Benevolent by Leddy Harper Page B

guess we just weren’t here at the same times. Where were you tonight?”
    She shrugged her shoulders and looked off to the horizon that was quickly growing dark. I knew what that meant. She didn’t want to tell me. Which could have only meant one thing; she was on a date.
    “Eddy?” I didn’t know why I asked. It wasn’t like I really wanted to know.
    “Yeah.”
    She didn’t seem thrilled and that made me happy. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
    “So, how did the appointment go?” she asked before I could question her about her date.
    I looked at her and saw her. I saw that yes, she was an incredibly attractive woman, and yes, I wanted to fuck her. But I also saw the caring person inside her. The one that wanted to know about me. She wanted to talk to me. It hit me that she had been the only person in months— months —to ask me about me. To ask about my day. To ask about important things in my life. No one else bothered to find out what was going on with me. She wasn’t just someone I wanted to fuck. She somehow became someone I wanted to talk to. Someone I looked forward to seeing. That was when I realized just how royally screwed I was.
    “How is that working out for you?” I asked and immediately saw her questioning glare. “You said you needed to talk to me like a friend in order to see me as one. How is that working out for you?”
    Her eyes went back to the water and I saw the slimmest of smirks play on her red lips.
    “It’s working great.”
    “Good. Maybe I need to try harder. You hate cheaters. Why?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? Cheaters are unethical. They’re essentially liars and frauds.”
    “Clearly, but you have a personal reason to hate them, and I want to know what it is.”
    Her head shook from side to side and her curls bounced on her bare shoulders. I could no longer look at her tattoo without thinking of the rest that connected to it. The image of that ink was in my head and I’d never be able to close my eyes and see anything else for the rest of my life.
    “I dated a guy in college. I thought I loved him. I thought we were always going to be together. We probably would’ve been if he knew how to keep it in his pants. But the hardest part of it all was that it wasn’t like he cheated on me all the time… well, yeah, it was all the time, but it was only with one girl. It wasn’t cheating; he was having an affair. And I was too stupid to know anything about it until he broke up with me. I wish I could say that I caught him in the act and chewed him out. Or that I at least ended things, but I didn’t even get that. I was literally left with nothing. He took the apartment and the bitch moved right on in. He took all of the furniture since it was all his when we moved in together. He took the friends, since I gave all mine up when we first started dating. And he took my dignity. I was left with absolutely nothing for the last two weeks of school before I moved here. I came with my clothes and a pullout couch I bought at a garage sale on my way down. My parents know none of that. And that is why I hate cheaters.”
    I didn’t even know what to say. Looking at her and talking to her, I would have never guessed she literally moved here with nothing. She seemed so strong, so sure of herself, I would have never imagined she had been stripped down to nothing.
    “Wow. Did he have a reason?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “What if he wasn’t happy? Not saying you didn’t make him happy because I’m sure you did. But what if, for some reason, he wasn’t?”
    “Then he should have left me before he started dating her. She knew about me. But I don’t feel bad for her. Because she was with a cheater. And from now on, whenever he goes out without her, or comes home late from work, or uses his credit card at a department store, it will cross her mind if he’s doing the same to her. If he could cheat on me, then he can cheat on her.”
    My mind was swimming with thoughts. I wondered if she