I hadn't been there for three years of putting up with his "depressions."

And I exploded.

"Then why the hell did you ask me to marry you if you're in love with another woman, you piece of trash?" I yelled at him.

Tears of rage were streaming down my face.

"I don't know, I really don't know. Wasn't that what you wanted?"

I threw the frame with the photo we had taken on our last vacation at his head. He hadn't asked me to marry him because he loved me, because he wanted to start a family with me, but because it was the logical thing to do, the next step. To keep me happy, so I wouldn't bother him.

"You came over to fuck her and then you fucked me. What was going on? Didn't you get all you wanted?

He stayed silent, didn't say anything to me. And I felt it more like rejection, like he was taking care of that woman by keeping her for himself.

"Sabrina, you know it wasn't working between us. We've been more like roommates than a couple for a long time," he finally said.

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I didn't know anything. And we weren't roommates at all. We weren't roommates when it came to getting laid, were we?"

"Come on, don't be like that..."

"Fuck you, Zachary. How do you expect me to swallow all this? Tell me. You cheated on me. Period."

"I didn't want to hurt you, really," he said in that condescending tone.

"You didn't? According to you, if I didn't find out, you weren't hurting me. How the hell does your head work?"

"Look, this is what happened to me, this is how I feel... It's better if you know, so I don't have to lie anymore."

My blood boiled. It was the only thing he wanted: not to have to pretend he was a good guy, that he was a good boyfriend, that he had his life together.

"Better for whom?" I asked him. "For you, now that you don't have to make the effort to pretend you love me?"

"It's not that..."

"No? Then explain to me what it is. Because you just said you're relieved you don't have to lie anymore."

"Sabrina, please. You're exaggerating everything. I always loved you."

"You loved me while you were screwing someone else?"

"What I feel for her is different. It's more... mature. You and I were very young when we started, we were something else."

"Is that your excuse?"

"It's not an excuse."

"Oh, really? Then what is it? Because I didn't cheat on you," I continued. "I didn't screw up three years of your life. I didn't ask you to marry me while I was seeing someone else."

He ran his hand through his hair and sighed in frustration. He got like that when I cornered him, when I didn't let him manipulate me like he did with everyone else.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked me.

"Do what? With you? You can die," I spat at him, taking off my ring and throwing it on the floor.

"No, Sabrina. Where are you going to go?"

"Are you kicking me out?" He was crazy. He wasn't a piece of trash, he was a madman.

"No, I'm not kicking you out," he used that low voice to try to make me understand something that my stupidity wouldn't let me. "But if we're breaking up, we can't continue living together."

Of course, the apartment was his. I was the damn tenant who cleaned, cooked, did the laundry. Who was there at his disposal to spread my legs when he got hard. Who held his head while he threw up all the alcohol he drank because he felt that life wasn't going in the direction he dreamed of.

"You're right, I'm leaving."

"But where to?"

"As if you give a damn."

"I'm not a bastard. You have no one in the city, nowhere to go. What are you going to do? Go back to your parents?"

He was waiting for me to beg him on my knees to let me stay. He had that: he belittled you, reminded you that you were nothing. That way of twisting things to get what he wanted, to make you say what he needed to hear.

"I'm leaving anyway, don't worry. That way you'll save on the hotel room. But at least paint the bathroom, don't bring her to this hole without fixing it up first. The lady will be scared," I said mockingly.

I'm sure she was the one paying, because Zachary couldn't afford a 5-star hotel.

I tied my hair back, slung my bag over one shoulder and the bass over the other.

Dismantling three years of your life hurts. But it hurts more when the person you shared them with sees you as if you were a mistake.

"Should I call you a taxi?" he said, standing up.

"Go to hell, Zachary."

I slammed the door and ran downstairs because I was about to start crying again. When I got downstairs, I was out of breath, suffocating. The neighbor on the ground floor was taking out the trash and looked at me scared, but she didn't ask me anything. She quickly went inside and closed the door.

That's what I got for being stubborn, for insisting on something that always smelled rotten. For being comfortable, for wanting to stop fighting every day with life.

Now I had to start all over again.