She'd been stood in front of the door for at least half an hour, a suitcase at her feet, her keys clenched in her hands. She was shaking, the outside of her indicative of the turmoil inside of her. If she put her keys on the side, that was it, she'd given up on him. The metal was biting into her hand, not enough to draw blood, but enough to be uncomfortable. But still, she couldn't unclench her hand, couldn't release her grip on them. She hadn't decided yet, but as long as she held the keys, she was still his.
She thought this decision had been settled when she'd packed her bag. Taking only the things that were hers, that she'd bought with her money, nothing that she couldn't attribute to herself. Tears had fallen, but that was nothing new. She could ignore them, she'd had to learn to ignore them. She found it amusing that doing up a zip on a suitcase could rip your heart into shreds. But that wasn't true, her heart had been in shreds before then, she could barely remember a time when it had been whole.
Until last night that hadn't mattered, but last night neglect had transformed into something else. If he wanted to drink himself into a stupor continuously, well, she could deal with that. It hurt that he preferred a beer to her, but people got help for alcoholism all of the time, and she figured that eventually they'd work things out. But at half-past two in the morning, a time when he was normally unconscious and drooling on the sofa, he'd appeared in her door. She'd been having difficulty sleeping, insomnia being a feature of her stress, and so was wide awake as she heard the creak of heavy footsteps on the stairs.
It was a sound she associated with fear anyway, and when he appeared in the door, the whites of his eyes glowing in the moonlight, she had mistaken him for someone else, something from another time. Fear paralysed her, every muscle tight, not daring to breathe. As he neared, she actually thought he was going to hit her. Even when he collapsed next to her, that fear did not go away. An arm was slung over her side, hand resting on her stomach. Even through the fabric of thick pyjamas, her skin crawled, revulsion threatening to overpower her as a feeling of sickness crept up her. The heavy taste of stale beer, and the general stench that lack of washing produced filled her nose.
It took her less than a second to make the decision that had been lurking in the back of her mind for months now. She was going to leave him. She had no choice. She'd lived in fear before, and she wasn't going to go back to that, never, ever again. If this was wanted, it was fine by her, she just wasn't going to be a part of it. He'd appeared in her door before, and she'd been delighted, thinking that he was finally coming back to her. But he dashed those hopes just as quickly as he'd raised them. The next morning would find him sat on the couch, drinking cheap beer out of a mug, refusing to acknowledge her existence.
He was doing that now, knocking himself out, trying to forget that he was an actual person. Not that he was anymore, he was just a drinking machine, a body fuelled by alcohol, not trace of the man that had once been there, the man she so desperately wanted to come back. He was less than two feet away from her now, sat in the next room. He had no idea what she was thinking, she wondered how long it would take for him to realise she was gone. Until the next time he found that he hadn't drunk enough to knock himself out by the time evening approached? Or would it be when he ran out of beer? More likely the second, especially at the rate he drank.
Without realising it, she had come to her decision. She opened the door, pausing only to leave her ring on the side. Her keys were still in her hand, they were hers, and she wasn't going to give him anything. He wasn't even a real person any more. She pictured him, accurately, raising his mug to his mouth, eyes dead as they regarded the TV. She was not going to be married to that.