“Charlotte, don’t.”
“Charlotte don’t what?”
“Don’t do this. You know you are special to me.”
“No, not really; not for the past eight months or so it seems,” Charlotte said. “And Carly ... I can’t believe you slept with her. She was supposed to be my friend. How could you do that to me, and with her of all people?”
“Charlotte, baby, first of all, I didn’t sleep with her. And please believe me when I say it wasn’t all that cut and dry. It wasn’t all that simple, and I didn’t have feelings—I mean any real feelings—toward any of these women.”
“Oh, I am supposed to believe you now? Now that I’ve done everything but get your fingerprints matched, I’m supposed to believe whatever you decide to let fall out of your mouth?”
“It’s true. I didn’t and don’t have any feelings for any of those women.”
“So what were they? A hobby or something? Most people get regular hobbies, but not you; you have to get a hobby that could jeopardize our lives, not to mention eventually cause you to end up getting someone pregnant.”
“I used protection,” Xavier quickly said.
“So, I guess that gonorrhea must have slipped through the condom somehow?” Charlotte rolled her eyes.
“Charlotte, that was low,” Xavier said.
“No, Xavier, you are low.”
She was one hundred percent right. How could he have even formed his lips to say that to her? He was one of the lowest pieces of scum on the earth. Why couldn’t he have just learned his lesson losing his first wife? And why couldn’t he have just found something else to occupy his time? Now he was right back to where he was years earlier; trying to explain his actions to his second wife.
His mind was reeling; he couldn’t believe the extent in which Charlotte had gone to gather information about his escapades. And he wondered why she’d kept it all a secret from him for so long.
“There’s no excuse for what I’ve done,” Xavier said.
Continuing to fold her arms, Charlotte stared at him.
“I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry for withholding information. There’s just no excuse.”
“What about the women you chatted with online? How many of them did you sleep with?”
“None,” Xavier said.
“Come on, Xavier. You’re just saying no because you’ve seen everything in that file. Don’t you know this could be another test for me to see if you’ll tell me the truth?”
“You don’t have any proof of me sleeping with any of the women online because there isn’t any evidence to find. Yeah, I chatted with them and probably led them on in many cases, but it was all just fun to me. I didn’t sleep with any of them. I’ll have to admit that I did meet Angel once. But nothing happened.” Xavier was stating the truth. He’d set up a meeting with Angel at a restaurant in a city over an hour away from his home. With anxious anticipation, he waited for Angel, who said she’d be wearing a camel colored top and mini skirt. When she’d rounded the corner of the front doors and introduced herself, Xavier had been completely turned off.
The picture she’d posted on the Internet had been old. It was a picture of her wearing a bikini on the beach. In the picture, she was every bit of a size three, if that—pretty and petite with a smooth hourglass figure. The woman he’d met that night at the restaurant sounded the same as the Angel he’d spoken to on the phone, but the long gone hourglass figure had now turned into a Coke bottle shaped like a two liter. And she was nowhere near a size three; more like a size twenty-three. Xavier couldn’t make enough excuses fast enough as he tried to get away from her.
He’d made it back home in record time that night, hoping Angel hadn’t gotten a glimpse of his license plate.
Charlotte paused, thinking about his response. Xavier knew she couldn’t comeback with any proof that he’d slept with Angel either.
“Look, I know you’ve spent a lot of time finding information to back up all you’ve been saying. And you’re right; much of the truth is here in black and white. But believe me when I say I’m a changed man. Getting that STD really scared me, and giving it to you scared me even more,” Xavier said.
He took a deep breath. Keeping secrets and telling lies wasn’t going to work anymore. He needed the truth to make him free. “I did know I had gonorrhea before you confronted me. I was afraid to tell you and was really hoping you wouldn’t get it.”
“I knew,” Charlotte said.
“You knew what?”
“I knew you knew about the gonorrhea before me. When I went on the Internet to find out more information on the disease, I saw that you’d already done searches,” Charlotte said.
Xavier wasn’t sure, but for a flicker of a moment, he thought he might have seen relief on Charlotte’s face because he was finally telling the truth. But it was only there for a moment, quickly replaced with a furious scowl.
“What the heck were you thinking? What if it had been some other disease; an incurable one? Or what if I hadn’t shown any symptoms and it was too late for me to be treated?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight, I know that. Everything happened so fast. I went to the doctor, got my results, and just got scared. I immediately broke it off with Yasmine. She wasn’t too happy I’d broken it off, but at that point I really didn’t care. She’d given me a disease, and because of her, I gave it to you.”
“No, Xavier. Because of you, you gave me the disease. I married you, not that woman,” Charlotte said.
Xavier nodded his head. Now was not the time to start blaming someone else. He had to take ownership for what he’d done and face it like a man. Whether it led him down the same road he’d been down before or not.
“I did break it off with her.” Xavier picked up a handful of papers off the bed. “And somewhere in this tall stack of investigative paperwork, you should see that I haven’t had contact with Angel or Carly in months. I’d broken it off with Angel before I met Yasmine. And Carly ended up getting a conscience herself, and stopped talking to me.”
“So, what are you supposed to be, a saint or something? Am I just supposed to forget all this because you say you’re turning over a new leaf?” Charlotte asked.
“Yes, something like that. We can start with a fresh slate. No more secrets, I promise. And again, I haven’t had contact with any other woman in months. And there aren’t any other women in the woodworks for you to find out about. From what I’ve seen in these papers, you’ve been extremely thorough.” Xavier was sincere in all he said.
“Don’t you understand that you’ve demolished any amount of trust I’ve had in you?”
“Can I ask you something?” Xavier said.
“What?” Charlotte snapped.
“If you knew about my stepping out for months, why didn’t you call me on it before today? Why gather all this information for months?”
“Your ex-wife tried to tell me that you had numerous affairs during your marriage to her, but you’d only told me about the one affair. So who was I to believe? I believed you of course. You’re my husband. But then I started seeing some things that just didn’t add up. So I checked here and there.
“There is a saying that goes, be careful what you look for, you just might see it. That’s when I started noticing the increased number of calls on your detailed cell phone bill. I was in denial and kept thinking there had to be an explanation for all the stuff I was finding. Then when I got the disease, and you wouldn’t give me the details I wanted, I found myself doing even more investigative work. And after looking in the right places, I found more than I could handle.”
Charlotte stared at him with contempt. “I wanted so badly to believe you. I truly hoped there was an explanation for everything. I gave you chance after chance to tell me the truth, but you never did.”
“I’m telling you the truth now.” He held the papers up again. “Look at your papers again. Look at the dates again. You’ll see. A couple of weeks prior to your confronting me about Y
asmine, my correspondence with her stopped. And the correspondence with everyone else in real life, and in cyberspace, ceased also. I am a changed man. I promise you.”
He hopped off the bed and handed her the stack of papers he’d been holding. “Just look. You’ve got to believe me.” Then he scooped up the rest, giving them to her as evidence.
Instead of looking at the papers, she stood and threw them back. Some landed on the bed, but most scattered to the floor.
“You’re like the boy who cried wolf, Xavier. Prove it to me,” Charlotte said. She stepped past him, leaving him in the pile of papers.
Chapter 17
Xavier Knight
Tuesday: 6:10 P.M.
At dinner, Xavier felt like he’d traded places with where Travis had been the night before. This time it was he who was unable to finish eating his supper, while Travis ate just fine. Even though the spaghetti tasted fantastic, he just didn’t have an appetite.
Charlotte, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed by their earlier conversation. She was eating her second helping of spaghetti and garlic bread. And unlike the previous day, she was talking with everyone like she didn’t have a care in the world. Talking to everyone except him, that is.
“Don’t you want to go ahead and share your fabulous recipes with us now?” George asked Shelby. He also was on his second helping of spaghetti.
“Can’t do that just yet,” Shelby replied.
“I have to give it to you, Shelby,” Nina said. “This spaghetti is almost as good as my mother’s, God rest her soul. She used to make the best spaghetti in the world. I’ve never tasted anything that has ever come remotely close.”
“Thanks. Do you have your mom’s recipe?” Shelby asked.
“No, she died when I was seven. And at the time, I took my mom’s cooking for granted and I thought everyone’s cooking was as good as hers.” Nina’s eyes turned downcast and her tone saddened. “But I found out the hard way that everyone wasn’t like my mom.”
It was the first time Xavier had witnessed Nina’s lack of arrogance. She actually seemed human as she spoke about her mother. He watched as George started rubbing his wife’s back.
“Sorry to hear that,” Shelby said. “I’ll make sure to give you my secret for the spaghetti, and maybe you can make a few modifications to get it to taste even more like your mom’s.”
“Thanks, I’d really like that,” Nina said. She actually looked grateful for Shelby’s offer.
“My baby can make some of the best Italian food in the world. You name it: spaghetti, lasagna, baked ziti, chicken parmesan. Just name something, and Beryl can whip it up,” Travis said. He patted his wife’s back. “She can tell you some of her cooking secrets also.”
Halfheartedly, Nina nodded her head.
Xavier didn’t know why, but Travis was really getting on his nerves. It was like he was trying to impress somebody and like he didn’t want to feel left out of their conversations. The guy was always thinking of any and everything he could to add to what was being said.
He was surprised the guy hadn’t said anything about something on television or a movie yet.
“My wife can cook so good that one day I gave her a recipe from a movie I was watching, and she made it look just like it did on the TV. I don’t know how it tasted to those actors, but it sure was good to me,” Travis said.
Xavier’s head was starting to hurt, and the ramblings of Travis were only making it hurt worse. He wanted the guy to be quiet and knew that if he didn’t tune him out quickly, he might just tell him to shut up. He didn’t have the luxury of time to listen to Travis’s trivial comments, especially when he needed to focus on how he was going to get Charlotte to believe he was a changed man.
He recounted the events after Charlotte charged out of their bedroom. Instead of running after her, he’d quickly gotten to work, knowing there was no time for a pity party. If he had caught up with her, she’d probably have just told him to get out of her face anyway.
He needed to quickly figure out what he was going to say to Charlotte the next time they got a chance to talk. Since she was so enamored with dates and numbers, he figured he’d use the documentation she’d gathered—the only resource he had—to help his case.
He’d gathered the pages, reorganizing them by category instead of by month. After he had the categories sorted out, he then organized them by date. Once all this was done, he was able to pinpoint—on paper, at least—the last time he had either talked to or corresponded with any other woman.
As he had told Charlotte, all communication with the women had ceased the day he found out about the STD. There were a few sporadic places where some calls from Yasmine had gotten through to him. But the timestamps never logged more than a minute. He always either told Yasmine not to call him again, or hung up as soon as he realized it was her.
Looking over the numerous times and dates he’d talked to the women, had made his stomach churn. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking anything really. He’d just gone on his impulses, never thinking of the consequences and never thinking he’d get caught.
He’d been so stupid. Most men weren’t blessed to ever find a good woman. And God had blessed him with two. Surely he wouldn’t get that chance again if Charlotte left him. And he didn’t want to look for woman number three anyway. He’d done enough of that and was just plain tired.
He circled dates and times, which would hopefully help Charlotte see that he was serious about being faithful to her. Then on his own separate sheet of paper, he jotted down key points he wanted to show her.
After an hour of studying the papers, he had all the information he could scrounge. Then with heavy legs, he set out to look for Charlotte, hoping that within that time she’d had enough time to cool off.
But when he looked around throughout the cabin and out on the porch, there was no sign of her. With flashbacks of her leaving the day she’d confronted him with the test results, he looked to see if their SUV was still parked around the back of the cabin. He was relived to see the SUV, but she was still nowhere in sight. So he sat on the porch waiting for her to return from wherever she had gone.
The last time she disappeared, he didn’t hear a word from her for three days. Three days filled with him pulling out his hair.
After she finally returned, Xavier had asked her where she’d been. Charlotte told him not to worry about where she’d been. And to this day, he still didn’t know where Charlotte had been for those three days.
Just before dinner, Charlotte emerged through the trees and returned to the cabin. She was sweating and breathing hard. When Xavier stood to greet her, she’d placed her hand up saying she was tired and needed to clean up before dinner. She kept walking right past him and entered the cabin. She hadn’t really talked to him, but at least she was talking at him.
Now, at dinner, she was talking around him. But at least she was talking. And Xavier didn’t want to push. He decided to wait until they could talk in private again, after dinner.
“Did you hear what I said, man?” Xavier heard someone say.
“Huh?” Xavier replied.
The source of the question was Travis. He was still talking. “I said, did you ever see that movie with Glenn Close and Michael Douglass, Fatal Attraction? The part where they boil the rabbit?”
“Ah, yeah.” Xavier wondered how they had gotten on the subject of boiled rabbits. And the interruption had caused him not to be able to make his thoughts detour any longer. “Travis?” Xavier said.
Travis looked at Xavier expectantly, as if glad to finally have the man’s attention.
“Silly rabbit; tricks are for kids.” It was the closest thing Xavier thought to say without straight out telling the guy to just shut up.
Chapter 18
Phillip Tomlinson
Tuesday: 9:07 P.M.
Doing a silent attendance check, Phillip mentally checked off where each of the couples were. Xavier and Charlotte were in their room, Beryl and Travis wer
e playing one of the board games, and Nina and George were outside by the lake, roasting marshmallows.
He decided to take time out to spend with Shelby. They decided to go for a walk on the walking trail they’d become very familiar with during their first stay at the cabin. After grabbing two flashlights and donning a couple of light jackets, they set out for a stroll.
That afternoon, the warmness of late summer had turned into a coolness of early fall. The weather in North Carolina was notoriously known for being wishy-washy. One day the temperature might get up well into the eighties, and the next day it might only get up to fortysomething. And likewise, one day it might be dry, and the next day it might pour cats and dogs.
This particular evening, the temperature had gotten down into the sixties, and luckily, it hadn’t rained since they’d been there. The weather forecast hadn’t predicted any rain the whole week.
The moon was full and bright. Near the cabin there was no need for a flashlight, but as they reached the thick foliage of the trees surrounding the trail, it became a little harder to see. As soon as Phillip and Shelby reached the opening of the trail, they cut on their respective flashlights.
Phillip took a deep breath. “Umm, smell those Carolina pines. Don’t they smell good?”
“Fresh and strong,” Shelby said.
They guided the flashlights up and down and back and forth in front of them on the ground, so they wouldn’t trip and fall or run into any trees.
“Nice, fresh, smog-free air. That’s one of the things I love about being up here in the mountains.” Again Phillip filled his lungs with air, and then let out a deep breath.
They walked along gingerly, avoiding sticks and tree limbs.
“I wonder if that log is still out here,” Shelby asked.
“I figured you’d want to forget about that log,” Phillip said.
“Except for tripping over it and falling face first, no, I don’t want to forget it. We had some good times talking on that log—our own little get away from all the other couples and their roller coaster arguments,” Shelby said.
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