“Why did you do this, Valerie? I thought you were my best friend. What were you thinking?”
She practiced the words and the mild tone she would use as she drove to Valerie’s. Julian was working overtime all that week to make up for the days he would be off next week while they vacationed in Bermuda on their honeymoon. They had decided to hook up for dinner on Friday evening as the last time to see each other before the wedding.
She pulled into the lot outside Valerie’s apartment building and sat in her car for a few extra minutes. Valerie’s red Volvo was parked there, so Beverly knew she was in. All that remained was to be sure she was ready to do this. It was going to be hard, one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. In all their years as friends, she and Valerie had never argued about anything more serious than where to go out to dinner together.
Beverly grew teary-eyed as she thought about their friendship coming to an end. Tears were the last thing she wanted at this moment, and she immediately opened the car door and hopped out. No need to get sentimental now, she thought as she locked the car. Their friendship was over the minute she’d caught Valerie and Kevin together. Valerie certainly wasn’t thinking about their friendship when she decided to spread her legs.
She slipped through the main entrance as someone else exited, took the elevator to Valerie’s unit, and knocked. It took a while, but the door finally swung open and Valerie stood there, still dressed in the long skirt and cotton blouse that she had probably worn to the office. If Valerie was surprised to see Beverly, she didn’t show it. She opened the door without saying a word and stepped aside.
Beverly walked in and they stood facing each other in an awkward silence for a minute. Beverly was trying to get out the words that she had rehearsed, but she was surprisingly nervous. It felt like she was standing in front of a stranger rather than a friend.
Finally, Valerie spoke up. “I wondered if you’d come by,” she said. “I tried to call you a few times.”
“I know. I wasn’t ready to talk to you.”
“That’s what I figured. Come on in and sit down.” Valerie gestured toward the couch, the same couch where Beverly had walked in on Kevin and Valerie just days ago. Beverly was having trouble getting the memory out of her head. She didn’t want to sit on top of the scene of the crime. She kept her heels planted firmly where they were.
“I’ll stand,” she said. “I’m not going to be long. I have a couple of questions and then I’m out of here.”
Valerie crossed her arms defensively. “I’ll try to answer if I can, but I don’t—”
“Why, Val?” Beverly blurted out. “Why the hell would you do something so goddamn stupid? Are you really so desperate that you have to go and screw my brother-in-law? Huh?” Beverly paused, more so to catch her breath than to allow Valerie a chance to speak. So much for not getting ruffled, she thought. But how could she stay calm when she was spit-raving mad?
Valerie shook her head sadly. “I don’t know what got into me. I admit that what I did was stupid.”
Beverly scoffed. “No kidding. Which one of you started this whole mess? You or Kevin?”
“Um, I don’t know if you could say one or the other of us started it.” Valerie shrugged. “It just happened.”
“Excuse me? Excuse me? You didn’t just open your eyes and find him lying on top of you, Valerie. One of you had to start flirting or something first.”
“We both did. Really. I mean, we first talked at your bridal shower. That was when we realized that we have a lot in common, the same taste in movies and books. He’s getting into New Age things, which I’ve always been interested in.”
“Did you exchange phone numbers at the party?”
“E-mail. He asked for my address. He said he wanted to send me links to some interesting New Age websites. I offered to do his astrological chart and e-mail it to him. It was innocent then. Just helping each other out.”
“If it was so innocent, why didn’t you tell me that you exchanged e-mail addresses with him? You never said a word at the party or ever.”
“I think I forgot about it,” Valerie said.
“You think you forgot?” Beverly said with contempt. “How could you forget that so fast? You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t think it was important because I never thought he would get in touch with me after the party. I thought he was just being friendly.”
“So tell me how the hell it went from being friendly to fucking in one week?”
Valerie swallowed hard but said nothing.
“Figures,” Beverly said. “For once in your life, you have nothing to say.”
Valerie smacked her lips.
“Did he e-mail you first?” Beverly didn’t know why, but she had this bizarre need to understand just how this came about.
Valerie nodded. “Yes.”
“And you still never said anything to me.”
Valerie looked down toward the floor. “I know.”
“Why not?”
“I… I just didn’t.”
Beverly sighed with exasperation. “Go on.”
“I got the information to do his chart, and we e-mailed back and forth for a few days. At some point I realized that he was flirting with me.”
“And you flirted right back, didn’t you?”
“Not at first, but well, I guess so.”
Beverly rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She was tempted to smack Valerie upside the head, but if she did that she would never get the full story. “Go on.”
“We agreed to meet for coffee on Saturday afternoon. But I… I never expected it to go so far.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Seriously. I expected to give him his chart and explain it to him. That’s all.”
“Is that why you kept all of this from me?”
Valerie clenched her teeth silently.
“Kevin is a dog.” Beverly continued. “And you, you’re a fool for going along with it. You knew what you were doing with him was dead wrong. I thought you had more integrity than that, Valerie.”
They stood in silence for a couple of minutes, each lost in her own thoughts. Two lifelong friends standing only a few feet apart, yet they could have been miles away from each other, given the huge emotional distance between them.
“I don’t get it,” Beverly said, shaking her head with despair. “I just don’t get it.”
“I don’t know what came over me. I’ve always thought Kevin was hot and I let him get the better of me.”
“So you were being a selfish whore? Is that it?”
“Stop calling me names, Bev. Can’t you talk to me without trashing me?”
“Well, excuse me. Bitch!”
“Fuck you, then,” Valerie said.
Beverly didn’t know what came over her, but before she knew what was happening she had slapped Valerie hard across the cheek. Valerie winced as her eyes grew big with shock, and Beverly was horrified that she had allowed herself to lose so much control. Then Beverly realized that she felt more relieved than she had since walking in on Valerie and Kevin. She felt vindicated. She felt good!
Valerie grimaced and touched her cheek. “I don’t believe you hit me!”
“I don’t believe you fucked my brother-in-law.”
“You have every right to be pissed off at me, Beverly. What I did was wrong. But in my defense, Kevin and Evelyn were separated when this happened, and he insisted that they—”
“He’s still Evelyn’s husband,” Beverly interrupted.
“But he insisted that they weren’t going to get back together.”
“What the hell difference does that make? Even if they were already divorced or had been divorced for ten years, you had no right to screw him. All the men out there, and you had to mess with my family, Valerie. That’s just wrong.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if he and Evelyn hadn’t split up. Or if Kevin had said he was going back to her.”
Beverly couldn’t believe that Valerie cont
inued to try to rationalize this to herself. But maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. Something wasn’t right in this woman’s head. “It’s unbelievable that you would try to justify what you did. And what the hell is going on with you and Otis? Where is he?”
“He’s still around, only we’re not as tight since he shoved me.”
“You know what you are, Val?”
Valerie looked at Beverly and waited.
“Pitiful. That’s what you are. You’re so desperate for a man that you’ll do anything. You’ve stopped caring about anyone’s feelings but your own.”
Valerie sneered. “You have some nerve talking about hurting someone’s feelings. What about my feelings? God, you can be so annoying at times.”
Beverly frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You really have no idea, do you? Or at least you pretend not to.”
“What? What did I do?”
“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be getting married on Saturday.”
Beverly blinked. What on earth was Valerie getting at?
“Yeah, I’m going there,” Valerie continued. “You walk in here all self-righteous about me hurting you. Do you fucking realize how much you hurt me? No, of course not. You’re too stuck on yourself.”
Beverly was stunned. Where was all of this coming from? “How did I hurt you? Are you talking about Julian?”
“Who the hell else would I be talking about? You always pretended not to know, and I went along with it because of our friendship. But how could you not see that I had feelings for him from the very beginning? All you had to do was open your eyes. You didn’t want to know the truth because you wanted him for yourself.”
Beverly’s mouth dropped open. “You never ever said anything about any of this. When you introduced him to me, I asked if you were into him. You told me no.”
“Any idiot could have seen that I was lying. But no, you were too selfish to see it. So I waited and hoped you would break up with him, like you did with all the other fiancés in your life. Only it didn’t work out that way this time.” Valerie laughed with scorn.
“I thought you were in love with Otis,” Beverly said. “You were going to marry him.”
“When I realized that you and Julian were serious, I convinced myself that I was into Otis. That didn’t last long. He’s a brutal, male chauvinist ass.”
Beverly stared at Valerie and shook her head numbly. “I had no idea. Is Julian aware of your feelings?”
Valerie hesitated a second. “You should ask him that.”
Whoa. Something about that reaction didn’t sit too well with Beverly. Valerie made it sound like there was something between the two of them that she wasn’t aware of.
Beverly backed toward the door slowly and silently. She’d had enough torture from this woman for one evening. She wanted to get out of there. She put her hand on the knob and opened the door without saying a word. Enough had already been said.
She turned, flew down the stairs, and jumped into her car. She paused as she sat behind the steering wheel to catch her breath. Why on earth would Valerie make a comment like that? Beverly had enough faith in her relationship with Julian to be sure that nothing was going on between him and Valerie now. But what about in the past, before she met him or during the early days of their relationship?
Beverly realized that she was seriously doubting Julian for the first time since they had met; she didn’t like the feeling one bit. She banged the steering wheel. Men! Talk about agony and ecstasy, ups and downs, highs and lows. One minute it was total bliss with them, the next pure hell. Sometimes, Beverly thought she should just run off and live alone in the woods with the plants and animals, become a hermit, and swear off men altogether.
It was just as her sisters had said—desperate, lonely, horny women would always be out there, ready and willing to pounce on your man at the first opening. If the men would keep their zippers shut, it wouldn’t be such a huge problem. But so many of them didn’t.
Was Julian one of those who would keep his zipper shut, even ten, twenty, or thirty years from now? Or would he be like the others?
Chapter 30
The doorbell rang just as Charmaine finished placing a bottle of chardonnay and two of her best wineglasses on the kitchen table. That had to be Tyrone and Tiffany, ready to move back in and start fresh with open hearts and minds—she hoped. She tugged her new skirt down over her hips and walked quickly toward the bottom of the stairs leading up to Kenny’s bedroom, where he was playing games on his Xbox. Charmaine wanted them both to welcome Tyrone and Tiffany back home.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Kenny yelled.
“No, you’ll come now,” Charmaine insisted.
Kenny appeared at the top of the stairs. “What’s the rush? They’ll be here for a while.”
Charmaine smacked her lips and pointed to the lower landing near her feet. “I’m going to count,” she said. “If your feet don’t appear in the spot where I’m pointing when I get to three, there will be no Xbox for…”
Kenny’s feet appeared on the spot before she could finish, but it was obvious that he wasn’t exactly thrilled about this reunion. “Tyrone and I are working very hard to make this family work,” she said. “And I expect you to cooperate. Understand?”
Kenny shoved his hands into the pockets of his knee-length shorts and nodded reluctantly. Charmaine opened the door to see Tyrone standing there holding three suitcases, one in each hand and one under an arm. Tiffany stood behind him, a garment bag thrown over her shoulder. She was snapping her fingers as she listened to her iPod through earphones.
Tyrone stepped in and placed the luggage on the floor, then gave Charmaine a quick but warm kiss on the lips and hugged Kenny enthusiastically. Tyrone looked genuinely happy to be home, but Tiffany was another matter. She slid in behind her father and brushed past everyone without a word, heading straight to the stairs and her bedroom.
“Tiffany,” Tyrone called after her firmly. She stopped and turned to look at her father, clearly surprised to be interrupted.
“The least you could do is say hi to Charm and Kenny,” Tyrone said. “And remove the earplugs, please.”
Tiffany shifted from one foot to the other with annoyance and removed the iPod earphones with so much reluctance you would have thought her dad had asked her to yank one of her teeth out. She waved halfheartedly.
“Hi, Tiffany,” Charmaine said, reaching out to hug her around the shoulders. “It’s good to have you back.” She nudged her son on the arm. “Isn’t it, Kenny?”
“Yeah,” Kenny said with an equally weak wave.
Tiffany nodded. “Likewise.”
As soon as Charmaine released her, Tiffany replaced the earphones and headed up the stairs. Tyrone rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Sorry about that,” he said to both Charmaine and Kenny. “She’ll come around.”
Charmaine waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Kenny wasn’t much more enthusiastic. Had to force him off his Xbox. Give ’em time.”
Tyrone punched Kenny playfully. “Didn’t want to see me, huh?” Tyrone teased. Kenny laughed and the two of them pretended to box each other for a few seconds. Charmaine smiled.
“It’s good to be back,” Tyrone said as he picked up the luggage. Kenny helped him carry the bags upstairs and then went back to his Xbox. Tyrone came down, and he and Charmaine walked into the kitchen and popped and poured the wine. They sat at the table and clicked their glasses together. “To new beginnings,” Tyrone said.
“I like that,” Charmaine said.
“Again, I want to apologize for Tiffany’s attitude just now. I talked to her as we drove over here, but it didn’t seem to help much. I’ll work on that.”
“It’s going to take some time for both of them,” Charmaine said. “She understandably resents Kenny for being able to live here all year with you, and she doesn’t like the idea that I’m sort of replacing her mom.”
“But I haven’t been married to he
r mother for several years now. And her mother is fine with me and you.”
Charmaine shrugged. “I’m sure Tiffany still wishes the two of you would get back together. It’s the dream of any child of divorce to see their parents together. I’m not saying it’s an excuse for her behavior. It’s not. Just trying to see her side.”
“You’re probably right, and it’s going to be tough to get her to shake those feelings,” he said. “I’m going to have to be straight with her from now on and make it clear to her that I won’t be getting back together with her mother and that she shouldn’t hold that against you or Kenny.”
“And I’ll explain to Kenny that it’s going to take some time for her to get used to sharing her father and that we all have to be patient with her. Kenny should be able to understand that, since he had to get used to you when you moved in.”
“I told Tiffany that they won’t become best buddies overnight, maybe never, but they have to learn to get along and respect each other.”
“We have to work together on this,” she said. “They’ll come around if we’re united.”
He nodded in agreement. “Being away from you got me to thinking. There’s going to come a time when Tiffany will go off with some dude to start a family of her own, and I don’t want to find myself all alone when that happens.”
He reached across the table for her hand and squeezed. It was good to hear him talk like this, Charmaine thought.
“`I’ve given some thought about how to handle this,” he continued. “I can start by showing more respect for you and Kenny around Tiffany. I have to make it clear to her just how important we are to each other. She’ll grow to like you both better if she sees how much you mean to me.”
Charmaine smiled broadly. Now that was her man talking. “That’s a plan I can get with.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Then he gave her a seductive look and delicately ran the tip of his forefinger along the outline of her low-cut top. “The kids are occupied with their Xboxes and iPods,” he said. “What do you say we two grown-ups sneak upstairs. We’re overdue for some serious making up.”
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