PANDORA’S BOX, (noun) A process that generates many complicated problems as the result of unwise interference in something.

The next morning, I woke up beside him and rolled over to drape myself over him, as I had done for 3 years. But the moment he spoke, I felt it. Writing this now, I can still feel it and my stomach flutters with the same anxiety as that morning. There was “that tone”, and whatever was in his head, it had inflated and taken up space, squeezing me out, all over again. When he got up to leave, the atmosphere was thick with his anticipation to leave. I didn’t have any idea what happened, but he was elsewhere in his mind and I was dismissed, yet again. He said to me, “We’re not back together, Shannon. We’re taking this one day at a time. Let’s just take things as they come.” And I nodded my head, understanding that I was back on probation, for whatever crime I had committed. Asking again if there was another woman, he sighed and asked his usual, “Where am I going to meet a woman? Home Depot?” And, “There’s no other woman. I haven’t even touched another woman since well before you, Shannon. I told you that you ended a long dry spell for me. Stop asking. There’s nobody else now, there has never been anyone else.” Later that day, we spoke on the phone and when I asked what was wrong, he rattled off reasons why we can’t be together; that he needs a woman who is more “motivated”, that I still don’t have clear career path, that my income should have jumped this many years later … I knew this was ridiculous, because I knew him. His heart was entirely too soft, his understanding too great to peel me off of him because I didn’t have any money, and he knew I was a hard worker. Beyond all of that, we got along like nobody. We’d hardly ever fought, we were so compatible. It just made no sense. But it hurt just the same, because … maybe he was telling the truth.

We didn’t see each other again for another month, with sparse communication, mostly over text, and he was “too busy” to get together. He was moody, and we would have strange little arguments, and if I expressed my hurt, he’d say, “Well, life sucks. We don’t get what we want.” Or “Life blows. We all die alone and I am not meant for relationships so I’ll die alone, too.” (What? What are you talking about?) By now, I was growing used to him being gone, and my love wasn’t dying, but my tolerance and interest were. Never being one to go where I’m not wanted, I was getting the message, and rigor mortis was setting in … I had been dead too long.

One evening, he called me and asked me to come over, saying he wanted to talk. He said we never really talked and he felt bad about that, because he had promised. Surprised he was willing to “go there”, I went to his house and walked in to find a quiet and sedate man. He was different. He seemed almost defeated, but very loving toward me. He stood up to greet me, enfolding me in a long, warm hug. “Are you ok?” I asked. “I’m good. Just tired.” He said, “I’ve missed you, Shannon. You are definitely in a class all your own. I’m sorry I’ve been so … I don’t know.” He moved my hair away from my face. “You’re really a great cook. I’ve missed that.” “I never went anywhere,” I said. “I know,” he said. ” … You’re different,” I said. “What happened? You’ve lost weight, you’re sad … ” “Nothing’s happened,” he said. “But you disappeared again … ” “I know,” he said, slowly unbuttoning my shirt. Mustering up the courage to address a nagging thought, I haltingly asked, “… just tell me the truth. Are you doing drugs? I think you’re doing drugs. It’s the only thing that explains how you’ve been acting. Are you?” He stopped cold, looked at me with an incredulous expression, furrowing his eyebrows, his eyes staring into mine for a long moment. “whu – really?” He said. Then hearty laughter erupted out of him, and he covered his eyes with his hand. “Shannon … drugs. Drugs? I don’t even take Tylenol,” and he laughed again. That really cracked him up. Well, that is true. He won’t even take an Aspirin. “Then are you gambling? Are you in trouble? You’re always in Atlantic City. You’ve called me from the Taj Mahal hotel that you hang out at … twice … at night, and when I asked why you were there, you said you got a free room from your friend. Are you gambling or something? Are you … are you in trouble?” As he slipped my shirt off of my shoulders, he shook his head. “No. No. Come on. You know I don’t gamble, Shannon. If I were a gambler, believe me, you would’ve known years before. You can’t hide habits like that. Besides, that place has the shittiest casino ever.” “Then why stay there?” “Because I got a free room. You know I love hotels, Shannon. So do you.” “Then what is it? What’s going on?” He reached behind me with both arms to unhook my bra, kissing me as he leaned in. “Nothing is going on. Nothing. Sshhh.” He settled back on the couch, pulling me on top of him, both of us nestled on the couch. He stroked my hair with one hand, rubbing my back with the other. “We’re good. We are. I want to forget the bullshit and try again. Shannon, I’ve never ever gone back to a woman I have broken up with. You are the exception. Even mom’s told you that. So let’s just start over. Let’s start over.” My face was nestled in his neck, as I blossomed in his arms, drinking in his sudden acceptance of me, all over again. And that night, he was more passionate, loving me harder and with more emotion than he ever had before. We moved around his house, landing here and there for more, rediscovering each other. I fell in love with him all over again, and I was so thankful that the clouds had finally blown away.
After a long while, late in the night, he drifted to sleep on the couch, his arms folded over his chest. I ran my fingertips over his brow, through his hair, and I softly kissed his mouth as he slept, before I stood up to grab a blanket from his bedroom. Walking through his kitchen, I thanked God that it was over and we were ok again.  My heart was overflowing and the suffocating hurt was gone. 

Walking into his bedroom, humming to myself, I passed the side table next to his bed, and I heard his phone chime with a text.  Startled, I glanced down where I had heard it, and there on the screen a text from a woman.  It said, “I kind of miss you.”  It was 1:15 a.m.

I stopped in my tracks, and it very literally felt like I had been hit square in the chest with a bat. My body responded with a loss of breath, somehow. I immediately recognized the name on the phone as the woman whose name I had seen often over the last 2 years, at odd times. He would tell me she was a client’s wife who had “entirely too much time” and “too much freedom with her husband’s wallet”, that she was “always asking for more improvements to this and to that”, and she had “no consideration for his time” and that is why she would text him at odd hours. He said she was thoughtless. He said he couldn’t stand her. He called her a bitch. Standing there, shaking, I remembered that one night, at well past midnight, we were reclining in my bed, and he was swiping through his phone, showing me a YouTube video about boats. Her name popped up on his screen with a text. When I asked who she was, he said it was the client’s wife again, and he sighed dramatically, speaking aloud as he texted her, “I will get back to you on Monday, I told you I have to wait for your cabinets to arrive before I can install them.” He slapped his phone face down on the side table and grumbled that I can’t wait to be done with that project. I remembered another time when I saw her name on his phone, because he was sending her a picture of his snowy yard before he walked out the door for work. I asked him who she was and why he was sending her a picture of the snow. He groaned and said he had to explain that he “can’t come to her house today” because he has other things to do and “the snow is too bad to get there any way” … And he again said what an annoying woman she was. Shaking myself out of those memories, I picked up his phone, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I very slowly slid my index finger from the top of the screen to the bottom, opening the text. “I kind of miss you.” I very gently tapped the text and the page opened, revealing a long conversation of very emotional words between the two of them. “Oh my God,” I breathed as my eyes took in their texts, reading with utter disbelief, the things he had said to her. Loving words he had never spoken to me, sentiments he had never expressed to me, spilling out emotion that I had never seen before from him and would never have believed in a million years he could even produce. The man that was texting this woman … This was not the man that I had known for 3 years. Had it not been for his familiar speech cadence that I could feel through his written word, I wouldn’t believe it was him at all. But it was. And what idiot I was for believing all of those times that this woman was his client’s wife. That client never existed and as usual, he had a lie ready to go. I believed him. I always believed him.

I walked on shaky legs across his bedroom, into his bathroom. I shut the door, locked it, and sank to the floor, my hand over my mouth, tears streaming, heart thumping. As I sat there alone on his cold tile floor, I read page after page of texts between them, spilling out I love you’s and his text of “Good morning, Baby. I love you!” with her answering, “Good morning, my sweet man,” and “I can’t wait to see you, Baby. It’s all I can think about. I’ll pick you up after work and we’ll get a room” and her answering, “Ok, Babe. That sounds great” … text after text full of those gushing words that I literally never heard him say to me in 3 years. Not once, convincing me he “wasn’t capable of loving that way” and that he “didn’t do emotions” because he was an “Alpha Male”. I thought about the tears I had cried over the years, asking why he never said he loved me, shrinking under his frustration of him having to explain that it was because he was ” German”, that “German men don’t express themselves that way” and he “never says those things” to women, even me. Reading the countless “I love you so much” and “You’re so beautiful” texts was like a dull knife slowly twisting in the center of my heart, that I could actually feel. The sensation was tangible and I pressed my hand over my chest as I read. Then the pictures … I gasped out loud and covered my mouth with my shaking hand. She was a showgirl. She’s a showgirl! I exhaled and shook my head as another piece suddenly made sense: this is why I found that iridescent powdery body glitter on him all those times. It was her body glitter … rubbed right off of her body onto his.  This is why he would call me from the hotels in Atlantic City; he was there to see her perform.

I saw pictures of her dancing on stage under a red spot light, I saw pictures of her in with her showgirl group, posing in a line, giant yellow feather tails and headdresses, her in a tiny yellow sparkling G-String and bra, rhinestone straps, yellow rhinestone choker, fishnets. I saw a picture of her standing with her back to the camera, looking over her shoulder, with a tiny thong on, topped with the large feather plume tail, her backside completely exposed. The only piece of fabric visible was a small triangle resting on her tailbone. This is why he said my swimsuit had too much fabric. He was used to looking at her in a g-string. Oh my God. 

She had a very small bust, barely filling in the costume bra tops she wore, and I immediately remembered all the times he would come to my bed after days away, unreachable, “working”, and fawn all over my large breasts, sighing and telling me how “amazing” they were. Now I knew why; he had spent days in bed with small breasts and I provided the variety he craved. I saw selfies she had taken backstage, wearing a tiny black 2 piece shimmery costume with fishnets and a black flower behind her ear, pink lip gloss and a strap around her throat. I saw frontal shots of her smooth beautiful body, arms up in a sexy pose, bedroom eyes, and she was wearing a tiny bikini bottom, with not a mark on her tummy. She had a toddler at the time, and she bore no evidence of carrying a child. That’s why he said “Not all women get stretch marks when they have babies” and “Not all women look like that after having a baby.” He was comparing me to this professional dancer. Wow. There were pictures of her dancing in another dance group, more like a go-go performance. There was a selfie she sent from a bathroom, topless, her arm loosely draped across her chest, covering herself, with those bedroom eyes staring into the camera. “I want you right now,” he texted back. “I have never wanted anyone more.” “I want you, too,” she answered. “I can’t wait to have you on top of me,” he continued in text. “I can’t wait for that too, my sweet man,” she answered. My eyes went to the dates of this conversation, and I shook my head.  He had us both at the same time.  My whole body was shaking.

I saw emails, pictures together, selfies of her kissing his cheek, pictures of her in her lingerie and stage costumes … one shot of her posing before a Halloween performance in a tiny pink and black costume, dramatically holding a prop umbrella, her face half painted as a white skull for the Day of the Dead, silk flowers crowning her blonde head. She was beautiful.  … another shot of her posing, arms up, in a black and red satin 2 piece costume with stockings and garter belts on her thighs … pictures of her on stage … the two of them at The Sea Shell Resort on Long Beach Island, the blue sign on the yellow building behind in the background, tropical drink in her hand, large dark sunglasses on her head, the sunglasses I bought him on his head … the two of them posing in front of Barnagat Lighthouse, her in a leather jacket, tight jeans and black boots,  him in the rust Nautica sweater I loved so much. How many times did I ask you to come with me to Barnagat. You said you didn’t like lighthouses. Yet you took her. No wonder. You didn’t want to tarnish your memory with her.  I discovered pictures of them cuddled up at a restaurant table at the outdoor deck of The Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, with the yachts behind them in the water, other couples there, too …  the dates on the texts and pictures rolling back and back and back, revealing that she had been in his life for over 2 years, right along side of me. It was all sharpening into focus and I was beginning to piece it all together. This is why he was always down the shore. He was there because she lived there. That’s why he stopped bringing me down. That’s why he would never take me into the casinos with him. She was there. This is why he suddenly would dress up in his stupid suits and show up to see me dressed in a suit. He would see me and then go down the shore to her. I shook my head in absolute disbelief. He had a second life.

And then I saw their relationship unraveling; I saw her text tone change, blowing him off with him chasing her, trying to convince her that they belonged together, the same way I tried to convince him that we belonged together. I read their arguments and her excuses to why they “could never be” because her heart was “too broken” from a previous relationship and how she was “too damaged”.  I shook my head, as I recognized she was merely making excuses because she didn’t want him anymore, and taking the blame was easier than being honest. … and then I read her goodbye, right when he reappeared in my life after all of those agonizing weeks away.  No wonder. That’s why he left. He left me for her and came back when she shrugged him off, when he needed to feel loved. I read him tell her that no woman would ever come between them and he had gone to great lengths to “rearrange his life”, removing people and obstacles that would come between them. … Me. He’s talking about me. That’s why he left. That day in my car … that’s why he dumped me over text, so suddenly. That’s why I never got an explanation that made any sense. Oh my God. Vomit launched up my throat unexpectedly and I threw up in my hand, hunching over to catch it, my stomach twisting as I choked through puke and tears, trying to muffle any sounds I made through the shock of finding out what’s been happening. This is the truth I never saw coming … not like this. Oh my God. Oh my God. I stood up and washed my hand off, still holding his phone, shaking and dizzy, spitting into the sink.

Her text of “I kind of miss you”, was in response to him texting her a week before that he “will always love her, whether she liked it or not” and how deeply he missed her, that he “just can’t shake his sadness” … the sadness that I was picking up on and asking him about, since he returned, the “atmosphere” around him that was so unusual. You idiot. He’s not taking drugs, he’s nursing a broken heart. He got dumped, too. Now I knew why he was so down. He was actually grieving this woman the way I grieved him.

Heavy and spent, I slowly slid down the door that was holding me up, crumpling to the floor, his phone in my hands, tears and snot and betrayal all over my face. And I just kept going. There was so much more … and more … and more. With every swipe of my finger, I was opening another compartment of Pandora’s Box, releasing secrets and lies, introducing me to a man I never knew.

To be continued …