by Heidi Lowe
Now I am furious. Her comment has gone too far, struck a nerve. I shove her away. “Okay, we're done here.”
“For now, maybe. But you'll be back.” She sounds so certain of it, it's as though she's the puppet master, and I'm her puppet. “You always come back. And I'll be waiting. Waiting with my tongue... and my fingers...”
I can't climb out of that pool fast enough. This is the side of Angel that sooner or later rears its ugly head, showing her for the bitch that she really is. It's not enough that she's sleeping with another woman's wife, a woman with whom she became friends, she has to insult her at every opportunity. Faye doesn't deserve any of this.
“The only mistake I ever made, as far as I'm concerned,” I say while I climb furiously into my clothes, “is giving you the time of day in that bar where we first met.”
She only laughs as she watches me dress.
“I don't want you near me or my wife again. I mean that this time.” I storm from the house determinedly. And once in the confines of my car, rage-filled tears escape. It doesn't matter how determined I am never to sleep with Angel again, because I know how weak my flesh is. Besides, the damage has already been done. Three times, more if you count all those times I've fantasized about her while masturbating. I despise Angel with a passion, but I hate myself more for becoming that woman who cheats on her partner.
I take the long route home, and drive slowly. Faye could wake at any moment and see that the bed is empty, but it's difficult going home knowing what I've done, and with whom. I know my wife's a saint and thinks everyone deserves a second chance, but some things are unforgivable. I fear this is one of them.
SEVEN
“Again, Mama, again,” Emily shouts, yanking my hand and dragging me back to the entrance for the carousel. If I give in this will be our third time round. It's not that I wouldn't like to spend half a day riding around on plastic horses and carriages, while slightly eerie music plays in the background. It's just that I suffer from serious motion sickness. My stomach is already threatening to come pouring out of my mouth!
“Don't you want to try another ride, honey?”
She shakes her head and continues dragging. If I throw up all over her I don't think it would stop her.
This year's county fair is busier than usual. That likely has something to do with the heat. A record for this time of year. Shirtless men and scantily clad women meander about, while kids run wild and free. I see a lesbian couple and their two children stroll toward us. I offer them a friendly smile of support, and they smile back. They probably think I'm a single mother, not that I'm one of them, and I kind of regret not having Faye by my side. As they walk past, I catch a glimpse of the hardcover book on top of the stroller, and I smile again when I see the title and author's name. Mama Kitchen Cooks by Faye Cox-Everett. They've just been to her book signing stall and picked up her first ever book. Perhaps they noticed me and Emily, then, from her blog.
“Mama, hurry up,” my daughter whines, tugging as though her life depended on this monstrous carousel ride.
“I think your mom's all ridden out, babe.” Out of nowhere Sandra comes charging in and scoops Emily up. “Hello, my little angel.” She turns to me and says, “I've got this,” and relieves me of my mommy duties. It will likely be the only four minutes of peace I'll get today while Faye does the whole “celebrity” thing, signing books, plates, aprons, whatever, and taking pictures with her adoring fans.
I wander away from the carousel because even being a few feet away is making me dizzy and nauseous. I can see my wife and her two helpers at her stall. We've been here since eight this morning, and it's now twelve: She's still getting a steady stream of people stopping by.
“If you sell every single copy, you're buying me that yacht I've always wanted,” I joked this morning while we were setting up.
“I might be able to afford the anchor. How's that?”
She looks so at ease in this setting, being the center of attention, though extremely modest. And her fans love her as much as I do. I've had a constant grin on my face pretty much the whole day (when I wasn't being spun around on a treacherous merry go round). I'm still wearing it when Sandra and Emily rejoin me.
“That's the look of a proud wife. They're all over her like a rash. Look at them.”
“I am proud. She's worked really hard, and she's done all of this while being a stay at home mom.”
“Yeah, yeah, your wife is Superwoman. We get it.”
I laugh bashfully. Sometimes it feels that way, that I married someone superhuman. Great cook, great mother, loving and passionate. What more could a person want?
We go over to the stall so Sandra can say hi, and Emily decides she wants to “help” Faye, so she stays back with her. I try not to look too pleased for the reprieve, however short it may be.
“I didn't think you would make it.” Sandra and I have wandered off for a light beer, my treat. We sit on the hay bales conveniently positioned around the tavern stall and bask in the sunshine.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn't have missed Faye's big day for anything.”
“I thought you had boy drama to deal with.”
“Don't I always? I figured it could wait one day.”
If I'm being honest I kind of hoped she wouldn't turn up. Now that she's here, I'm going to have to come clean about Angel. She's going to find out eventually.
“Hey, do you remember that girl I dated a while back. She was younger than me. We dated for a couple of years on and off–”
“Angel?” she cuts in. “You're talking about that crazy bitch who tried to run you over, and who put that woman in the hospital because she put her hand on your thigh? How the hell could I forget that hot mess?”
I already don't like where this is going. Hearing someone else list Angel's past transgressions, despite me remembering them clearly, only makes me feel worse and equally as deranged as Angel is for starting up with her again.
“Yeah, that one,” I say despondently.
“The person you became when you were with her, I hated it. If I recall, the only good thing that came out of that relationship was the sex. Hell, even I wanted to try some after the way you were telling it!”
My cheeks are on fire. Back then, I wasn't exactly classy about my sex life, especially when it involved Angel. I would tell anyone who would listen about how incredible it was, how she did things to my body I didn't know were even possible. I regret all of that now, because it only makes sex with Faye seem lacking to everyone who knew about Angel.
“Don't remind me.”
“Why are you bringing her up now?”
Right on cue, as though they timed their appearance, I spot my father and Angel in the distance, through the crowd. There's a ball in my throat the size of Connecticut. Things are about to get really awkward.
“My father's here. Now before you meet his fiancee, promise me you won't freak out, won't get weird on me.”
She blinks at me, furrowing her brow. She isn't making the connection between what we were talking about previously and the imminent arrival of my father.
“What's going on, Nikki?” she questions.
“You'll see...”
Dad spots us and waves in our direction, his arm linked through Angel's. I'm light-headed as I stand to meet them. I'm too afraid to look at Sandra.
“What the–”
I nudge her quickly, as a reminder that she has to remain calm and not blow my cover. There's a flicker of recognition in Angel's eyes when they meet Sandra's, but she beams warmly and extends her hand.
“Hi, I'm Angelique, Bernie's fiancee.”
Sandra leaves the hand suspended in mid-air, her mouth agape as she gawks at me. Maybe I should have warned her about this a little earlier.
“Uh...hi... Sandra.” She finally shakes Angel's hand, but her grip is weak. She must know how I feel.
My father hugs her, tells her she's looking great, that he's so happy to see her again. Her smiles are faint, her responses ba
rely audible. I'm going to have a helluva lot of explaining to do.
“All right, start talking.”
Under Sandra's murderous gaze I feel like I'm back in middle school, being reprimanded by one of my teachers. She's pulled me away outside the fair grounds, to a quiet spot where she can rip me a new one without anyone hearing.
I shrug, throw my hands up hopelessly. “I don't know how this happened. I go to my dad's house, she arrives and it's her; it's Angel. It's a fucked up situation.”
“Gee, ya think?” She turns away from me as though I've disgusted her. Honestly, I didn't think she would freak out this much. “You've known this whole time and I'm only finding out now? What's up with that?”
“Erm, you can understand why I would have a problem sharing something like this with you.”
“Yeah, but... Jesus, Nikki, this is...insane.”
“Tell me about it.”
Our mutual silence seems to stretch on forever. She's calmed down a little by the time she speaks again. “I take it Faye doesn't know.”
“No,” I say hastily. “Absolutely not. I'd like to keep it that way. She wouldn't be okay. I mean, she's reasonable, but not that reasonable.”
She shakes her head in wonderment. “Angel's Angelique. How did I not see that coming? This can't be a coincidence that she's engaged to your dad.” Her eyes become slits of suspicion; her voice drips with it.
I shrug. It feels like the only thing I can do. “She swears she didn't know until we met at my father's place. I guess I can believe that. When he disowned me he removed all of my pictures from the house.”
“Well I wouldn't believe anything that hussy says. It wouldn't surprise me if she planned this whole thing just to get back at you.”
“Come on, even for Angel that's extreme.” Not only extreme, but talk about a delayed reaction. Why would she wait seven years to seek vengeance? And also, if she was so vengeful, why would she have slept with me again? I don't buy it.
Sandra puts a firm hand on my shoulder, gives me a steely-eyed look. “Nikki, she's crazy! That's the kind of crap that crazy people do. You have to tell your dad about her.”
“I can't. He's happy. You saw him.”
“He's a man; he'll be over her in a flash when the next hot thing shows him some attention.”
“Can we just let this one play out a little while longer before we decide to wreck his engagement?”
Now she's looking at me as though I've just stepped out of the funny farm. “Play out? What are you hoping will happen, that she'll suddenly stop being your psychopathic ex?”
“I don't know.” I growl in agitation. Her sarcasm isn't helping. “All I do know is I'm not ready to ruin his life. We just got back on speaking terms; I'm not about to fuck that up.”
The truth is, it's not really about his feelings. I'm a coward, plain and simple. Telling him means coming clean to Faye. Telling him also takes away Angel's incentive to keep quiet about our affair. It's lose/lose.
“So you're going to let them go through with the wedding?”
“No. I'll...I'll think of something.” I can hear the pessimism loud and clear in my own voice. I've been thinking of something for weeks and coming up trumps. Worse still, I've been digging a deeper hole for myself by sleeping with the enemy.
Sandra's skepticism is apparent even as she says fine and we return to the fair. I thought I would feel some relief now that it's out in the open, but I feel just as burdened as I did before, maybe even more so.
I manage to go a whole forty-five minutes without having to speak to Angel. But while my father and Sandra get hooked on shooting dolphins, trying to compete against each other while winning a hoard of stuffed toys for Emily, she finds me standing alone. My body tenses and stiffens as soon as I hear her voice behind me, feel her breath caressing my ear.
“Let me guess, squirting water at dolphins isn't your idea of fun? You prefer a different kind of squirting.”
I gulp and shift uneasily, because just by being this close to me she's doing things to my loins. She stands beside me, and even though I refuse to look directly at her, through the corner of my eye I can see her smirking.
“Funny. How long did it take you to come up with that one?”
“You know I'm just teasing you. You never were much of a squirter. Maybe I wasn't doing a good enough job.” She laughs. “No, that definitely can't be it.”
“Don't you have anything better to do than make crude comments that make me wonder what I ever saw in you in the first place?”
“Sure. I know what I would rather be doing. Or...who...”
Oh God, get this woman away from me! Please. I'm supposed to be having a family day, playing with my daughter, supporting my wife on her big day, but instead I'm thinking about screwing my future stepmother. I'm screaming at myself inside, while on the outside I'm trying to remain calm and collected, pretending that her words are doing nothing to me.
“They wouldn't miss us if we snuck off right now for a quickie,” she continues. Her smirk is larger than ever. I know her words are only meant to tease, that she isn't actually proposing we sneak off and screw, but the image of going down on her behind the ring toss stall, or the cotton candy stall, with the possibility of being caught at any moment, is making me wet.
My lips remain glued shut.
“I would only need five minutes to make you explode all over me. Maybe a bit longer to allow me to lick it all up...”
“Stop,” I growl through gritted teeth, afraid I'll explode all over myself, right here and now!
She giggles. “I'm sorry. The thought of tasting you again, it makes me forget my manners.”
“You didn't have any to begin with.”
“True. Still, at least I've succeeded in what I set out to do by coming over here.”
I finally turn to look at her. God, she's gorgeous. Her sunglasses sit pretentiously on her forehead; her blue eyes sparkle like diamonds in the sun. Her perfect white smile glistens, blindingly. “What was that?”
She lowers her voice to a whisper, bringing her mouth closer. Her coconut scent is strong, overpowering. As usual, her lips are moist, and they're beckoning mine. “You're going to be thinking about my tongue inside you for the rest of the day, and tonight, when you cuddle up to your wife. And then, when the fantasy and memories aren't enough, you'll come back to me for the real thing.”
I don't have time to respond because Sandra joins us just as Angel finishes speaking.
“Everything all right over here?” she asks, looking at both of us in turn. I notice that the look she throws Angel's way is more glare than anything else.
“Everything's dandy.” Angel beams, then bounds off to rejoin my father and Emily.
“What?” I say beneath Sandra's gaze. I hate it when she looks at me like this. She's got that whole teacher thing done to a T.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Don't play dumb with me, Nikki. I interrupted something, and I didn't like the look of it.”
“It was nothing, all right. Leave it.”
She stares at me, her frown deepening. “And I certainly don't like the sound of that.”
“Sandra, we were talking. What else would it be?”
“It looked a lot like someone forgot that they were married, and that this isn't 2008 anymore.”
I roll my eyes at her, tut impatiently. “I'm going to find my wife.”
“Yeah, you do that,” she calls after me.
“That was nice. I needed that,” Faye says when she enters our bedroom that night, soaking wet from head to toe from her shower. “Should I be aching this much after literally only sitting on my backside for ten hours straight?”
“Welcome to my world,” I laugh. I'm already in bed. I watch her towel-dry her hair. She does everything so serenely, I could watch her do anything and be content.
“Have I told you how proud I am of you?”
“Only a dozen times. I never get tired of he
aring it though.”
“So what's the final count on the book sales? Can I start yacht-shopping in the morning?”
She chortles. “Two hundred and twenty-seven, that's hardly yacht money.”
“Wow, that's impressive. At this rate Mama Kitchen will be a household name. Just don't forget me when Hollywood comes a-knocking.”
When she's finished drying herself and is dressed for bed, she crawls in beside me, and I put aside my book. She snuggles up to me, smelling fresh and sweet. My phone vibrates on my nightstand, signaling that a text has come through.
“It was really nice that your father and Angelique made it today.”
Just hearing Faye mention her name puts me on edge. “Yeah, it was,” I say with little enthusiasm.
“You know, speaking of Hollywood, Angelique mentioned in passing that one of her clients is the wife of this hotshot TV producer. Said he's always looking for new shows, and that I should pitch a cooking show to him. With my modest following, I might actually stand a chance.”
“I didn't know you wanted anything like that,” I say, gawking at her. It's the first I've heard her talk about wanting to branch out. She doesn't even watch TV, thinks it's soulless and banal, her exact words. “I get the feeling this is Angelique putting crazy ideas into your head.”
“Well that didn't sound at all condescending.” Although she says it in a joky way, the sentiment comes through. Are we seriously on the verge of arguing about Angel again?
“Look, I'm sorry, honey, I just...I think she's full of hot air. Don't go getting your hopes up, is all I'm saying.” I press my lips to her forehead and leave them there for a while.
“It was just a thought.” I know she's trying her hardest not to sound too disappointed, but I can hear it in her voice, and it makes me feel like the biggest douchebag in the state. She gets up. “Do you want some water? I'm getting some for myself.”
She leaves to get us both a glass of water, and I check my phone, wondering who in the world could be texting me at this hour. It's from a number I don't recognize; however, as soon as I read the message's contents, I know exactly who the sender is.