Temptation

I rolled over on my bed, blinking into the pitch darkness of my bedroom. A certain sense of dread crept up on me, and I remembered a time back when I still lived with Barry. It was one night when he came home drunk from a bar, dripping in the stench of another woman’s perfume, and sexually frustrated. Before he stumbled into our shared bedroom, I overheard him saying to one of his friends, “That bitch doesn't know what she’s missing out on.” It was followed by a chorus of drunk men laughing, a wet, slobbering yapping sound that sometimes still haunted me in my nightmares. As senseless as it was, it stood out to me—in fact, everything that night did because that was the first time Barry had taken something from me. No, taken wasn’t the right word… Robbed from me. Stripped, shredded, and condemned. We were in a relationship, so surely that didn’t count, right? My skin drew tight as the memory came up, me getting pushed down onto the bed and telling him no. He refused to listen, telling m