Discontinued

It was like something out of an episode of Jerry Springer—RIP Jerry, Caryn thought. She looked at the picture. A tiny teardrop puddle was in the center of it that rolled off when she picked the picture up. She was years younger in the photo and sticking her tongue out at the camera. Her lips were a color that they did not even make anymore, and she would never wear anything that gorgeous again she believed.

Caryn had dressed up that night, nothing was too good for Keith. It was their engagement party and she was so happy that night. She had always known that Keith was the one. From the moment she met him, she felt tremors — a bodyquake.

And when he looked at her, he looked at her like he knew that she was at least something. Later of course, he would say that he knew she was the one. It did not matter to Caryn if it was love at first sight for him or not, because she loved him so much.

That night she took so long even to apply that discontinued lipstick for the party. Her dress matched it and everything.

That night was magic.

Fast forward years later, she came home from work and her daughter Manda was wearing a lipstick damn near the color of the discontinued lipstick that Caryn wore to her engagement party.

Vowing to ask her daughter later over dinner where she got the lipstick from, Caryn walked into the bedroom. She took off her blouse and walked over to Keith in her very lacy bra, the padless one that curtained her nipples in lace.

“Hey baby…” she said and Keith shrugged her off roughly. “Baby?” she stood before him.

Keith did not get mad often, but when he did she took full notice.

“Who is this in this photo, Caryn?”

She tried to look at the photo, but Keith held a death grip on it.

“Well how can I tell you anything Keith if you are not even going to let me look at the picture?”

Her husband threw the picture on the ground. Angry but humbled, Caryn knelt and felt the immediate run on the knee of her ultra sheer stockings. The picture was the one from their engagement party. Her tongue stuck out at the camera and she held the back of the head of the man that she was about to kiss? She was not exactly sure. But it was absolutely Keith—who else would it have been?

“Keith, why is this picture of us upsetting you?’

“Us?” he spat. “Look at the date on the picture? Or can you not read your own amateur script?”

“This is the date of our engagement party,” Caryn still walked toward him, uncertain why he was acting like that way.

“Made up so extra pretty, I guess for this stranger?”

“Keith! This is a candid from our engagement party!”

“I always knew that you were a cheater! Our engagement party was…”

Caryn did not hear another thing that Keith said.

They always fought fair, but that was below the belt. She had never cheated on him. She loved Keith so much, she never would even have thought of that. Of anything with another man since she met him.

Never.

But once he opened Pandora’s box, the words that came out of their mouths were more corrosive than acid. Keith’s saliva fell on her like sparks. She slapped him in the face when he called her names she never thought a man who loved her would call her.

It was over. Over her sloppy handwriting? Or his lack of faith in her?

Caryn looked at the picture of them presently, that Keith did not recognize as them and her ubër prominent discontinued lipstick that she had found out from her daughter was reissued.

It was her marriage that was discontinued now…

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I enjoyed this story by Lola Sense--a very contrary couple to the couple in this story!