by Brandi Aga
“Erin knows everything there is to know about me. Unlike your boy, I was honest.”
“Oh my God. He’s not my boy.” I hold up air quotes to mock him as I yell a little louder than necessary, my voice echoing out into the garage. “I am married.” I say each syllable of the word slowly because they aren’t getting it.
“You were then, too.”
“Why are you here?”
“You know why.”
“Stop. Stop coming to my work. Stop watching me. Stop thinking about me or doing anything else that has to do with me.” I try my keys one more time and surprisingly he lets me unlock the door and get in.
“He won’t, you know.”
“What?”
“Stop.” He knocks on the top of my car and walks off to wherever he came from. I lock myself in and cry.
“Hey,” Ryan greets me the moment I walk through the door. He turns his video game off and sits on the barstool in the kitchen while I lay all my shit from the day out on the counter. I sigh a physical sigh of relief walking through the front door. The smell of home is always crucial to me at the end of a bad shift. I walk through the door and a million pounds disappear off my shoulders just like that.
I sent him a text earlier in the night about the patient I lost and every little thing that spiraled downward after that. He told me he was sorry and that he’d be here waiting for me when I got home, and here he is. He’s exactly what home is for me.
I’m about to tell him about what happened in the parking garage, but something tells me not to. Not yet. He’s in a good mood, I’m extremely tired, and I can’t fathom fighting through anything like that tonight. It’s just not worth it.
“I cooked dinner last night.” He nods toward the fridge behind me. “I can heat it up if you want. Or we can go to bed if you’re tired. Maddy will sleep for a few hours still.” He glances down at his watch to check the time.
“Thanks, I’ll heat it up.” I take off my scrubs and throw them in the laundry room off the kitchen and slip on a t-shirt that was in the basket on top of the dryer. Looking at the overflowing pile, I clearly need to add laundry to my list of never-ending things to do. The microwave pings, letting me know my food is finished, and I hurry back to the kitchen. I’m starved. Though, it’s a wonder I can eat after that bizarre run in with Blaze in the parking garage.
Ryan sits on the other side of the island across from me and absentmindedly plays on his phone while I eat.
“You want to go somewhere, babe?”
“Like where?” I ask around a mouth full of food. I’m too tired to go anywhere but to my bed and die for a week straight.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs nonchalantly, “the beach, maybe?”
After the day, week, year I’ve had, the beach sounds heavenly.
“What beach?” I eye him skeptically, unsure of where he’s going with this. Is this hypothetical or do I get to relax somewhere tropical? Don’t play with my emotions. He can’t control his face and his smile slowly creeps up on him no matter how hard he fights it. I narrow my eyes at him. “Are we going to the beach?”
“If you want to, it’s yours.” He turns his phone around and pushes it across the island for me to look at what he’s picked out.
“Wow, can we afford this?”
He shrugs as if money doesn’t matter. “I’ve been putting in some overtime and so have you. What’s the point of working so hard if you aren’t going to enjoy it later?”
“It looks amazing.” I scroll through the pictures of the private Airbnb condo with a full eat-in kitchen and extra lavish bathroom. Plus, the beach view and beachfront glass swimming pool. All the bells and whistles. Okay, I’m sold.
“I think the two of us need some away time, really bad.”
“Wait, just the two of us?”
“I figured Maddy could stay with Erin. She loves her. Or the babysitter could just stay, and we pay extra for overnight. It’s only three nights. We’ll figure it out.”
“Did you book it already?”
“Yeah,” he laughs with no shame in his game.
“Of course you did. What if I said no?”
“I’d have convinced you somehow.”
It’s not until I’m climbing into bed that the thoughts of the night come crashing back down on me. The parking garage. His hands around my throat. Despite being mentally and emotionally exhausted, I don’t sleep a wink all day.
“I’m so fucking hungover. It really does get worse the older you get. I used to drink like a fish and I never felt like this.” I grip my head in my hands like a basketball to stop the world from spinning.
Veronica laughs. “You did have a lot to drink last night. Maybe even fish equivalent.”
“Yo, thanks for bringing me home.”
She bites her lip between her teeth to stifle a laugh that’s obviously causing her turmoil to keep inside.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. It’s just, I never thought the roles would be reversed like this.”
“What roles?”
“Oh my God, you are so literal. Why are you so scared to have someone in your life care about you? Me, taking care of you like this.” She gestures to me in all of my hungover glory. “It was nice, last night, listening.”
I nod, taking in what she’s saying. Shit, how much information did I purge if she’s thanking me for opening up? I open up for no one. We were just supposed to be eating a late dinner and have a couple beers. Apparently, I had a couple too many.
“You were upset. I want to be there for you, okay?”
“Okay, cool. Sorry for last night. I wasn’t expecting any of this.” Well, I kind of was. That’s why I had so much trepidation about going there in the first place.
“We’ve got to stop doing this, apologizing to each other.” She tilts her head to the side and her blonde curly hair falls over her shoulder. She looks so innocent on the outside, but I should know better. She sees some gnarly shit on the daily with her job and I don’t send her running for the hills. What kind of love did she not get as a kid to want this in her life?
“So, what do you want to do about your daughter?”
“Her dick husband came at me with the whole get a lawyer bullshit, so what are my options?”
“This is going to be difficult, I feel.”
I scoff, no shit. Nothing ever worth having comes easy.
“Okay, well they’ll obviously learn about your jail time if they don’t already know. It’s fine. That isn’t a threat because it’s been dismissed and signed off by a judge. You’re no different than me, in that respect. Now, the fact that you haven’t spent any amount of time with her since birth is what proves to be challenging in winning cases like this. Especially when it’s the father and not the mother. It’s not like you live right down the street and she can just walk her over on the weekends. Plus, Texas judges hate men that don’t take care of their children.”
I flinch at her words, but I can’t even be mad at her for speaking the truth. I haven’t taken care of her.
“Which was out of your control, but now that you do have the ability to see her, we need to make it happen and prove that you care. Baby steps.”
She gets up off the blow-up mattress I’m still sleeping on and makes her way downstairs. I don’t bother getting up, my head’s still spinning. She comes back up a few minutes later with her bag full of notebooks and shit.
“I’ll draw something up and if you like it, let’s send it to her and start there. She can agree or not, but it gets the ball rolling and we’ll know what to do next according to her decision. What?”
I can’t stop staring at her. Her initiative to help me and my daughter leaves me at a loss for words. “Nothing. Thank you.”
“Don’t worry. Maddilyn will have her little toes in the sand in no time.”
Leylah is going to be so pissed. But I can’t think about that right now. I DO need to see my daughter. I’m not taking her away from her mother. I only have every
intention of exercising my right to see her, seeing as I have just as much jurisdiction as she does to pursue that. My thoughts keep going back to the look on her face when she saw me standing there unannounced in her driveway. I almost got to touch her. Kiss her. Feel the way she felt against me again. Almost. But almost doesn’t count. I feel like now that things have gotten so twisted, it’s Maddilyn or nothing. I won’t ever have them both as mine again.
“Come here.”
“What?” Unsure that she heard me right, V stops her writing and looks up from her paperwork. I lift my chin, inviting her back over to the bed with me. She slowly sets her papers down on the floor at her feet and stands at the end of the mattress.
I hold my hand out and she grabs on to it, steadying herself across the wobbly air mattress. She straddles my lap in just a t-shirt and sleep shorts.
“What are you doing?”
I cup her pussy through her shorts and rub my thumb across it.
“Rome…” She rocks into my touch and though her thoughts are confused, her body isn’t. “We don’t have to do this.”
I sit up on my elbows and give her one last chance to make up her mind. “You’re right, we don’t. If you don’t want this,” I squeeze her in my hand a little bit tighter, my thumb rubbing circles in all the right places, “then say so now.”
For a split second, I think her mind might have won the war over her body but then she lifts her t-shirt up over her head and discards it beside us. I take that as my cue and brush her hair back out of the way with one hand and roam my other hand over her vivacious tits.
I didn’t think the first girl I’d be buried inside once I got out would be anyone other than Leylah. I also don’t know what to do with these thoughts here and now in the moment that it isn’t Leylah.
With her shorts pulled to the side and riding on my dick, all I can picture is long black hair and every way her facial features differ from V’s. The way Leylah’s boobs spill out of my hands but V’s fit in one hand with room to spare.
I can’t shake the thoughts and my dick is just as confused as I am. I flip V over, face down ass up, and thank you Jesus, her image all but disappears.
Despite being a small girl, her pussy has no problem eating my dick up and it hurts so good. I pull her arms behind her back and watch the way her ass jiggles every time I thrust against it.
I push her face down into the mattress and hold her arms still pinned behind her back. I let everything go and take all of my pent-up frustrations out on this girl’s pussy, and I have no regrets because her screams echoing around the warehouse are music to my ears.
I pull out at the last second and paint her back with my load that never stops. Ass still in the air and panting for breaths, she wipes her sweaty hair out of her face and smiles. “You really need to get a better bed.”
I flop down on the mattress beside her and catch my breath. You know it was good sex when the mattress is on the other side of the room from where you started when you’re finished.
“I’m going home. I need a shower and to stop by the office for a bit. I’ll get started on your stuff.” She gathers her discarded t-shirt and her pre-sex abandoned paperwork. “Buy a bed!” she yells out as she disappears down the stairs.
I can’t help but laugh. Good times.
I never said I didn’t have issues. Some of them are just more obvious than others. I feel bad for V, mentally fucking Leylah while I’m balls deep inside her instead, but I’m going to purge that girl from the depths of my soul one way or another, even if it kills me.
Me: Want to go to the mall in Frisco today?
Me: I need to pick out a couple bathing suits for a trip.
Erin: Trip where?
Me: We’re going to Puerto Vallarta in two weeks.
Erin: Sorry, can’t go today.
Erin has been acting more and more weird toward me the more time that goes by. It doesn’t matter what I do, she seems to always find a way to avoid me. This is just the icing on the cake and I’m about over it. I won’t force somebody to be my friend. Not when she’s supposed to be so special in my life. I’m in my feelings today, and especially when it comes to her, so it’s just hitting me harder than I expected.
I frown at her quick response to shut me down. No hesitation whatsoever. Ever since Roman came back and turned our world upside down, she’s been walking on eggshells around me it seems. Or maybe it goes further back, to Blaze and his conniving ways. Have I not paid her enough attention through my own struggles?
It’s whatever. What’s done is done at this point. It takes two to put in the effort and she’s clearly not willing. I still have to have some extra suits, whether I go alone or not. I guess Maddy and I are going to the mall by ourselves today.
After two hours of stuffing my ass into bikinis I didn’t really like, Maddy finally fell asleep and I’ve just been strolling along window shopping while she naps. I brought her out with me during her regular naptime, so I will just let her sleep.
“I thought that was you.” I’m browsing through Nordstrom in one last attempt to find something that jumps out at me, when she spots me. I could have gone my whole life without seeing her here today or ever, really.
“Hey, Janice.” Fake it till you make it. Kill them with kindness. Can’t beat em’, join em’. I repeat to myself all these cheesy, inspirational quotes to keep from lashing out and strangling the bitch. Ryan’s whole family thinks I’m some adulterer that stole him away from his first wife, and that we practice some kind of evil sacrifice séances on every full blood moon and it’s bullshit. That’s the kind of crazy they see in me.
What they don’t see, is that I’m a normal, grown ass woman. He was single when we met. I didn’t ruin their marriage. The two of them did. I’ve come to terms with the fact that they will never like me. It’s why Ryan’s son doesn’t spend any time at our house when he’s home and I truly hate that for Ryan, but it’s not my fault. His mother, Janice, can’t be told otherwise. Or she won’t hear it, rather, seeing as I’ve told her many times before straight to her face. I have no issue with her. She won’t give me a chance and thanks to that, any relationship with Parker is strictly antagonistic. He’s brainwashed by her. Anyway, that’s another story for another day. It will never be what it should be, and we’ve done all we could to make it happen.
“And who’s this?” She squats down in front of Maddy’s stroller and gushes over how cute she is. I know that she knows about my affair. I’m not sure that she knows that I know, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Just using it as an excuse to flat out taunt me. It’s always in her M.O. to go straight for the jugular.
“This is Maddy. She’s taking her afternoon nap, as you can see.” So, don’t wake her up and nobody gets hurt.
“She’s a cute little thing. Tell me, who is her father again?” And there it is. I can picture the blood squirting from the metaphorical slice she just made straight to my throat. I could bleed out right here on this floor and she’d never call for help. She’d just step right over my helpless body and leave me here alone to die. I really scored a ten in the mother-in-law department. Go me.
“Ryan didn’t tell you?” Two can play this game.
She purses her lips and pretends to think about it. Can she remember such minuscule information? Because, you know, that’s how important I am to her. Not at all. “No, I don’t think that he did. I’d remember something like that.”
“Ryan is her dad. He has been there for her since day one, and that’s all that matters. We’re happy together, the three of us.”
“You don’t ever want more children?”
“What do you mean?” I don’t mean to, but I let my guard down for two seconds and she sees it written all over my face that she has me over a barrel. She enjoys every minute of it, too.
“I mean, how do you plan on having more kids? Adopting?” This time I’m completely unable to hide my expressions and honestly, I’m getting fed up with this whole charade. She covers her mouth with th
e side of her hand to cover her ugly fake smile. “You really don’t know why I’m asking do you?”
“I guess not, Janice.” I don’t ask for more. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want her to tell me something devastating about my husband that I know she’s going to love hurting me with. I don’t want to know. My heart can’t handle any more pain, from my own hands or someone else’s.
“Well, I guess I might as well spill the beans since we’ve gone this far. I just knew that he told you about his vasectomy.” She whispers the last part like it’s a dirty word and someone might hear. “I thought that might have been why you two split up but now I can see that I was way off.” She pointedly looks to Maddy in her admission.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Not in front of her. Don’t let her see her victory.
I sigh, exasperated and embarrassed. But also really proud of how far we have come since those dark days of uncertainty. “Yes, I cheated on Ryan. But you know what? He’s a big boy and we worked it out. So, thank you for being concerned.” I put my foot on the stroller to push it out of its place and get the hell away from her. Before I can go, she puts her hand on me and stops me.
“You should talk to your husband, dear. I am truly sorry this had to come from me.” I stare at the spot where her hand is connected to my body. I stare and I stare, and I don’t look away until she moves it back to her personal bubble and out of mine. If she’s going to make me out to be the crazy one, I might as well give her something to talk about.
Oh, me and Ryan are going to have words later. Trust me when I say that. But first, I have to figure out what to do with this information. How to bring it up at the right time to make sure I cover all my bases.
“It’s always so good to see you, Janice.” I give her the biggest, fakest smile I can possibly muster up. Full frontal teeth and everything. I don’t know what she expected telling me this here, today in the middle of a random department store, but she’s not getting the reaction she wants from me. Not today, bitch.