I’m out of my element, so I offer advice. “Look, there’s a lot of crappy guys out there. It might take a while, but you’ll find a decent one.” She nods, shifting from heel to heel. A lipstick smudge on her collar. Probably one on mine. I feel like a dick. But we both wanted this. Now all I want is to get out of here. A headache starts to pound throbbing between both eyes.
“Are you okay to drive?” I ask.
She nods like she doesn’t trust herself to speak.
I reach out and stroke the side of her cheek. “You are a beautiful girl. Please take care.”
Slowly taking each step one at a time, I head back to my truck. I don’t want her to see the vehicle I get into. I feel her eyes burning holes into the back of my head with every retreating step. I pause at the driver’s side door and steal a glance over my shoulder. Her car’s still there, but she must be in it. I see exhaust coming out of her tailpipe.
My hands grip the steering wheel, and I sit there a minute staring into oblivion. I flip down the visor, look in the mirror. My eyes are bloodshot, pink lipstick on my collar, and I look stunned, the actuality of what just happened. My pants are still unbuttoned, unzipped, my dick covered in our body fluids. I lean my head down on the steering wheel.
And I weep.
17
When I pull into the garage, I’m relieved to see Alastair and Livvie aren’t home yet. I need to take a shower, rid myself of her fragrance, the intoxicating scent I can smell, our sweat and body fluids entangled with my own just like our bodies were.
The guilt is building, the headache pounding as it reaches fever pitch.
I strip my clothes off and hold them in my outstretched hand for a second. Alastair will think it’s weird I’m doing wash tonight. She can’t convince me to do a load on a good day, let alone a Thursday night. I don’t care. I throw my clothes in the washer along with Livvie’s leotards and towels she left on her bathroom floor.
In the shower, I scrub as if the bar of soap can remove her, erase all thoughts of how her body felt pressed against mine, on top of me. I lean against the tiled wall, flashbacks of her moaning, our frenzied pace, as I rub at my skin even harder. I let the warm water soothe my aching limbs, my sore back, sinking into the shower bench to think. There’s no way in hell I can let Alastair find out. It was just one time, I think, one time. It’ll never happen again. She never has to know.
Turning the water off, I dry myself, add the towel to the load in progress, and pad into the kitchen, mindlessly scrubbing the counters waiting for them to arrive.
Livvie’s excited to see me, her face beaming when she walks in. She’s still at the age where she’s my biggest fan, her daddy and hero. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I pick her up and kiss her cheek, giving Alastair a brush across the jaw with my lips. My heart’s beating out of my chest, what if the five rinses with mouthwash and the three times I brushed and flossed didn’t cover the smell of cinnamon and bad decisions and Veronica’s tongue in my mouth?
“How was your day?” I ask. I don’t listen to her response, flashbacks of my night coming in waves. She says something, I interrupt, ignoring the surprise on her face. She turns away from me busying herself with starting the dishwasher.
“I’m going to put Livvie to bed.” I’m abrupt. Shit. Too abrupt. I need to take a breath and calm down.
Alastair nods without turning around to look at me. I’m grateful.
I wish I could feign a lesson plan or homework to grade, but it’s the summer. After I read Livvie two stories, acting out the characters, taking as long as I can to mimic their movements, I hear her even breathing, and watch her chest rise and fall. She’s asleep. I sit in the rocking chair, my grandmother’s old antique one, the smell of oak, imagining her reading my siblings and me a story. Sitting there, I rock back and forth, the methodical movement of the chair almost putting me to sleep. I start to doze off, catching myself. I stand, careful not to wake Livvie, pulling the covers snugly around her.
The guilt envelops me. It’s a tight grip that’s coming on strong. I shut her rabbit light off and close the door. The master bedroom door’s shut, I gently pull it open. Alastair’s already in bed, her inky hair blending into the dark. I sigh with relief. She must’ve had a long day.
Closing it, I sit in our office.
I do nothing, I sit.
I try and read, the words swimming in front of my eyes. After a few mindless hours, I walk through the house, my footsteps echoing on the ceramic tile and hardwood flooring. I go out front, the lights in the back will wake up Alastair, our motion detector will flood light over the backyard. I find the pack of cigarettes I hid behind the planter, a lighter tucked in the trunk of a tree, where it splits out into large branches. I feel around for the hard, red plastic, lighting one up as I settle in the wrought iron chair. We have a small table with two chairs out front, barely used. I inhale, sucking the tar in, the same way she’d kissed my face tonight, pulling me close. I picture her face, the skin pure and white until she had a few drinks. Then it became flushed as I trailed kisses down her neck, her breasts, perky B cups. I close my eyes. I press them shut imagining her riding me, her knobby knees freckled and white as she wraps them around my waist, her hips grinding against mine, slow, then fast, slower, then faster, matching her rhythm. I cough, the cigarette burning my lungs, a bad habit I can’t kick.
Pulling my phone out, I do a Google search. I only know her first name. Veronica. How many Veronica interior designers can there be?
Veronica Cline Interior Design.
I click on the link, the website has a picture of a woman, she’s mid-fifties with gray hair, though. I let out a sigh.
LinkedIn isn’t any help. Facebook has multiple Veronicas in this area, none of which are of her.
She probably works for an interior designer. She looks too young to have her own firm. I peg her as mid-twenties. I aimlessly check other interior design companies in the valley, pulling up Our Team pictures from one site. None are her.
I get excited when one company mentions Veronica Talbot on their site. I Google the name. It’s a dark-haired Asian woman, at least thirty-five.
Fuck. I stub out the butt and stand up. If anything, I need to forget about her. I’m married. I glance at the silver band on my finger etched with our wedding date. I twist it. How can one piece of metal feel so restricting? I throw the remnants of the cigarette in a bottled water and toss it in the recycling bin.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I think.
I didn’t know how true that sentiment would be.
Over the next couple of weeks, I throw myself into finishing projects around the house, the summer ending with a long weekend to a cabin up north before Livvie starts school at the end of August. Alastair’s employee and her husband own it, a retreat from city life. I teach Livvie how to fish in the lake, we go on long walks, hike trails and move off the beaten path. One night we take the tent to the middle of the woods, find a clearing, and camp. The stars lighted above us, nothing for miles but the big dipper. My kind of week.
I try to force Veronica from my mind. When I make love to Alastair, I press my eyes shut and visualize her blonde hair, the way she moaned when she came, her giggle, light and airy, her small snort as she laughed. I wish I could reach out to her, but I don’t if that makes sense. I’m in the middle of nowhere away from the city.
She seems to have already found me, haunting me, a ghost I can’t outrun. She’s vivid in my mind, but I know it’s for the best that we met like two strangers and left like two strangers who shared a fleeting moment.
The guilt is there, it washes over me, worse when Alastair does something nice for me—brings me the paper, a cup of coffee, or makes my favorite lasagna. It lessens when we’re fighting—her face taut, body stoic, as we argue. I picture Veronica at those moments.
Do I regret it? No. Until I look at Livvie or Alastair, and I mean really look at them. Then I feel ashamed. I can’t say it’s a true regret.
At least, not
right now.
School starts. I’m thrown back into the grind. She isn’t etched on my mind as much, but she’s still there, in flashbacks as I try to remember the details—how her hair smelled, the taste of her, her gorgeous lips.
I’m relieved I can’t find her. I tried. But I can’t. I search aimlessly on the web. PeopleFinders, Switchboard, design companies. Nada.
I wish I had her number. I smash my fist into the wall, a nasty bruise forming.
Then I don’t.
The week school starts, I get an email.
It’s her.
At first, I don’t even realize it.
I’m clicking through my emails, most of them spam, while others are bills or promotional discounts from department stores. It’s easy to overlook, the email address has a woman’s name in it, but it’s not Veronica. I assume it’s a friend of Alastair’s, she’s mentioned a Mara before, one a networking colleague and one a mom of a girl in Livvie’s class.
When I open it, I assume it’s a school function or play date request.
It’s not, though. I scroll to the end of the email before even reading it. My heart skips a beat as I scan the email, XOXO Veronica at the bottom.
Veronica says Mara is her middle name. She says hi, asks if we can connect again.
Leaning back in my chair, I pound my fists on the arms of my desk chair.
It takes every fiber not to respond.
A couple of days later, she sends another one.
I respond this time.
18
I know what you’re thinking. That as soon as I received that email, I made plans to meet her, and that I lied to you when I said it was once.
My pulse races. I felt a thrill, a combination of excitement and the unknown. My hands start to sweat. I hit ‘reply’ right away, then stop. My hands fly over the keyboard, then stop. I start to tell Veronica I want to see her again, and I’ve been thinking about her.
Leaning back in my chair, I consider what this means. I close my eyes, picture how this will end. We sleep together, continue to ravish each other. Then what? I keep lying, cheating, burning everything Alastair and I have worked hard to build because of a spite-fueled moment? Yeah, I was weak, pissed off, and needed a release.
As far as I’m concerned, my wife and I are square.
Deleting everything I’ve typed, I hunch over the keyboard. I tell Veronica I enjoyed meeting her. I also mention that it’s not the best idea to see each other again. I’m still sitting there, imagining her body, when a new email pops up.
She asks why.
Mentioning I’m married, I tell her she’s beautiful, and while I’ve thought a lot about her, I have to focus on my marriage.
Her first couple emails had been sweet, pensive, lighthearted. She sends another one telling me she feels a deep connection, and that she can’t let me just walk out of her life.
My resolve is lessening. I apologize, I wasn’t trying to be callous.
I plan a trip to San Francisco and Napa for my wife’s and my seventeenth anniversary. I plan to put this to bed, figuratively, since I had literally.
The next email is from her but sounds like an alter-ego wrote it. She asks if I happened to ‘forget’ I was married the first time around. I let her have that dig. It’s accurate.
Alastair comes into the office, gives me a quick nod, and takes a seat at her desk, tucking her feet up underneath her, her long black hair in a messy bun, tortoise-framed reading glasses on. She looks stunning. Alastair’s beautiful. She’s the most gorgeous right now, makeup-free, long, dark lashes fringing her dual-colored eyes. She’s naturally beautiful, graceful, and the most content when she’s doing something she loves. I used to spend time just watching the expression change on her face, her mannerisms, pinching myself that I got so lucky. Eighteen years ago when I proposed, my hands were trembling, I dropped the box her ring was in, convinced she’d say no. I held my breath the entire proposal rushing the words out as she stared at me, her eyes shining. One green, one hazel. When I paused, waiting for a response, there was hesitation on her part. She was considering my request. Then she said yes. I have never wanted something so bad in my life until she said she was having our child. Then I wanted that more.
I glance at her. She’s reading something on her computer, her eyes never moving from the screen, silently mouthing what she’s reading, a habit of hers. She’s concentrating. I can tell by the way she strains to see the screen, biting her lip when she pauses. I look back at the email.
I send one more response, telling her it was nice to meet her but reiterating that though we weren’t a mistake, I didn’t want to go down that path. I move all the emails to the recycle bin deleting both the inbox and sent emails. It’s true, I thought I could erase her like all traces of the emails with the click of a button.
A few weeks go by, I check my email more often than usual, albeit nervously. Did I piss her off? What’s she going to say next? I see her email address, and my brow breaks out in beads of sweat.
Steven,
We need to meet. It’s important. Pick a time and place, and I’ll be there.
-V
This time she doesn’t bother to type out her name. Shit.
Hesitating, I respond the next day. She knows my name, and if I don’t, will she confront me at my house? Tell my wife? She has no proof. It was one time. I was home that night. No long lapses, no text messages between her and me. I breathe a sigh of relief.
I feel this is a trap, a way to get me to meet face to face. I want a neutral spot in public with no potential of us rehashing our behavior from a couple of months ago. We make plans to meet for coffee. Since I told her I was a teacher, she mentions coming to my school at lunch. I nix that idea. A twenty-something girl showing up at my place of work when I’m married will raise red flags.
The morning we meet, I tell Alastair I have to get to school early to set the lab up for an experiment. I kiss her cheek, avoiding her lips, wearing the guilt like a cloak I can’t shed. She accepts me at face value, earnestly getting Livvie ready and out the door. “Liv and I will grab our fraps then and go to school.” The two of them have a habit of drinking Starbucks’ Frappuccino’s as a special treat since I usually take her to school.
Veronica and I meet at a Starbucks a few miles from my middle school, one that’s out of our bubble, less chance of running into someone I know. It’s barely 6:00 a.m., the sky just beginning to filter in the sun, clouds parting as I feel a darkness overcome me. I see the outline of a woman who looks like Veronica sitting inside, her back to the window, blonde hair in a messy ponytail. I’m tempted to drive off. I don’t owe her anything. I sit there for a minute, contemplating what I’m going to say to her. How to end this once and for all. Pounding my hands on the steering wheel, a flash of annoyance as I glance in the rearview mirror, I unbuckle my seatbelt and walk slowly as if I’m being hung in the gallows or meeting an untimely death.
When I walk in the door, Veronica darts her eyes, licking her lips in a nervous gesture. She doesn’t stand to greet me. Her feet stay firmly planted on the floor. When I met her, she was bubbly and vivacious, today she’s cold, her mouth in a tight line. No smile in the crease, no laughter bubbling. Her hands were all over me that night, but this morning they’re twisted in her lap.
My body language tenses as I approach. I keep my hands in my pockets. We both eye each other uneasily, waiting for the other to speak. I break the silence. “Do you want something to drink?” She stares at me, purple shadows beneath her eyelids.
“I’m not supposed to have caffeine.” When she says this, I don’t put two and two together. I haven’t spent more than an hour or so with her, her drink and food preferences unknown, except for vodka and fireball. She motions to the cup in front of her. “I have tea.” I order a coffee and sit down across from her. We look at each other. Her bow-lips look chapped, her makeup hastily applied, the color of her foundation too dark for her pale skin.
“Is everything okay?” I ask
.
“Why didn’t you want to see me again?” she snaps.
‘Veronica.” I put my palms out. “I’m married.”
“I thought we had fun, though.”
“We did.” I sigh.
“But it’s not enough?” Her mouth twists into a smirk.
“No. I’m married,” I repeat. I point to left hand. “It’s nothing against you.”
“You don’t want me?” Her tone’s high-pitched and whiny. “You don’t want to keep doing this?”
“Doing what?” I’m confused. “Look, I know this might not make sense because of what happened. I have a wife, and I don’t want to repeat the same mistake.”
“So, I’m just a mistake?” She spits the word out, her hands tight around her cup.
I shake my head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
She crosses her arms. “So, I’m just garbage you can discard?”
“That’s not what I mean.” I stare at her as she glares at me.
“I thought we had more going for us than a one-night stand.”
“I’m married. I don’t want to leave my family.” My eyes plead with hers. “It’s not that easy when you have a wife and kid.”
“Hmm… maybe not.” She sits back. “Until the day it all disappears.” The sly smile she gives me fills me with a sense of dread, foreshadowing something much darker.
“Maybe your wife needs to find out.” She stands up to leave.
My temple throbs as I consider this, the pounding a drum that reverberates through my frontal lobe.
After the glass door shuts, I sit in silence. The world goes on around me—people enter and exit, laughter and loud banter, the baristas take orders, fill cups, blend drinks, and feed the morning crowd, and the smell of bacon and eggs fill the space. The aroma usually makes me salivate, this time I gag.
The Ruined Wife: Psychological Thriller Page 16