Edward Lorn: Crawl

Colton slid into the car again, started the engine, and pulled out of the BP station. When they were back on the interstate, she glanced over at him, at his slab of a nose, and shivered. How cold she had become—Frosty the Snow Bitch tooling across eastern Alabama in a silver Subaru hatchback, accompanied by Stonehenge himself. Itself . Whatever .

Frosty the snow bitch? No, she wouldn’t do that. There was no need to call herself names. Colton had screwed the pooch (well, the pooch sitter , anyway) and spoiled everything. Damn him. How had she ever loved—?

Do not finish that thought, young lady. You’re angry. You finish that sentence and all this, all nine years of it, is over. Shut up and stare at your nail polish or something.

“Are you going to talk to me?” Colton asked.

Juliet was so shocked by his sudden question that it took her several seconds to respond.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“ This . You and me. Why you’re leaving.”

“Oh,” she said shortly, “you mean you cheating on me. Gotcha.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, blanching the knuckles.

Juliet laughed mirthlessly. “You have no right to get angry here.”

She returned to the view scrolling past her window. The silhouettes of trees whizzed by, highlighted only by the backsplash of a red warning light atop a tower somewhere in the distance. Juliet tried to assure herself that she didn’t feel like throwing open her door and spilling out onto the tarmac simply to get away from the current topic of conversation.

“I’m not angry,” Colton said. “I’m frustrated. You said we’d work this out. That you wanted to work this out.”

“I do want to work this out,” she said, without looking at him. “It’s just too new. I need time. That’s why I’m visiting my mother. But, of course, I’ve already told you all this multiple times. Perhaps if my name were Vicky you’d give enough of a shit to actually listen to me.”

“She didn’t matter to me.”

“Right. You were just screwing her.”

“That’s low.”

She reared on him. “I’m low? Are you kidding me? You’ve got some nerve. Seriously .”

He flinched under her words.

“How are we going to rise above this if you can’t let it go?” he asked.

“We don’t have to rise above it. I have to forgive you . Right now, you’re not making that very easy. You messed up, Colt. Not me. If I do forgive you, it will be on my terms.”

A silence weighing roughly the same as a sumo wrestler settled upon them. Juliet glared at her husband’s crimson-splashed face. He still seemed to be angry, which infuriated her even more. Did he really think this was her problem? That she’d done something wrong by not accepting his apology and jumping back in the sack with him minutes after he’d been caught? What the hell was wrong with him?

Colton shattered the fragile quiet with, “Do you even love me anymore?”

She slapped him. It was an awkward thing. She’d been going for his left cheek. Instead, her right hand whapped down atop his lips, as if she were a mother popping a child on the mouth because they’d cursed. Colton barely flinched, though. His gaze traveled ever so slowly from the road to her, and she had a brief moment’s thought that he was about to direct them into those red-rimmed trees.

“I guess I deserved that.”

And with that, he focused on the road once more. His fists relaxed, and blood returned to his knuckles. A soft hand lighted upon Juliet’s left thigh, squeezing through her jeans. She didn’t allow it to linger, shooing it away with the back of one hand.

“What I meant was, I still love you,” he said, “and I hope one day you can forgive me enough to remember that we used to share something special.”

“Something special…” She let the sentence die in her throat. It would have become forced laughter had she not swallowed it forthwith.

They settled back into the oppressive silence. Not talking was becoming old hat with them. Juliet had to keep telling herself that silence was conducive to healing. Although she couldn’t recall a single time in her life when one of her wounds had mended or festered based on the volume level of her surroundings.

“I miss before The Dog.”

“What?” She’d heard him fine, but didn’t understand the meaning. What was before the dog ? Shouldn’t it have been, before Vicky ?

“No, that’s not right.” He blinked and a tear rappelled down his cheek, landing in the corner of his square lips. “I mean, I miss what that time represented. I miss that time when you needed me. I think The Dog killed that need in you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Before The Dog, you needed me… well, you needed something, anyway. Once you had that mutt to comfort you those nights I was away, you didn’t need me anymore.”

“Colt, that’s bull—”

“Is it? You were filling a hole.” His anger came rushing back. “Replacing me with a fucking dog!”

He slapped the steering wheel.

She jumped.

He was sobbing now.

“You didn’t need me. What was I supposed to do? She was there. There, goddammit. There !”

Juliet steeled herself against the new Colton, this Colton filled with undue rage. She would not let him make this about her failures, because she was not the one who’d failed.

“You fucked her because you wanted her. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Exactly.” He loosed a sigh that sounded full of relief. “It had nothing to do with you.”

She twisted in her seat, trying to find a position of power that didn’t exist inside a hatchback. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t sleep with her because I don’t love you. I didn’t sleep with her because you weren’t there for me, or because I was upset with you for not putting out enough, or whatever other excuse your brain has dug up. I fucked her because she was there, Julie. Vicky was available . I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I slept with Vicky because I was bored and you weren’t around.”

“And where exactly was I, Colt?”

“Most nights? With your dog.”

Rivers of ice ran down her back. Was he actually getting to her? Could he have possibly found the one argument that made his infidelity acceptable? She didn’t even like that fucking animal. Did he honestly believe she’d been too enamored with The Dog to give Colton the attention he deserved? Then again, she wasn’t sure Colton actually deserved her constant attention. He paid the bills, but she wasn’t some pre-suffragette kitchen-bound homemaker who knelt at the command of her mister. She was a free woman who returned what she received. Love for affection. Anger for rage. Silence for betrayal. That was the base of it, wasn’t it? It all came down to a betrayal, a breaking of vows. A promise destroyed under the weight of two people entwined on a couch, writhing against one another, moaning and groaning, and singing each other’s names.

All Juliet had wanted was to surprise Colton with a quiet dinner at home. She’d made the excuse that she had some errands to run, that she would be a few hours out about town, and he’d said that was fine because he needed to run to the office for something. Colton called Vicky to watch The Dog. Juliet had left the dog sitter and her husband alone, thinking Colton was going to leave as well.

His car being in the driveway when she returned caused Juliet’s stomach to roil. She tried to will the bad feeling away, assuring herself that he’d simply beaten her home. But she hadn’t been gone that long. He couldn’t have made it to the office and back in the time she’d been gone. Which left one possibility: he’d never left. Her subconscious suggesting subterfuge, Juliet parked across the street, knowing deep down something was amiss. She shuffled over the asphalt, feet never really leaving the street. Stumbled onto the grass and up the porch steps, her keys tinkling together, far too heavy in her extended hand. The knob swallowed her offering, turned, and the door floated inward. Sounds flooded over her, nasty words and expulsions of orgasmic glee. She slammed the door, silencing the cadence of the lovers on the couch. Juliet braced herself against the door frame of the entrance to the living room, lifting her head to see the naked bitch scrabbling for her clothes, and Colton, sweating and panting, trying to cover his massive erection. The thing bobbed under its own weight below a tuft of curly brown hair, looking intent on impaling someone. Or ripping them in two. Juliet saw it, dismembered and twitching, on the floor of the kitchen beside a bloody butcher’s knife. And that’s what made her move. Out through the front door, down the steps, across the grass, into the street, and behind the wheel. She screamed the entire way. Because she was scared. Because she was terrified of the violence she wanted to see done to her husband. To her beloved Colton. Tires squealed as she rocketed away. Sobs wracked her while she fled. The sky opened up and sent torrents down to wash it all away. To wash her away.