by Ellen Mint
“Excuse me, sir. Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist butted in on his kind gift. At least if he was kicked out, there was a dojo he could visit next to the pizza shop. It wouldn’t be a total loss.
“No, but I’m here as a support animal,” Marty said as he locked his fingers around Brandy’s. He slapped his hand over hers, pinning her safely in his grasp. “Think of me as that hairless cat that looks like Yoda got into the hot wax.”
The receptionist sighed, clearly not in the mood to deal with his nonsense. But Brandy stared in awe at him giving up his lunch hour to sit in a stuffy doctor’s office just for her. “Thank you,” she said.
“It’s no big deal,” Marty said and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “I’m here for you, no matter what happens.”
For the first time in days, she wanted to cry tears of happiness. But Brandy blinked them away, her smile rising as she laid her head on Marty’s shoulder. The fear of not knowing what could happen lingered deep inside, but at least she wouldn’t be alone facing it.
“If you’re here, who’s watching the store?” she asked.
“Oh, I left the basketball in charge. It’s already made employee of the month.”
* * * *
Two days of her trying to ignore her phone, to religiously check every spam call and voicemail to see if it was news. To sit on the edge of her seat and chew apart her cuticles until a nail salon would throw holy water on her.
At least Marty was providing some distraction. He rolled into work with his usual bag stuffed to the gills. “All for the new display. With the Fourth over, I was thinking we should add a little spice between fireworks, ooh, ahh. And back to school, womp womp.”
So she left him with a drill—always terrifying—and a two by four he claimed to have found. The loud power tool noises had Brandy concerned she might miss the call, so she slipped off to the back. It was much quieter, leaving only the rattling of worry in her brain to keep her company.
They’d said it’d probably take a while, that the lab was always backed up. How long was a while? Three days? A month? Two years? Would she already be dead before they got the results in?
Not helping. To her continued surprise, when she’d had a massive welt on her back to take care of, Marty had arrived at her door. He’d brought soup, because somehow that was supposed to fix everything. As it was proper tortilla soup, she wasn’t going to argue, even if the temperature outside was hotter than the food.
With Marty at his most jovial, yanking every joke out of the ether he could, she should have told him. Talked to him. Explained that he deserved better, and that she was…
She was tired of waiting for the answer. For some angel to descend from on high and tell her, “Brandy, you are ready to date again. To love again.”
“Hey!” The drilling stopped, and Marty shouted even louder, “Can you get the screwdriver out of my bag? I think I stripped this.”
Brandy chuckled to herself. He’d once helped her to put up bookshelves. Rather simple project, just follow the instructions. Until the shelves had been put in at a slant and her books had kept trying to rush for the floor. She’d wound up laying a rolled-up towel in front to keep them in place.
“Have you found it yet?” he shouted.
“No,” she called back, scattering a random assortment of books, boxes and empty bags from his donut place on the table. “This thing is a mess. Did you have putty in here?”
“Oh dear, it’s breeched containment!” Marty called with a laugh. “Wait, I bet it’s in the pocket. Eldon gave it to me and he sure loves his organized pockets.”
Laughing at his brother, who probably put labels on every one of his tools, Brandy unzipped the front pocket and reached inside. A hard box the size of her palm bounced against her fingers. Curious, she tugged it out and stopped dead.
Square, it nestled perfectly in her hand the way a ring box would. Black as a tuxedo, it bore the sign of a hinged lid…exactly like the box one would use when making a large, life-changing request. Blood thundering in her ears, she tugged back the top and a massive sparkler smashed through her heart. Simple, brilliant and of the knuckle-crushing variety—it was a diamond ring. An engagement ring.
He’d had to leave her place early—something to do with Janeth. Brandy hadn’t said anything at the time. She’d just let him go and waste God only knew how much on this? Fuck! She had to stop this, to intervene before he ruined his life chasing after…
“Brandy?”
Slapping the box shut, she stuffed her hand into the bag’s pocket and yanked on the zipper. In her panic, she forgot to move her skin, catching it between metal teeth. Damn it!
“Hm?” she gritted through the pain, trying to wipe away both the fear for Marty and her heart shattering into a million pieces.
“The thing I use to put in screws? I believe it’s colloquially known as a fingamajig.”
What would happen if he proposed to Janeth and she turned him down? It’d kill Marty. What if she didn’t turn him down? What if she just kept on cheating on him behind his back while they were engaged? While she was walking down the aisle? While they were married and living happily ever after?
“I, uh, I couldn’t find it. But you know what would be fun?”
“Watching a very unstable table shatter through the door?” Marty said, darting his focus to whatever he was building.
“Ha.” She laughed at his joke and ran out into the store. Grabbing the first two books she could, she spun around and said, “Playing our game.”
Marty dug the battery pack of the drill into his palm in thought. “You know I’m usually down for this, but…”
Brandy rammed the book into his gut, not taking no for an answer. She had to do this. She had to be the one to break his heart before it could get so much worse.
“If it means that much to you,” he said, laying the drill on the ground then rifling through the pages. “Why not?”
How could she hurt him? Break him into a million pieces just so that…so that he might look at her differently. He certainly would now.
That damn ring, a symbol of pain and joy, of strife and love, floated through her mind urging her on.
“Why don’t—?”
“You go first!” Brandy interrupted him, holding the book she had no intention of reading.
“Uh, sure. Page twelve. Always a good number there.”
She pretended to shuffle through the book, not caring what was in the mass of paragraphs and sentences. “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”
Marty snickered. “Already so dour. We’re off to a rousing success. Your—”
“Ten,” Brandy threw out fast, needing to get this done. Blood pounded so hard through her ears she barely heard Marty’s reading. Instead, she watched his lips. Always so soft and sweet, saying far too kind things.
He glanced up from the book and said, “How about thirty-four?”
Brandy nodded, her teeth clamping together like the bars of a jail. They didn’t want the truth to get free, to ruin whatever they had between them, but she didn’t have a choice. “She’s cheating on you, your girlfriend. I saw it at the party.”
Only the briefest flit of her gaze drifted up to Marty, but he looked entertained and not bowled over by her truth. Oh God, he had no idea.
“Well, that is a morbid tale of…” He peered at the cover and for the first time his frown rose. “…puppy training.”
Come clean, Brandy. Tell him everything. Finally rip that damn Band-Aid off and face him.
“Marty, I—”
“Ah.” He held up a hand and dug into his phone. “Sorry, looks like one of my ‘fans’ sent me something that I just have to see. It’s weird that I have fans, isn’t it? I’ll never get used to it.”
He pressed Play on whatever video the follower had forwarded. Tinny sounds of shitty house music rose from his phone. At first, Marty wore the same wry grin as usual. Brandy gripped her book harder, cursing herself for not
picking something from the literary fiction section. But as she turned around, Marty’s happy look crumpled. First it transformed into a puckered frown, then his eyes lit up in an emotion she’d never seen on him in the year and a half she’d known him—rage.
“I have to go,” he said, his voice as cold as the grave. He didn’t slip his phone away, only kept it tight in his palm while picking up his bag.
Brandy must have failed at repacking, as a pair of shorts and flip-flops tumbled free. She raced to put them back in, but Marty was already marching out of the store with a dark cloud trailing him.
“What if Mr. Fensin…?” Brandy called to him.
Marty paused in front of the door, his bent back straightening in a heartbeat. “I don’t give a fuck about Fensin,” he thundered and ripped open the door to vanish into the parking lot.
Brandy clung to the book in her hands, her eyes shut tight. She had no idea what was on that video, but she hoped it’d fix all of this. Somehow.
Chapter Eighteen
Even while he glared at the traffic lights, the video wouldn’t vanish from his brain. Two grainy bodies grinding together on a deck chair with only the shrubbery to provide a hint of cover. They didn’t care who caught them. They didn’t care that someone would record her and share it with her boyfriend.
“Aaaah!” Marty unleashed the feral roar that’d been building in his throat since he’d watched the woman in the video turn around. Sadly, it was aimed directly at the old woman pushing a cart across the street in front of him. She glared as if putting a curse on his next one hundred generations, causing Marty to hunch deep into his shoulders.
It could be a trick. There were computers that’d put faces on other people’s bodies, even in video. And the footage was so terrible that it had to be even easier to fake. Or the date, the only proof that it’d happened last weekend. That could be fabricated easily. Even he knew how to do that.
Janeth would clear it up. No problem. Marty’s knee, bouncing since he’d got into the car, finally struck the console. It hit in just the wrong spot, sending shockwaves of pain shooting up his thigh. But even as he gritted through the pain, he assured himself that it was all a big misunderstanding.
She’d said she loved him. How could his princess cheat?
It didn’t take much work to find her, Janeth always leaving a digital crumb trail. She’d been near the ship docked at Penn’s Landing that had been turned into a restaurant. Far too fancy for the likes of him, but probably something she expected.
In too much of a confounding rage to find good parking, Marty picked the first place that didn’t cost him a literal kidney. Jogging up the gangplank, and trying to not imagine someone was holding him at sword point, Marty glanced across the massive ship. Four masts towered above him, American flags whipping in the wind.
How many engagements, anniversaries, baby announcements and birthdays shared with a loved one had those flags seen? How many promises had been made atop the planks of that ship?
To think he’d been planning on…
No, give her a chance to explain. It could be a lie from one of her online haters.
His first challenge was the gatekeeper, a host dressed not in old-timey sailor garb but the white shirt and black slacks that fancy restaurants required. He gave one slow look at Marty’s barely tucked-in electronic store cast-off uniform and all but slammed the door shut.
“I’m looking for a woman,” Marty said.
“Unsurprised,” the little shit sniped. “But I’m afraid we can’t supply that here.”
The place wasn’t packed, but he couldn’t find hide nor hair of Janeth. Snickering to himself, Marty pulled up his phone and called her. With one eye on the galley, he watched until a slender hand emerged from the dessert tray that’d obscured her.
“There she is,” he said, rebounding around the man before he had a chance to respond. Despite his shorter stature, Marty hauled ass. No doubt the host was calling for all manner of pirates to descend and hurl him into the briny deep. But he was talking to Janeth, no matter what.
Barely out of breath, Marty paused in front of the woman just placing the phone to her ear. She had two silver jewels adhered right under her eyes, which glittered in the mood-setting candlelight on the ship. “Martin?” she gasped, as if surprised to find him.
Her white-blue gaze drifted to the retinue of waiters he pulled with him. As they all came to realize she knew him, and wasn’t about to panic, they sheepishly turned to walk away. At any other time, he’d have known better than to pull what he had. Brown guy attempting to get anywhere they didn’t want tended to end in him being shot. But he was so frustrated that he didn’t care.
“I didn’t know you would be joining…me for lunch,” Janeth said as she gestured him to a chair already tugged back.
He didn’t realize that until he’d already sat down and pulled out his phone. “Is this you?” Marty demanded, needing the proof that he wasn’t wrong. That he hadn’t placed all his dreams on a woman who’d cheat on him without a second thought.
The easygoing smile on Janeth’s face hardened to stone. She watched as the two people on his phone got down to business fast. In a snarl, she damned herself by asking, “Where did you get that?”
“Is. It. You?”
Her snort cut straight to his marrow. Leaning back so that she nearly elbowed a passing waiter, Janeth said, “What if it is?”
“What?” Marty flipped his phone back, drowning himself in the obvious misery of her wrongdoing, just to make certain he hadn’t invented it all. “You’re…you’re cheating on me!”
His voice carried over the ring of buoys and diners, heads swiveling over to them. Janeth seemed to realize what trouble she was in, not from breaking his heart but the outsiders judging her. Dropping her voice, she reached for his hand. “It was a…a momentary lapse. I was alone and drunk. I always act out when deep into drink.”
“It happened three days ago!” he shouted, not buying her excuses. She wasn’t pleading with him, begging for him to forgive her. There were no tears in her eyes, no wobbling of her lips. A hard, stern look glazed across her face and a shark emerged from his angel.
“What of it? What right do you have to decide what I can and cannot do when you’re not around?”
“Excuse me? I’m your boyfriend. That tends to come with some unbreakable terms and conditions.”
Her cold laugh rattled through his bones, sharper than any winter chill. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m not what?” He reared back in confusion. They’d agreed to start dating during the picnic. It’d been going on for a month.
“You can’t honestly believe someone like me”—she waved a hand down her body—“would date a man such as you? For fuck’s sake, I’m a head taller than you without heels. It’s goddamn hilarious if I stand anywhere close to you when I’m in them.”
A crack burst through his ears, causing all sound to fade to a loud whine. Pain ripped through his chest, stamping his breathing to little gasps of air. “No,” Marty croaked, struggling to fight through the crushing reality. “No, you…why would you keep me around if you think I’m such an embarrassment?”
Janeth shrugged. “The clicks. You get amazing ROI with my fans. They adore seeing what dates you’ll come up with next.”
That was all he was to her? An investment? A way to grow her brand? All those people fawning over him, pretending to call them the cutest couple in the universe? It was a lie? She didn’t want him because of who he was, of how he made her feel, but because he kept spending all his money, time and heart on her. An ache ran up his jaw as he ground his teeth harder and harder. Through it, he forced out, “But you said…you loved me?”
“Of course I did—there were cameras on me.”
“Your cameras! I never wanted a fucking thing to do with—” Despite Janeth starting the cursing, Marty felt disapproving eyes swing only upon him from the people who could unleash the police. He struggled to drop his voice, but he could bar
ely hear it over the sloshing in his ears. “Was it all a lie? You just picked up some ugly little Latino to keep your viewers happy for a month?”
To his surprise, she frowned at that. Was there more there after all? She just struggled to see what they had beyond her influencer sphere? He could help her break free, to come into the light and really love him.
Hope rose in Marty’s soul as Janeth picked up the proverbial knife and jammed it into his heart. “You weren’t the worst person I’ve had to spend time with.”
“Are you fucking serious?” he screamed, slamming so hard into the table that the silverware made a break for it. Out of habit, he caught a butter knife about to hit the floor.
“Look, it’s nothing personal, okay? It’s just—”
“Don’t you finish that,” Marty said. The hand holding a harmless butter knife began to wave.
“Listen, pal,” a voice thundered in his ear as a massive hand landed on his shoulder. Marty might not have had the size, but he was a single strip of sinew. All of that flipped him directly into the face of the man caught on tape screwing his girlfriend.
Ex-girlfriend.
Aiden blinked slowly, no doubt needing a minute to register what had happened. But he tried to reach for the butter knife in Marty’s hand and Marty was in no mood for anyone to touch him. He yanked his hand away and tossed the knife to his left.
“Don’t do anything funny, man,” Aiden said in his low rumble.
All that time, Marty had shaken off how close Aiden was to Janeth. They were friends, he was her employee, she needed him around for unexpected photoshoots. All that time Marty had wanted to believe a woman like her could look twice at a guy like him.
“You’ll know when I’m doing something funny,” Marty snarled as he spun the knife down and slammed it onto the table. “Because you won’t understand it. As for you…”