I sigh. “So… when Leslie told me that you and she had been intimate…” He flinches, and his mouth drops open, but he doesn’t say anything, so I go on. “And she had details that only someone who had seen you naked or had had sex with you would know, I believed her.”
“Leslie?” he cries. “Me and Leslie?”
“Yeah.”
“She told you that I slept with her? When?”
“The day of the announcement.”
“No, I mean, when did she say this happened? Did she say I’d cheated on you?” He looks as sick as I feel.
“Oh.” I blink. “No. She said it was when you first came to town. Before we started dating.”
“And you said she told you things… That is, however would Leslie know what I look like naked?”
Quickly, hardly breathing, I tell him about the “proof” she gave me and how I eventually found out she got the details from our emails. Closing my eyes again, I say, “I know. It’s so stupid and improbable now that I know it’s a lie, but at the time… She couldn’t have timed her little joke any better—or worse, depending on how you look at it.”
“This is no joke!” he comes close to shouting, startling my eyes open. “This is… is… something that could have had dire consequences. Did have dire consequences. For months!”
“I know, but look: we’re together again. I found out the truth—”
“And how is that? By coming to me straight away and asking me if it was true? No. You chose to believe I would…” he shivers rather than says it. “With Leslie?” He scoots and rests his back against the headboard. “I wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole!”
He pulls the sheet higher up his body and crosses his arms over his chest. Sullenly, he says, “I can’t believe you chose to believe her rather than say, ‘Jude, did you ever get a leg over on that walking STD Leslie?’ I mean, I think I deserved at least that much from you, a chance to defend myself!”
While I’m trying to think of a good reason why I didn’t just ask him, he’s still thinking out loud about the timeline of events. “And when I tried to convince you to take me back, before I left to come here, you wouldn’t, because of her lies?”
“Yes.” It’s barely a whisper.
“What a fucking waste,” he mutters, staring into space.
“But,” I point out, remembering why I didn’t ask him about it, “if I had asked you, and you had denied it, it would have just confirmed my suspicions that you were a bastard. Her proof was so overwhelming and incontrovertible that I would only have been asking you in order to hear a confession. And when you denied it—as you rightly would have—I would have written you off as a lying man-whore! Her plan was simple but genius.”
“You would have taken her word over mine?”
“It wasn’t just her word, Jude. It was details. A lot of details. Your rugby scar, your favorite positions, your ticklish feet… Again, I’m so sorry! But, honestly, I don’t know how I would have done anything differently. You and I were broken up. I didn’t feel comfortable asking you about something that supposedly happened before we ever got together.”
His response is to put his hands over his eyes and say in a voice so cold it gives me goosebumps, “That fucking bitch. You have no idea the misery I’ve endured every. Fucking. Day. There hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t think I couldn’t get out of bed. Because I thought I had lost you, and I couldn’t figure out why. I just knew it was probably permanent. And now I find it wasn’t my fault at all. Not a bit of it.”
He removes his hands, revealing red eyes.
“I should have told you sooner,” I suddenly realize. “I’ve been sitting on this information for a month, dreading how angry you’d be at me, trying to come up with the perfect way to break it to you, making all these extravagant plans. It was selfish. I should have just told you!”
“Yeah,” he says huskily, blinking at me. “Maybe. Although…” He brushes his foot against my leg under the covers. “I could tell recently that something had changed. I almost had… hope. I suppose I didn’t really need to know why you seemed to care again, since I never knew why you stopped.”
Now I join him at the head of the bed. He puts his arm around me as I burrow next to him. “I never stopped caring. Never. But I thought I knew the truth. And it was devastating.”
“I have every right to be furious with you,” he declares bullishly, as if I’ve been saying otherwise. But he grabs my hand and rubs the back of it with his thumb.
“I agree. I’d be livid, if the roles were switched.”
“If you had asked me about Leslie, I would have at least known to confront her about her lies. And make her tell you the truth.” He barely skims his fingers against my upper arm.
I shiver. “You’re right. That would have saved us both a lot of heartache. I was just too proud to bring it up to you. Please don’t be mad at me. For long. I understand if you are right now.”
“I’m not angry with you,” he replies, seeming surprised by the statement. “But I’d like to hop on a flight and murder Leslie.”
“Then you’d go to prison. We can’t have that.”
“Then you’d better find a way to restrain me here.”
“Don’t make me pull your hair again.”
Laughing, groping, and murmuring, we disappear under the covers.
34
Lisa,
I seem to remember promising you an update (it must have been one of my weaker moments). You said it didn’t have to be long, so here goes: flight was fine; talk was fine; yes I did. Several times. Tell
