I groaned as my eyes opened in the darkness.

Making a face and feeling the shroud of sleep lifting from me, I glanced at the clock and cursed under my breath. It was way too early to be up, but I’d been having the hardest time sleeping in these days.

I swung my long legs out of the bed and stretched in the early-morning darkness. Behind me, Tim snorted groggily and turned heavily in his sleep, a rattling snore tumbling from his mouth. I wrinkled my nose as the smell of alcohol drifted over to me from his sleeping, grumbling form. I let out a deep sigh.

I didn't remember him coming home last night, but apparently, he'd had another late one — a “networking event” he called it. “Getting drunk with his pals,” was probably a more apt title for my fiancé’s recent nighttime excursions, I thought with a frown.

The layoff had been tough for him, I knew that. And at first, I’d been as sympathetic as I could be. I played the dutiful fiancée and the supportive partner when the law firm had let him go not long after his promotion. But as weeks, then months, went by without so much as a peep about even looking for another job, it seemed more and more that Tim was liking his new-found freedom from the work-week grind.

Really, it wasn't that he was unemployed that bugged me, it was the bullshit from him that came along with that.

I stewed over this as I scooped grounds into the coffee machine. It was much too early to be worrying about big-picture stuff like this, I decided, groaning at the smell of the coffee beans wafting out of the can.

It was quiet as I sat at the kitchen counter, silent but for my thoughts and the low gurgle of the coffee machine.

I sat there, sighing and sliding my fingers through my long dark hair. I had my writing, not that it payed much, and after the layoff, I’d suggested that I could always go back to teaching. I’d enjoyed teaching, however brief it was before we got engaged and moved to the west coast for Tim’s new job. And after that, I didn’t really have to work anymore since he was bringing in so much.

But Tim thought that was “below” us now, now that we lived in a higher tax bracket, a better neighborhood, with higher bills. None of which we could afford for much longer without work. But he also refused to look at anything that was less than the position he'd had before, which was looking more and more unrealistic. I sighed again into the darkness of the kitchen and reached for the coffee.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud ping from across the counter. With a frown, I glanced at the origin of the sound as it went off again.

Tim's phone, left downstairs next to his half-drunk beer from his late-night arrival. Blinking in the semi-darkness, I reached for it to find the volume switch, and then went totally still has my blood chilled in my veins.

There, lit up across the screen of his phone, was a photo of a pair of nude, perky tits.

Tits that were decidedly not mine.

The room went silent around me as I felt my pulse pound in my ears.

The phone pinged again, this time a text popping up on the screen:

What. The. Fuck.

My face went leaden and hard, coldly emotionless, and I felt as though the wind was slowly going out of my sails. There was a tightening, like a knot, in the pit of my stomach, and for a minute I almost felt like I was going to throw up.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

My face felt numb as I hissed it into the empty kitchen.

The real shitty part was, I wasn’t even surprised. Part of me could have almost guessed this was going to happen. I didn’t think Tim stepping out had started until after the job loss, and since then, it’s almost like he hadn't even been trying too hard to hide it. That and the fact that he’d barely touched me at all in months had made it something I was almost expecting to happen.

It hurt — a lot — the first time I’d smelled perfume on his shirt, or found a phone number scrawled on a bar napkin in his pocket. But it was always something passing, something that could probably just be explained away, even if I knew deep down what was going on. So instead, I guess I’d just internalized it, as if never talking about it made it something that was just in my head.

But, this text message — yeah, there wasn’t really any denying this.

I glanced back at the phone on the counter, paused, and then reached down to unlock his screen, bringing up his messages. I looked at text again — at her tits — and felt the rage searing up inside. I tried to picture the little tramp attached to those breasts who was texting my fiancé at this hour.

I frowned at the message:

Were. So, he'd planned to, but hadn't? I furrowed my brow at the message.

Goddammit, I was so tired of being such a fucking pushover about everything! I knew — I knew — I should confront Tim about this, but something kept stopping me. Even now, I was figuring out how to push it to the back of my mind, with evidence right in my face!

The phone dinged again and I looked down and gasped.

The view was wider now, and clearly a selfie being taken in a bathroom mirror. The girl was topless, her tits pushed out as she struck a sexy pose for the camera in her hand. I could see the lips puckering on her face, though nothing above except for long tendrils of blond hair. She had her thumb hooked into the waistband of her panties, and had them pulled down enough to almost see her trampy little pussy.

It was the message that followed next that hit me in the gut.

The anger welled fast inside of me. I felt betrayal, dismissal, shame. There was no denying it to myself anymore, it was right there staring me in the face. My fiancé was fucking somebody else.

I put my face in my hands, elbows on the counter, as I exhaled slowly. In a way, I felt relieved. No more second guessing myself, no more bullshit, no more thinking I was just being that woman; paranoid and accusing.

I looked down at the picture on Tim’s phone again and shook my head, shaking.

I wondered briefly where they’d met.

The phone went off again. This time I didn’t even look at it before I snatched it up and slammed it back face down on the counter.

I needed to get out of the house and clear my head.