by Amy Brent
“So, who’s the lucky guy?”
“Mark.”
No reason to try and sugarcoat it. No matter when the truth came out, there would be a reaction.
Sharon frowned. “I don’t remember any Mark. Does he study with us?”
I shook my head. “Not a student Mark. A grownup Mark.”
I watched her mind tick, running through all the Mark’s we knew. Her eyes widened slightly and I knew she’d landed on the right one. I nodded a confirmation.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell is wrong with you?”
This was the first time she’d asked me that. I heard that sentence often.
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
She snorted. “A classic case of you slipped and he fell?”
I rolled my eyes at her sarcasm. It wasn’t necessary.
“Don’t be a bitch right now, okay? I’m stuck.”
She snorted again and I could almost taste the next snarky comment but she didn’t say it and I breathed out in relief. The truth was I was starting to fall for Mark and it scared the shit out of me. I needed another perspective and Sharon – on the days she chose – could really be a voice of reason.
“I know you think this is all wrong, but the story isn’t exactly what you think.”
She raised her eyebrows and folded her arms. So tell me, her face said. I explained to her about Marina and her lover, about Mark and how lonely he’s been not just after the affair but while he was married, too.
“So, you thought it would be noble to keep him company?”
I sighed. “Can you please just push aside the fact that he’s twice my age—”
“And married.”
“Yeah… and married. And just treated this like every other screwed up relationship I’ve had?”
Sharon shrugged with one shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was consent or indifference.
“The truth is that I really like him. I’m falling for him. He’s different. But he’s a billionaire with a life he built himself and I’m just a student. Why would he like me? Why would he go for me?”
“I don’t know.” Sharon’s voice was neutral. “You might want to be careful, but it has happened before that men were genuine. It can happen again.”
I picked at my thumbnail. “I am pregnant with his child, after all.”
“But that happened before the sex, not after.”
I nodded. “I know. And it’s also not my baby. It’s hers.” I covered my face with my hands. “God, this is so complicated.” My voice was muffled through my fingers.
“Why don’t you go and talk to him about it? You deserve an answer if you ask him the question. He can’t just leave you hanging, if he does you’ll know, anyway, but you still need to see him. And his wife.”
“She’s not his ex, yet.”
“She might never be.”
I hadn’t thought about that. When he’d told me she’d moved out I’d assumed it was over. Us having sex had made me feel like it was final. I hadn’t thought about the fact that he might take her back for the baby’s sake, that it might be nothing more than a one-nighter to get it out of his system. Shit.
“Stop worrying about it,” Sharon ordered. “You can’t overthink this until you speak to him.”
“And I can’t speak to him until after the test series or I’ll fail them all. Especially if it goes south.”
She nodded. I was being reasonable.
“Can I ask you something?”
I looked up at her and nodded. Her eyes sparkled and a smile spread over her face. “What was he like? In bed?”
I smiled, too. “Oh, my God, Sharon. He’s older, so he knows what he’s doing. I mean… hell. He really knows what he’s doing. It was fantastic.”
I swallowed, trying to get rid of the insecurities that were creeping in. Had I been good in bed? Had I left him just as satisfied as he’d left me? Was this something he would do again? Was it something I would let happen again? Did I have to stop it?
I shook off the questions and focused on Sharon, giving her details, telling her enough to satisfy her curiosity without sacrificing my or Mark’s dignity. It distracted me from all the questions, the doubts, the insecurity. It distracted me from a future that was unsure.
Mark
I couldn’t get her off my mind. Legs that went on forever, caramel skin that tasted just as sweet. Her eyes, boring into mine, encouraging me to bare it all. Her mouth, mesmerizing into wanting to kiss her whenever she spoke about something interesting, which was all the time.
I should have thought about what I was doing. I was nervous I’d taken it too far. I knew what I felt for her but I had no idea if she felt the same for me.
And she was pregnant with my child. With my and Marina’s child. Had I done something terrible?
It was difficult to see something that had been so spectacular as something terrible. I hadn’t felt like that with a woman since… I wasn’t actually sure if I’d ever felt that way around a woman. I knew for a fact Marina had never made me feel that way, which was just another reason on the pile of why I shouldn’t be with her. I’d been trying my damn best to make her happy, to be the model husband, to give her everything her heart desired.
It was just a pity her heart didn’t desire me. That hurt. It had stung like a bitch when I’d come back after catching the two of them in bed and she’d sat on the couch, her makeup in place, her hair perfect, her voice, her eyes, pleading.
I’d kicked her out. I couldn’t stand the look of her. She was nothing like the woman I’d married. I felt tricked and betrayed, not just by the affair but by our entire marriage.
I drew my thoughts back to Camille. She deserved them, not Marina. Not now. She was a point of light in a life that had become increasingly dark. She’d made me realize what it was like to be happy again, and that it wasn’t wrong to want that. I needed her to know how I felt about her. I needed her to understand that this wasn’t just about sex.
I called her. I was scared she wouldn’t answer. She’d left without saying goodbye.
“Do you want to come over tonight?” I asked. “Just to talk, to spend time together.” No sex, I wanted her to understand. She hesitated.
“I can’t see you until after my tests,” she said. My heart plummeted.
“Are you upset?”
“Not at all.” She was quiet to respond there and it made me feel better. “I’m not upset at all. But I need to pass these tests to get into the exam and I can’t afford a distraction.” She paused before adding on with a smile in her voice, “and you’re a very big distraction.”
When we ended the conversation I felt better. She didn’t hate me. She didn’t think I was the scum of the earth. At least, she was very good at pretending, if that was the case. I didn’t see her as the kind of person to lie about it, though. She seemed straight forward, open, uncomplicated. A big distraction, she’d called me. A compliment.
Dusk started falling when the intercom buzzed. I walked to the television that was linked to all the cameras that monitored the place. Marina stood outside, the door of her Gold Mercedes open, the lights on.
“Can we talk?”
I wanted to tell her to go away. I didn’t want to let her in. But the sooner I got it over with, the better. I opened the gate and walked to the front door. My stomach turned to stone, nerves settling inside of me like they were going to stay. I didn’t want to talk to her. I never wanted to see her again.
I opened the door and she stopped in front of me. Was she expecting a kiss? When I didn’t move she carried on, moving deeper into the house. She sat down in her usual spot on the couch as if I was the one that was going to be interviewed, not her.
I sat down in my usual spot, too. I realized that our usual seats hadn’t been on the same couch for a long time.
“Why did you come?”
She looked hurt. “Is it wrong for a woman to come home to her husband?”
I shrugged. “Is it wrong to sleep with her ferti
lity doctor in her marriage bed?”
She cringed away as if I’d physically struck her. Her eyes welled with tears.
“I made a mistake. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?”
I thought about our marriage, how devoted I’d been to Marina. I thought about Camille, the way she’d looked so perfect on my bed, naked, wanting. I shook my head.
“I’ve never made a mistake like that. This wasn’t a white lie or a forgotten anniversary, for God’s sake.”
She nodded, looking at her hands. Her nails were freshly done. My money. I was going to stop her cards.
“I wanted to fix this between us, Mark. I want us to be how we used to be.”
Before she’d become a bitch or before she’d had the affair? Those didn’t happen at the same time. I shook my head.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to do that. I don’t trust you anymore.” I wanted to add that I should never have, but I didn’t. That would have been cruel. I didn’t want to be cruel, only realistic.
“Please, Mark. You can’t just give up on us now. We have a baby on the way. What about the baby? Do this for the baby if not for me.”
We didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. Neither Camille or I went to the doctor’s meeting.
“I’m sorry, Marina, but everything has changed. I can’t do this.”
She tried to plead a little longer. When that didn’t work, she changed tactics.
“You have someone else, then?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s rich, coming from you. I wasn’t the one that had the affair with the one person we were both supposed to be able to trust, to confide in to build our lives together.”
“But you’re used to whoring around. Before you met me, that’s all you did.”
I was getting angry. She knew exactly how to push my buttons. That was what happened when you lived with someone, married someone, shared your life with someone. You got to know them well enough to know where you could hit them, where it really hurt.
“My life before you and after you are two very different things. I gave up my lifestyle for you.”
“But that didn’t stop you from falling straight into bed with another whore, did it?”
“Camille is not a whore.”
Shit. The words had slipped out, our back and forth had gotten faster and faster. Marina’s face changed from shock to a sly grin.
“I knew it. I know who you really are, Mark. You can’t hide it with fancy suits and cars and that billion watt smile of yours.”
She was hurting me and she knew it.
“A child of all things. She’s barely an adult, and you want to tell me she’s not a whore? What could she possibly see in you? Or you in her?”
She’d stunned me, but not for long.
“I care more for her than I ever cared for you.” Let her take that however, she wanted. She paled a little but she bounced back quick. That was one of the upsides of being Marina. Her skin was thick and her tongue was sharp.
“Don’t play games with me, Mark. Jealousy won’t win me over. I’m not going to run back to you just because I feel like I have competition.”
I nodded. “Good. That saves me the trouble of having to get rid of you over and over again.”
She opened her mouth to say something but she had nothing and snapped it shut again. For a moment I felt guilty. I was being hard on her. I was hurting her. I wanted to apologize but then I saw those dark brown hands on her light skin again, the sheet clutched to the chest he’d been starting at openly, and I swallowed my regrets.
Marina stood up. Her heels clacked on the marble tiles all the way to the front door.
“You’ll hear from my lawyer, Mark. The baby is mine and you know, as the woman, I’ll win I court. If you want to play dirty, so can I.”
I followed her to the front door. I watched her climb into her car. She started it with a huff, flicking her hair over her shoulder. I was tired. Exhausted.
I still loved her. On some level, I supposed I would for a long time, still. But so much of me had been bruised and become callous as a result of constant battering it was hard for me to reconcile the woman she was now with the woman she had been before. It was hard for me to find a reason to feel like I should fix it with her. It was hard to care about what happened to her at all.
She reversed out of the yard and sped off. I could hear her engine whining for a long time after the gate had rolled shut. I turned around and walked back into the house that felt miserable and empty. It was easy to get rid of someone that had hurt you. It was hard to filter through all the emotions that had built up through the years, to see the house you’d shared as a place of your own again. A place where you could be yourself without being judged for it.
Her comment about the whores rolled around my mind and I struggled to silence it. It was true, I’d lived the bachelor’s life before her. But I had been a bachelor. There wasn’t another choice. I had changed everything for her when we’d gotten married, even who I was.
That had been the mistake. Maybe we’d gone into this all wrong. I’d gone into the relationship thinking Marina would never change, but she did. And she’d gone into the relationship expecting I would change, and I never did. Maybe it was just a bad match and too long trying to make something work that had been doomed to fail all along.
Or maybe I was being nice and giving her too much credit when, in the end, she was the one that had forced it until it broke.
Camille
Three tests in two weeks and I had six more to go. Some of the subjects had double-barrel tests and I had to get through all of them. I hadn’t slept for than two hours a night for the past six nights and I was running on coffee and willpower.
After the test series, I was going to sleep for a week. The fact that I was pregnant made it all the more difficult. I ran low on energy very quickly. I was sleepy often. I had to pee all the time, even during my tests where I had to hold it, or when I really couldn’t I had to be escorted by a moderator to make sure I wasn’t just cheating in the toilet stall.
I was hungry all the time, and besides my belly that kept growing I was pretty sure I was picking up weight. A little more than five months to go. I hadn’t even reached the halfway mark, yet.
Sometimes when I walked on campus students did a double take. I knew they were speculating about my pregnancy, whether it was real or if I’d just picked up a lot of weight. I knew that there were those who said I was saying it was a surrogacy just to cover up for the fact that my pregnancy was an accident.
I knew that I didn’t really care, either. My real friends knew the truth and believed me for the most part, and the most important thing was that I was going to pay off my degree and make my mama proud. That was all that mattered to me at this point.
I would go through life without a single friend as long as mama was still on my side.
I sat down on a bench. I was halfway between the dorm and college campus and I was heaving and sweating. My bag felt ridiculously heavy. I found a bottle of water and drank at least half of it. Sure, it would make me have to pee again, but it was the lesser of two evils at this point.
Other students were already heading toward class. I could see them in the distance, a range of bags in every color, hair styles and clothes that defined student life. I was happy here, even though at the moment I felt like an outcast.
After ten minutes of catching my breath, I had to get up and keep moving. I was already late for class.
“Camille,” a voice said behind me and I turned. Marina stood under the tree, her feet together in her nude heels, her dress suit pristine and her hair and nails perfectly manicured. She was much older but she still looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. A pang of guilt shot into my chest. I’d slept with her husband. I hadn’t even hesitated when I realized that was where he was heading.
“How are you, Marina? I haven’t heard from you in a while?” I forced a smile and walked closer to her. My fingers were trembling but
I clutched onto my bag to hide it. “The baby is doing well.”
She smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and looked at my belly.
“Thank God it’s you, imagine that happening to my body.”
The insult jabbed at me and my smile faltered.
“Is there something I can help you with? I’m late for class.”
She shook her head, glanced in the direction of the other students that were thinning out now that classes had already started.
“Oh, no. Nothing you can do to fix this, really. I was just wondering why you thought it wouldn’t come out that you’re sleeping with my husband.”
Blood drained from my face and turned to ice in my veins. My stomach turned and I couldn’t breathe.
“It was a mistake, Marina. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
She shrugged. “You see, it’s very hard for me to believe you when he tells me how much he feels for you and how little he cares for me.”
When she looked at me again she looked different. She was still composed as ever on the outside but her eyes were manic and her mouth was curled into a sneer rather than a smile.
“I’m sorry, Marina.”
“I don’t believe you.” She laughed. I shook my head, held up my hands defense. I’d made such a mistake. I should have stopped it when he came onto me. I should have done something about it. I’d known it was wrong but I’d been overcome by emotion, by how much he’d cared for me.
“I never meant for this to happen. It was a mistake, a stupid mistake. In fact, I think that he was just trying to forget that he’d lost you. You know he loves you, you know how much it hurt him that he’d lost you.”
She shook her head while I was talking. I was panicking. Rambling and panicking. I said anything that came to mind just to make it all better. I was young and stupid and I should have thought about what I was doing before just falling into bed with him. Maybe he was getting back together with her and they could have their baby and I would disappear forever.