Tame the Beast : Small Beach Town, Single Mom Romance

I break into messy, ugly wailing. That beast inside my chest squeezing my insides all too hard. Why does it hurt so much?

“Please, let me stay here. I can’t go home today. Please,” I plead, because even in a room full of memories I feel better than alone in my small apartment where all I have are my own vicious thoughts to be lost in.

But is this any better? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I stop crying? And in front of my boss nonetheless. Damn it.

Out of nowhere, I feel Dr. Levine’s hand on my shoulders, patting me awkwardly like that action is a foreign gesture for her.

“Zoe, how about you calm down and tell me what happened so I can help you, okay? I don’t have solutions for tears; I need real words.” Damn it, I am messing up everyone’s day today, and now my boss has to deal with my antics which makes me sob even harder, shaking under her touch. “Zoe!” she calls out in a demand, and that right there does the trick.

“I saw him with his wife,” I mumble out, the admission to my failure tumbling out of me without my permission and evidently it shocks her just as much as me because all of a sudden, she grows stiff next to me.

“You saw who?” she says almost in a whisper but still wielding it with authority and a dark edge I haven’t seen before.

I swallow hard before answering her, but maybe I swallowed too much of my sanity along with that lump because I spill it all. Along with more damn tears. “My boyfriend. My stupid, stupid boyfriend. The one w’s been lying to me for the past year. He is fucking married, and he showed up with his wife at the ceremony yesterday.”

Instantly, Dr. Levine’s naturally golden-toned face pales and she says softly, “Zoe, are you talking about Justin?” My eyes snap up to hers so fast, I felt my irises strain.

“H-how did you know?” Oh, God, please don’t tell me she knew this whole time? Knew that I was stupid enough to date a married man and make a fool out of myself. Did she catch us after all?

I am awaiting her to tell me what an idiot I am or at least look at me with disgust when something so unexpected happens, I am lost for words.

She laughs.

Laughs.

A belly-deep, tears-down-your-cheeks kind of laugh but it had a sardonic note. But she keeps laughing and laughing as if some kind of dam broke loose inside her and now, she can’t stop. I even forget to be concerned that she might be laughing at my pathetic self in my worry for her.

“Doctor Levine? Are you okay?”

“Oh, Zoe, I think we need to move on to first name basis after this,” she says, while wiping the tears underneath her eyes, as she keeps laughing but not as hard anymore and takes a long, assessing look over my whole body, glancing over my ordinary blonde hair, dull brown eyes and an unflattering figure that I tried to work hard on for Justin but could never get to be an extra small in size. I am not as beautifully curvy as Joy is, but I am not skin and bones either. Like I said, unflattering. But the way she watches me makes me want to tug on my coat to hide it all.

Jesus, what is going on?

After a moment, she looks up and says, “I guess he has a type. Shame his wife doesn’t really fit the bill, huh?” I feel my brows furrow further into confusion at her comment.

“What are you talking about, Doctor Levine?”

“Joy,” she says all of a sudden and before I get a chance to ask why she is telling me her name that I already know, she dumps an atomic bomb on my already shattered heart.

“Women whom I have shared a boyfriend with get to call me Joy.”

1

Zoe

“My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on.” – Joan Rivers

Whoever created the saying, “It can’t get any worse…” clearly needs to get an MRI and a CT scan, along with a full bloodwork and neuropsychological testing. Hell, let’s add a urinalysis, just in case as well. Because I swear, I see two pink lines but also, I shouldn’t be trusted with determining anything at this point since clearly my eyesight has left the building ever since I met Justin. No, scratch that. I am simply blind because there is no other explaining for how I got myself into this situation in the first place.

But those are two pink lines, right?

Well, ten of them from the five tests laid out in front of me, but I must be seeing double from so many lines. Yeah, that’s it. Those are not really two lines, just my shit eyesight. And the never ending throwing up is simply me still being disgusted with Justin’s betrayal two weeks later.

Two weeks. It has been two weeks since the night I swore to never stuff my intuition up my ass. Two weeks of having sleepovers with my toilet bowl and then piling myself up with so much work during the day that I simply didn’t have the time to go throw up some more.

But it was also two weeks of eye-opening and clarity that I have never had before. That next morning after the night I—and pretty much everyone else—found out about Justin’s wife, life turned upside down.

My boss, whom I was slightly scared of, became my best friend and comrade in Justin’s betrayals, and I guess the sun does shine up on you when you are below the crap level because I could not be any more grateful for her. If not for Joy, I would probably still be wallowing in misery and participating in self-destructive thoughts like “what’s wrong with me?” or “why can’t nobody ever love me?” and so on.