Hidden Lives

“Are they gone yet?” she asked me, sobbing quietly. From our hiding place, it was hard to tell. I could hear distant voices, though it was impossible to make out who they belonged to over the sound of the driving rain on the roof of the dumpster.

What a first date it had turned out to be. I’d warned Marie about my psychopathic ex-girlfriend but she thought I was joking. As we hid in that dark, smelly and no doubt disease-ridden steel coffin the scary reality of what my life had become dawned on her. Alice was a jealous ex with dangerous friends and she wouldn’t be happy until I was dead and buried.

The break-up hadn’t been a bad one by normal standards. We just drifted apart, stopped caring about each other and eventually we were both sleeping around. It just wasn’t working and I thought we were as relieved as each other when we finally parted. I resolved to get on with my life and let her get on with hers. And it was working out well until I met Marie.

Alice went crazy when she found out. Marie and I met at Grand Central Station in the coffee line, we clicked instantly and found out we worked in the same building. If only we’d talked a little longer, maybe I could’ve prevented our first date from turning into a fight for our lives. Maybe if I’d paid more attention to Alice, gone to Thanksgiving when she’d asked me to meet her family rather than drinking with my buddies, it all could’ve been so different.

I’d always known she was crazy and, I guess, I feared that her family was too. If I’d taken the time to meet them, maybe I’d have known that Marie was Alice’s sister.