The smell of frying bologna still makes my stomach clench. Not with hunger, but with a cold, sharp ache that digs deep into my ribs. It used to be different. It used to be the smell of dawn, of comfort, of a promise. Our mornings, always the same. He’d be up first, the gentle sizzle of bologna and the soft crack of an egg shell filling the quiet apartment. Simple, humble, perfect.
He’d bring me a plate in bed, a small gesture that spoke volumes. It said, I see you. I care for you. You are my everything. We didn’t have much, but we had that. We had our eggs and bologna, and the certainty of a future built on quiet mornings and shared laughter. I truly believed it was the purest, most honest love I’d ever known. He was my rock, my safe harbor.
Then, the shifts started. Subtle at first. He’d be out earlier, sometimes before the sun, saying he had an early meeting, or a gym session that suddenly became crucial. He’d come back, sometimes smelling faintly of a different air, a different kind of morning. But then he’d make the eggs and bologna, just for me, just like always. He’d kiss my forehead, and I’d brush away the fleeting doubt.
The calls became hushed. The phone always faced down. He’d say he was stressed from work, taking on more responsibility. And I, so eager to believe him, so deeply in love, would offer comfort, would try to ease his burden. Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe I was just imagining things.
But the cracks widened. He started forgetting things. Small details about our conversations, plans we’d made. He’d come home exhausted, but not from the kind of exhaustion I understood. It was a worn-out kind of tiredness, like he’d been performing all day. I started noticing a faint, sweet smell on his clothes sometimes, like children’s shampoo. My stomach would tighten, a knot of dread forming, but I’d swallow it down. I couldn’t bear to question him, to risk shattering the beautiful picture we had painted.
One morning, he rushed out, saying he had to be at the office by 6 AM for an urgent crisis. He kissed me goodbye, promised to make up for skipping our breakfast later. The apartment felt impossibly cold without him. I lay there for a while, the silence heavy, then decided to get up. As I walked past the couch, I saw his work bag, carelessly left open. He never did that.
A strange compulsion, a cold dread, made me reach inside. My fingers brushed against a small, rectangular object. Not a phone, not a wallet. I pulled it out.
It was a plastic lunchbox. Bright blue, with cartoon dinosaurs on it.
My breath hitched. What is this?
I opened it. Inside, neatly wrapped in wax paper, was a half-eaten bologna sandwich. And tucked beside it, a crayon drawing. A stick figure man with a big smile, holding the hand of a smaller stick figure, with spiky hair just like his. And written in shaky, child’s block letters at the bottom: “I LUV U DADY!”
The air left my lungs in a ragged gasp. My knees buckled. I sank to the floor, the lunchbox clattering on the hardwood. My vision blurred. A child. A child.
And then, the horrifying realization crashed over me, a tidal wave of ice. The early mornings. The vague excuses. The faint, sweet smell. The exhaustion.
It wasn’t just an affair. It was so much worse.
I remembered the times he would leave so early, telling me he had to be at work. He’d come back, just in time to make me eggs and bologna, as if he hadn’t just come from somewhere else.
The bologna sandwich in the lunchbox. The same kind of bologna we always bought. The same brand.
He wasn’t just cheating on me. He was living a DOUBLE life. He had a child. A child who drew pictures for him, who probably ate eggs and bologna with him every morning too. Maybe before he came to me. Or after.
The eggs and bologna. My symbol of love, of honest beginnings, of our shared, simple future. It had been a LIE. A meticulously crafted lie, a schedule of love and deception, divided between two homes, two lives.
My heart didn’t just break. It didn’t just shatter. It felt like it had been scooped out, leaving nothing but a gaping, freezing void. He hadn’t just betrayed me. He had built our entire world on a foundation of sand, while simultaneously nurturing another one. He had served me eggs and bologna, knowing full well he had just served it to someone else, to his actual family. And I had eaten it, every single morning, with a smile, believing in a love that was nothing but a calculated segment of his cruel, secret existence. I FELT SICK. I FELT SO UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY FOOLED. The smell of bologna will haunt me forever.
