Friday Flash - Power Play

Rob Green left me at the altar. I vowed, as I stood, humiliated, in my white dress and shimmering veil, that he would suffer for this. Forever.

On the outside, I pretended to understand. I cried fake tears and told him he was right to do it if he had doubts. I begged him to remain my friend, for as everyone knows; you should keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still. 

Bewildered, he found himself doing my bidding although I was so skillful, he never truly understood how I manipulated him, nor how I stood in the way of every victory he might have had since that fateful morning when he dared to leave me.

Why, who was there to whisper to him that his new girlfriend -- the one I’d introduced him to six weeks after what was supposed to be our wedding day -- was secretly seeing another man?

Who was there to encourage him to take the job he hadn’t the skill to keep? Who talked so glowingly of him at the bar that night when his potential boss sat nearby?

Who pretended to be unable to handle an over-amorous new suitor who happened to be an aspiring prize fighter and then called 911 when Rob lay, battered and broken, in the gutter?

Why, when his friends asked him to their parties, it wasn't that they felt sorry for him or that they felt obligated by the past, it was true friendship.  What else could it be when their lives and his life were so dissimilar?  They were, one by one, marrying and starting families.  They were advancing in their careers and had nice houses and fast cars. 

So he still lived in the basement apartment of his mother's house, drove a fifteen-year old Ford and couldn’t hold a steady job or girlfriend. It meant nothing.  

Who was there to throw the first fistful of dirt onto his coffin after he committed suicide at the age of thirty-four? 

Why, me, of course. It seems I had all the power in our relationship after all. 

He’s been gone now for six months and, it's strange, but  I’ve come to the realization that just as his life had no meaning to him in the end, I no longer have much of one of my own.

Yesterday I found the first strands of gray in my hair and wrinkles in my forehead. 

All my friends are married or seeing the men who used to want to be with me.

I haven’t had the time to have a career or a relationship because I’ve been too busy scheming to get even. 

I spend most of my free time lately at the cemetery.  The grass above his grave has filled in nicely and with my back propped against his headstone I can see straight down into the town I used to find so fascinating.

Nothing much interests me anymore.  It’s as if my reason for living has disappeared. 

But I got even. Nobody will ever leave me at the altar again.