Extract from The Train.

“And yes, I know,” Michael said. He sat next to her, giving her a glass of cognac with lemonade.

“Thanks. I guess he talked about it,” She responded, her head pointed at her feet.

“Well, yes. But that’s him. Want to talk about it?”

The party was reaching its end. Kay and Naomi were asleep on the couch. The other guys were playing an EAFC tournament. They were alone at the back of the apartment in their secluded corner.

“Tell me, Michael. Which is the worst of the three? Being betrayed, being taken for a fool, or letting go?” She asked him; she raised her head, looking at him with glassy eyes.

“Well, Mandy, I can tell you that letting go is the easiest. You will realise that Mike was a lesson. He was someone put in your life to make you stronger.

I call it an emotional runner’s high. The happy feeling you get after running? It applies here as well. Any runner knows that before experiencing that high, you have to endure the pain of the run. The heavy breathing, the shin splints, you know. But at the end of the run, you feel happy for enduring the pain. So is this.

Mike will always have that spot in your heart as your first love. Later in the years, you will look back at the relationship with fondness. But the pain will not let you go back. The pain would have made you stronger. From this new, fond strength, you’ll have the willpower not to go back”

“I guess you're right, there are plenty of fish in the sea, I guess,” she tried making a joke. But Michael remained serious.

“Well, not really. There are plenty of fish in the sea, but the most treasured ones are hunted by experienced fishermen.

The trick here is to allow the pain to work its magic. The trick is to allow the pain to break you, then rebuild you. The danger will be to try dating again without experiencing the fullness of the pain.

If the pain still lives, it will continue to blind you even in the next relationship. For instance, you will call your new boyfriend at midnight. He won’t answer, and you’ll think he is cheating. When in fact, he was probably just sleeping.

Letting go is letting go. Think of holding a tight rope. It will tear your hand, right? When you let go, the pain will still be there. Allow the hand to heal before holding a new rope; you get me?”

“I get you. I get you,” she said, facing down once again.

“The one in the middle is the betrayal,” Michael continued, taking a sip of his drink before he did.

“Betrayal?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink as well.

“Yes. And here’s why. Look, we all tell lies. Sometimes we don’t know we are telling lies. To paraphrase Dostoevsky, sometimes the lies we tell ourselves protect us from the insults those lies bring.

You know, I have cheated a few times myself. At first I didn’t realise that I was cheating. Texting a girl who I knew had an interest in me, I did not see that as cheating. To me, I was being kind to this lady. To her, I was asking her out. This tiny lie, captured in a screenshot, was sent to my girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend now. To her, she saw this as cheating and left me.”

“Well, that was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“At first I thought so, but later I realised it wasn’t. You see, Mandy, what I have learned is that truth is absolute. You are a church girl. Before there was light, there was darkness. Whatever lived on this planet believed that darkness was a way of life. Until God spoke the eternal words that produced light. Surely whatever lived here was confused. They had never seen light before. They knew the darkness. To the new beings that knew light as truth, when told about a time of darkness sounded like a lie.

I believe that is what happened with you just now. I believe those tears came from playing the rewind button on your relationship with Mike. I am sure you believed all his lies. I am sure when you asked him if he was telling a lie, he would tell you that he was telling the truth, and you believed him.

But, again, church girl, that which was in the dark has been brought to the light. At the time, you believed the lies as truth. But under the light, you are seeing them for what they were: lies.

But to Mike, it was the truth. Or his truth. I know when I told a girl that the girl I was flirting with meant nothing, to me it was the truth. Because it meant nothing to me. I would sleep with a girl without even knowing her name. To me, the sex meant nothing. And I was honest when I would tell my then girlfriend it was nothing. It was the truth.

But not to her. To her, it was a lie. To her, how could I sleep with another girl, merge my body with her, share my breath with another soul, and it would mean nothing? To her, it was a lie. But you see, the girl loved me so much that she would believe the lie. She would believe my truth.”

“Michael, I am confused here. And I’m a bit tipsy. What exactly are you saying?”

“Sorry for making it complicated. What I am saying is that when I cheated, I cheated believing in my own lies. Did the sex with strangers mean nothing? Yes. If I wasn’t in a relationship, this would be an absolute truth. But I was in a relationship. So, my truth was a shared experience.

In a relationship, the truth has two sides. If you and I are in a relationship, and we are faithful to one another, our truth is absolute. There will be no doubt in our truth. You could be out with your friends, but if we are faithful towards each other, I will rest easy knowing you will not betray our truth.

But if you are not faithful in the relationship, I will have doubts. You might be out with your friends, hook up with a guy for meaningless sex and indeed the experience will mean nothing to you. But not to me.

That meaningless sex will have meaning. That experience will mean something. And so, your truth, which is a lie to me, will destroy our absolute truth. This destruction is what we call betrayal.  

To cope with the betrayal, I will accept your lies as truth. Accepting the lie protects me from its insult to my person. Yes, it might have meant nothing for you to sleep with a stranger or have an ongoing affair with another man. But then I realise that it probably meant nothing for you to sleep with me or to be with me in the first place. From your lies, I realise the truth that was hidden. I will realise that I never meant anything to you in the first place.

“Truth be told, maybe I am getting drunk here, but I am still confused, Mike. I mean Michael. What if it is true it meant nothing to you but to me, when you are with me, it meant something?”

“That’s the tricky part. People who cheat hardly stop cheating. They have deep unresolved issues regarding how they love that they haven’t dealt with. A friend of mine had the wildest revelation the other day,”

“Which was what?”

“In every single relationship he has been in, he has cheated. We were reading a book called The Casanova Complex. When he read it, he saw himself in the book. He realised that he would find a woman, fall in love with her, sleep with her, but eventually want another woman. He would still be in love with his main girlfriend, but he would continue pursuing other women.

In the book, the men there had slept with over 1000 women in their lifetime. When he did the math, he realised that he was averaging the same number of women a year as those men. So, if he continued that path, he too would be a man who would have slept with over 1000 women in his lifetime.”

“Well, isn’t that something that you men find pride in?”

“Not if you want love. Like me, he would have meaningless sex and tell his main girlfriend at the time it was nothing. This was a lie he believed in. But the truth is that it was something. And it was this something that would break his girlfriend’s heart. This something was the truth he was speaking through his lies.

Again, you probably remembered all the lies Mike told you. And you believed him. But now that there is light, now that you can see clearly, you are seeing the truth that was hidden in his lies. What was nothing for him was something for you. You did not see it at the time. But now you see the truth that was hidden in his lies. The pain of betrayal comes from the insults in those lies.

He was cheating. Like the women he was entertaining, saying it was nothing, you too, sadly, were nothing to him as well. He calls himself NPS6 cause your were supposed to be the sixth woman on his list.”

“NPS. . .”Mandy felt her heart break.

“Oh, sorry, I thought you saw the live stream,” Michael said, realising that Mandy did not know this information about Mike.

“I just knew 2 women,” tears burst through her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I…”Michael lost for words, hugged her. She regained her composure after a while, finishing her drink.

“It’s okay. I guess it makes me understand why being played for a fool is the worst pain from all of this.”

Michael did not know how to respond. He continued hugging her. Her head was on her chest. She tried her best, but the tears rushed back to her eyes.

Her soft sobs were absorbed in Micheal’s embrace. They shared the moment together. The guys were still playing their tournament, and the girls were fast asleep.

“Let me take you home; safe to say the party has died,” Michael said, raising her head from his chest.

“Well, I can’t. I didn’t tell my parents, but I had moved out of my place to live with Mike. I was planning on crashing here or at Naomi’s.”

“I guess that won’t happen. If you don’t mind, you can crash at my place. I have a few roommates. Cool guys and I’m sure they won’t mind your company. And I trust they won’t try their luck with you.”

“Thanks, that could work.”

Michael stood up first, gently raising Mandy by the arm. The other guys were so invested in the tournament that they did not see them leave. They didn’t even see Michael take the leftover Hennessy from the kitchen counter.