All I Stole From You Novel – Several obscene and explicit photos revealed my husband’s brutal betrayal. It was an envelope hidden under the seat of Rob’s truck. My heart pounded faster as I opened it. A photo fell out – my husband, Rob and our neighbor, Maggie were smooching. I gasped, my hands shaking. Another photo. Rob and Maggie were having intercourse in our living room, on that green velvet loveseat I’d bought the day before our wedding. What I saw next made my vision blurry. It was a picture of Rob holding Maggie on our bed, my lost wedding ring gleaming on her ring finger.
Maggie Do you want me to tell this part, really? You know it better than I do; it’s your story now too. I guess I’ll just go through what happened step-by-step, what you did and what Rob and I did in response. I woke up on the day after New Year’s Eve to a text from Rob. He’d called seven times. I rubbed at my eyes, still sleep-filled and puffy from last night’s drinks, and opened the text. It had two words, but those words sent chills down my spine and awakened the butterflies, who morphed quickly into yellow jackets, stinging at my insides. The text was, of course, this: Ingrid knows . I listened to Rob’s three voicemails, trying to pretend I wasn’t even a little pleased that finally, finally, you knew. The first one was left when he was in tears.
I know this because of his heavy, labored breathing and occasional sniffs. “Maggie,” he said, “Ingrid knows about us. She confronted me just now. Please call me when you get this.” The second: “Maggie, wake up. Ingrid knows. She knows. She’s suspected something since that brunch, and then last night she found that photo, the one we took at Lucy’s, in my truck, and . . . jesus christ! Please, babe, just call me.” The third one was left two hours after the first two. It was the hardest one to listen to, but, mercifully, it was the shortest one. He sounded exhausted, totally drained: “She’s leaving. It’s done.”
I called Rob, who sounded just as drained as he had in the last message. He said, very slowly, that you’d made him tell you everything, this whole story in his words, and, when he was done, you’d told him you “weren’t interested in pretending that this was just an affair.” You said, “If it’s just intercourse, that would be one thing, but you love this girl?” And he’d admitted it. I tried not to gloat when he told me that. I tried not to, but I wasn’t successful. (Also, screw you. I’m not a girl.) He said you packed some of your things and went to a friend’s place in Big Sur. I drove up to your house, now Rob’s house, I guess, letting myself in and finding Rob on the couch, eyes red-rimmed, staring straight ahead. I held him silently as he sobbed, his shoulders shaking so violently I thought he’d fall off the couch. We had intercourse in the kitchen.
Quick and messy and he cried throughout, even after I asked if he wanted to stop. He smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, and I sat watching him. We had intercourse in the living room on that green velvet love seat he said you’d bought the day before your wedding. We had intercourse in your office, and his tears covered my chest and tangled my hair. He drank half a bottle of whiskey and told me all the reasons he loved me more than you. I’m not sharing them, so don’t even ask. We slept in your his bedroom and he held me so tight I lost sensation in my arms. That was the first night after you left. It got easier after that. It took some time, but it really did get easier. He boxed up your things and shipped them to your Big Sur address, and I sat on the deck as he did it, not wanting to interfere with your things any more than I already had.
I kept thinking about my mom, how she was in the weeks after my dad left for London with Lily. She didn’t speak for three days, spending her time staring out of windows and through space. I remember one night she got drunk and rented one of his movies, Button Nose , I think, and made me watch it with her. I was six and it was late, but she made me sit down on the couch and watch all two hours of it. At the end she turned to me, her eyes glossy, and said, “At the end of the day, Maggie, he needed someone who thinks his name deserves to be in lights as much as he does. He needs someone to adore him. All men do.”
I think about that a lot. I’m still not sure if she meant it, but I think she was on to something. It’s not just men, though. We all need to be adored, don’t we? My mom used to talk about how my dad was needy. She called him a spoiled toddler, always reaching out to be seen, to be admired, and to a point, she was right, but I think we’re all a little like that. That’s what relationships are, aren’t they? Two people reaching for one another, both needing something from the other.