chapter 2

He seems to be over analyzing my question, or maybe he's just wondering if he should answer or not. Just when I think that day really wasn't that important to remember, Devon frowns as if something suddenly bothers him.

"You didn't use to drink when we met," he says strangely, even though that's a big point out of all the things that went wrong in our life together, it's not what I wanted him to remember.

"I didn't used to do many things before you."

That's all I dare say because many of the times I got drunk I did it for him or because of him.

Devon bites his cheek again and that makes me want to punch him, to throw the glass vase on the table at his head, every time he makes that silly gesture I know he's holding something back and I hate it.

"Say it," he demanded.

"What thing? " He asks trying to avoid my request.

"Whatever it is you want to ask and for some reason you don't." He looks down at his hands before sighing and looking back at me.

"I asked your name that day and you said that if he wasn't drunk enough by the end of the party, you would tell me." I try to remember whether or not I told him my name that day, I don't think I did, he never got that drunk.

"And with that? Him-I shrug to play it down."

"I didn't get drunk that day and you never told me your name." Rachel did it a week after the party.

I remember fighting with Rachel for telling her my name, I wanted to be the one to tell her.

"Why did you do it?" he asks, both eyebrows raised."

"At that time I had a stupid rule of never dating guys stupid enough to get drunk at a party, I thought if I told you to get drunk you'd do it and I'd forget about your stupid ass, but you didn't."

He looks at me confused waiting for him to add a little more light on the matter.

"When I was sixteen…" This time I'm the one who sighs, because remembering it still makes me feel dirty and stupid. I went to a party and for the first time my mom let me come home later, I knew that the boy I liked would be at that party and I couldn't just come and leave two hours later, so I insisted to mom to let me come past twelve and she was in a particularly good mood that day.

» The truth is that, although I tried everything to get the boy's attention, he was only interested in older girls. So I just watched him pick up girls all night and when my friend said we should go home I told her I'd stay a while longer. She was sad and also naive so I drank a few glasses of vodka until I felt that my head was lighter, then it happened. He was coming down the hall and I accidentally bumped into him. We both almost fell, but he leaned on me, leaving me against the wall.

He held my cheeks and kissed me, just like that, it tasted like vodka and marijuana. He was taller than me and all his weight was on me, I wanted to push him away to get some air because he was getting uncomfortable and because his hand had slipped under my shirt, but I couldn't get him off of me.

I told him to stop, I begged him, I was too drunk to take him away from me too so I bit his lip until it drew blood.

He slapped me so hard that I fell to the ground. My left eye was watering and I was so scared I didn't even move to run, he pulled me back to my feet and tried to take my clothes off right there in a filthy dark hallway. I was frozen, luckily one of the older boys passed by and noticed that I wasn't moving, he didn't kiss him back and my body was just a mass without movement.

He came over and pulled him off me, he asked me if I was ok right before the guy I used to like jumped on him and they both started a fight, the guy I used to like yelling that I was a dick tease and I don't know what else things because I ran, I ran away from his fight, I ran until I got home and all my mother said when I told her was that pretty girls suffered much worse and that it was the cost of my pretty face.

It was my punishment for all the beauty I stole from him, that day I swore that I would never look at a guy who gets drunk at parties again.

Devon listened intently to every word, clenching and unclenching his fists as if he suddenly wanted to strangle that boy too, as if he too suddenly felt the impulse of the boy who saved me.

And I guess wondering what kind of mother I had, he knew my giddy mother unfortunately and knew she was a poisonous snake, I might be a wild wolf but my mother had poison.

"Don't look at me that way," I plead when I see the compassion shine in his eyes. That's why I never told you, I knew that somehow that would make me different in front of you.

"I can't even imagine how horrible it was for you," I deny, that doesn't matter anymore.

"Okay, don't think too much about it."

"That's why you didn't drink alcohol either, I remember that the day of Rachel's party you didn't even finish the bottle I saw you take out of the fridge." I look at him through my lashes, I never told him why I didn't usually drink or why sometimes I got angry when he would get drunk to the point where he didn't mean what he said or did.

"I wasn't comfortable drinking with a bunch of strangers."

"You got drunk many times while we were married," he reproaches me.

"You took care of me, and besides, how else could I bear everything about us?" You wanted the perfect version of me, the one that I gave to everyone. You expected it to be her all the time and fuck, she wasn't. when she was with you I felt inadequate all the time. You were perfect and I wasn't, and every time you looked at a girl or smiled at them, I had to swallow my own tears because you looked at them like you never looked at me.

I am reminded of all the times he took Rachel by the arm or any of her other friends, proud that they were brilliant and could hold a conversation about the growing market or how NASA was working on building houses on Mars, as if that was important. And I was just his pretty airhead wife of his.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know what made you so unhappy, Irina. I guess he gave you what I never could."

Then we came back to the same thing: Thomas Blake. Rachel's lawyer and my only real friend, the one who stayed with me while my husband walked arm in arm with any interesting woman, the one who saved me from every situation I got into thanks to Devon.

Thanks to him, I stayed fairly sane the two years I was married to the man in front of me.

"It's not about Thomas, it's about me."

Devon laughs unfunny, running his hands through his hair like he wants to rip it out.

"He felt like you didn't care about me. Every time we went to the filthy dinners, parties, galas, awards, wherever we went for photos you were by my side but for conversations it was Rachel you wanted and I used to be fine with that until I wasn't anymore."

"You acted like I wasn't there watching! And I didn't care, I always thought you were what should have happened in the first place, I was just secretly proud that you chose me, but did you? Did you really choose me?"

"Don't make it about Rachel."

"Then don't do it about Thomas either!"

"It's all over because I chose someone who was going to break my heart," he attacks me."

I feel tears sting behind my eyes, but I swallow them by looking away.

"If you were looking for someone faithful and loving that would never be me, you should have gone for Rachel if what you wanted was an admirer who would applaud every little step you took" he attacked him, he doesn't even look at me. Have you already forgotten that I said no the first time you proposed to me?

Other girls want to bring men to their knees and I ran away from him when that happened. I brought him to his knees and I hated him for it.

"You said I asked you the wrong way and then all my friends wondered why I kept insisting when you ran away and it was clear you didn't want to." He gets up from the chair and turns his back to me— I guess I don't have much respect for myself. I thought he knew you and that you were just scared, that you didn't do it to hurt me, that it was just a bad time to ask, that you would never do anything to hurt me. He was so wrong.