by Sy Walker
Trish tisked. “You should break that blank canvas over his head.”
“I would if I hadn’t paid for it.”
“What, his head?”
Maggie laughed. “Practically. I have supported that creative noggin’ of his for three years now.”
“You should try and get your deposit back.”
It was all well and good to make jokes about things like that. But even though Tony annoyed the shit out of her, a lot of the time… Maggie still loved him. He was her college sweetheart. He was still the reason she got up in the morning and worked so hard.
She just wished she would get a ‘thank you’ now and then.
“Hey, honey?” Tony suddenly asked her, removing his silly, large headset. He resembled an air-traffic controller when he wore that thing.
Maggie swallowed her annoyance. “Yeah?” She even managed a smile at him. She was glad to have his attention at last.
“Do you want to play Zelda with me?”
She rolled her eyes a little, but she continued to smile. At least playing with him was better than him playing without her all of the time. She moved the phone back so Trish could hear her. “I gotta go for now. We’ll talk again soon – hopefully with good news.”
“Bye, Mags. Hopefully the good news is that you’re leaving that f—”
Cackling, Maggie hung up on her friend.
Friends did not let friends date douches. But friends also did not let friends give up.
Tony was not really a hopeless case. He just needed a lot of pushing.
They played the fantasy video game for a while, and then he left her to it while he went to his easel and began covering it with yellows and greens. Maggie glanced over at it and smirked at him. “I thought you said you didn’t paint video game characters.”
“This is just inspired by it,” he said, indicating that it was similar colors but not actually any shapes that were specific to the game. No fairies were to be found. “It’s also inspired by you.”
Maggie paused the game. She got up and went to him, wrapping her arms loosely around his shoulders. They kissed each other. “I don’t know why you’ve gotta be such a pain in the ass all the time,” she murmured against his neck. “I just want you to reach your full potential and be happy.”
“I know, Magellan,” he said, using that silly nickname he’d been calling her since their awful and boring eight a.m. history class four years ago. “I’m sorry for sucking. I promise I’ll go check out some jobs tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” she said with a smile, petting his thick, brown mop top. “I love you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care so much.”
They kissed each other again. At last, she felt like she was getting through to him.
Maggie went to work the next morning, feeling confident that Tony was going to get the ball rolling with some job interviews. He left the house when she did, wearing a suit and everything. “Good luck,” she said, kissing him. “I love you.”
He smiled at her. “I love you, too. Thanks.”
They headed their separate ways, her in her car and him on foot. The home painting company was literally up the street from their apartment. It seemed quite perfect, but Maggie felt some sense of dread about it that she could not shake. She hoped Tony would not ruin his chances somehow. Hopefully he would not let his inherent laziness show through.
She drove to her office building in the middle of Baltimore. Once she was parked, she adjusted her makeup in the rearview mirror, not that it mattered what she looked like, really. The customers were not more or less rude to her because she dressed well.
Her wavy red bob looked good, but her cinnamon-colored eyes appeared exhausted. Maggie was always exhausted. Tony was correct when he said that she hated her job, but she kept it up because she was responsible and it paid well. After applying some extra eyeliner to make her appear less sleep-deprived, she got out of her car and went into the building.
Most of what she did involved placating irate customers who either bought something they did not know how to use or broke something and wanted a refund. In person and over the phone, on a headset not unlike Tony’s ridiculous gaming one. At least he got to have some form of fun on his. None of the yelling on Maggie’s headset was to achieve a mutual goal, really.
“I am sorry, Mr. Johnson,” she said into her headset while her line grew longer and the clock slowly moved toward her lunch break. “We cannot accept your return because our policy says that it needs to still be in the box. I know, but if we cannot resell it, then it is no use to us. I know, it is unfair, but I do not make the rules… You may talk to my manager, but I want you to know that he will say the same thing.”
It took everything within Maggie to not say the expletives that went through her head as she talked to customers.
When her half-hour lunch break came at last, she was determined to enjoy the shit out of her fast food burger. She always went to the same place: a fast food joint right next to the toy store. They served pretty shitty food, but at least it was the kind of shitty food that she could receive and eat quickly.
Someday, your business acumen is going to be worthwhile, she told herself as she sipped her Diet Coke through a straw. Someday, you will not work in customer service at a corporation that kills its employees in the name of children’s entertainment. Someday, you’re gonna be somebody.
Maggie repeated the same mini-mantra every day she was at work. She was sick and tired of waiting for someday. She was sick and tired of taking responsibility for a man child. She needed things to change.
She looked at the clock on the wall. Two minutes left. She wondered how Tony had done on his job interview. “If he does not get this job, I am pretty sure I’m going to have a nervous breakdown,” she muttered to herself, finishing up her atrocious burger.
Having goals and things to work for was a good thing, but Maggie could not carry the weight all on her own. And she should not have to.
Fortune smiled on Maggie when she returned to work. Her boss decided that she did not need to stay the whole day, since things had slowed down considerably in the customer service department in the afternoon. “Take the rest of the day off,” he said. “Or, better yet, move to Maui. These people are brutal.”
She chuckled. “Thanks, Derek. See you tomorrow.”
The drive home was the happiest, most awake drive she had experienced in a while. She felt like she had been released early from school for the summer or something. And she planned to celebrate the extra time with Tony.
However, when she got there, he was already celebrating… with another woman.
He hadn’t even locked the door. Maggie came into their apartment and found Tony sitting on the couch like usual, but naked and on top of someone else, which wasn’t usual. Instinctively, she blushed and looked away. But then, regaining her composure, she looked hard at him. “Hello, Tony.”
The movements immediately stopped. He looked up at her, horror-stricken. The woman he was with had to be younger than both of them. By the looks of the discarded clothes, she worked at one of the places he had been sent to apply. A gold nametag pinned to her blouse appeared to say Lacey.
I bet she is.
“Shit,” Tony said. He graciously got disentangled from Lacey and came over to Maggie.
She thought about how she had never seen him naked in a bad moment until now. Had his penis always seemed so shriveled, or was he just scared? Maggie did not feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“Maggie, this is not what it looks like,” he said. “Well, it is what it looks like, but she means nothing to me.”
“Ugh!” Lacey interjected. She got off the couch and began to put her clothes back on. Maggie realized, with another sickening feeling, that this woman worked at the painting company. They had probably been together for hours.
Maggie shook her head at them. “Get out,” she said. “Both of you.”
Lacey did not need to be told twice. She was hightailing it toward the door,
one high-heeled shoe not even on her foot yet. Tony, on the other hand, looked at Maggie, wide-eyed and completely panicked.
“Don’t kick me out, Maggie. Let’s talk about this,” he tried to reason with her. He was always trying to reason with her, give her excuses for why he should stay. For years, she had put up with that and let him goad her. Well, no more!
Maggie had not anticipated feeling this calm. “Get. Out.”
Tony turned back to the couch and scooped up his clothes, stepping into his boxers. He was crying a little, putting on a real performance.
When he was in the doorway, he turned to her. “But I don’t even have a car. And where should I go?”
Maggie shrugged. “Take a bus.”
She slammed the door in his face and then leaned against it.
It felt strange to her, to feel this relieved and this happy. She brought a hand up to cover her mouth as her thoughts whirled around in her head. The fucking cheater. The fucking scumbag had had the nerve to cheat on her, after everything Maggie had worked for, after everything they had been through.
The worst – or was it the best? – part of it was that Maggie only felt relief, like a massive, video-game-playing monster had been lifted from her back. She did not have to carry him anymore. She did not have to think about him anymore.
As she looked around the scattered objects in their living room, she noticed that the video game he had been playing was still paused on the screen. Even Lacey did not get the courtesy of him turning his games off. Maggie smiled slightly. She went over to the gaming system and wrenched the game completely out of it, hoping that he had not saved his progress. She threw the game in the garbage, followed by the whole system itself.
She was not going to stay in this apartment. Maggie did not actually know why she had kicked Tony out when she was not going to stay. Maybe it was just the thrill of humiliating him. She went into the bedroom with a renewed sense of purpose. It was like her boss knew that this was afoot and had sent her home to discover it. It was as if Derek was giving her a tip.
Packing up her things did not take as long as she would have thought. Maggie realized that she did not actually own much of the stuff in the apartment. She had planned all of the necessities. Of course she had. All the rest was just things. Tony’s things.
Short of setting his things on fire, Maggie left her key on the counter. She knew that her leaving was going to crush him. He had no job. There was no way he would be able to keep the place. And that was why it was all his now. She was free.
Already in her car and on her way, she called Trish. “I have the good news you have been waiting for,” Maggie said, still smiling. She had not stopped maniacally smiling since she tossed the games in the trash.
“I hope you haven’t been reading my cues wrong,” Trish replied, amusement in her voice. “If you’re pregnant, that ain’t good news. But if you’ve left his sorry ass…”
Maggie laughed, nodding her head even though Trish couldn’t see the gesture. “I left his sorry ass,” she said. “I kicked him out, but then I realized that he deserves to fail miserably. He can have the apartment. He can have fun trying to keep up with the rent and the bills on zero fucking salary.”
“Woo hoo! Amen!” Trish said, ecstatic. She was always so supportive. Maggie needed that right now. As the big, scary world reached out for her, Maggie needed all the support she could get.
“Could I move in with you?” she asked, turning momentarily timid.
“You do not even need to ask, girlfriend,” Trish replied. “We are gonna party tonight!”
Maggie truly did feel like partying. She also felt like sleeping for as long as she damn well pleased.
CHAPTER TWO
Hot Shifters
Safe and happy at Trish’s place, Maggie emailed her boss and quit her hated, draining job at the toy company. She enjoyed a day of relaxing and drinking margaritas with her friend. “The weirdest thing about all this is how it feels like I wanted it to happen. I wanted this excuse to kick Tony out for good.”
Trish sipped her drink, and then licked her lips. “Not weird, Mags. You wanted things to end but you’re so nice that you were desperate for an out.”
Maggie thought it was more than that… She was desperate for a complete change. She just did not know what that was yet. She wanted to do something crazy. Something that would make Tony annoyed and maybe even a little jealous. She wanted him to be miserable.
While Trish was gone at work the next day, Maggie hatched her plan. She would join the dating app for shifters. It was kind of an underground thing, but one of her good friends, Phoebe, had recently shared a picture online of her new shifter baby. He was adorable! Maggie was not looking for anything quite so serious, but she was looking for a change and this had to be it.
She created an account, and then made sure to take a handful of sexy pictures of herself. Werewolves were hot as hell, and the dangerous kind of fun. Tony had often warned her about them, which was part of why she felt the call to action now. Under the guise of trying to protect her, he had told Maggie to stay away from werewolves. But the closest he had ever come to meeting an actual werewolf face to face was in his stupid video games.
Maggie was going to one-up him.
Once her account was set up, she sifted through the shifters, looking for the sexiest badass she could find. Maggie had to admit right off the bat that these guys were sexy as all hell. Finally, her gaze fell on this werewolf shifter named Keith Suffield. He was twenty-eight years old with black hair and gold-brown eyes. He looked like a wolf in human form. Maggie wondered how anyone saw this guy and did not know about his capabilities.
She sent him a message to see if he wanted to meet up. A one-night stand would be fun. She was ready for a break from responsibilities…
Hey, handsome, we should meet up and see where the night takes us.
Maggie took a shower and put on the sluttiest outfit she could find. This Keith guy liked them slutty. She could tell by the things he put in his profile. She put on tight, black pants and a black crop top with some stilettos. Teasing her red hair with a comb and some hairspray, she added a lot of eyeshadow and eyeliner to her face, making herself look like the dark vixen she felt like being tonight.
When she went back out to the living room, her phone’s screen flashed with a notification light. She swiped the screen back to life and looked at all of the messages she had received, smirking and tickled that she had garnered so much attention in such a short amount of time.
The sexy young Keith had messaged her back.
Meet me at Transform on Summit Avenue. It’s a shifter club, so be prepared. I don’t doubt you will be.
It was a date!
Maggie decided that driving there was probably not the best idea. She did not want to drive if she had a lot to drink, and she did not want her car to end up in a strange area, unattended, so she decided to take an Uber instead.
Even the Uber driver could not stop staring at her. Maggie felt good, like she was on top of the world right now. She hoped that going out on a date with someone new would not diminish these feelings. The last thing she wanted was to go from one frustrating relationship to another frustrating relationship.
No, she planned to keep things light with Keith. No promises, no obligations. Just a bit of fun.
When her driver pulled up at the curb outside of Transform, Maggie thanked him and hopped out. She clutched her black purse to her side, not that a thief was really what she was afraid of. Stepping into the club full of shifters, she gulped and took a deep breath in order to stay calm. A lot of male eyes were on her. The shifters were all drinking and loud, which was something she was used to in normal bars.
Suddenly, Maggie locked eyes with the one and only Keith. He waved her over, and she sat down across from him at his table. He smirked and shook his head, moving to the chair directly next to her and then inching it ever closer.
“You’re even sexier in person,” he growled, into her ea
r. His breath smelled like three different kinds of beer.
“Thanks,” Maggie replied, feeling shy but not wanting to act like it. Keith liked the more brazen type, and she wanted to give him what he wanted. “You’re pretty smokin’ yourself.”
He laughed a dark, frightening laugh, like he had just murdered someone and was really glad about it. Keith did not strike Maggie as someone who was known for his sense of humor.
“What’ll you have?” he asked her then.
“Oh, uhh…” Maggie looked at the list of drinks displayed on a small, laminated menu. “Could I get a mojito, please?”
Keith nodded and stood up, going over to the bar to order their drinks. Maggie looked around, noticing how the place did not seem any different from what she was used to, and how it was actually calming her down to see that. The men all laughed and shouted at each other. Sports were even on the TV screens, though it was boxing, not baseball like she normally found in bars.
A few minutes later, Keith came back holding a glass in each hand. He handed the mojito to Maggie and sat back down in his chair, beer sloshing out of the top of his glass when he set it down on the table.
He downed it like a champ while Maggie carefully sipped at hers. It had been a while since she had indulged in a drink like this. She usually just mixed soda with things like rum or scotch. She hadn’t gone out for drinks for some time. That was what came with being engaged to a man who could not provide anything …
“So,” she said, trying to strike up a conversation now that they were settled. “What do you do for a living?”
Keith narrowed his light brown eyes a little. “I fix motorcycles,” he said. “It says that on my profile.”
Maggie nodded. “Right. I have to admit; I was more interested in the pictures than reading a bunch of words.”
Saying such a thing might have been an insult, but he took it as a compliment. She could tell because he placed his hand on her leg and looked into her eyes. “I can live with that,” he said, boozy breath now amplified thanks to his new round of beers.