Peacock

by Nora Flite

  I had to come up with a game plan, some sort of way to save face. Because right now, I was a sad sight. My mouth was contorted in pain. I wasn’t crying, but I was leaning on my horn and careening wildly around the streets, trying not to think about how Simon was out there somewhere, already counting his cut.

  What a fucker. A pretty fucker, to be sure. I’d loved the way it felt when he angled those slim hips against me and his rock-hard cock cut into my body. But he was a heartless, cruel son of a bitch. Last night, I’d really believed that I was falling for him, and that he was falling for me, too. I was such an idiot. I’d been so careful, so calculating. I’d never given my heart freely before. And the one time I did, look what happened.

  Simon and Riley had stomped on it. Together.

  All that emotion that had been building up inside of me, not just over this week, but over years, ever since my parents’ divorce, was coalescing into something dangerous. For a long while, I’d been calm and controlled. I’d been in charge. And now something inside me had snapped.

  I needed to get a handle on myself. I needed to go somewhere safe and think about anything in the world but Simon.

  Dad had given me a key at the end of my last visit. You’re welcome anytime, he’d told me, smiling warmly. Knowing my dad, he probably expected me to come over to cook him dinner now and then. Still, if nothing else, my dad had always been a great shoulder to cry on. We’d been a team through the divorce. I’d comforted him, and he held me tight and distracted me with board games and monster movies. No reason to think we wouldn’t be a team now.

  I parked my car so close to the curb that I bumped it. Storming out and up the grass, I opened the front door and stepped inside his living room, just as crammed with boxes as it had been the last time I’d been there.

  “Dad?” I called, still sniffling. That’s when I heard a sudden flurry of movement, and my dad’s voice rising awkwardly above it.

  “Oh crap!”

  I took a few perplexed steps forward. There on the sofa, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, was my dad. And he was lying on top of someone; a lady I’d never seen before. I shook my head a little bit, stunned, trying to find some other place to look. Because my dad’s pants were around his ankles, and the lady’s skirt was up around her waist.

  “Oh no, Dad!” I cried, covering my tear-damp face with my hands in horror. I couldn’t get the image of his pasty butt out of my head. Behind my veil of hands, I heard my dad and his, er, friend, scramble to get dressed.

  “Tazzy!” he cried. “Oh jeez, I’m so sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.”

  “Um,” I said, and laughed despite myself. My world was so ridiculous—how could I not laugh? And then I couldn't stop, wracked with laugh-sobs and still covering my eyes. “Do you have any brain bleach, because I sure could use it?”

  The woman he’d been . . . you know, started laughing a little, too. At least she had a sense of humor. Dad put his hand on mine and I startled.

  “It’s okay now, Tazzy,” he said gently, pulling my fingers down so I could see his smiling face. “Everything is okay.”

  My smile must have been tragic, because I saw it in his stare. “No,” I said simply. “It really isn't. Not for me.”

  Her name was Cindy. She was an accountant, and my dad had hired her last year to help him take control of his taxes, which had been a mess since my mom. Sparks flew over expense reports and W-2s. They went out for coffee to talk over his deductions, and somehow ended up falling in love.

  “I wanted to tell you about her sooner,” Dad said. We were all sitting around his kitchen table, drinking beers together. It felt surreal. But not exactly bad. He looked so comfortable with himself. I watched him tuck Cindy’s hand into his. He looked so comfortable with her.

  “Wait, how long have the two of you been together?” I asked him. They glanced at each other.

  “We met in April,” Cindy said carefully. “We’ve been dating since . . .”

  “April,” Dad said, and laughed. My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe he’d been hiding a secret like this from me, and for so long.

  I took a long swig of my drink. “My dad, the secret Romeo.”

  “I wanted to tell you!” he said. “I was going to the other day, actually. But I saw you going through those old photos and you just looked so sad.”

  My mouth twisted into a knot. I’d been sad about the photos, sure. But I’d also been a little turned on by talking to Simon. That fucker. I guess it was a real tragedy in the end, anyway.

  “Look, I’m happy for you, Dad,” I told him, pushing thoughts of Simon out of my mind. My father smiled, weakly but hopefully. “Cindy seems like a great lady.” And she did. Her hair was threaded gray and seemed kind. I liked the way she listened to my father when he spoke, like his words mattered to her. I wasn’t used to anyone else looking at my father that way. Hell, not even my mom treated my dad like he was someone with something worthwhile to say.

  “Oh, you seem like a lovely young woman yourself,” she said. “Your father has told me so much about you. He’s so proud of the work you do. An independent woman!”

  “Just like you!” my dad crowed, pulling Cindy close. I grimaced playfully.

  “Okay, Dad, I might be happy for you but I don’t want to see that.”

  “Okay, okay, kiddo. Sorry. I’m just so happy. Happy with Cindy, but happy to finally be able to share her with you, too. I . . .”

  Dad hesitated. A look of doubt crossed his face.

  “What is it?” I asked. He cleared his throat.

  “I had hoped you’d approve of all of this. In fact, I wanted to ask for your blessing . . .”

  “My . . .” My eyes widened. Oh my god. Ohmygod. My dad was going to get married? I noticed then how Cindy kept fingering a ring she wore on a chain around her neck. A diamond ring in an antique setting. Sparkly, gorgeous, and familiar.

  “That’s grandma’s ring,” I said. My father nodded.

  “We need to have it resized,” Dad said. “Your mother gave it back to me when . . . well, you know.”

  I did know. I remembered that fight. The screaming, and the look on my dad’s face when Mom took off the heirloom ring and flung it on the floor in front of him. He ugly cried that night like a little kid. I’d sat beside him, gazing into the sparkly surfaces of those diamonds. That’s when I’d decided that I’d never wear a ring myself. Love wasn’t real. It was only an illusion. And it opened people up to a world of hurt—good people, like my dad.

  Like me.

  I thought of Simon, and a new thrill of pain sliced through me. I stood up and went to the sink. My throat was tight. It was suddenly a little hard to breathe in that kitchen.

  “Excuse us for a moment, Cindy,” Dad said. I heard her chair legs squeal against the floor as she stood up.

  “Of course, Jerry,” she said, and hustled off into the other room, leaving us alone.

  My dad didn’t ask what was wrong. He didn’t have to. He just wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight. I was crying again, tears slipping down over the dirty dishes. I wasn’t sure if I was crying for the thousandth time about my mom, and my dad, and the divorce. Maybe I was crying about Cindy. Or Riley. Or maybe I was crying about Simon, and how I’d been foolish enough to believe him, if only for a minute. I’d put all of my values aside, opened my heart and let him in, hoping he was more than what he’d seemed.

  Turned out he was worse. Turned out I was just a big stupid fool. My throat was so tight, and the tears were coming hard now. But I still managed to force a smile.

  “I am happy for you, Dad. Really, I am.”

  But Dad didn’t even acknowledge what I had said. He thought I was crying for him. For mom. “You always took the divorce so hard. My poor little pumpkin.”

  I smiled wider despite my tears. It had been years since he’d called me that. “I always figured that aside from you and me, love was a lie.”

  “Oh, Tazzy,” my dad said. He kissed me on the side of t
he head. “Love isn’t a lie. Not even with me and your mother, not at first.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I adored her. She made me feel like no one else. We laughed all the time. I never would have married her otherwise. And then we had you, and it felt like my heart was going to burst from my chest.”

  I thought about the pictures in their old photo albums, all those pictures of them young and slim and smiling at one another, their eyes full of love. I knew it was true, even if I hardly remembered it. At one time, Mom had been a good wife to my dad, even if that had eventually changed.

  But even now, I wanted to protect my dad. I didn’t want him to get hurt again. In part, because I knew I couldn’t pick up the pieces if things fell apart even worse. I couldn’t be his counselor again, his confidant. Not when my own love life was in shambles.

  “How do you know it won’t go south with Cindy?”

  “I don’t,” he said, finally loosening his embrace. I turned around to face him and saw that the corners of his mouth were shaking. He was smiling. Sweetly, sadly. But there was hope behind his eyes. “But you never do. You just have to do your best and never stop believing that there’s good in people. There’s good in your mother, you know. I still think that after all these years. After all, she gave me you.”

  That’s when the salt water started flowing. Big gloppy snot, lip trembling and all. My father hugged me again and held me tight.

  I needed that. The hug, but I also needed to hear my dad loved me, that he saw the good in all people, even my mom. I was still mad as hell at Simon, and Riley, too.

  But somehow it was easier if I believed there was some good in them, deep down inside. Maybe what had happened between me and Simon had mostly been an illusion, but he’d made me happy for a moment, and there was good in that.

  “Are you kids okay?” Cindy’s voice rang out from the doorway. I pulled away from my dad, laughing back tears.

  “We’re okay,” I said. And then I added, with a smile warming my face, “Welcome to the family, Cindy. We cry a lot.”

  14

  All through the night, my phone kept buzzing. Every time I glanced at it, it was a missed call or text or email from Simon. Every single time, I deleted it without reading. The sight of his name filled me with a swirl of feelings that was too complicated for me to even begin to untangle. Sometimes rage. Sometimes self-pity. Sometimes regret. I’m not sure why I didn’t just turn my phone off. Maybe I was a glutton for punishment.

  But finally around 2 am, after my phone vibrated on my nightstand for what felt like the thousandth time, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to sleep until I talked to someone. Just not Simon. I grabbed my phone, deleted his latest message, and called up Katie instead.

  I knew she’d be awake. She worked late at her wine bar, closing down her shop long after the last drunken hipster had gone home. And I could always trust her to lend an ear when it counted. Even now, when I was at my worst.

  “Hey Tazzy,” she said cheerfully into the phone. I could hear the sounds of the bar in the background: murmured conversation and muffled bass lines.

  “Hey, I hope you’re not busy,” I said in the darkness, chewing on my lip. I heard Katie let out a laugh.

  “No way. It’s deader than Simba's dad in here.”

  “Spoilers, nerd girl!”

  “Sorry! Anyway, what’s up, girl?”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “I’ve had the worst week,” I admitted. “I could really use someone to talk to.”

  “I can hear tell. That’s not like the Tazzy I know.”

  She was right. Ordinarily, this kind of thing rolled right off my back. Hell, any kind of thing ordinarily rolled right off my back. Sunny and rainbows, that was the normal Tazzy everybody knew and loved. But not tonight. I sniffled into the darkness.

  “I think I have a broken heart,” I admitted. Katie went silent for a moment.

  At last, she let out a soft, “Whoa.”

  Through tears, I told her how the whole sad saga of me and Simon had finally unraveled. She listened, saying “Mmmhmm,” and “Yeah,” and “Daaaamn” at all the right moments. At last, when I got to the part about Riley’s IMs, she paused.

  “Do you want sympathy?” she asked. “Or advice?”

  I smiled to myself. That was one of the things I loved about her—how she always knew to ask for the kind of comfort I needed.

  “Anything,” I told her. “Honestly, I’ve never felt so fucked up before. Not over a guy.”

  “So first of all,” Katie said. I imagined her in her dark little bar, polishing a glass with her cell phone tucked against her ear, “Fuuuuck that guy. Silas, I mean.”

  “Simon,” I corrected her, smiling wryly.

  “Sorry. Yeah. You know who I mean, tattoo dude. What a pig! If he would use you like that, then it’s not worth your time or your grief. Remember: two weeks ago you didn’t even know him. If you want, you can be over him in two weeks, flat.”

  “I guess,” I said sadly. “But he really seemed different.”

  I heard Katie sigh. “They always do. Remember Carl?”

  I chewed my lip. Carl had been Katie’s first boyfriend in college. Two months after giving him her v-card, she’d learned that he hadn’t broken up with his high school sweetheart back home.

  “Yeah, but Simon wasn’t Carl. He showered, for one thing.”

  “Shush,” she said. “A pig’s a pig.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, rolling my eyes a little. “But what am I supposed to do, just ghost? It doesn’t feel right. Christ, I was starting to fall for him, Katie.”

  “I can’t tell you how to talk to him about it. That’s something you need to figure out for yourself. But you’ll know the right thing to do when it’s time.”

  Normally, I would have felt a little bit defeated by such vague advice. But coming from Katie, it was encouraging. This might have been new territory for me, but she believed that I could make things right. I squared my shoulders, sniffling my tears away.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Buuut,” Katie added, “way more worrying is that Riley bitch. And I’m not just saying this because I’m jealous she’s like your work wife.”

  “Believe me, I’ll be filing for divorce soon.”

  “Good!” Katie said. I could hear the grin in her voice. “No real friend would fuck you over like that. You’ve got to put her in her place, Tazzy. Otherwise you’ll never be able to move on. I know you. You’re a total workaholic, and that office is your happy place. You can’t let some pranking bitch pull the wall-to-wall out from under you.”

  “You’re right,” I told her. “You’re sooo right.”

  “I always am,” Katie chirped back.

  I woke up the next day ready to go toe to toe with Riley. But she wasn’t at work. Her cube was empty. I skulked back to my desk, sat down, and started drafting her an angry email.

  “Working hard?” Jim said that afternoon, peering up over the edge of my cube. “Or hardly working?”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him irritably. “I finished my presentation and turned it into Travis already.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried,” Jim said, holding up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I know our Tazzy always delivers.”

  I smiled vaguely, trying to hide my mood. I needed to get this wording exactly right.

  Dear Riley, I typed angrily, starting from scratch again. You are a stupid, smelly jerk and I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but . . .

  “Actually,” Jim began carefully, “I was wondering if you’d seen Riley.”

  I frowned at my screen. “No. Not lately.” And I was sure as hell going to give her a piece of my mind when I did.

  “Well I was wondering . . .”

  I don’t know what you were thinking in hiring Simon to fuck me over but it wasn’t funny. I thought we were friends!!! No, too whiny. I held down the backspace key until my page was clean again.

  “Spit it out, J
im,” I sighed. He let out a nervous laugh.

  “Ummm. I guess I was wondering if you knew if she was seeing someone.”

  I glanced at him, my gaze hard. He practically flinched when I looked at him. He was blushing hard.

  “Aren’t you married?” I asked, disgust crawling into my voice. Man, except for my dad, men sure were assholes. But Jim held up his naked hand. No ring.

  “I’ve been divorced for like six months now.”

  “Oh!” You sit next to a guy and assume you know everything about them, only to find out that you know nothing. “I had no idea. Sorry to hear that, Jim.”

  “I’m not,” he said cheerfully. “Best thing I ever did. Shook up my life a little. Now I’m ready to get back in the game and I’ve always thought Riley seemed like a nice girl. I like them a little geeky, you know? Someone who can fix my sockets when my wifi goes down, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I told him a little bitterly. Because I knew that Riley wasn’t a “nice girl.” But I didn’t know how to say that to Jim. “I think I get your drift.”

  “Well?” he asked. “Is she single?”

  “Perpetually,” I said wryly. “She hasn’t dated for the entire time I’ve known her.” I thought about the things she’d told Simon about me and considered saying something vicious, but before I could, Jim responded breezily.

  “Great! Do you know if she likes Chinese?”

  I pursed my lips. “Oh yeah, she loves it. Maybe you can get her a nice steaming pu pu platter.”

  An echoing silence was Jim’s only response. I glanced at him, and saw his confused expression. Good one, Tazzy. Real classy, I told myself. I didn’t need to let the drama between Riley and me become the latest office gossip.

  Besides, I was a bigger person than she was—a better person. I didn’t want my hatred of Riley to eat me alive. Maybe she and Jim could still find happiness together, even if it was all over for our friendship.