The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5)

by Nicole Strycharz

  “We need to talk.”

  “Not tonight. Tomorrow,” I dictated.

  “You need to understand—”

  “I do,” I put my earrings down and then undid my choker. “I understand more than you know.”

  He came close to me as I lifted each foot to unclip my heels. He touched my hair, and I stopped, letting him investigate the change. “You cut it?”

  “Yes.”

  I leaned away when he tried to touch me again. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said again.

  He retreated, eventually even went to bed, as far from Kendrick as possible.

  I put one of my hoodies over my dress and went downstairs to work. Even though it was three in the morning, I needed something to do. So, I washed my face and started restoring a China tea set from the thirties.

  Another hour went by, and my phone lit with a text. It was from Lorenzo.

  “I’m outside.”

  Two little words that helped me to breathe again. I left my workspace and pushed my feet into sneakers I kept by the door.

  Going outside, I saw him straddling his bike, where it’s parked two houses down.

  As I walked to him, he got up, put down the brake. The set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, I knew he planned to kiss me. I wanted it. I needed it. I started to cry because if he didn’t, I felt I might die never knowing what it is to be loved by him, but just as we collide, he held my face and resisted.

  “We can’t,” he reminded us like before. “We can’t, we can’t,” he fumed.

  “I know,” I found a measure of satisfaction in his breath against my face.

  He folded me in his arms, and we held each other for a time. He’s never hugged me, his own way of safeguarding his own heart. He’s let me hug him, he’s been sturdy as a tree with deepest roots, but he’s never used his arms, never held me like this.

  “How is Ruby?” I asked into his shoulder.

  “She’s awake. She woke up an hour ago,” he let go to see me. “Asking for Noah.”

  I broke for him. “I’m sorry.”

  He held out his hands. “Why? This is what it will always be.”

  “Will it?” I hugged myself, suddenly exasperated. “You know… cheating is wrong, but it’s still a fifty-fifty blame, isn’t it?”

  “How?”

  “You don’t ever wonder how it happened? I have. Some of my theories were stupid, that I wasn’t pretty enough, or I wasn’t exciting enough. That was just my insecurity. But there were things missing on my end. I wasn’t passionate, I was perfect. Too perfect. I expected perfect from Noah and perfect is boring. It’s pressure. I wanted him to be honest, but did I give him a reason to? His wrongs are his own, and I’m not justifying what he did, but I’m not perfect. No one is. Why would he tell his perfect wife that he had partners before our marriage? Why would he admit to a mistake one night with Ruby? I’m that silver yardstick of expectations that aren’t realistic, and my faith made me arrogant with it. I had an arrogance that would have been hard to live with.”

  Lorenzo tried to disassemble my argument. “You’re arrogant for never cheating and expecting the same?”

  “I’m arrogant for thinking I’m above it, and that he should be too.” I swallowed. “No one is above it under the right circumstances. Put Lark or your brother Rocco, or my Reverend in front of me and I know I’m faithful to Noah. But you… It’s taking every ounce of self-control that I possess not to beg you to touch me. When we were at the lake, when we danced tonight… We’re resisting, but for how long?”

  “You don’t want to see me again,” he guessed.

  “I can’t.”

  He walked away, not far but enough to hurt me. “Why?”

  “Because I’ll fail. I have to try and mend this now that the lies are exposed. I never should have waited this long, you tried to tell me that, I didn’t listen. I should have confronted Noah that first night.”

  Lorenzo faced me from where he stood down the sidewalk. “Why?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I came to him. “There are two reasons. One, I can’t leave my husband for someone else. It’s not the way any relationship should end. If we started something from the ashes of this mess, would we be happy? You want to sneak and lie like them? Be paranoid like them? That’s not who you and I are.”

  I was glad he didn’t fight me, but I knew he would this time, “And… because you are always going to love Ruby or that building more than me.”

  His eyes seemed black from anger. “She—”

  “She’s your wife, and you should. But she doesn’t love you. Not the right way. It’s sick love because she knows that no matter what she does or how she cuts at you, that you’ll be there. There to take it, there to bleed. And you let her because you don’t mind the abuse. And because you’ll lose the restaurant if you do.”

  “It’s not just a restaurant.”

  “Yes, it is!”

  “You have no legacy, you don’t know the responsibility, you have nothing like this in your family or in your blood!”

  I laughed incredulously. “Yes, Lorenzo! In your family, in your blood! Not that damn brick and mortar! You, you are the legacy, not that place. You’re stubborn. Ruby is wrong about gutting the soul from Cibo Degli Dei. People come for the culture but expanding wasn’t wrong. That was thinking bigger. That was something your father and your father’s father would have done if they had the resources.”

  He was shaking his head at me, his stupid pride becoming an entity between us.

  “What truly will destroy the legacy?” I asked him. “Moving to a bigger space? Or having sandstone replaced by metal, brick replaced by steel, warm candles replaced by fluorescent, paintings of Italy and her vineyards that were made by your Nonna, replaced by photography of food—” at his look, I lifted my brows. “Yeah, I know your Nonna painted them herself, to remember home.” I squeezed in a breath. “The name Taste of Italy? Making your place a cheap joke for Americans, just another junk place claiming authenticity.” I panted with my fury. “The building isn’t worth the soul of Cibo Degli Dei, and it sure as hell isn’t worth yours.”

  He looked in my eyes from across the distance left.

  “I held your past in my hands,” I cried. “Each picture, each story, all spoken in your native tongue, by your grandmother. No, I don’t have a legacy of my own.” I pressed my hands to my stomach, “I probably will never mother one either…” That admission killed me again. “But I was adopted by yours and I love and respect it more than anything.”

  Seeing me break, he came for me again, walking me back against the small space between houses, until my back pressed to the neighbor’s house. He held my face again and pressed our cheeks together. Then, with trembling hands, larger than my face, he dug his fingers into the sides of my hair and shook me a little. “Where the fuck was you? Huh?” His voice wavered, tearing me apart. “Where were you twelve years ago, Lydia?”

  I wept, holding his wrist as he shook me again almost painfully.

  “You were meant for me,” he said, certainty in his tone. “Me,” he repeated.

  I nodded, knowing he was right.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  NOAH

  When Ruby called me, asking to meet three months after the accident, I was supposed to say no. Lydia had given me a second chance.

  Couples counseling.

  A trip to the country for a week.

  Talking.

  We were trying to repair the damage.

  I was trying to be a better person.

  But when Ruby called, it wasn’t with a sultry message, and the location for our meet up wasn’t a hotel or an empty house. It was a coffee shop.

  What she told me, was no different than handing me a grenade without a pin.

  LYDIA

  Noah paced in front of me.

  I was sitting on the couch in our living room with Kendrick in my lap. I was dressed for services since this was Sunday, so was Noah, but he was nervous. He stopped and looked
at me.

  He was about to speak but then he looked at my clothes. “Are you wearing that to church?”

  I continued to pet Kendrick, who kept narrowed eyes on Noah. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s pretty, the color is nice, but in sunlight, I would be able to see through it.”

  I looked down at myself. My dress was apricot and buttoned all the way down, with a collar.

  “Also, the hem is a little…” he pointed.

  I’m wearing hosiery but my knees are showing when I sit. Somewhere between now and three months ago, I lost track of what’s considered inappropriate. Noah frequently reminds me.

  I flicked my much shorter braid back. “I’ll put a shorter slip on.”

  “Right,” he smiled warmly and nodded, then rubbed down his beard. “I need to tell you something and… I don’t know how you’ll handle it.”

  Having nothing to say, I waited.

  “Please don’t think I was dishonest again. I did go see Ruby, but not to…”

  His words had no sway over my facial expressions.

  He knelt in front of me and Kendrick growled.

  “Lydia, when I had the accident, right before I hit the other car…Ruby was trying to tell me something.”

  I thought about that night. The other drivers were okay, but we were hit hard financially by Noah’s mistake. When the judge found out he was out with his mistress, he threw the book at Noah for reckless driving, for endangering lives, even Ruby’s.

  I sat up and itched behind Kendrick’s ears. “What did she say?”

  “I didn’t hear her, then. When we met up yesterday, she told me.” He held my knees. “She’s pregnant.”

  My heart slowed drastically.

  “It’s mine.” He said. “She and Lorenzo haven’t been together.”

  Hearing that offered me some morbid joy, but it was short-lived.

  “She’s having your baby?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. We tried for so long—”

  This means I’m the problem. If he managed to get Ruby pregnant when they were being careful, but we weren’t, then… my body is the fault. The hollow feeling in my gut, that had been there since I sent Lorenzo away, spread through my body. I couldn’t feel more worthless.

  “What does all this mean?” I pressed.

  He massages my calves. “I don’t know. She asked me what I want. She’s twelve weeks along, she’s keeping it no matter what. She just wants to know if I want to be involved.”

  “Do you?”

  “I want us to be involved,” he put it in a most convincing voice. “This could be our chance at parenthood. We haven’t… had sex since before you miscarried. I don’t ever want to push you, I have to earn your trust back, I know that. But, maybe this way… we could—”

  “You want me to mother the product of your affair on the weekends you have him or her?” I simplified it.

  He didn’t like my delivery. “I want to be a team and do it together.”

  “What about you and Ruby? It won’t be tempting to be in contact with her?” That was a trick question because I’ve cut Lorenzo from my life, knowing the temptation would overwhelm me.

  “That’s the other thing…” he continued. “She and Lorenzo… they are in the final stages of divorce,” he informed me.

  My heart inflated, unable to believe what I was hearing.

  “He filed the same week of the accident.”

  “But,” a dawn rose in my soul. “What about his restaurant?”

  “That little Italian place?” he asked? So naïve to the importance of that little Italian place. “Well, her dad owns most of it. I think it’s shut down.”

  I blinked to clear my head.

  He did it.

  He separated, lost his place, and moved forward.

  “Lydia,” he returned me to the moment. “With Ruby almost divorced, I do feel something. A kind of question in my head. I want to keep trying with you, I want us to work. I want to be where we were a couple of years ago. I love you. I still love you. But if we don’t get better, if we don’t make this happen, then…”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You’re not really trying, Lydia. You aren’t open with me, you don’t try to be warm, you don’t even let me hold you at night. Even when we went away. If it keeps on like this, then… I am going to pray on whether we should keep trying to save what we have or if I should…”

  Go with Ruby. That’s what he wasn’t saying.

  Go with the woman that can give him children and make him happy, that’s what he wasn’t saying.

  I went upstairs after our talk and put on a slip. I also put on a sweater.

  On the drive to church, I sat in the driver’s seat and tried to pick apart my life for answers. My foot slid on an envelope. Bending to get it, Noah glanced my way. “That’s the bill from the marriage counselor, I forgot to bring in the mail.”

  I nodded. “Okay. You can put it in my purse,” I offered. Our marriage counselor, the poor woman. She must have a love for hopeless cases.

  “It’s getting expensive,” he shared.

  I held the top of my seatbelt. “We knew it would be.”

  “You didn’t want the church elders to do it for us, forcing us to hire—”

  “I don’t want them in our business. They aren’t neutral, they pick sides. How are we supposed to fix if we each have fan bases?”

  “And I respect your choice,” he reached over and touched my knee again. I shifted so that my knees pointed toward my door, making him take his hand back. “But I was thinking…” his tone became stern, upset that I hadn’t let him touch me for long. “I think we should sell some of the toys,” he said with some remorse. “Not many, just enough—”

  “My toys?”

  “The ones you restore,” he said like it was obvious. “Those things are antiques, it’s a small fortune in that room. I looked some of them up.”

  I shook my head. “They aren’t for sale.”

  “But I put a couple of pictures on eBay, and you won’t believe the response.”

  I pulled my neck back and looked at him. “You put my work on the internet?”

  “I would never sell without talking to you, I just wanted to see how it works. Be able to explain it to you.”

  I sat straight and looked ahead, even as he whispered for me to listen. The car felt like a coffin.

  What kind of wife doesn’t sacrifice to help her husband? What’s missing in me that I refuse to do this? Would I have given up the contents of my toy room for him years ago? Without a second thought. Would I do it now? Never. “Noah, no.”

  “We’re in financial trouble, what don’t you get? Things are tight and we could lose the house.”

  I shook my head. “You put us in financial trouble when you crashed the car into another man’s extremely expensive foreign car, had your license revoked for the speed, plus taking out a street sign, and then having to buy a new car.”

  “We’re a couple, we share each other’s burdens, that’s what couples do. But you don’t know what it means to support someone.”

  I squeezed the wheel, my knuckles blanching. “I don’t support you?”

  “If you did, being part of my child’s life, wouldn’t be something you have to think about. You’re hesitating because it means dealing with Ruby. A woman you hate but never met.”

  “That’s true, I’m sure we have a lot in common, we both saw a future with you,” I shrugged. “Perhaps instead of fighting it, we should all live in one big tent, like in Bible times. And whenever the night comes, we can flip a coin to see which of your women get the lucky treat of sleeping with you.”

  “That’s disgusting, you’re being wicked instead of talking it out like the counselor said.”

  “I am talking it out. You want me to sell my hard work to help get you out of a debt hole you acquired while joyriding with your mistress. Then you want me to agree to raise your love child, the ultimatum being that if I sa
y no, you’ll consider leaving me for her.”

  “I never said that.”

  I parked at our church. “Is it hard?” I asked in the silence, car engine off, and no music or sound at all. “Always being the one in the right? Never being the guilty one? Always being the victim?” I set my head back and looked at him. “Even with your father, you play at being treated unfairly. Maybe one day, you’ll rise above it.”

  “A lot of people get past cheating,” he schooled me. “There are couples in our church that have, why can’t we?”

  I thought about it. He’s right, even Lorenzo managed to overcome it for many years. “I think it can be gotten past,” I agreed. “Maybe when it’s a one-time mistake. Not when the person who cheated falls in love with someone else.”

  He unbuckled and got out.

  I went into the church in a funk. Before the service started, I set out the cookies I made the night before, and Sara came to help me.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I’ve seen better days.” I smiled. “You look pretty.”

  She grinned and turned so I could see her dress. It was tweed, stopping above the knee and showing a very minimal hint of cleavage. Not that she’s trying to show any. She just happens to be more blessed than most. “You like?”

  “I do, it’s very classy. Almost like Audrey Hepburn.”

  “That’s what I thought, too!” She laughed. “Still got called a slut, though.”

  I frowned. “By who?”

  She laughed again. “What’s her face. The one with the big nose.”

  “Kate? The treasurer’s wife’s cousin?”

  “Yeah, they were talking about me when I came in, never seen them spook like they did when they realized I was so close,” she nudged me with her elbow to make me laugh, but I didn’t.

  “It’s not funny, Sara. That’s wrong.”

  “So?”

  “So, they should be told. Gossip is wrong and slander is wrong.”

  “Meh,” she snuck a cookie and ate it. “I don’t care, I’m not here for them. I’m here to learn about the big man upstairs. That and to hang out with you. I think you’re why He sent me here.”

  I balled up the clingwrap. “He’s cruel, then. To have you come to a church that’s going to peck at you for being pretty.”