The Levy Breaks

Sam watched as one wet dot after another began to blossom on the margins of the hastily scrawled noted, intermingling with the already smudged pencil markings of another, previous deluge of tears. He didn’t want to cry. He wasn’t sure why the tears fell. Yes, he’d just learned that his girlfriend of three years was carrying on with other men without his knowledge and would apparently continue to do so without him at all.

It would have almost come as a relief if it was dissatisfaction. If Esme's confession was that her orgasms were fake, their sex was lifeless, and she was perusing campus for someone fulfilling, then Sam at least had a modicum of closure. That would have been a painful pill too swallow, yet in a paradoxical way, Sam knew the reality of their sex life would have disproven that claim retroactively. Perhaps that prospect held analgesic properties was because then, she would solely be in the wrong for having such high hypothetical sexual standards. But the knives of reality, lodged into him earlier in the night, now twisted themselves into his back, bringing forth the painful clarity that the truth was much muddier than that. It was the fact that she had waited that ushered the tears forth. When all he knew was a maze of foggy, cobbled streets and strange forms lurking in the mist, all she knew was loneliness and uncertainty. It had never occurred to him until now that they were simply two sides of the same coin in that regard. In fact, Sam surmised Esme's end was inimitably worse given she still had to carry on with classes and pretend everything was OK. There was no haze for her. No missing persons notices with her name and face plastered over them that went viral on campus social media broadcasting to everyone that something was wrong. Her pain was something she and she alone was **** to deal with, and as painful as it was, Sam couldn’t blame her for manifesting it with casual sex.