Chapter 4: The Abandonment
A month after I returned home, the final betrayal arrived.
I was sitting on the floor with Jacob, the hum of the television providing a backdrop to our quiet play. I was still wearing a baggy sweatshirt to hide the belly that refused to recede. My skin was sallow, my eyes underlined by dark circles that no amount of sleep could touch.
Ethan stood in the doorway. He didn’t sit down.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
I looked up, confused. “Do what? The laundry? I’ve got it, Ethan, just give me a minute…”
“No,” he said, his voice cold and terrifyingly calm. “This. You. Everything. I’m just not attracted to you anymore, Melissa. You’ve changed. You let yourself go. You’re always tired, always complaining. I can’t live a life that feels like a weight around my neck.”
I watched him reach into the closet and pull out a suitcase. He had already packed the essentials. He had waited until the last check cleared, until his mother’s debts were erased by my flesh and blood, and then he decided the “vessel” was too damaged to keep.
“I’ll be there for Jacob,” he said as he walked toward the door. “But I need to find myself. I need to be happy.”
He left.
I sat on the floor of the apartment I had paid for with two pregnancies, holding the son I had barely been able to play with for two years, and I realized that I had been the ultimate “Super Host.” I had hosted his mother’s debts. I had hosted two strangers’ children. And I had hosted a man who never truly saw me as a person.
