The Last Round Read Free

moments in the past few years? I can’t help but throw it in his face. Maybe I am wrong, but we never fully addressed it, and I’m sick and tired of always sweeping it under the rug.
    His jaw tenses and shoulders stiffen. “I was never unfaithful.”
    “No? All those parties with your buddies, and the photos of you with drop dead gorgeous women? Sometimes you were captured with them nestling on your lap, while you held bottles of liquor, clearly intoxicated. Do you honestly think I’d believe that bullshit lie?”
    “That was all for show and you know it.”
    I stand, my stomach feeling queasy. Do not cry. Do. Not. Cry. The more I tell myself not to shed a single tear, the more they roll down my face. “Julian, there were times you were dragged home by either Jonathan or a bodyguard, or a friend who I never met before—at all hours of the night. Sometimes five in the morning, and you were so drunk and high on whatever it was you took that night!” I take in a sharp breath and continue.
    “I spent hours in the early morning sobering you up. I spent many nights in tears, thinking this was it; this was the day I would get a phone call that you’d overdosed. I placed you in the shower and cleaned off the smell of cigarettes and liquor and cheap perfume. I had to scrub off the lipstick from your neck!” A shaky breath leaves my lungs. “So you can stand there and tell me you were never unfaithful, but I know the truth.” I stab a finger at my chest, “Okay? I know the fucking truth!”
    “I never cheated on you! There may’ve been girls at parties and maybe they clung to me, but I never slept with any of them!”
    I laugh and cry and laugh some more. He’s going to make me go crazy. This is all bullshit. Just pure bullshit. “You couldn’t even remember half the shit you did the night before!” I laugh again, more tears trickling down my cheeks. “Do you seriously think nothing happened? If that’s the lies you want to keep telling yourself then go ahead, Julian. But I’m over it. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep living this way!”
    His expression grows livid with my words and I know that look. I know this argument is going to get worse before one of us storms out. “You can’t keep living this way? So you want throw away twelve years? Just like that, huh? It’s so easy for you to just walk away from all of that? Is that what you’re telling me, that you don’t give a fuck about our relationship to even work things out?”
    “That’s not fair. You know what you’re saying is not fair!”
    “How is it not fair? That’s what you’re saying! Let’s just fucking throw all of it away”.” He tosses his arms, causing one of the lamps on a table to drop to the floor and shatter. I flinch and my chest heaves as my breathing grows rapid.
    “It’s not fair, because you walked away from us long ago and you know it!” I cry out. “I tried to fight for us for so long and you pushed me away. This has been going on for two years now. We are not teens anymore and I can’t keep doing this. I’m unhappy. You’re unhappy. What do you want me to say? Do you want me to just give us another chance? Well I have. I have given us numerous chances and I have no more left in me to give.”

Julian
    I STARE AT my wife of nine years and she looks just as lost as me. “Was I so bad of a husband?”
    She fists a hand to her chest, her face is filled with so much pain and I want to do everything and anything to take it away.
    “Not always,” she admits.
    “Not always?” This pisses me off. I step around the couch and move in closer to her. I stab a finger at my chest. “I busted my ass, Natalia. I worked hard so you can have everything. Everything ! The designer clothes in your large walk-in closet, the jewelry, and the expensive cars you drive. I got us the house you wanted. Everything was always for you.”
    She lifts her head, her tear-stained eyes penetrating me. “I never asked for any of that.