I don’t know what Avery’s life was like anymore. He is married and he has a child, a stepdaughter. This whole life so separate from me. It's been two years since he was mine. His new family is Godly. I am nothing like that. I don't think of him much, but someone at work asked me about him. So I texted him on my lunch and he texted back. My hand shook as I typed his number into my phone. I wondered if he would have changed it but then I remembered he has had the same one since high school. I had never reached out to a married man before in my life. Women like that? I hated them. Now I knew their hearts. Now I was one of them.

Avery looked around my place and I shivered. He'd always placed such an importance on things. Where you lived, what you drove, what you wore. I got caught up in it all. And when he was gone, I started to value what was more important. Saving money. Just trying to survive on my own.

My home was my safe place. I very rarely let anyone inside. When I got together with a guy, I liked to go to his house. I didn't like having men in my bed. Now here was my ex, walking around, running his fingers along my belongings. On the things that made up my life after him. And I felt sick to my stomach. My bedroom door was open and he peered inside, then turned around, smiled at me, and walked in.

I shouldn't have followed him. I should have made him leave.

But I learned that night that he had a power over me still. And he was here. After two years apart.

I tried to ignore the silver band on his hand. I walked into my bedroom to find him standing at the side of my bed. He crawled into it like he lived there. Like he had always been there.

I walked over to my desk and pulled myself up onto it, crossed my legs, and stared at him. Beautiful Avery with the smile of a devil, of a snake.

"What are you doing over there?" he smirked.

I wanted to throw him out, or sit on his face. I wasn’t sure which would be the better idea. I was starting to see what a mistake this was, starting to see him with the same eyes as everyone else, all the people who told me I was better off without him. "Wondering what you're doing," I said.

"Just making myself comfortable," he said.

I wanted to peel my skin off under his gaze. "I can see that,” I said. There was no humor in my voice, in my eyes. The way his eyes held mine, it was obvious to both of us, he had the power here. I was trembling already and he hadn't even touched me. He was across the room, twisting me up.

I was disgusted with myself for wanting him still, but I did. I wanted to prove something to myself. This was how I won games. The ones others played and the ones I made up in my head.

"Come here," he said.

I shook my head, stared down at my dirty carpet.

"Come over here, now."

I didn't answer. I just got up and stood at the foot of the bed. I crawled across my comforter and propped myself onto one elbow, staring over him, into my open bathroom door. The trash was about to spill over the top.

"Look at me."

I hated his commands. I hated that they turned me on. I felt warm between my thighs. I shook my head again. In response, he pushed himself up and placed his palm on my shoulder, pressing me flat down.

I closed my eyes and felt a couple tears start to grow. I don't know if he saw them, if he cared.

He ran his nose along my jaw and I couldn't control the shaking anymore.

"You're so nervous," he said.

I knew he was laughing at me inside. This was just a game to him too, but I felt like I was going to break apart under his touch. The touch I longed for ever since he left. Part of me wanted to kick him out. The fact that he was here was enough. I had gotten what I wanted, for years. The proof that his marriage was unhappy. That his life after me was not perfect, wasn't the way it looked in pictures.

I moved to kiss him and he pulled away.

"Not yet." He continued to tease me, grazing his lips along my collarbone, pushing me down every time I tried to reach for him.

When he finally did kiss me, we didn't stop. He had pushed me too close to the edge.

I got on top of him and fucked him in a way that I never did while we were together. I showed him everything I learned from other men after he let me go. That I could control my pleasure and it wasn't just up to him. I made him look at me as he betrayed her. I wrapped my hand around his throat and watched his eyes as he liked it.

I thought being with him again would hurt me more. But instead, it woke me up. It showed me what kind of man he was. It showed me that if I got what I wanted, if I had gotten his last name all those years ago, that he would have betrayed me. He would've been fucking some other girl in her dirty trailer while I was taking care of a child.

I didn't come, and he didn't expect me to.

"You've never been able to get me there," I said, as he was pulling his jeans up, just an arm's length away. There. That was it. The punch to the gut. He looked me in the eye and hated me. I enjoyed it.

Before he left, he told me not to tell anyone what happened. He said he would burn my trailer to the ground if I did.

I washed my hands and took the makeup off my face as he gave me his speech.

I didn't care what he had to say.

Everything between us had lasted less than a half hour and in those thirty minutes, I stopped loving him.

Everything I held onto for all those years, every beautiful thing that I thought about him, fell away. I finally saw him for what he was. A shallow man who followed his dick around. A boy who loved toys only for a little while.

I had been one of them. I let myself be one of them again. But I had no interest in ever seeing him again.

I let him out of my bedroom, out of my living room, onto the front porch, out of my heart.

I shut the door behind him and didn't say a word.

When he pulled away, I fell to my knees and I cried. Not for him but for myself. What I let myself become. I slept with a married man. That was something I could never wash off. It didn't matter that he was mine first. He said vows to Wendy, and I let him break them with me.

I didn't tell any of my friends what I did, and I never heard from him again. When he was brought up in conversation it didn't hurt anymore. Whatever I saw a picture of him and Wendy online it didn't hurt anymore. Because I knew the lie that lived under the surface. I know the frailty of his love for her.

My own shame kept me quiet. I had become the kind of woman that I swore I never would. I thought of the little boy, Avery's little boy. And I hated myself.

The only good that came from that night is that I stopped loving him there instantly. But a little bit more of the little amount of love I had for myself fell away, too.