Honey

He calls me ‘honey’.

He’s been calling me ‘honey’ so much that I get confused sometimes.

I’ve learned to not take him too seriously, but when he calls me ‘honey’, I get weak in the knees.

He calls her ‘honey’, too.

The word echoes in my head, endlessly. Playing on a loop - I cannot decide if I love it or hate it. I replay every time he calls me ‘honey’ in my head, compare it to when he calls her ‘honey’. I listen for inflections, tone, context, and changes.

I’m afraid of the day he calls me ‘honey’ in the same voice he uses for her.

He takes me out for date nights on Friday. It’s our night. It belongs to him and I and no one else. It’s my little slice of heaven. I have him all to myself and for a few hours a week, reality fades away and all I can think about is how right this feels.

I want this. I want this man, this love, this future. I love him.

He takes me on long drives, shows me his favorite spots, and treats me to his favorite food. He cooks for me and always enjoys the meals I cook for him.

I think that I could get used to this.

He tells me he loves me and I beam at him, the words washing over me like fine silk against my skin after a long, hot bath. He smiles and kisses me, tells me sweet things and makes me dream of a future together. Reality doesn’t exist in that moment and I fall deeper in love.

I fall harder and faster and deeper - love comes in waves, each tide stronger than the last. Love covers me in butterflies and leaves a sweet taste in my mouth - the taste of menthol Pall Malls and Southern Comfort whiskey mixed with adrenaline and oxytocin and I am swept away in the gentle stream of his words.

He calls me ‘honey’ and the dream begins to crack.

I can’t keep the nagging reminder out of my head, can’t force myself to forget that I’m not his only ‘honey’. My mind races and my breath quickens and he thinks I’m getting aroused. He leans in to kiss me and runs his hand up my thigh and I am torn.

I want to scream and push him away but he whispers in my ear and I melt, opening my legs and my heart and letting him take and take until I am empty.

He leaves the hotel room afterwards, promising to come back with food and drinks, but I see the way he clutches his phone in his hands. I see the missed calls and texts. I know what he is doing, but I bite back the words and paint a smile over my face, my cheeks straining with effort.

I pull on his shirt and pace around the room on wobbly legs, like a newborn deer, resentment at myself and him burning in my heart.

I’m going to end it. This is ridiculous, I have to stop. I tell myself, muttering curses against him with every breath.

As I search for my clothes, I find a little black book sticking out of his briefcase. Curious, I flip through the pages.

Favorite color - maroon

Favorite food - sushi

Middle name - Eva

...

It's me. It’s all about me. Every single little detail I've ever told him about myself meticulously penned down. The pages are brimming with date ideas and reminders about what I would enjoy the most, places I’ve mentioned, activities I enjoy - it is two years of forbidden love made permanent in ink.

It’s tragic, but it moves me, makes me forget my resentment, just in time for him to walk back inside, a guilty smile on his face.

He knows. I know he knows that I know what he was truly doing.

I simply open my arms and welcome his scarring embrace.

He calls me ‘honey’ for another year. I never tell him the pain that endearment causes, the hurricane of guilt, selfishness, and self-hatred that it breeds.

I plan a trip for our anniversary, but he calls me at the airport and tells me he won’t be able to make it. He spends our anniversary with her and I burn. I burn because he is hers and I want so badly, but he will never leave her.

The realization hits me like a tsunami and I keel over, my luggage scattered across the floor of the airport while I am heaving on my knees, the futility of my love branding itself into my heart. Wave after wave of hopelessness crashes over me and I become one with the cold tile of the grimy airport, clutching the tattered remains of my heart close to the open wound on my chest.

The next day, I end it.

He stares at me for a long time, kisses me, tells me that he loves me and slips between my legs again. I fall back into his embrace like a moth to light.

As I lay there in rumpled sheets, he pulls himself away from me, plants a kiss on my forehead, and tells me that he will miss me.

And he leaves.

He leaves me in a hotel room and I hate myself.

I seethe, I fume, I grit my teeth and cry for days, but he doesn’t contact me again. I wait and want and sit in my bay window like the forlorn heroine of a fairytale, waiting for her lover to steal her away - but he never comes.

He calls me once, drunk and reckless, at 2 am, asking me to meet him in a hotel room.

Instead, I record the call.

I gather all the pictures of us, screenshot the texts, compile all the lovestruck voicemails and I send him an email. I want my revenge.

I decide that $20,000 is what my pain is worth and I spit all my rage into two sentences.

Don’t you dare contact me after throwing me away like garbage. I wasted 3 years on you and I want $20,000, or your wife is going to get an email with some very interesting attachments.

He doesn’t respond or call me again.

One week later, I treat myself to a spa trip, fancy dinners out with friends, and I buy myself all the pleasures that $20,000 can afford. I wait for the feeling of satisfaction to come, but the hollowness is inescapable. I kneel on the ground in the middle of all my purchases until the hard wooden floor leaves indents in my knees, relishing in the pain.

Two weeks after that, he comes to my front door, tears in his eyes and a duffel bag in his hands.

“I was stupid to think that I could let you go,” he says, reaching for me with cold hands.

Like a pretty little fool, his tears wash away my walls and I fall into his arms again. His red flag is my white flag - I cannot bear to see him in pain.

“I left her for you, honey. I want a real future with you, I love you so much.” He whispers into my ear, clutching my body close to his, his hands running down my body and squeezing my curves.

Tension that I do not understand fills me, warring with the bursting happiness in my chest. He is finally mine, all mine. The conflict in my heart leaves me confused and thoughtless. I welcome him into my home.

As he uses the washroom, I look at his phone.

Are you with her right now? The bitch from the email? Are you seriously throwing our relationship, our marriage, years of us down the drain? Just like that???

Fine. Don’t ever come back here, this is my house.

I’m done with you. Thank god I saw that email, I don’t want to waste my life with a cheater.

Did you give her the money?? Did you steal it from our joint account??

I’m gonna sue you, you f***er!!!

Realization washes over me as I read the texts.

They’re from ‘Honey’.

As he comes out of the washroom with a cigarette hanging between his lips, I turn to him with a frozen smile.

Terror courses through me and I understand the tension that filled me earlier.

“C’mere honey, give me a kiss.” He says, with that glint in his eyes that I thought I loved.

For the first time in my life, I see the malice behind it.

The dream shatters and reality sets in and I -

I run.