***

It had ended badly. Meaning, he had cheated on her. Twice. Both times with her.

Looking at him now across the room she hears vague echoes of a vodka bottle crashing a few inches from his head. The ex. Their bedroom. Her sheets.

Her footsteps on the stairs had seemed oddly out of place, even when welcomed by the familiar creak of the second stair from the top.

They hadn’t heard. She didn’t expect.

She wonders whether she would have taken off her shoes, avoided the squeaky stair if she knew where she was going.

But instead it had ended badly. Meaning the ex, in their bed. In her sheets. Second strike serving as the third.

Fool me once shame on you.
Fool me twice and I’m a fucking fool.

***

They used to fight constantly; Both relishing in the competition of one who didn’t know how to back down. Fierce. He beat her in video games the first time they played. She practiced for two weeks straight before she let him play her again. He still beat her by two and when she almost burst into tears he laughed at her and took her right there on the living room floor. They didn’t touch the video games the rest of the weekend. When she became good enough to beat him they rarely made it through a whole game before their taunting and surprise smoke grenades had them abandoning the game for tiny shivers of fingernails on the couch.

He loved the whole concept of the corporate ladder. He was proud of his social skills, his ability to read people. To him it was the ultimate game of manipulation. She loved the drive home after those parties, when they would systematically psychoanalyze all the other attendees, making top five lists of their coworkers. He would tell her stories of some of the ridiculous things he had said -golf strokes he had only read about in some magazine, foreign policy positions recycled from last week's newspapers. Five points for every person he formed life long cocktail party friendships with. Ten points if he got invited to a corporate function or golf game. Negative five points for any mistakes with names, places etc. He never scored below a 55.

She used to like to watch his face when she would slap him in the middle of a heated argument. He would grab her wrist and pull her roughly towards him, until they would both fall to the floor with lips biting, his other hand tightly pulling on her hair. After his brother found a long deep scratch down his back at Christmas his family took to calling her “the tigress,” which she found publicly humiliating. In private it made her sway her hips.

***

It wasn’t perfect but neither was she. So the first time he cheated on her she knew she might deserve it. She was too much. She wasn’t enough. It was out of his system now. She didn’t open up enough. They pushed each other too much He loved her enough to try. Maybe it was her fault for asking too much. Maybe she was a little crazy sometimes. Maybe it was her fault for seeing too much.

***

Six months later she had to let it end badly. A year and a half maybe wasted. Footsteps on the stairs, the squeaking step. And he was there, lost. Buried in her hair. The name they rarely spoke, smirking, on her bed, contaminating her sheets. “I’m sorry. You know I love you. I still want to be with you. Doesn’t that mean something? That I can sleep with her but still want you?” But her face covered every inch of his skin.

The vodka bottle missed by probably half a foot. She thinks he might have been a little disappointed in her for such a bad throw.

***

It was seven months, two weeks and three days later when he joined the branch. She only felt cold and competitive. He only seemed turned off by her. Slowly warming, exploding paper clips, a half smile and she found herself a little surprised. And now for something different? Maybe different was what she needed all along.

So she doesn’t move for him, she moves because she doesn’t want to lose her interest in something different. And she's happy in this quiet. She wants to keep it. If she sometimes misses the intensity she remains intrigued by the challenge. When she says “I moved here from Connecticut” she means to say ‘I've worked for this. I'm trying to become this. This is different. Please be different.'

She doesn’t want to be a catalyst or a roadblock. She doesn’t want to be part of someone else’s story. She just wants her own. She doesn’t want to again be the girl who isn’t the girl. She doesn’t bother telling him why -she thinks if they focus enough on fighting off his demons, they’ll cure hers.

The day she tries to pull the art show flyer off the cabinet in the kitchen she feels sick all afternoon. After she spends twenty minutes rationalizing how its better for everyone if he doesn’t know, if everyone could just really finally move the fuck on, she knows once and for all she is a selfish bitch. She is a woman possessed, afraid that she already knows the ending. She never mentions the flyer to him and makes an excuse not to see him that night. She spends it just looking in the mirror.

She doesn’t deserve something different.

***

She spends most of the cocktail party trying to feel his eyes on her. She realizes the absurdity of never mentioning him before tonight but she also knows this relationship has never really been about her.

She is in the middle of being the perfect girlfriend when she realizes she has somehow engaged in a staring contest with him across the room. She refuses to blink. When he shakes his head at her and raises his eyebrow she tries to repeat to herself 'fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...' She breaks eye contact to close her eyes on her new life. She feels misshapen. When she looks back he is still staring. She crosses her arms. She feels naked.

***