My ex is a cheat

I GRAB my husband's mistress by the hair. Feel my nails scrape against her lily-white scalp. Wrench her extensions the way I discard tufts of dandelions from my rose garden.

She shrieks like a banshee. Like some otherworldly monster, clawing out of the grave. Out of hell. A devil wrapped in my robe, sipping from my wine glass. In my freaking house.

I throw my weight and my words around. Cohesive sentences broken by expletives. Dark obscenities. Vicious threats.

The woman manages to slip out of my grasp like the worm that she is.

Big brown eyes blink in my direction, filled with shock and pain.

I give her a once-over. Make side-by-side comparisons in the space of three seconds.

Jerrison really lowered his standards with this one.

She's young. The kind of young that believes her opinions matter even though she lacks experience. The kind with shelves of participation trophies and awkward photos of herself in lingerie, celebrating the years before gravity sags everything and the sun carves lines into her face.

Blonde. From the bottle. Her roots are showing. Black. Darkness creeping on light.

Her body's lanky–if I'm being harsh. Willowy if I'm being kind. But her tits are like watermelons. She must have back problems. There's no way her scrawny frame was built to support that.

Fake hair. Fake eyes. Fake tits. Airhead Barbie. As plastic as the dolls I used to play with in childhood.

Jerrison lurches to his feet, his thick blonde eyebrows slashing over startling blue eyes. "Harriet? I thought you were going on a business trip?"

There's an edge to my smile. I feel the rage building and building, galvanized by his ridiculous question.

He wants to know why I'm here. Like this isn't my house.

Like my name's not on the mortgage.

Like he wasn't sipping wine beside another woman, giggling and cuddling her five seconds before I busted in.

I ball my fingers into fists. Fight the lump that forms in the back of my throat, a lump that always precedes my tears.

Beyond the anger, frustration and disappointment is a secret hope.

Please let this be a dream.

Nightmare. Reality.

I never thought it would come to this. That I would fake a business trip just so I could catch my husband in the act.

I wanted evidence. Proof beyond whispered phone calls in the night. Socked feet tiptoeing out when he thought I was asleep. Empty sides of the bed. Strange credit card purchases. Hotels. Lingerie. Flowers that never came to me.

My marriage fell on the rocks and capsized, but I stubbornly believed it hadn't come to this point. It took effort to ignore the signs when I was bombarded with fragments of the truth. Nudges from my intuition. Whispers from my co-workers, friends, and family-those who loved me enough, who were brave enough, to bring their concerns to me.

"I noticed your husband with someone last week..."

"I thought you should know..."

"Is Jerrison seeing someone...?"

I didn't want to believe it. Even if I knew I was no longer his priority, even if the nights he reached for me, slid inside me, moved over me had dried up to nothing. Even if we never said 'I love you' or went on dates or exchanged more than the necessary conversations about bills, politics, and schedules, I believed in our marriage vows. To love and to hold. To honor. To respect.

I was there when Jerrison made those promises in front of everyone. Love shining in his eyes. Chest puffing out in a double-breasted suit with a flower clipped to the lapel.

He held my hand. Squeezed my fingers. Repeated after the priest in a giant cathedral that echoed with prestige and old money. The kind of religion people fought wars over.

'I will always love you, Harriet'.

Except Jerrison didn't warn me that his love came with strings. With business suits carrying the subtle scent of perfume. With lipstick stains on wrinkled napkins. With callers that go silent and then hang up when I answer the phone instead of him.

Today, I summoned the courage to see for myself, but there was no preparation for this moment. No motive beyond an urgent desire to prove I wasn't crazy.

I wanted my husband to face me. To see me.

To watch me watching him.

And I wanted remorse. Knees hitting the hardwood floors. Tears gushing from his incredible blue eyes. Hands up, rasping together in pleas for understanding.

But my husband did not receive my script because he's not following the lines.

It's been five minutes since I burst into the house, caught him with Blondie and grabbed her hair.

Five minutes.

I have yet to receive an apology.

"J-Jerry!" Barbie whispers, reaching for Jerrison. Bracelets dance up scrawny arms, clanking loudly against her elbows.

My gaze drags back to her. The way my voice carries through the room sounds like a gun without its safety. "Touch him and die."

She snatches her hands back. Looks at me with fear and trembling. I am her end.

And she knows it.