The Mistake

"What is it?"

Nic is seated behind his mahogany desk, his attention focused on the folder before him. His tousled dark hair and tired eyes tell me he has been mulling over this particular folder for a while now.

I clear my throat and bring the yellow envelope out of my handbag. I place it on his desk before replying.

"Your copy of the divorce decree."

The hand he has been using to scribble down notes pauses for a second before it continues. It is the only indication that he has heard me.

"Leave it and go," he says. I hear no emotion in his voice. No inflection. It's almost as if he is reading off a manuscript.

I have to pointedly ignore the ache in my chest to set the envelope on his table and step away. The plethora of emotions rushing over me has to be ignored, stored away for a later time. Nic's body language has made it clear. The divorce is a business transaction, nothing more.

But my thoughts betray me. I sneak a glimpse at his fingers; long and elegant, and remember years ago, back when we were only just schoolmates, when he helped me to my feet after I had fallen. I remember when he had seen me, a wondrous feat back when I was fourteen, poor with horrible teeth and crazy hair, and offered me the seat beside him in the bus. I remember when he handed me my book when a school bully pushed it out of my arms.

"Are you done?" his voice shakes me out of my reverie.

I swallow and nod. Nic Sanders has always had this effect on me; the power to silence me with his presence alone. We had been married for six years, I had borne him a son, and yet, there was always a moment in our interactions where I would feel thirteen-year-old me surface and forget the entire English language.

"I am," I say with a little tremble in my voice. I was twenty-five, I tell myself. Almost twenty-six now. I was a mother of a beautiful six-year-old little boy. I could not be letting my emotions get the better of me. I had to be poised, collected, strong.

"You're going to marry her now, is that what you'll do?"

Of course I had to say that. It was almost as if some part of my brain could sense that I could get out of this interaction scott free before it decided to mess things up.

"What Ella and I do now is none of your concern," he tells me shortly, his eyes still glued on his folder. "We are done."

I suck in the deepest breath known to man and nod slowly. Of course we were done. We had been done from the moment we had the drunken one-night stand that made me pregnant and inadvertently forced our marriage all those years ago. It was really just my fault that I had thought, after all that time, Nic would have thought of me as something more than the occasional bang and the mother of his child.

"Of course."

After a long second, I turn and make my way out of his office, barely keeping my emotions in check.

Sorrow fills my chest and threatens to bubble up my throat in a scream. I want to cry. I want to sob.

I had wished so bad that we would work out. That six years of being married would have meant something, even until the very last second, even until when I had forced myself to take the elevator upto Nic's office to hand him his copy of the divorce decree.

I had hoped he would realise he loved me. I had hoped he would look up and remember that it had not all been bad. We'd had a few good moments; times where he had temporarily forgotten his hatred for me and held my hand, or where his fingers had sought me out in the darkness. But to no avail.

The hate in his voice, always a constant presence since I told him I was pregnant with his baby almost seven years ago, told me otherwise.

Nic Sanders hated me. And honestly and truly, I could not decide whether I hated him too.