Okay. So I did what any idiot who's already half-mad would do — I went to the hotel. Not to smash things, not to make a scene, but to see. Eyes on the evidence. Feet on the ground. The kind of small, stupid pilgrimage you make when your faith gets shot and you need proof the sacred is really gone.
I left work early like I had an appointment. Told Raj I was feeling off — he gave me that look, the one that says, I get it, without asking why. Taxi ride felt longer than usual. My palms were sticky. My mouth tasted like pennies. I kept replaying her laugh in my head and every time I did, my whole body tightened like someone winding a clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The hotel sat two towns over, the beige kind with a tired lobby and a bored receptionist. I watched from across the street like a creep—yeah, pathetic, I know—holding my phone like it was a rosary. She walked in yesterday with that man, the one from the photos. That fact made my stomach sour. I remembered the tag: yesterday. Fresh. Her red coat. Her laugh. The image drilled into me like a nail.
I watched people go in and out, the way the automatic doors sighed open, the way the light there felt cheap and dishonest. I practiced breathing slow like some yoga ad, but calm was a costume I couldn't wear. Instead I followed. Not right up to the door—don't be stupid—but far enough that no one would notice a guy leaning by a lamppost staring like a wolf.
He showed up. Not flashy. Ordinary dude — office shirt, watch, that low-kept look of someone who thinks he's playing it safe. He gave off this smug air like he knew something the rest of us didn't. I hated him instantly. Hated how small his presence made me feel and how big my anger ballooned. I let him get comfortable. Let him check in. Watched his hands at the counter, the way he talked like he'd rehearsed charm for women in hotel bars. I wanted to walk up, snatch his phone, tear it open, look for my name in their chats. Instead I logged plates, times, details. Like a cop. Like a man who needed an alibi.
Following is a careful art. You don't want to be seen. You want to be a shadow. I trailed him to a café a block away where he sat with some guy on his laptop. I watched him order, laughed at how he fidgeted, how he kept checking his watch like he had a meeting with virtue. The point wasn't to scare him; the point was to learn his pattern. Where he goes. Who he meets. If I'm going to cut someone's wings, I need to know their flight path.
My chest kept clawing. The anger had teeth now, but under it was something colder: a hollow, like nostalgia gone rotten. I missed the small, stupid stuff — the way she'd steal my socks, the way she sang off-key in the shower. Absurd things. I don't even know why I miss them. Maybe because missing them made me human, and I was trying desperately to hold on to any scrap of that.
At the café I scribbled notes on a napkin. Times. License plate. The man's posture. A tattoo behind his ear I'd never seen in photos. His name, when a waiter accidentally said it — Arjun. Not that it mattered. Names like stones. I pocketed the napkin and felt a tiny surge, like maybe I'd found a handle to pull on. Small wins keep you breathing.
I didn't follow him inside the hotel after that. I didn't chase him to the rooftop or throw myself against his chest. I thought about it, and then I thought about the consequences. If I got caught tailing him, what then? Headlines. "Obsessed husband stalks wife's lover." I can see my life reduced to a meme already. No. Keep it clean. Keep it surgical.
Instead, I ghosted back to the car, heart thumping, and drove home slower than usual, as if the road might spit out more answers if I gave it time. At a red light, I stared in the rearview like someone trying to read their own face. My eyes were bloodshot. I looked older than thirtysomething; my jaw had set into a permanent line I didn't recognize.
That night, I dreamt in fragments: her laugh, his hand on her hip, my phone on the dining table like a sleeping animal. I woke up gasping, like I'd been under water. Revenge felt closer and more monstrous. It wasn't about hurting her now; it was about reclaiming my story. But the truth was harsher: reclaiming it might mean killing a part of myself I liked. The one who used to make tea at midnight. The one who could forgive small sins with a shrug.
I folded the napkin into my wallet and touched the spot where my blood had left a faint print from earlier, where my nails cut my skin. It stung like a warning. I told myself to breathe. To be patient. To think. The dossier was growing. The map was filling in. And the machine I was building—it was starting to hum.
Tomorrow I'd make a small move. Not dramatic. Not violent. A test. See who answers and how. See if that good little man Arjun had anything to hide beyond a tattoo and a smug grin.
And as I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, I heard, like an ugly little echo, her voice in the dark: Welcome home, dear. Only now it felt like mockery. Like a coin flipped and showing the wrong face.