You and Him

You are… normal. Ordinary. A perfect boy-next-door example, with messy blond hair and a laughing smile, whenever you look my way.

(Not like James. He’s messy and careless, with earth underneath his fingernails and smudges of oil across his face, eyes always snapping and angry.)

You go to work, and you come back home, always asking me how my day was, if that editor had accepted my article. Caring. Listening to what I say, and sometimes you mouth my words, as if committing them to memory.

(James never liked me going out to work. He used to say it reflected badly on him. Always expected food on the table, never listened to what I had to say. I found some of my articles hidden under his pillow though, carefully smoothed down and read over and over again.)

You take me out to the cinema, buy me a fancy dinner. There are candles lit in the house when we come home, and you get down on one knee with a huge rock of a diamond ring. “Marry me?” you ask, after a long stumbled speech on your feelings.

(James just left me a scribbled note, with a simple, small ring. ‘I love you,’ it said, and he thought that was all that was needed.)

And it’s you I come home to find cheating on me.

(Not James. Never James.)