The beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair. (Relient K)

I peeled myself away from him. I guess it had been a spectacle but I’m sure the tea garden was accustomed to such scenes on Sundays. I wasn’t embarrassed as everyone watched me walk him to the table where Gloria was sitting. Maybe I should have been but I was too proud. I led him by the hand to our table with a boasting smile. I let people watch. I’m a heroin addict, this is how we do. Gloria just shook her head at me with a crafty smile.

Christian and I sat together in the chair beside Gloria at the round glass-top table. She said a few polite words and left to head back to the heroin house.

“See you at home, Hun,” she winked.

Someone brought us cute little china cups of tea but they went untouched.

He left and it was like was heart was ripping out of my chest, veins torn and dangling from the still-beating red mass he carried away. I walked back to the heroin house alone. I walked into our bedroom and Gloria greeted me with an unsympathetic: “You whore!”

I responded with laughter.

“I do not believe you are married to him. How is that fair? You're as terrible a person as me, why did God toss you a bone like that?”

I tossed myself on my bed.

“I miss him already,” I sighed musically.

“I could strangle you. Don't whine to me about your problems when you have that to go home to at the end of this and I can't even get my mother in here to visit me.”