I spent a few minutes feeling sorry for myself. Then my self-preserving delusions gave up the fight. Dave was replicating exactly what I’d done to him on his birthday. A wave of nausea came over me when I remembered what I’d been doing at 10:15p.m., on the night of his birthday. I’d been in bed with John. I nearly passed out again. No way. Dave would never do that to me… but he probably thought exactly the same of me. I screamed. I screamed until the sparks were back from lack of oxygen. Then I slumped sideways on the couch. I have no idea how long I lay there, running the movie that was my memories of the last four months. One stood out as odder than the rest. When I’d come out of the bathroom naked, in a hotel an hour and a half from home, to find Dave sitting on my bed, the loop strap of his little digital camera sticking out of his pocket. I’d taken no notice at the time. Why a camera? It all fell into place. He’d known all along. He’d used the find-a-phone function to come into my hotel room in the hopes of taking photos for evidence. I hadn’t wondered at the time how he’d got in. He must have been issued a key by reception. Luckily, John wasn’t there at the time.
I remembered Dave’s behaviour that night. After a room service dinner, he’d cuddled me to sleep. So, he only suspected me at the time. No solid proof. Otherwise, no way could he have stood to cuddle me. I imagined him quietly opening the door and creeping in to that hotel room, intending to quietly sneak out after he heard me in the bathroom, before repeating the whole process later. The heavy hotel door slamming shut accidentally, preventing his quiet withdrawal. Was it possible he still only had suspicions and this was all just an exercise to show me how it felt, for the person you love to forget your birthday? It’s amazing the straws a desperate mind will clutch at.
Thus, partially relaxed, my brain remembered both our phones had the find-a-phone function enabled. I went online to see how it worked and tried it. Nothing. Five more minutes’ research showed it didn’t work if the target phone was turned off. If Dave was replicating my behaviour, minus the sex, I fervently hoped, he would turn his phone back on tomorrow morning, send me an apology and turn up about midday. I had no intention of dancing to that tune. I did some more research and initialised another function that sent me an alarm when his phone was next turned on. Then I would go to wherever he was. It didn’t matter if I had to pull him over between here and his jobsite. I was going to drag him into the bushes on the side of the road and fuck his brains out.
I must have zoned out for a while because I was roused by an unfamiliar chime from my phone. There was a map and flashing point on the screen. I glanced at the clock. Nearly midnight. It must be another coincidence that on THAT night, I’d checked my phone about the same time. There was plenty of fuel in my car to drive the two or so hours to where he was working. I zoomed out to see what town he was in. The cheeky prick was in our town. He must have checked into a motel to play his trick. There were no motels in that neighbourhood though. He must be staying at a friend’s. No matter, I could drag him out and either do the deed in the back seat of his truck or wait until we got home.