Heliocentric - Chapter 1

The Cheat 

I can’t stop picturing it. Imagining it. Did she fit better in the crook of his neck than I did? Did she let him put his cold feet on the warmth of her stomach? Did she laugh at his jokes harder than I did? Was her laugh cuter? Less chortley, more girly giggle? Was it the comfortability of us that pushed him to her? I bet she doesn’t show up to his house in sweats, unshowered, hair a matted mess. She probably did herself up every time. Lashes perfectly curled, long brown hair silky and smooth, lips glistening with gloss. She didn’t gain any relationship weight. That’s probably what did it. The extra 15lbs. 

The start of us was nothing short of perfect; he was everything I had ever hoped for. Summer after senior year, it was a love I had never experienced, a love that was entirely consuming, a love that made me want to do long distance. I would have done anything to be with him. I look back and wish I could smack myself over the head. 

It was Winter break of Sophomore year, so we were both home. At this point we’d been dating a little over a year and a half. I was so damn excited to see him I went straight to his house from the airport. There we were, lying in his piece of shit bed, when the text came. 

“miss u already <3” from erin. 

– 

“Ladies and gentlemen, Merry Christmas and welcome to Madison, Wisconsin. The local time is 10:05 AM.”

I woke, still groggy from the mediocre plane nap, neck hurting, and drool dripping down the corner of my mouth. I have never felt more disgusting in my life. I’ve never been the most confident girl, but I have never felt my self-esteem plummet as far as when I saw that text. And all the texts that came before it. I need to stop thinking about it before I drive myself clinically insane. 

While I wait for the plane to deboard, I open the window to my right. Simply knowing that I’m no longer in the same state, let alone time zone, as him makes me feel better. Not that much better, but a little. Walking off the plane felt like walking into a healthier future. 

I crawl into an Uber, one of those Ubers with stickers all over the windows and little snacks in the back. The man driving is immediately chatty, chasing that 5-star review and ignoring the fact that my headphones are very clearly on. 

“So, what’s your story? Flying on Christmas?” he asked.

I take a deep breath. This question gets really old after a while. 

“I’m Jewish,” I respond, plainly. 

This doesn’t seem to satisfy his confusion, however, as he looks at me with squinted eyes through the rear-view mirror. 

“Sure, but I assume you’re a student here,” he pauses for confirmation. I nod. “So what are you doing back so early? The rest of campus won’t be here for at least another two weeks.” 

“I just wanted to come back,” I snap, cold and short enough to stop the conversation altogether. I feel a little guilty, but not guilty enough to sacrifice my own peace for his. I told myself I would never do that again. 

I get to enjoy the hushed, semi-uncomfortable silence that follows my attitude for all of two minutes before a piercing ring fills the car. It’s my phone, my mom’s picture plastered across the screen.

“Hello?” I say into my phone, as if I don’t know who is on the other side.

“Hi sweetie! How was your flight?”

“It was fine, Mom. I just slept.” I speak with such blandness, a monotony that I hope she picks up on and decides to leave me alone. 

“How are you feeling? About everything?” 

I feel a pit develop in my stomach, and a lump grow in my throat. 

“I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

We exchange a couple of minutes of back-and-forth before I manage to escape the clutches of her phone call. I spend the rest of the short drive home from the airport peering out the window. I see a couple walking hand in hand down frat row, and feel the hot sting of tears pierce behind my eyes.

– 

When I was young, my father used to work late. I still remember the creaking of the front door, anywhere from 8-10 p.m., the feel of his crisp work shirt when I would run to him for a hug. His getting home meant the day was complete; there were no more missing pieces. I used to have nightmares of the door not opening, the creaking sound never coming, and policemen showing up instead. My mother would open the door, sirens painting her face blue and red, and drop to her knees, crying. This day never came, obviously. 

It wasn’t policemen that came to the house that night, but instead, a woman. I was sitting on the stairs when I caught a peek of her through the window beside the door. She knocked lightly, timidly. My mom yelled for me from the kitchen, “Can you get the door for me, Taylor?”

So I did. I opened the door, hearing that familiar creak not accompanied by the familiar turn of a key or a familiar face. 

“Oh,” the lady said, looking shocked to see me. “Is your mom home?”

This was when I really took her in, looked her up and down, and noticed how young she looked. She was beautiful, her skin glistened under the porchlight, and her hair swayed lightly back and forth in the wind. It was pin-straight, blonde, about shoulder-length, nothing like my mom’s long, dark, curly mane. 

Upon overhearing an unfamiliar voice, my mom was next to me in seconds with a comforting hand on my shoulder. 

“Why don’t you go upstairs, sweetie?” She said, in that voice I knew all too well. The voice that implied something was about to go down that wasn’t for the eyes or ears of children. 

I listened, but only partly, sitting right at the tip of the stairs where I could no longer be seen, but I could still hear every word. It was then that my world came crashing down. I heard this woman explain why she was here; the guilt was becoming too much for her. She didn’t know there were children involved. She was sorry. She and my father had been sleeping together. 

I didn’t exactly understand what “sleeping together meant,” but her tone, along with the reaction of my mother, informed me that it wasn’t good. I remember the house being filled with screams that night, a verbal battle between my parents that made me unable to fall asleep, unable to wake up for school the next morning. My mom let me skip. We had ice cream for breakfast as she cried, and my dad packed his bags. 

–

When I walk into the lobby of my apartment building, it’s hard to see anything but him standing outside, waiting for me to buzz him in. In the elevator, all I feel are his hands on me, his breath on my neck from the last time we embraced in this very elevator, whispered “I missed you”s and “I love you”s like ghosts clinging to the walls. When I reach the 7th floor and begin walking to my unit, I feel his fingers lingering where they used to intertwine with mine. We once walked hand in hand down this hallway. Now I walk with my hands glued to my sides, slyly picking at my cuticles in that way my mother always hated. By the time I arrive at apartment 728, my cuticles drip blood onto the carpet floors, and the pressure behind my eyes is so intense that it bursts the moment I turn the key.

When I shut the door behind me, I almost can’t believe the way I’m acting. I do exactly what I used to see women in movies do, the move I would assert was fabricated, “No one actually does that”. But there I was, sliding down the wall until I reached the floor, hugging my knees and sobbing, coating my gray sweatpants with salty tears. I let myself indulge for a bit, just a couple of minutes of self-pity, before I force myself up and look around the apartment. All I see is the space I was once so excited to share with him. When I look at the kitchen, I see mornings spent sipping coffee and frying bacon. When I look at the couch, I see him holding me close while we watch Harry Potter. When I look at my bed, I stop myself. I can’t even go there. The apartment felt entirely infested with him, almost like it was crawling with ex-boyfriend-sized bed bugs. I saw two options for what to do next: lie down and cry in the bed he’s been in before, the bed we made love in, cried in, laughed in. Or get cleaning. Everything. 

Being sick of crying at this point, I opt for option two. First, I strip my bed, change my sheets, and wash anything that ever came in contact with him. Disinfect every surface, sweep and mop the floors, bleach the bathtub, hell, I even get on my hands and knees to dust the baseboards. Anything to avoid the unavoidable next step: the purge. My room is filled with evidence of him. Letters and cards from every occasion, gifts, and his clothes suffocate all the air out of the room. It all needs to go. 

I read each letter, feeling increasingly sick to my stomach with each word. I scan for insincerity, for a trace of the liar he turned out to be, but I can’t find it. All I see are the words I once knew to be true, words I read like scripture. “I can’t wait for what the future holds,” “It is us forever,” “There is no one else for me.” I rip them into shreds as tears stream down my face. 

Eventually, the purge tires me out. Once my bed is remade with fresh sheets and clean pillowcases, I lie down for the nap of a lifetime. I hate to admit it, but I dream of him. The way he used to hold me, planting kisses on the tip of my nose and my eyelids. I dream of touching him again, running my fingers through his hair, feeling his stubble beneath my fingertips. I wake up crying. 

On day two of my one-woman pity party, I woke up to a banging on the door of my apartment. I opened it to see all 3 of my best friends, each holding a bottle of wine. 

“This pity party is so over,” Layla said, with a smirk, pulling me in for a group hug. 

The moment I was in their arms, I started crying – this feels like it’s becoming a pattern these days, everything makes me cry. 

“What are you guys doing here?” I ask through tears.

The three of them pull back and look at me like I have six heads, then they look at each other and laugh. 

“You seriously thought we were gonna let you go through this alone?” Sasha quipped, shoving past me into the apartment to put down the wine. 

It seems so silly now, so foolish that I hadn’t even considered them coming back early for me. My friends are my rocks, my family, of course, they would hold my hand through this. I would do it for any of them in a heartbeat. That’s how it works around here. 

So there we were, the four of us yet again, cuddled up on the couch under a blanket with glasses of wine. They didn’t need me to put on a brave face; they just let me cry. They listened, they comforted, they cried with me. 

“I just told myself my entire life that I would never let myself be my mom, and here I am. The girl crying over a damn cheat,” I said sloppily into my wine glass. 

“Hey, that's not fair,” Layla added quickly, “to you or your mom.” 

“Men are fucking dogs,” Maeve said under her breath. Sasha reached across the couch to give her a light smack across the head. 

“That’s not helpful, Maeve.” 

But honestly, it was. “No, they are,” I added, and we all laughed. 

Maeve looked at me with a sinister grin before she got up with a fervor that told me she was plotting something. “Tay, you need to shit on this man. Like now. Give me something bad.” 

We all had those little details about our relationships that we would never share, not until the breakup, that is. Those details too embarrassing to share if you’re gonna stay. 

“Okay,” I said hesitantly. “But this is like, really bad.” 

The three of them looked at me, an even mix of excitement and nervousness, before they started freaking out, begging me to spit it out. 

“Okay. Here goes.” I funneled through every reason not to tell them. What if I want to get back together with him? Is this more embarrassing for me than for him? But I eventually landed on just ripping the band-aid off and telling them. 

“Connor lied to me about his age. Like for months,” I said, hands over my eyes. 

An orchestra of “WHAT”s and “OH MY GOD”s filled the apartment, followed by laughs, and then concern. 

“And that’s not even the worst part,” I added. “I bought him two birthday gifts. One for his fake birthday and then another for his real one.”

At this point, all four of us were hysterical. The laughing seemed to drown out the embarrassment, the sadness, the betrayal. The rest of the night was spent just like this. “He used to leave the seat up,” “He made me call him weird names during sex,” “I think he was in love with his mom.” 

Eventually, Sasha and Layla stood up, a wordless communication that the night was shifting to a new territory, a new phase. I had been friends with them long enough to understand they could only drink so much without needing to smoke. Maeve and I don’t have any weed, so they would have to go buy some. 

“We’ll be back in like, ten. You know what time it is,” Sasha said over her shoulder as she and Layla walked out the door.

When the door shut behind them, Maeve moved in a little closer to me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I said with a laugh. Maeve just looked at me with a sadness in her eyes that I didn’t see often.

“Are you doing okay? Like seriously?” 

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I responded, my first honest answer to that question. 

Maeve pulled me in for a hug, “I know.”

When Sasha and Layla returned, we all began the bundle, no speaking necessary. It was about 10° and snowing in Wisconsin tonight, so we all knew what we needed to do, silently piling layer upon layer on top of our pajamas, and the four of us migrated out to the balcony together. 

Out in the cold, smoke filling my lungs, it’s like it all really hit me. The tears came back, stronger than ever before. I put the joint down and sobbed into my hands. Maeve picked it back up, peeled my hand away from my face, and placed it back between my pointer finger and thumb. 

“I think you’re gonna need this,” she said, looking at me not with pity but with empathy and love. 

I laughed, and I cried, and I shivered. It was so cold, but the three of them pulled me into their orbit, and for a moment, it was hot. I was the Sun.