Live & Learn ~ A Miss Independent Novel

by Kiki Leach

  “That isn’t true.”

  “I think it is, and it’s alright to admit it,” he said. “I want to be clear when I tell you this. I’m not jealous of the past. I’m old enough to be secure with myself and what I have to offer you and this relationship. But I’m also too old to play games with my life and I’m certainly not going to spend the rest of it chasing after someone while they think about someone else during sex.”

  “I never did that. I wouldn’t do that with you and I’m not playing games,” she insisted. She stood up from the couch and walked over to him. She reached out for his hand and he was reluctant, but held onto hers. “I care about you and I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I might have been just a ‘side piece’, but I was with Oscar for a long time despite the circumstances and that’s not something I can easily get over in just a few weeks. I want to, believe me I do and I will at some point. I don’t plan on going back to him. But I can’t help it if I get emotional about what we had when I see him or them together. I’d like to stand here and tell you that I am fine and I’m over it, but the truth is that it’s going to take some time for me to finally get there and be okay with things as they are. But whatever I had with him, whatever I felt and still might feel someplace inside myself, doesn’t lessen in any way how I feel about you right now. Or where I see us going and becoming in the future. Because I think we can be pretty great. If you’re willing to stick it out with me to find out.”

  He looked down at their hands and held hers tight. “I’m willing to stick it out just as long as you know where I stand and I know the same.”

  “I’m standing here with you. And I don’t plan on going anywhere.” She swallowed hard, unsure and afraid but more than prepared to continue moving forward. She knew there would never be another man to completely take the place that Oscar held inside of her heart, and she was okay with that. Just as long as it meant that she was allowed to be happy without him.

  Part Thirty

  As they stepped back into their three story penthouse on the Upper East Side, Melanie inhaled the clean air of her home that she remembered before leaving. Compared to the stench that seemed to fill every part of the Hamptons from the time they had arrived to the time they left that morning, she was more than excited to breathe in the fresh scents of potpourri that bounced from room to room.

  While Oscar grabbed what little bags they had brought with them from inside from the car, the girls flew into the house and ran straight to the den, immediately turning on the TV to Sesame Street and singing along to the opening credits. Melanie watched her husband as he continued moving everything into the house, but quickly realized that he was trying his best to keep from even looking at her. It was as if he had been guilty of something, but since she had constantly been at his side the last two days, she couldn’t even imagine what it could be.

  “I have to admit, that was a ‘vacation’ we could’ve certainly done without,” she said.

  “You insisted on driving out there after talking to Sheila and learning that Nikki would be there,” Oscar responded. He gathered the girls’ toys in both hands and sat them on the table in the dining room.

  “I really hate when you put those there.”

  “We can move them later.” Once he had gotten the last of everyone’s belongings, Oscar closed the front door and walked around her. Things had been tense from the moment they woke up that morning, at least for Oscar. The first thing he did when he got out of bed was search around the area for Nikki. He only discovered she was long gone when where he stood from the beach, he couldn’t see anyone else moving around inside any of the other rooms of the house aside from Vanessa and Maurice. As he thought back to what he had done in essentially stalking her, he wiped the sweat down that was building on his face.

  Melanie caught the intensity in his eyes and placed a hand on his shoulder. He stiffened his arm and slid away from her. She became even more alarmed by his behavior. “What’s going on with you right now?” she asked.

  He balled his fist and rested it on the banister. “On the way back, I started to realize that being out there was probably the best for us… Or maybe it was the best for me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He gulped. His heart beat faster and faster as the beads of sweat sliding down his face became more frequent and larger in size. “What I mean is that while we were there for just that day alone, I started to think more about my life. And I realized that there are things I need in it, as well as things that I want and think that I can’t live without.”

  “What are you both needing and wanting at this very moment?”

  “Nikki,” he blurted out. Fury arose inside of her the moment her name had forced itself between his lips. If she had had a knife in her hands, she would’ve plunged it directly into his chest and felt no remorse for it. “I want to be with her. I want a life with her--”

  “Do you want children with her too? Because she doesn’t seem like the type that would happily embrace our children, let alone a new baby. Not when she’s trying so damn hard to get her ‘career’ off the ground.”

  “I want children with her,” he said. “And I do think she would make a fantastic mother.”

  “So you want her children. Is that because the ones that I gave birth too aren’t good enough for you anymore?”

  “No--”

  “That’s what it’s sounding like.”

  “That’s not how it is.” He closed his eyes and furiously shook his head. “I love our children more than my own life.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you just don’t love me that way anymore.”

  “I don’t know how else to put this without sounding--”

  “Hurtful?” she said. She flushed as the feeling of rage collapsed and rebuilt into something much more devastating than even the pain of his words. “If you were so anxious to get back with her even before we left the Hamptons, why didn’t you say anything about the fact that I was lying about our sex life?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” he said softly. “She was so angry and I didn’t…”

  She nodded. “You wanted to hurt her, right?”

  He lowered his eyes in guilt. “Things changed so much while you were away, Melanie. When you came back, I tried to make it right, to be the husband and father that you always knew me to be. But in the back of my mind, nothing felt authentic anymore, not like when we were first married and had first discovered each other in every way.”

  “You mean sexually.”

  “Not just that.” He paused. “Since you’ve been back, it feels as if we are going through the motions of a relationship and how we think it should be between us. All of this feels as if we’re just playing pretend for the sake of friends and acquaintances and our parent’s as well as the kids. But, I don’t think I can do that anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore and I don’t think you want to, or should have to either.”

  “I still love you and want this marriage to work!”

  “I don’t feel the same way. I’m not happy and life is too short to live it like this.”

  “With your family,” she said.

  “No. I don’t want to sit around anymore hoping that I’ll have something that will never come to me unless I fight for it.”

  “So you’re willing to fight for an affair? You’re willing to fight for HER, as opposed to the life that WE have built, that WE have made together? What about your businesses, what about this house? What about our children, what the hell am I supposed to tell them? Daddy left mommy for his whorish barista because I just wasn’t as good enough in the sack as she was?” He didn’t say another word, which enraged her even more. “Just get out,” she said. “Get the hell out of here and don’t come back until you are ready to be a man and accept the responsibilities and the promises that you made to me, to yourself, our children and this family. Get out.”

  “Can I at least say goodbye to the kids?”

  “Hell no,” she snappe
d. “You don’t get that privilege.” He looked back toward the den, his eyes turning red. Tears rolled down Melanie’s cheeks, but the hatred that she felt in hearing his words never left her face. She grabbed onto the door and yanked it back, forcing him to leave without another word. He reached for the keys inside his pocket, holding them tight. “Those stay here.” He looked at them for a long time, remembering how it felt the first time he held them in his hands, when he first brought his children there. This was the sacrifice he was making. It was painful, yet true to what he wanted.

  He removed his house key and placed it on the banister. As soon as he stepped outside, she slammed the door and turned every knob of every lock to make sure he would stay out. And then she began to cry uncontrollably. It was as if she had just been told he had died and was never coming home to her and their children again. She cried until her entire face turned red, until her eyes were blurry and she could barely see her hands in front of her face. The girls heard the wailing and ran out from the den to comfort her the moment they saw her crumbled on the floor. She took them both into her arms and sobbed into their hair and faces. They asked her what was wrong and why she was crying, but she couldn’t even form the words to tell them that nothing was wrong, that she was okay. She could feel her heart breaking inside of her with every breath, every moan and tear that escaped her eyes. She didn’t want it to end like this. She never imagined it would.

  Back at The Palace, Sheila had gotten to the room and was settling back in while Nathan was arguing with a bellhop downstairs about his car being slightly dinged as they removed the luggage from the trunk and backseat. She was putting clothes away in the closet and hanging others up when she heard her phone buzzing. She went to her purse to check it and saw a text message from Adrian, wanting to check in and make sure she had made it back to the city safely. She smiled in knowing that he cared and replied that she was fine. After last night, she knew she wanted to see him again, but that it was impossible. She had made a commitment to stay away, but how could she when it was so clear that it was the last thing they had both wanted? She waited for a few moments and thought about texting him back, but stopped when she received another message. This time, from Joan:

  Nathan, if this is you screwing with Sheila’s phone again, it’s not very funny.

  She knit her brows. “What?” She picked up her phone and began texting her back:

  “What are you talking about? This isn’t Nathan, this is Sheila and I didn’t text you.”

  When she received no immediate response, she texted her again:

  “Joan? What the hell is going on? Why would you think I was Nathan?”

  After a few minutes of waiting, she received another strange response:

  I just received a text that looked recent. I guess my phone sent me an old message disguised as a new one. The older models can do that sometimes. Sorry.

  “What the hell?” she said to herself. Even more confused, she texted her once again:

  “That doesn’t explain why you thought I was him.”

  Sheila waited a few moments for Joan to respond again. And when she finally did, she was livid.

  Once Nathan reentered the room and saw her sitting on the bed, he began complaining about the bellhop and their crappy service. But she was in no mood to hear it. With tears in her eyes, she held up her phone and stood up. “What did you do?” she asked him, her voice shaking.

  He tossed his phone on the dresser and removed his jacket. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you contact Joan pretending to be me?”

  He stared down at the phone in her hands and stepped forward. “Are you talking to her right now? Is that what she told you?”

  “Yeah. She said that you went to see her for lunch to ask about Adrian. And that’s how you learned he was a professor of Philosophy.”

  He shuffled around her and opened the curtains in the room to let in some sunlight. “You were lying to me.”

  She whirled around to face him. “You were doing the same thing! Bringing Adrian out to the Hamptons was all about Vanessa again! Joan told you that he was her professor and about their relationship. Why the hell did you bring him out there, Nathan?!”

  “I didn’t need a reason for it,” he said.

  “Oh don’t you dare give me that shit! You need a reason for EVERYTHING that you do when it comes to her and this was NO exception! Is it because she’s with Maurice? Are you so jealous and torn up inside over the idea of being without her that you thought it was a good one to bring someone she slept with in the past on this trip just to try and shake her up?”

  “You brought him back to keep her away from me first.”

  “Then that’s why you did it.”

  “No,” he told her.

  “Then why?!”

  “The reason behind it no longer matters, alright? She and Maurice are fine and Vanessa wants nothing to do with him.”

  “That isn’t the point, Nathan! You did this out of some malicious spite and for WHAT?! When the hell are you going to finally realize that Vanessa doesn’t want you back?! It wasn’t even real love between you two in high school, why do you think that despite everything that’s happened, she’s finally been able to move on!”

  “I KNOW THAT!” he hollered back.

  “THEN WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE?! She is happy with Maurice, and she was probably happy with Adrian before the baby despite what she told me and--”

  He staggered back to the door and raised his hands. “What baby?”

  Her mouth instantly went dry the moment she realized the words that had come from them. She turned away from him and in a panic and went over to the window. “None. I misspoke about that.”

  “No you didn’t. Was V pregnant?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if she was, but even if, so what? It isn’t any of our business. None of this is. I should’ve stayed out of it like she asked me to, and so should you.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.” He seized his wallet and bolted from the room.

  “Nathan!” Sheila hollered after him as he sped down the hallway. “You don’t have anything to do with this, the baby wasn’t even yours!” He raced onto the elevator and hurried to shut the doors. Sheila grabbed her head and felt an immense headache coming on. “Damn it.” She fell back against the frame and closed her eyes. “What have I done – what have I done – what have I done.”

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  Coming next, in the series:

  Truth & Consequences

  815