The Love Hotel

“Rochelle,” said Seth softly as he watched her unpacking the suitcase. It was filled with junk. Rochelle was annoyed that it was filled with so much useless stuff. She needed it to be empty right now. However, she was not going to let something so simple get in the way of her plans. She was going to do what needed to be done in order to get out of there with her piece of mind. She was going to be strong.

“Rochelle,” said Seth yet again. “Please, I am so sorry. You have to believe me. Look at me, don’t I look like I am sorry? Don’t I look like this guilt is making me suffer enough? I feel like I am dying on the inside, Rochelle. I feel like I am going insane. I feel like I am going mad with grief. I feel like nothing in the world matters anymore. I… I lost sight of what was important to me. I think that’s it. I lost sight of the things that mattered and that made me do something that was incredibly stupid. That made me do something that ended up hurting the person I loved more than anything else in the world. Don’t you see? I made a mistake, baby, and I am so sorry for that mistake. I am so sorry that I will never even be able to describe to you just how sorry I am because words are not meant for such things. I-“

“Where is my shirt?” asked Rochelle, cutting him off. “The one with the bunny on it. I loved that t shirt. Had you been wearing it? I can’t find it in the wardrobe.”

Seth looked at her. He looked completely numb. Once again, Rochelle felt he deserved to feel all that he was feeling right now. If he felt miserable right now, then he didn’t feel miserable enough. He needed to feel a lot more misery before he even came close to feeling what Rochelle had felt last night when she had seen him on top of someone else, and a man no less. This misery was the very least of what he deserved after spending two whole years fu*king other people. After fu*king people of a different gender entirely, a betrayal that was so absolute that it would have completely and utterly destroyed Rochelle if she was not such an utterly strong and independent person deep down inside, if she had not been strong enough to overcome all of the socialization that had made her feel as if she was supposed to take such betrayals as a natural part of love.

“Where is my shirt, Seth?” asked Rochelle. She didn’t have time for his moping. She was going to get what she needed and she was going to leave and that was going to be the end of that.

“It’s somewhere on my side,” said Seth. “I… I wore it for somebody once and I forgot to put it back on your side. I’m sorry. I should have put it back where I found it, it’s your shirt after all, it’s your property. I should have asked you before wearing it too, I’m really sorry for that as well.”

Rochelle snorted and said, “I can’t believe that you’re apologizing for this. Please, Seth, apologize for the things that you have done wrong. This is nothing at all compared to what you have done to me, compared to the way you have completely and utterly ruined me. Whatever, I don’t care anymore. I have stopped caring about anything you say. It’s amazing, really, just how quickly I stopped caring about what you had to say, about what you have to do in my life. It’s amazing, but at the same time I think it was inevitable. Why had you been wearing my shirt? Tell me?”

Seth looked down, clearly ashamed of the reason that he had been wearing her favorite t shirt. “Seth,” said Rochelle, “this is what you deserve. Tell me what you had been doing while wearing my shirt. Tell me why you had been wearing the shirt that I bought for myself as a birthday present with my own money, the shirt that you had absolutely no fu*king right to wear. Please, tell me. I want to know. I am not going to leave here until I know, and you know that is true.”

“I wore it for a guy that thought I would look cute in a tight shirt,” said Seth.

Rochelle looked him up and down and said, “Maybe he was right. You know, if you had asked, if you had been enough of a man to own up to your predilections and told me that you wanted to fu*k other men, I might just have been open to it. And in that case, I might just have been okay with you wearing my t shirt for another man. I might have helped you look good even. But no, you had to go and fu*k other men behind my back.”

She started packing furiously again. She had said all that she had to say. Everything had been said and done. All that she had to do now was take all of her stuff and leave and that was exactly what she did. Seth said some other stuff but she was too busy packing to listen. She was too busy packing to care. She was not going to be a party to his self pity.