He was her disease.

She knew it, he knew it, everyone who had seen her think of him knew it. He had infected her, and it had spread throughout her whole body and soul.

He was her addiction.

He was wrong for her in every possible way- she knew this- but she couldn’t stop herself. She could declare that she could quit him, but sometime later- a month, a few weeks, a few days- they would run into each other, words would be exchanged, and before she knew it they would be tangled together in his spare apartment.

And thus the cycle never ended.

She could sit on a bench outside his office building at noon on the days she was yearning for him most, hoping he would come out for lunch and she could have her time with him, or at least just see him, hear his voice. He hardly ever came out, but occasionally she did, and sometimes he would see her and sometimes he didn’t, and sometimes he would pretend not to see her. The days he did see her, he would give her that look, and she would follow him carefully to his spare apartment.

The days he saw her made up for those he didn’t.

The weekends when he went on “business trips” made up for everything else.

This weekend, he is on a business trip to Baltimore, which is spent entirely in his spare apartment in lower Manhattan.

He is sleeping, entwined in the Egyptian cotton sheets she had bought him. She watches him carefully, watches his chest rise and fall, observes the way the light falls on his face and glistens off the gold band on his left ring finger. She has memorized every detail of his face already, for she has watched him sleep many times before. Down on the streets, alarms sound as an ambulance wails past, but she pays the noise no notice.

She now stares at the ring on his finger- a symbol that he is not hers, that she does not own him, even though he owns her body and soul, heart and mind. She had asked him once, near the beginning, to take it off while with her. He left abruptly and she didn’t see him again for weeks.

She had never cried herself to sleep before those weeks.

Then one day he burst into her apartment and grabbed her hungrily, and she knew that at least some part of him belonged to her. She never again asked him to take off his wedding ring.

But now, as she stares at it, she wishes she had asked him again. It glow in the lamplight, mocking her attachment to him and serving as a reminder that she can never have him completely. It casts merry reflections onto the walls and ceiling, as if to say she is nothing more than a distraction, a folly, that he does not truly belong to her at all, that no matter how much she tries to have him for herself, his marriage will always outshine her.

Suddenly decisive, she stumbles out of the bed, pulls on her clothes, and grabs her things. She hears him shift in the bed and looks over to see him sitting up now, awake, watching her. He gives her that look, and although her whole body aches for him, she shakes her head. In that moment they both realize she is not coming back, she is never coming back, she will no longer wait for him outside his office building or answer his calls or meet him after hours in his office. He merely turns away from her apathetically; she blinks back tears and runs out onto the street.

The air in New York City has never smelled so fresh before.

It is a month later, in a new city, a new job, a new life. She has someone new to love, a new man to wait for, a new wedding ring to fear and despise.

An addict can never truly quit.