Tonight Is Perfect.

’Tonight is perfect'. She says to no one. Sapphire moonlight seeps through the thin clouds high above a wife’s head. The wind breezes by slowly, warm and feathery, yet her body shivers. She checks her phone but sees nothing and for a moment, the water in her eyes distorts the city’s view. Her mind goes back to the days when they were in love. How they wrote each other’s names on the beach, shared secrets they promised to never tell, woke up only to sleep next to each other again. He loved her to the stars and back, and she loved him more. That’s what they whispered to each other’s ears and they meant every breath of it. She remembers building their first cot in their new house. Their baby would be the icing on the cake. Perfect meets perfect. A story befitting a happily-ever-after ending. Only it turns out, the child wasn’t his. And the fairytale was only that. A fairytale. Crafted finely in the hands of a wife whose sin was to forget their shared love. A sin that made mankind the original deviant. A sin that makes her stand on this ledge tonight, needing to end it all, wishing against all hope that her husband will text her back, tell her he loves her and forgives her fall from grace. But nothing comes. And she jumps.

Two three thousand miles away, husband sits in a restaurant staring at his phone. He lacks an answer to his wife’s sorry texts. What should he do? Lie that he forgave and forgot? He is certainly no liar to that degree. He quickly switches off his phone when his mistress walks in, wearing a red dress that gorgeously flatters her perfect figure. He leans in for a kiss and before that, she whispers in his ear what she always tells him. ‘Tonight is perfect.’