Challenge 001:
500-750 word flash-fiction piece centered on a relationship or an exchange with a significant person from your character’s past, using the below prompt:
3. A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.
cheating tw
Silence reigned over the small apartment. For once, all was still in the small flat they shared. Him, on the opposite end of the sofa, knuckles white as he clutched the phone now at fault of the most recent argument. They had been burning flames just moments before, now burnt out and exhausted with the heaviness of it all. Tears pooled in her eyes, threatening to escape despite her resolution not to cry. There should’ve been no surprise at all, with the way their relationship was always so hot or cold, it was bound to happen one way or another. Once it had been her to do this. Sure, part of a drunken stupor, but it happened… only once.
His mistake, if she could say that, had happened multiple times, with different women. It took one notification popping up on his phone for her to realize what was going on. June had heard it many times on her coworkers phones, the distinguishable dating app notification and there it was: “You’ve got a new match!” The words caused a frown to push her eyebrows close together, a breathless laugh leaving her. No, he did not do this. Except, as she pushed through the notifications and messages, it was clear this wasn’t the first woman he’d matched with. Not the last woman he’d choose to meet outside of their home.
Home?
What was a home? The longer she thought about it, the more she realized she had never known what that was. Her parents provided a roof, food, a nanny, but never the love necessary to turn their house into a home. They could barely stand each other and now June was repeating their mistakes. She was a carbon copy of the disaster her parents had made. Everything they had built their life upon was a lie. Like playing pretend. They pretended to love each other, neither knowing what true love was; they pretended to be happy, despite the constant arguments that stained their married life. They pretended to be in love, despite trying to destroy each other constantly. How was this a home? With bitter pain, came bitter realization. They never loved each other, they never would and it simply wouldn’t work out. Despite the many years that lay between them, the “love” they once felt as young adults had died out as the years passed.
No, this wasn’t a mistake he’d made. This was a choice, no matter how many times he tried to apologize and say the opposite. He chose other people; they chose the wrong person to spend the rest of their lives with. To say, however, that June handled it gracefully was a stretch. The last thing she told him that day was as follows: “I hope the poor women you’ve slept with got to lay with someone who won’t leave them high and dry as you have a tendency to do, you motherfucker.” Before storming out of their flat.