by Piper Knox
I shook my head and was about to say something, but that made them even angrier.
“Ask your husband, you dumb twat,” Kailey said, “I’m sure he will tell you, now that you two are on good terms.”
Caiden? I was about to inquire further when Mya cut into our conversation with an announcement, “Okay everyone, get into teams.” She came over to us and said, “you three plus Ax and Dana?”
I didn’t have time to object. The other three reluctantly nodded. And like that, we were a team. This should not be hard, I told myself. I could do this. We used to be friends, after all.
“Are you good at volleyball?” Dana asked when she came to stand next to me.
I wasn’t. The last time I played was in high school gym class. But how hard could it be? “Yes.”
“And I don’t mean through cheating, I mean genuinely.”
Everyone around us laughed. Nice one, Dana. I looked up over to the other side of the net. Caiden raised his head at the sound of laughter and our eyes met. He looked away. I was alone in this, it seems.
We got into our positions. Mya hit a ball towards me. I missed and fell down.
Dana took it as an opportunity to throw in another dig, “I hope you’re not drunk yet. It’s only one o’clock.”
More laughter.
I picked myself up, “Aren’t you supposed to be trash talking the other team?”
“Oh, come on Hailey,” Ax said, “it’s just us having fun.”
The game restarted. Our team was doing terribly. Mostly due to me. I was the weakest link, and all the balls were being thrown in my direction. Ax had resorted to taking them himself if he could. I didn’t fail to notice that some of those balls were coming from Caiden. If the man was trying to kill me with volleyballs, he was surely close to succeeding.
Another ball came for me. I tried to hit it and send the ball back to the other side with a punch. I succeeded, but then stumbled, crashed into a body, felt a sharp scratch on my toe and tumbled to the ground. There was a squeal, and I saw Dana lying next to me.
She was rolling on in the sand. Everyone rushed to ask if she was okay. She was holding her foot, wailing in pain. Wailing a little too dramatic if you ask me, “Why did you push me,” she said glaring at me.
I didn’t push her. I barely touched her. But maybe I had, I was not sure. “I didn’t push you.”
“Can’t you simply apologize?” Sophie's eyes were accusatory. She rushed over to her friend.
“But I didn’t touch her. She was—” I felt the pain throb at the top of my toe and I couldn’t finish my sentence. I glanced down. Blood was gushing out of my big toenail.
“Hailey?” Caiden was glaring at me with an accusatory stare as well. I didn’t do anything. Dana on the other hand was wailing on the ground with her hand on her ankle. Someone had given her an ice pack which she was now applying on her foot. It didn’t seem like much had happened to her, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with the way she was squirming and the way everyone had gathered around her. Meanwhile, I was in blistering pain. It felt wrong to say I had hurt my foot too.
“I’m sorry.” I said in a low voice. Caiden rushed over to Dana and carried her into the house. The game was over after that.
8
The ride back home was excruciating. I didn’t want to spend any more time next to her than I wanted to. I took off my eyes off the road and momentarily glanced at her. She had her arms crossed against her chest and her lips pouted as she stared outside the passenger side window.
“What you did was childish.”
She scoffed.
“It’s not funny.”
“What she did was childish. I didn’t push her. She was trying to gain your attention and clearly it worked.”
“You seem more bothered that I got her attention.”
She glared back at me, “I don’t care about whatever you two did or still do.”
“That doesn’t sound like someone who’s not jealous at all.”
“I thought we both agreed not to have affairs inside the marriage.”
“We did. And I’m not having any.” She was back to staring outside the window. Her arms were still crossed against her chest, pushing up her breasts. I wanted to laugh. If I was sleeping with Dana or anyone else, I wouldn’t be fighting the feeling I had right now of wanting to stop this car and dive into her delectably presented breasts.
Three weeks of living with her had done nothing to cool any latent feelings I had for her. If anything, they had flared up. The ironic thing was that, though she was constantly proving that she was the awful person I knew her to be, I was feeling more attracted to her despite of her deeds, not less. Everything about her, her body, her face, the way her hair was bellowing against the wind right now made my cock hard. And it made me hate her more. Instead of focusing on the subject at hand, I was thinking about positions I could get her in, in this car. Get it together, Caiden.
I cleared my throat, “You’re going to apologize to Dana.” I made it sound like a resolute statement and not a request, so she could tell I was serious.
She didn’t turn towards me this time. She merely muttered, “I already did.”
“She sprained her ankle. The least you can do is offer a proper apology.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Do whatever you want Hailey, but if you continue to agitate my friends, I will end up doing something about it.”
She gave me an incredulous look.
“What’s so surprising?”
“That you and Dana are friends. I never thought the day would come.”
“Not everyone saw her as an object of ridicule.”
“I didn’t mean… It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Hailey.”
“Oh, fuck you.” She whipped out her phone and began tapping and swiping furiously on it. I took it as a sign that conversation had ended. We drove on in silence.
Nate and Mya shouldn’t have thrown it. I shouldn’t have accepted. Hailey always was a destructive presence, and today she had shown that she was nothing more than a spoiled, infantile princess who, it still seems, liked to have fun at the expense of others.
When we got back home, I was ready to get away from her and shut myself in my study when I saw as we both got out of the car, that Hailey was limping. I shouldn’t care. I should let it go. If she had gotten hurt too, then it was karma, right? Except, when we were both in the elevator, I couldn’t help but notice that she was leaning heavily on her one leg. I looked down at her flip-flop-clad feet and saw that it was bleeding. The spoiled princess herself hadn’t made peep when she got hurt. I shouldn’t care. I really shouldn’t care. When the elevator doors opened, however, I took her into my arms and lifted her off her feet.
She squealed and squirmed in my arms. “What the hell?” she said.
9
"Why didn’t you tell me?”
I was so shocked when he scooped me up, I barely processed his question. One moment I was pretending to text on my phone, the next my feet were dangling and I was leaning into his chest.
“Tell you what?” I said.
Instead of answering, the second we entered the apartment, he went straight to the downstairs bathroom and dropped me on the counter. He opened the bottom cabinet and fished out a first-aid kit. I watched him as he gently removed my shoe, took out a gauze from the container, ran it under water and used it to clean my wound.
“That you were hurt?” he said. I had almost forgotten my earlier question.
“You don’t have to do it, it’s a small wound.”
“Don’t be silly,” he mumbled. When he finished cleaning, I could clearly see that half my toenail was gone, “It looks bad, I should call a doctor.”
“No,” I shook my head, “it’s a nail, it will grow back.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. He resumed his task and went to the kit again. He dabbed some disinfectant. I flinched, but he held me down until he
finished the application. Then he put a band-aid on it. “Done,” he said as he pressed on the band-aid, making certain it was firm.
Our heads were so close to each other that when I lifted mine, I almost bumped into his. We both stared at each other. The mood between us had shifted, I noticed. He was standing between my legs and his hand had moved up from my foot to my thigh where he was lightly caressing it.
“Thank you.” I choked out.
We were so close we could kiss. I could lean in now and capture his lips with mine and taste them again. The wedding kiss had been fleeting, but it was on my mind and I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel if we truly kissed. If I kissed him, something told me he wouldn’t refuse. But was I bold enough? No. I couldn’t deal with it if he rebuffed me. I thought of the next best thing that would dispel this unsettling feeling I was having of my husband.
“Kailey and Sophie said something today.”
“About?”
“That I did something to them and I was too drunk to remember, but you’d know.”
I felt him withdraw, and the mood went back to being icy.
“Where do I start? There is so much that you’ve done.”
“Please,” I grabbed his hand, “I need to know.”
He wiggled out of my grasp as if I was diseased. I pressed down the feeling of rejection. “She said you’d tell me. I think it has to do with Sophie’s wedding.”
He frowned, “You really don’t remember?”
I shook my head. “I realize I did something, but what, I can’t recall.”
He sighed. “Of course you can’t. You have a knack of conveniently forgetting the bad things that you do to people you call your friends.”
Why did it feel like he was not referring to Sophie, but to himself? I had given up thinking he didn’t want to tell me and was about to slide down from the counter when he said, “In a nutshell, you ruined her wedding day.” He stared directly at me, “You arrived at the reception late, with a bunch of friends most of whom we didn’t know. You said they were from Europe. Then you tried to get them in, even though they weren’t invited, but because Sophie was your friend, and it was her wedding day, she didn’t want to cause a scene so she let them in.” That part I remember. I had been late, but that was because the flight had been delayed and Marco, a friend of mine, offered use of his private jet, and that took time, which is why I wanted to return the favor by inviting him in. But he had other friends, and they, too, wanted to come…
“God,” disgust flashed over his face, “you were so drunk, I barely recognized you. Clearly you had something else in your system. Anyway, you and your friends, let me see what was first, oh, you high-jacked the microphone, and gave a ‘speech’ where you—”
“Wait, I don’t think—”
“—where you claimed she had been cheating for years with another man. I had to grab the microphone from you after that.”
A foggy memory of me slurring into a microphone and him taking it away from me, flitted in my mind. He had looked as he did now when he had hustled me away, disgusted.
“Then you had your friends destroy her five-tier wedding cake that had cost sixty grand. I took you to my room after that where you promptly passed out. Luckily the cake was in another room and no one saw your antics. I had to play clean-up and get a cake in record time. Some poor baker probably had to work overnight after we bought a ready-made cake that was about to be delivered to another couple.”
I remember waking up in a strange hotel suite that day with cake all over my dress. And Caiden driving me to the airport and told me he never wanted to see me again. “You cleaned up all my mess?”
He shrugged, “Your father was right I guess, I will always be the maid’s son.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For what you did all those years ago.”
“I don’t need your thanks.”
10
“Pack your things.” He said to me one early morning a few weeks after the brunch incident. I was at the breakfast counter eating my cereal in peace when he came rushing in while on a phone call.
“Whatever for?” I was enjoying my cornflakes, and I wasn’t about to get up at his command. The last time he commanded me to go somewhere, I came back with a broken toenail and a huge dose of remorse over what I had done to someone I used to call a friend. I still couldn’t bear to face Sophie and I kept thinking of what I could do to apologize. I had yet to come up with something.
He paced back to where I was and covered his phone, “We’re going to France,” he said and got back to his call. I continued eating my breakfast. He stopped talking and frowned at my food.
“That’s the only—hey, what are you doing!” Without warning, he grabbed my bowl and threw the contents into the sink.
He spoke into his phone with his eyes on me, “Ax, I’ll get back to you later.” To me he said, “Why are you still here?”
“I was eating that!”
“Pack your bag, we will eat on the way.”
I crossed my arms, “I’m not one of your lackeys.”
He sighed, “Hailey, we have to go right now. This morning.”
“You have. Doesn’t mean I have to.”
“Okay what is going on?” He looked exasperated, as if I was about to pull some trick and he was readying himself.
“I can’t merely get up and leave my life whenever you want to. I have commitments.”
“To whom? Saks? Bloomingdale’s?”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny. Bottom line. I’m not going. You didn’t ask.”
He sighed, “Hailey. Can you please pack your things? We need to leave for France this second.”
“No. I have work.”
This time he laughed. He laughed so hard I felt a sting in my eyes. I will not cry, I told myself. I steeled my back and continued with my food.
“Oh. You’re serious. Where is this workplace you go to? Influencer central?”
“Keep doing that and I won’t go with you.”
“Fine. Can you tell your workers or your boss or whatever that you can’t make it today?”
“You seem to not understand that my stuff has more importance than your stuff in my world. I couldn’t care less about France. But I do care about my job.”
“You really are trying to make this hard for me, aren’t you?”
I shrugged and glared at him. He sighed, “Hailey,” his voice was low and deliberate. He enunciated every word, “Can you please come to France with me.”
“See. That’s much better,” I uncrossed my arms across my chest, “why do you want me to come to your business trip so much?”
“There’s a meeting I’m attending. A potential business partner, and it would be better for business if you were there.” He sounded as if the words were being pulled out of his mouth against his will.
“Why would it be better? I thought I was great at destroying things. As you once delicately put.”
He winced, “he likes you,” his voice was low when he said it.
“Excuse me? I didn’t hear that part.” I had, of course. I wanted him to repeat it.
“He likes you! There, I said it. He likes your internet persona or whatever, and he specifically requested that you come.”
It surprised me that anyone from Caiden’s world would know me, or even be a fan. I picked up my phone, “If that’s the case, let me call the office and tell them I can’t make it. Although, you should have given me at least three days’ notice.”
He frowned. “You really do work?”
“Yes,” I said mid text, “I really do have a job.”
“Who do you work for?” The thought of me working was clearly doing a number on him.
“Three months into the marriage, you ask what your wife does?” I looked up at him, “I work for a foundation if you must know.”
“As what? Their social media manager?” I knew it was a dig at me and social media marketing in general, which was a genuine job tha
t deserved to be respected, and I wasn’t going to take the bait.
“Right now, I’m kinda like an intern, but I’m working up to a more permanent position.”
He continued to gawk at me as if I had two heads, trying to square the information I had told him with whatever image of me. His features returned to their usual smirk when he said, “Is that how your family launders its money?”