ten

It was George who ended up telling her. It should have been me, but I did not have the guts to face her. As the feeling of guilt grew in me, it became tortuous to be around her. I spent less and less time at our apartment, constantly fleeing, constantly on the run – and most of the time, I ran, of course, to him. George had come up with numerous excuses to delay the wedding further and further, and as the guilt consumed him, too, he ate less and less until his already slim figure had become nearly emaciated. He cracked, finally. Told Delilah everything while I was away for my father’s birthday. When I came back, I found our apartment abandoned. Delilah had taken what belonged to her – none of our shared possessions, which was the final drop I needed for the guilt to swallow me entirely. She could have at least taken some of our things, some dishes, the expensive espresso machine, the money in our household piggy bank. But she had made a clean cut. She had left me to sit with nothing; not a single shred I could possibly feel self-righteous about.

To my defence – if there can be such a thing – I truly loved him. We got married two years later, and for the three decades we spent together, we never once even considered divorce. We were great together – so much so that with time, the guilt over what we had done to Delilah faded, and even though for months after she left, we could barely look each other in the eyes, somehow, we grew from it. It seemed impossible to believe in the beginning – there was a long phase of dread and misery, in which I was convinced I had not only broken my best friends heart and ruined our life long friendship, but also completely sabotaged any chance that George and I could ever be in a happy relationship when it had started with such an inexcusable offence. But as time passed, we slowly found our ways back to each other. The only thing that kept us going, I think, was the realisation that we genuinely loved one another – and so somehow, maybe, it had at least all been for a reason. And eventually, with Delilah having disappeared from both our lives so abruptly, our story became our own. We moved to a different city for his work, and, frankly, because we could no longer stand to stay. I cut my hair short. We forgave each other, even if we never quite forgave ourselves, and we moved on.