Rachel was walking back towards her apartment building from a long day of work. She enters her apartment pin on the key pad, walks through the lobby, and enters into the elevator. She clicks the button to her floor and waits for the elevator doors to close. As the elevator goes up floor by floor, she slumps on the wall exhausted and checks her watch, which said 3:30 pm. When the elevator doors open to her floor, she walks down a narrow hallway fixing her hair, reapplying lip gloss, and fixes a smile on her face, because even if work tired her, there was one person that always brought her happiness. When she reaches her apartment number 330, she’s at the door rummaging her purse to find her keys until she hears her man’s voice and a woman’s . “Come on Brandon, she won’t find out about this” the woman said “Amy this situation is not going to work and I can’t have Rachel finding out that you were here,” Brandon replied “You know you’re just hiding what you truly want, if you’ve done it before you’ll do it again—“ “Amy please—“ Before Brandon could finish, Rachel opens the door violently and storms into the living room charging towards Amy. Brandon steps in to block her but Rachel slaps him across the face, “AGAIN?” she screams, “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME AGAIN!” “Rachel, it’s not what it looks like I swear,” Brendon said, “please let me explain—” “OH? LIKE HOW I LET YOU EXPLAIN BEFORE AND IT WAS BECAUSE YOU NEEDED TO FEEL SOMEONE ELSE?,” she roared, “WHAT MAKES THIS ANY DIFFERENT?!” Rachel grabbed Amy’s purse and bag and threw it at her, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY APARTMENT!” and Amy dashed out the door. Rachel walks past Brandon and he grabs her arm and he says, “Rachel, please listen”, “DON’T TOUCH ME,” she cried and yanks her arm out of his hand. She walks to their bedroom and slams the door.

Rachel couldn’t stop replaying the memories of walking into her apartment one day and finding Brandon sleeping with someone else on the couch. She couldn’t stop thinking about the two naked bodies touching, making love to each other, Brandon making love to someone else, Brandon’s shocked expression as if he wasn’t expecting to get caught, and the random woman lying on their couch smiling at Rachel’s heartbreak. She rolls over the bed facing the large window where the sky is raining on New York City and you could see the tiny yellow and red lights of cars going wherever they needed to go. On the other end, Brandon falls to the floor and leans on the bedroom door “Rachel,” he calls and she could hear him but refuses to listen. “I know you are thinking about what I did in the past five years ago. But for five years Rachel, I’ve made a vow to never betray you again and see that look on your face that haunts me every night.” Rachel gets up from the bed and sits by the door and leans against it. “Amy is just a colleague who pretended to be extremely drunk and tried to seduce me, but I thought about the past and was going to tell her that I am loyal to my wife and that she needed to leave,” Brandon explained, “I am not the same person I was five years ago, are you listening to me Rachel?” Tears streamed down Rachel’s face. Even though a part of her knew that he was telling the truth, another part of her couldn’t trust him anymore. “It’s been five years,” she says, “And I thought that I would be able to heal from the past,” she sniffs, “But it still hurts, Brandon,” she cries, “it hurts, and I can’t let myself be hurt like this again” “So after all these years, you still don’t trust me…” Brandon said “I can’t…” Rachel whimpered. Without another word Brandon gets up and says, “We’re out of onions, so I’ll be at Publix.”Rachel could hear Brandon’s keys jingle and before Brandon closed the door he says, “I love you Rachel” and she heard the door shut. Rachel lifts herself from the floor and sluggishly goes back into the bed and thinks about Brandon saying “I love you” and was wondering if she should have said it back to him before he left but she fell asleep. Boom A loud thunder woke Rachel up. She looks out the window and see buckets of rain pouring down and gusts of wind. It was 9pm and she knew that Brandon should be back by now sleeping in the guest room. She turns on the lamp on her nightstand, grabs the remote, and turns on the news to get info on the weather. “Authorities are at the scene where an 18 wheeler hydroplaned on 5th Avenue and crashes fatally into this vehicle where the victim did not make it.” Rachel switches to another channel to watch Seinfeld, but it showed the same thing, “Authorities have now identified the victim as 29 year old Brandon Garrison—” “What,” Rachel gasps and she flips over the blankets, opens the door, and sprints to the guest room to see that her Brandon was laying there asleep and that Brandon was someone else. But he wasn’t there and Rachel started to panic. “Police are going to contact the victims close friends and family to give them the tragic news” Rachel throws on her raincoat and boots to go to the scene and turns on the kitchen light to grab her keys. But before she could grabs her keys, she sees a piece of paper on the counter and she reads it:

Rachel, no matter how long it takes I will earn your trust back. I’ll do what I need to do to prove to you that I will never cheat again. I wish I could tell you verbally but you won’t listen to me and I understand. You still need more time. I hope that one day you are able to heal from the past and forgive me, but just know that I will always love you Rachel.

Your husband, Brandon

“I love you too Brandon,” Rachel says as she collapse to the floor and mourns what she had lost. The phone rings on the counter but Rachel remains on the floor hugging the letter to her chest and mumbling “I love you, please don’t leave me Brandon, I’m sorry for not listening”

Oh shit… this first question is hard that’s how I know I’m going to fail. Did we even go over this? Okay, find the cosecant of the right triangle—what the hell? Let me glance over at Christy’s “Do you know the answer to number 1,” she whispered. I shook my head. Fuck! Okay, I’ll just circle C. C is more right and less wrong the clock is ticking, clock stop ticking— “Class you have 5 minutes remaining” Dang! I’m just going to circle all of them C, at least I should get a D. “If you fail another test, you’re grounded and I’m taking your phone for a month,” my mother said. I continue to circle C on my test. (You’re grounded) (you’re grounded) (your failing pre-calculus, what’s going on with you?) (you’re grounded) (why can’t you be like your brother)(you’ve changed over the summer)—Hey I know this equation! You just subtract four from 37 and get thirty-three then take the three from the x to isolate it and divide it by thirty-three to get eleven so the last answer is A “Pencils down,” my teacher said

If there’s anyone that caught her eye lately it was Him He was what she was looking for in a man, as she looked at his back from across the hall “Untouchable,” she thought But it made her desire Him more Maybe it was the challenge that made her start to like Him Or maybe it was that everyone founded Him attractive, sweet, and wealthy “Because I deserved someone like Him” she thought, So the boy the young girl sought after was Him who paid her no attention But it was the attention of Him that further drove her desire Maybe it was the challenge that made her want Him Or maybe it was that everyone held Him to a high standard that she wanted to obtain for her own pleasure like a trophy hanging pretty on a shelf Her thirst for the attention of Him grew more as she kept observing his back in the hallways But peculiarly after school was over, her desire to be with Him vanished She went on with her daily routine not thinking about Him But when the school day starts— “I want to be together with Him,” she says to her friends, while observing Him in the hallway Her friends agreed that they would be cute together and be the best couple at school During school is when she wanted the attention of Him the most so that everyone could see that “He’s mine” But in reality she never attempted to go after Him, nor did he ever bat an eye at her Through her eyes she saw everything she wanted in Him But in reality she was nothing more than a stranger to Him and he was nothing more than an ordinary guy Realizing that he was just another boy, she stopped observing him in the hallways and went back to only seeing him as a stranger Everything she saw in him vanished and she didn’t bother to look at him again “Because he’s not someone I want,” she thought She was looking for a fairytale in him, but wasn’t able to get it So until then she went back to focusing on school and her daily activities until her Prince Charming came into her life and presented himself as Him “Ordinary guys would only prevent me from being treated like a queen” That was the only lesson she ever needed to learn