A Good Woman, by Hailey Danielle

When I tell this story, I start by saying: I’m not the victim. I say this less because I believe that that it is true and more to beat the listener to the punch. We are rarely the villain in our own stories; we may place ourselves somewhere in between villain and victim. I made a bad choice and I got hurt. I deserved it, many would say. Sometimes I think that I deserve pain, deserve to be treated poorly, but I only have these thoughts on bad days.

This is what we had in common: we are in our twenties, we are attractive, we are students at the same university. Most importantly, we are both successful in our applications to go on a three-week trip to a very small town in the Northwest Territories, to fulfill a requirement of our program. I didn’t know him before, but a friend pointed him out to me. I thought about what might happen between us for months before we met, and in this way my actions are premeditated.

I sleep with him on the first night. I sleep with him on the second night, then the third, and many of the nights that follow. That I knew of him for months, fantasized about sleeping him, while he had no idea of my existence is funny to me. That I still manage to sleep with him on the first night is even funnier. My ego is beyond satisfied. After we sleep together for the first time, he tells me that he has a girlfriend of thirteen months. I wonder why he doesn’t say a year or just over a year. Thirteen is a particular choice, just like his choice of when to share this with me. 

Everything in my room is gray. I don’t unpack my suitcase on the first day. I don’t do it on the second day, either. Each day, I hang a few clothes in the closet, but I never finish. He comes over every day and comments on the mess of my room, asks why I’m not unpacking. I don’t know, I say, I just can’t do it. I ask him why he doesn’t stop sleeping with me, and he shrugs. He throws the question back at me and I answer without a pause, because I don’t want to stop. Neither do I, he says. 

During the day, he watches me so intently that the other women notice and ask me if we’re sleeping together. I tell them because I don’t think I have anything to hide, but I am wrong about that. Too early on I become a threat, not a good woman, one who is adept at betrayal. A good woman doesn’t talk openly about sex. A good woman says no when she should. A good woman wouldn’t be shamelessly sleeping with another woman’s boyfriend. We impose morality on sex— where there is inherently none. 

I’ve been cheated on in a similar way, in a variety of ways, all the ways are the same. There is no new way to betray your girlfriend. Yet here I am, with no intention of stopping. In this land of the midnight sun with miles of tundra stretching towards the open sky—it feels as if there is no time here, a surreal quality lent by the extended hours of sunlight. It’s not an excuse—there is no excuse for what we’re doing—but this is how it feels. Unreal, a parallel universe. He says we’re living in a fantasy and I agree. He tells me to listen to “California Dreamin”, tells me it is how he feels. I scrutinize the lyrics and settle on if I didn’t tell her, I could leave today. 

On the sixth day, he tells me he is emotionally attached to me. Now, I understand the speed in which people fall in love on reality dating shows. I know that psychologically, novel experiences bond people, likely why they make contestants on dating shows embark on a variety of risk-taking activities. You mistake the dopamine rush for love. I know this yet I feel the bond forming despite my best efforts anyway. In all the pictures of us that I send to my friends and family, everyone says, you look so happy. My mother says, too happy. This is a warning of the pain to come. And yet I feel the happiest I’ve felt in years. 

As our trip stretches on, and we become closer to our return to our regular lives, I want to freeze time. Some days he says that he wants this to continue when we are back in the city. He doesn’t want to lose me. He has decided he will tell his girlfriend about me. He sends her photos of us and hopes she will ask him who I am. Another day he says that our time together is limited to this trip. Is there a word for being in the moment and mourning it as you are living it?

One night, I ask him to describe her to me. He begins with, she is the opposite of you. For the length of our affair, she has been invisible, nonexistent. He doesn’t speak of her and I don’t ask. When he leaves, I find her online. The invisible woman becomes visible. It changes nothing. The next night, I tell him I know who she is and, in this way, I have acquired power. But what good is power if you don’t use it? 

I know that a good man doesn’t call his girlfriend to say goodnight before returning, and taking his clothes off to fuck another woman. I know that a good woman doesn’t sit and wait for him to finish the call before he finishes in her. But this is what happened—regardless of whether it made us good or bad. I know I’m not the sympathetic one here—she is. I made the choice with no regard for another woman’s feelings, only my own. That makes me selfish, a betrayer of Girl Code. This choice I made makes me the bad person. And yet—I don’t feel bad. I still haven’t figured out why. I have always been a woman whose desire has run wild; this is who I am. I care less for consequences than I do for pleasure. The principle of pleasure above all else, even to the detriment of others and myself. 

The first time he tries to end it, I convince him not to. It is easy and he pulls me into his arms. The second time, he ends it and leaves. I threaten to tell her, but he still walks out the door. I run down the stairs after him, begging him to stay, tears running down my face. Still, he leaves. I return to my room and finish a bottle of wine, then more. I read all of our messages and screenshot the ones that I could send to her as proof. I sext the man I was sleeping with before the trip, and then I message my ex, the one that got away, the one I always return to in search of love and validation. There is no redemption arc here. I am not a better woman. Yet? What does it mean when a person continues to make the same mistake? Keeps choosing bad men? I want to be with a good man. But first, will I have to be good?

We get drunk. He comes home with me then tells me that I will never be more than a mistake. He loves his girlfriend and I mean nothing to him. I tell him that I will tell her. He looks at me and says, do it. He leaves. Something rises in my chest but tears don’t come. I open Instagram, find her profile and send her a message. In the days that follow, he does not respond to my messages. He has erased me. I am nothing. I saw the bend coming in the road yet I accelerated towards it nonetheless, eyes wide open, body numb, preparing for impact.

The mistress is not afforded grace nor empathy. The bad woman is not allowed to have feelings of her own, but the good woman is, she is the one who deserves our sympathy. She is innocent. There are not many instances of true dichotomies, but here there is—me, and her. I am blamed the way that women are often blamed—I should have known better, should have said no, should have seen it coming. But I don’t hear anyone say the same for him. Nobody says, you are the one in a relationship, you chose to continue this for days and days, and you hurt her, too. Or maybe they do, but I will never know. One woman on the trip has an unexpected response. She tells me, my only hope is that you aren’t being too hard on yourself. I tell her that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I mean it.

We return to the city. Despite our affair, she picks him up from the airport. I watch him walk out of the doors. He turns and waves, and I am the only one who is looking at him, but his goodbye is not meant for me. I take the train home, and I am alone and the hard part begins. 

I sit with these bad feelings. They don’t go away. Therapy doesn’t work. Sleep doesn’t work.  Writing doesn’t work. The bad feelings simmer, intensify. I am resigned to let the tide of time wash it away, but I know it will always sting. The photo evidence of us happy together. The memory of opening the door to find him waiting, smiling at me. Watching his body move on top of mine in the mirror, in the eternal yellow light of the midnight sun. His hand cupping my face as he looked into my eyes. These images play on a loop in my mind, a horror movie of my own creation. The ending—in a dark room, he tells me that I’m nothing more than a mistake, leaves.

When we return, all three of us are on campus. She is on campus too, a detail he left out but one I learn nonetheless from a friend who saw them together, her tote bag in his hand. Oh, he’s a gentleman, I say, and we both laugh. Each day, usually multiple times a day, our paths cross and he walks past me like I am nonexistent. I am nothing. I am not a good or bad woman, but an invisible one. I have become the invisible woman, and perhaps it was never her— it was always me. And yet— I go on. Time passes. Therapy begins to work. Sleep begins to work. Writing begins to work, again, because it always has, and it always will, even when I am in the depths, unable to see the life vest that is inevitably floating towards me. 

Hailey Danielle is a writer in Vancouver, B.C. She completed a B.A. in English literature at the University of British Columbia in 2017. Her work has appeared in SAD Mag, Hobart, and the Rumpus. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. You can find her on Twitter at hdanielle_r