Chapter 11 Shameless

• I sat on a bench in the park, holding the phone in my hand. Since I knew what the passcode was, I unlocked it easily, then I opened the photos app, and the first thing I saw was my nudes. He took the photos in every angle possible, and in every pose possible. There were full-body shots, upper-body shots, profile pics, and some were closeups of a particular part.
• Now that the phone was in my hands once more, I deleted the photos as fast as I could, formatted the phone, reset it to factory settings, and smashed it with a rock until nobody could recognize that it was a phone. Then, I tossed the rock away and plopped down, staring at the pile of junk. I knew it was humiliating, but I had no other choice.
• I’m an honest to goodness woman. I never get to work late, nor have I been lazy at work. I never gossip, and I work hard to support myself. So what did I do to deserve this? Why?
• “Shelly?”
• Wait, who’s calling me? And he sounds familiar. When I turned around, I gasped. “Ben!”
• I tried to get away, but he quickly caught my hand. “Let’s talk, Shelly.”
• “There’s nothing to talk about. You can talk to my lawyer if you want.” I tried to break free of his grip, but it was to no avail, so I bit his hand. There were a lot of people in this park at this hour, and I wasn’t going to be the topic of their gossip.
• However, Ben didn’t let go despite the pain, and he suddenly kneeled before me. As if that wasn’t enough, he started crying. “Please don’t break up with me, honey. Come home, I beg you. I don’t care even if you cheat on me, but just don’t bring them back home. You can cheat all you want, but please don’t get the divorce. I-I don’t want that.”
• Ben’s ploy managed to garner the people’s sympathy, and they started seeing me as a sl*t who slept with multiple men at once. Enraged, I swatted his hand away and slapped him. “Get your hands off me! You’re embarrassing me.”
• “Wow, and she doesn’t feel embarrassed when she cheated?”
• “What a piece of work. She cheats on a nice guy like him and tells him off?”
• “They don’t make quality women nowadays, huh?”
• “Poor guy.”
• The spectators were taking his side, slandering me. I teared up, but I couldn’t defend myself. Even if I did, they wouldn’t believe me anyway, since they were already seeing Ben as the victim here.
• However, there were those who suspected Ben of lying, so Ben took out two red booklets from his pockets. “See? We’re really married. We’re a legal couple, but my wife cheats on me because she says I can’t satisfy her. And she even brought two of her lovers back home. My mom tried to reason with her, but her lover ruined my house and beat my mom up just because of that. I know you think I’m not worthy of you, honey, and I know I’m not a rich guy, but I’ll work hard to support you. I’ll do anything you say, honey, so just don’t get that divorce, please. I love you.”
• The moment he ‘confessed’, the insults took a turn for the worse. I knew slandering someone was easy, but I never expected it to happen to me, and now I was getting hurt because of Ben’s lies.
• I wanted to cry, but I refused to, for I did nothing wrong. You want to play with me, Ben? Well, take this! With that thought, I put all my weight on my right leg and kicked him as hard as I could. He didn’t see that coming, so he fell back down and finally let me go.
• I went up and stared down at the man who was writhing in pain, but I showed him no mercy. “You’re not getting away with this, Ben. Stop trying to salvage the relationship. It’s long gone, and I’m getting the divorce no matter what. Harass me again and I’ll call the cops on you.”