by Shey Stahl
About a year ago, at our annual New Year’s Eve party Madison and I have, they fucked. And no, in case you’re wondering, the child she has is not Brantley’s. He’s product of another drunken night Nathalie had with some other guy. She makes a habit of getting drunk and spreading her legs.
Hypocritical don’t you think?
Anyways, from what I gather, they still fuck on occasions. I don’t ask and Brantley’s never been one to talk about it.
And Madison can’t understand why I don’t let her go out with Nathalie to the bar.
Anyway, Grady’s dad isn’t part of his life now, which is sad. The little fucker needs a man around to set a good example for him.
Walking inside the house, I smell steak. Madison is an amazing cook. Throws down the best meals at the drop of a hat.
Brantley walks in behind me. “I’m starving.”
We’re still dressed in our work clothes, trudging through the house in our boots, covered in a thin white dust from hanging drywall. Madison frowns when we come around the corner into the kitchen. “We should eat outside.”
I grab a beer from the fridge and one for Brantley. “Okay. Do you need help?”
For a second, she’s taken back by my willingness to help. “Uh, well,” she reaches for a bowl on the counter with what looks to be pasta salad in it, “you could find the boys and tell them it’s time for dinner.”
“Okay.” I’m not excited by this. Mostly because Grady will probably be with them and he hates me more than his mother does. I think she tells him to.
“Sorry for intruding,” Brantley says, wrapping his arm around Madison as I walk outside to see if the boys are in the backyard.
“You’re always welcome here, B.”
Upstairs, I find all three boys in Callan’s room. He looks stressed out sitting on his bed with a book on Ukraine while Noah and Grady are playing with GI Joes on the floor. They pay me no attention when I sit down next to Callan. “Hey, bud, how was school?”
He shrugs, flipping the page in his book. “Boring. But I got a book from the library today.”
I point to the one in his hand, reminded of the parent-teacher conference we had the other day. “This one?”
“Yeah. I really want to go to Ukraine. Will you take me?”
He’s not going to let this one go. Maybe he does have a little bit of my personality in him?
“We’ll have to talk about it sometime. That’s a big trip for a kid and more than likely not that safe.”
“It’s not Rio De Janeiro, Dad.”
I feel really dumb right now. “What’s wrong with Rio?”
“Their crime rate is ridiculous. It’s a third world country.”
Show’s how much I know. I ruffle his hair. “Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat.” Peeking over the bed, I toss a pillow between Noah and Grady. “Dinner’s ready. Go downstairs.”
Do you think they listen to me?
Nope. It’s like I’m not even there.
I leave them up there and pass Nathalie in the hallway. “Tell your kid it’s time for dinner.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?” she asks, putting her hand on her hip. Nathalie could be pretty if she wasn’t such a bitch. She has long blonde, super curly hair that’s always sticking up all over the place. It’s wild and like I said, would be considered cute, but her personality ruins it for me. “Didn’t Madison send you up here to do that?”
I stare at her, the two of us standing in the middle of the hallway as Callan rushes down the stairs when he hears Brantley’s voice. There’s something off about the way she’s watching me, and I know this is my wife’s best friend and she more than likely knows more about me than I want her to. But is she withholding information? I could tackle her to the ground and sit on her head until she tells me what she knows, but I won’t.
Instead I try more of an asshole approach because it’s what I’m good at.
Leaning in, I whisper in Nathalie’s ear, “Just because you’re happy being single and fuckin’ my best friend, doesn’t mean you have to talk my wife into being part of your slutty single mom cult.”
Harsh? Oh, just wait until she starts in.
“Oh, please.” She pushes me into the wall with a quick jab to my shoulder. “I’m not talking her into anything. You’ve done this all on your own.”
Why do people keep saying that?
“Well, she agreed to go on a date with me,” I say, half tempted to stick my tongue out.
Nathalie rolls her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to fuck it up.” She sticks her head in the bedroom. “Boys, dinner’s ready.”
And then they both come running.
Nobody listens to me lately.
“SO I HEARD you got your balls waxed, Ridley.”
Choking on a mouthful of steak, I shoot Madison a glare. “You told her?”
Luckily the boys aren’t at the table with us. They’re in the backyard playing basketball. Well, Noah and Grady are. Callan’s sitting by the pool with his feet in the water reading his book.
Madison smiles, her eyes lighting up and you know, it’s been a long fucking time since I’ve seen this smile.
I turn to Nathalie and force a grin. “Fuck off, Natalie.”
“It’s Nathalie.”
“I don’t care.”
Brantley stares at me, a slow smile creeping across his face. “Is that why you were walking weird?”
I nod, not knowing what else to say. I fucking knew she was going to tell everyone.
“Does it, you know, make it look bigger?” he asks, laughing now.
I refuse to look at any of them and cut into my steak again. “Stop talking about this. It’s not appropriate.”
“Ha!” Nathalie laughs. “You’re never appropriate.”
She’s right, but I refuse to ever agree with her. “And neither are you so shut the fuck up.”
Madison kicks me under the table. “Ridley, knock it off.”
I know what you’re thinking, geez, you’re in a bad mood now.
Yeah, well, have you had your ball skin ripped off? No? Then don’t judge me.
Grady walks up to us, takes my steak from my plate and throws it on the ground. I want to take my steak knife and stab his hand for doing that. But I don’t.
Instead, I glare at Nathalie. “Control your kid.”
She laughs. “He doesn’t like men.”
It’s not even that he doesn’t like men, which she’s partially right. The only man he’s ever tolerated is Brantley, but I think Nathalie secretly tells him what a jerk she thinks I am.
Did you know at mine and Madison’s wedding, Nathalie objected to the wedding? Yep. Fucking stood there and said, “Don’t marry him!”
Can you also believe she was her maid of honor and shitfaced?
I can.
I don’t react to Grady taking my steak, but I do glare at him only to take a foot to my other shin when he kicks me. “Son of a bitch!” I scream in pain because it’s like he’s wearing steel-toed boots. Grabbing my beer off the table, I take a long drink, hoping to talk myself down from drop kicking this child. “Stop that. You’re lucky I don’t stab you with this knife.”
Grady is two years old. And doesn’t talk. I’m positive he doesn’t understand when you talk either.
Nathalie throws a piece of bread at my head from across the table. “Don’t talk to my son that way.”
I set down my beer with a loud thud on the wooden table. “Teach him some manners then.”
Have you ever heard the term resting bitch face? If not, just look at Nathalie. She has the look perfected to a fucking art. “Yeah, you’re one to talk.”
With a grin of satisfaction, Grady takes off toward the pool.
Remember when I said he’s a devil child?
Clearly, I knew what I was talking about.
I don’t say anything more to Nathalie but I glare. I’m hoping my glare might make her head explode. If only I had super powers.
AFTER EVERYONE LEAVES th
at night, Madison’s in the kitchen cleaning up and I can see she’s tired and wants to go to bed. What do I do?
I should probably help her but I’m more focused on trying to seduce her again so I lick the back of her neck. She doesn’t find this sexy and slaps at my head. “Stop it.”
“Why?”
Subconsciously I think I’m annoying her to get her to yell at me because that meant talking instead of ignoring, right?
She turns to face me, wiping her soapy hands on a hand towel beside the sink. “You want to know what upsets me?”
I smirk. “I’m dying to know.”
“Just once I’d like to come home for you to have actually done something around here. I get it, you run a business and have little time for anything else but would it kill you to put your dishes in the sink and not on the counter. Or better yet, in the dishwasher?”
“I’m never sure if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean,” I say, attempting to defend myself with humor. “And I don’t do the dishes because what if I break one? Remember that time I broke that plate your grandma gave you? You didn’t talk to me for an entire day.”
“At this point, I wouldn’t care if you broke every dish we have as long as you made a damn effort. Or when you see that I’ve picked up the house and put away all the laundry, why do you have to leave your pants on the floor in our room? Do you not see everything else is nice and clean and it’d be nice if you helped me keep it that way?”
I blink a couple times but I don’t say anything right away. I’m not sure I know what to say. For an intuitive and observant person, she was painting me to be oblivious to what was happening to us. Had I really turned my back on her for that long?
I scrub my hands over my face, leaning back into the counter. “I’m… I just don’t understand any of this, Mad. I thought you were happy. Why haven’t you said anything to me until now?”
“I have said things, Ridley. I’ve asked for your help but it was apparently not what you wanted to hear at the time. You don’t seem to get it. By the time I get Callan ready for bed, you’re already asleep or still at work. And when you are home, you think I should give you all my attention, but you know what, you’re just like having another child.”
I am not a child. “What’s your point?”
Do you see that look I’m getting? The one where she looks strangely like she might be constipated? I think I shouldn’t have said that.
She throws her hands up in the air, reaches for the door to the dishwasher and then slams it shut. “My point is when you are here, you’re not! I feel like a single mom most of the time. We’ve grown apart.”
We’ve grown apart? She thinks that?
And my first thought is, I should have seen it coming if we’d grown apart, right?
“Ridley, I was so in love with you. I was, but now, I just don’t know what’s happening anymore. I want to make it work, but I’m scared all this, you being here, trying, I’m scared it’s just a phase, and a couple months go by, and you’ll go back to what it was like before. I don’t even know how this happened. We went from being these two people who couldn’t get enough of one another to this, barely talking in passing. That’s not a marriage. It’s not even a life. I refuse to be married to someone like that. I deserve a husband who wants to share his life with me, not one working all the time.”
Do you see that guy, the one with itchy balls and a confused expression on his face?
He needs to up his fucking game for sure.
It’s the morning of Callan’s birthday party when I notice Madison in the kitchen, making food and doing all the things she does as a mother without ever being asked to do them. I get this sharp pain in my chest when she sighs and stares at the plate of veggies. She’s attempting to make it perfect, because it’s in her nature to do so, but she’s unsettled with it, or me.
In the last few days since she agreed to let me try and prove to her that she still loves me, I’ve been sleeping in the bed again. It’s much more comfortable.
I can’t say we’re okay yet because if I’m being honest, I’m starting to see there’s some truth to everything she said in the kitchen.
“I was so in love with you. I was, but now, I just don’t know what’s happening anymore. I want to make it work, but I’m scared all this, you being here, trying, I’m scared it’s just a phase and a couple months go by and you’ll go back to what it was like before.”
Those words, the way her hurt ripped in me, I knew then this was serious. She had a reason for doing this. I may not agree, but she had her reason.
Madison notices me watching her, does a double take and sighs, like she’s remembering something she forgot. “Hey, listen…”
I don’t like conversations that start like that. My heart pounds in my chest waiting for her words.
“…my mother is coming today….” And then her voice trails off because she knows how I feel about her mother.
Jenna Adams is a fucking bitch, like if I could slap my mother-in-law in the face, I would.
“I’m sorry she’s coming. Nathalie invited her, and I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
I know what you’re thinking, do I like anyone? I do, sometimes but not Madison’s mother and trust me, you won’t either. She’s a drunk, uses Madison for money and basically tells Callan to his face, be less weird and people will like you.
“I don’t care if she’s here, but if she says anything to me or upsets Callan, I’m going to say something.”
Her brows draw together, rawness and pain evident in her features. She doesn’t want her mother here either. “Don’t make this more complicated today, please.”
“How would I complicate things?”
She raises on eyebrow.
“Define complicated.’”
“You.” Her voice shakes around the words. “You’re complicated.”
Of course she’d say that. I sigh heavily and reach for a carrot from her tray of vegetables. “I won’t say anything to her or be mean, but if she says something to you, or our kids, I’m not going to remain quiet like I did the last time.”
Guess what? Her mom hates me too. And I’ll be honest here, I think Jenna, her mother, only disapproves of me because I provide for Madison, something her own husband never did. He left town when Madison was two and nobody’s seen him since then.
Madison catches my eye and my thoughts. She’s wearing a royal blue dress that shows off just the tops of her breasts, her hair curled in soft waves. God, I hope she gives me a chance because I can’t stand to think of not having her for the rest of my life.
I know what you’re thinking. If you feel that way, why not tell her what you’re thinking?
Women?
Our brains don’t work like that. We may think something and never say it. And believe me on this one, you might not want to know everything we’re thinking. Mostly because I’d say 85 percent of the time it has to do with one of two things. Sex or getting you to have sex with us.
I’m just being honest.
Watch. Here’s my attempt at telling her what I’m thinking.
“You look…” I breathe in, watching Madison move around the kitchen. “…pretty today.”
“Thanks,” she mumbles, keeping her distance from me.
“Do you need help?”
“No, I think I got this, but can you make sure Noah has pants on? He didn’t earlier, and I don’t want people showing up when his pants are off.”
I chuckle and itch my balls by sticking my hand right down my shorts. “I wish I didn’t have to wear pants today because you know, my balls still itch so bad.”
I know what you’re thinking, gross, right?
Just wait. I do this on purpose because the moment I stick my hand down my pants, Madison’s eyes follow as if she can’t help butt drag her eyes there. She’s just about to say something when Nathalie walks in carrying a box of what looks to be cake. “That’s disgusting! Wash your hands!”
Madison laughs and shakes her head as
I remove my hand.
Moving past Nathalie, I’m behind her about two feet and then lunge back at her, my ball sweat hand covering her mouth. “You were saying?”
It’s really paybacks for her son ruining my delicious steak the other night.
But here’s the thing, I should have looked at what she had in her hand when I did. Whatever’s in her hand makes contact with my junk. Hard. I don’t even know what was in her hand, but it hurts.
I may never father another child, and I’m pretty sure I can’t breathe.
Yep. Can’t breathe.
Falling to the floor, I curl into a fetal position. Madison walks over to me, shakes her head and then steps over me like she holds no concern for me and my pain. “Go find Noah and his pants.”
Nathalie, on the other hand, is gagging in the kitchen sink and washing her mouth out with soap.
“I hope you get diarrhea,” I mumble when I can breathe again.
She spits bubbles at me. “I hope you die of blunt force trauma!”
HAVE YOU EVER been to a child’s birthday party?
They’re awful if you ask me, but no one does today and I’m glad they don’t. Mostly because after two beers, I’m afraid I’ll give them my honest opinion.
Guess who I meet at the birthday party?
Pedro. Remember the pool guy? I’m very excited about this because I want to see if there’s anything going on with him and my wife, and I know I’ll be able to tell when I see them together.
I motion for Callan to come over when I see a darker-skinned man appear with what looks to be his son and he’s staring at the pool. “Who’s that guy?” I ask Callan when he’s next to me, kneeling to his level.
“Pedro.”
He acts like I should know him, and I sorta feel weird that I don’t. “Who’s he?”
“He’s the pool guy. You hired him, Dad.”
I raise an eyebrow and stand up. “I did?”
“Yeah.” And then Callan walks away probably thinking I’m crazy. Which really wouldn’t be a surprise.
Intending on asking Madison about Pedro, I walk inside the house to find her arranging the cookies on a platter as kids rush around the house.