Lib Novel Page 2
Putting away the thought of my childhood and current warning bells inside my head, I get ready and hurry to work, running around the fancy lab and helping Dr. Levine get ready for dinner tonight while pretending she doesn’t still slightly terrify me after working together for so long.
I go through the motions of checking up on the bodies we are working on currently, finishing up the reports time on those and making sure her dress arrives on. Yet those warning bells I’ve tried to put away start blaring louder and brighter as the day goes on.
Especially after yet another unanswered text from Justin.
But I keep shoving them down further and further through the evening and the walk to the auditorium. I shove them down through the flashing lights from cameras that I avoid because that kind of attention was never my thing. I shove them down through some mindless conversations with a few colleges who have also come out tonight.
I shove them down and down until I am so numb and have convinced myself that the world is made up of unicorns and rainbows. I don’t realize I’ve shoved my heart so far down, it is numb to what my brown eyes are seeing. To the shift in the atmosphere.
I don’t realize that it is my boyfriend in a perfect black tux with a woman on his arm. A gorgeous—even if it’s in a fake kind of way—woman clinging onto him with her nose tipped up as if the rest of the world is beneath her. And why wouldn’t she feel that way?
That is exactly how Justin Hunt makes me feel. Only naïvely, I didn’t realize I wasn’t the only one. He has someone else. Somehow in the span of one week I haven’t seen him, he found someone else. Someone so important he brought her with him to show the rest of the world. And he looks so damn happy with her there, blessing everyone with that blinding smile of his.
But then what was I?
Justin is shaking hands with everyone around them, accepting congratulations on his award while the woman at his side bristles with pride, and runs her hands all over him as if to make sure there isn’t a single soul in here who doesn’t realize the claim she has on him.
And what a claim it is…
Forget a simple shift in the atmosphere. It’s a full-blown earthquake inside my chest.
I must still be too numb, too crumbled beneath the rubble of my heart, otherwise I am sure my knees would give way when my eyes fall onto her arm, the one she has him in a death grip with. There, just at the end, where the ring finger is, lays a diamond so big I’m not sure she’s able to lift her hand up with that on it.
Additionally, there is a platinum band on his ring finger as well. One I’ve never seen before.
He got married in a week? Or was he seeing her at the same time as me?
Oh, hell…Zoe…stop being a naive fool.
Late night calls. Seeing each other so scarcely. Unanswered texts. Avoidance of showing me his place or to make our relationship public…
No, he didn’t just get married. He was married. He is married.
I have been in love with a married man for a year.
I have been dating a married man for a year.
Suddenly, all the pieces of our dysfunctional relationship fall into their rightful place. It all makes perfect sense. It all fucking makes sense, and despite the PhD I earned I was stupid enough not to see the biggest lie right in front of nose.
I should walk right up to him and claw his face out. I should damage that blinding smile of his and make sure everyone sees him for what he is, but I don’t.
Instead, I turn and run as fast as I can, because after an earthquake there is generally a tsunami that follows. And the waves of mine are washing up the shores already. Alongside a healthy dose of nausea.
Fuck you, sun.
You won’t fool me twice. Yesterday I might have fallen for your lies and false sense of warmth but not today. Not after I saw through the fuzzy sunrays and revealed the murky skies full of lightning and thunder.
Yes, I might be completely losing it because I am having conversations inside my head with the sun. But since everything else is going to shit why not add insanity into the mix? Obviously, I’ve been having the symptoms for a while now with all the weird emotions, nausea, and sore back.
It doesn’t help that I couldn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night—tossing and turning, searching in my head for the answers to questions I’ve been asking myself far longer than just last night.
Why? What is so wrong with me that I am the one being lied to all the time? What is so wrong with me that I am not deserving of that love I so desperately want. Maybe I should know better…
Jesus, how could I be so naïve?
Me!
A person, who is basically a know-it-all in deceit and lies department since I was born, fell for it blindly. But just because we are parched for some water, doesn’t mean the sand will magically become it.