She's telling me she's done wrong as we stand there in the dim light, the filament of a single lightbulb buzzes above our heads. I have a calm demeanor. She is saying she can confess to me because I will not get mad. She says I will understand, I always understand. I am the only one who ever understands. She says she can tell me because I will not raise my voice.
I do not ask what she's done wrong. I just watch her, the shadows running across her face, her long, brown hair enshrouding her. I can see the bags beneath her eyes, the stress of it paling her face and making the bags more pronounced. She says it is taking a lot of strength for her to say this.
She tells me there was another man, her voice caught in a choked sigh. For a moment, then, she says nothing more. She stares at me, watching me as I watch her. Her eyes scan my expression but I know it is partially hidden in shadow and hard to read. But then again, she has always told me I am hard to read. When I do not respond, she begs me.
"Say something," she says in her, half-crying voice.
I ask what she wants me to say.
She wants to know how I feel about it. How I feel about her giving herself to somebody else. How I feel about her betraying my trust. She wants to hear me sigh, feel my arms wrap around her as I whisper forgiveness in her ear. She wants to taste my kiss when I prove to her that it is all okay because she did the right thing by telling me.
I ask how long it went on for. She eyes me for a moment. My voice is too flat to read.
She says "a month." I say nothing. She steps forward in the darkness steps toward me. I can see her large brown eyes gazing up at me. The buzzing filament breaks the shadows but does not destroy them. It forms a cone of light starting at her head and extending down so that only her ankles are fully visible. She is asking me to say something. She is telling me she knew the whole time I would understand.
When I stay silent, she swears it will never happen again. She tells me she loves me. She tells me in the same desperately passionate tone she always had. It is the same voice she had when she first said it. Like all the times she let it burst out at the most wonderfully unexpected moments. Like she did last week.
The spontaneity I fell in love with has backfired on me. When I tell her this, she begs again, her eyes filling with tears that look black in the thick darkness when they fall. She tells me it's not true. She tells me she loves me and only me, forever. She tells me it meant nothing. I tell her to stop crying as I wonder if she told the other one the same thing about me. I tell her I can't stand it when she cries.
She holds out her arms and steps forward. I let her hug me. I feel a soft kiss at the base of my neck and I can't help myself. I pull her in tight and hold her there. The two of us just stand there in an immobile grip for another moment longer, the single dying lightbulb throwing us into a burnt orange cocoon within the blackened universe. Then I let go and we gaze into each other's eyes.
When she looks at me, I find her tears of pain and desperation have become relief and joy. I am still silent, though still unreadable. Then I turn my back to her, my hand sliding into my jacket as I stare at the floor. She calls my name, her voice sounding small and far away. I can still feel her embrace, her arms wrapped tightly around me. I can smell her perfume and his cologne. I can feel her warmth and his sweat. Taste her shampoo, his aftershave. My body begins to fester with deception, it crawls through me, burrowing beneath my skin, eating through me eating me alive.
I remove the only thing to ever remain loyal to me. I turn and hold it out to her, watching her eyes widen in a different kind of way. She backs up now, the shadows engulfing her, already digesting her.
"Samantha," I say to her, "you disappoint me." And I pull the trigger.







