Shade

by Shayne Ford

  I blink quite a few times, confused. It’s like I see him for the first time. Was I blind all this time?

  He makes a stop next to me and squeezes my shoulder like my math teacher used to do when I scored high on a test. Except that now, I didn’t.

  He grabs his laptop bag.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “I might as well go to my place. I have an early morning meeting, and I don’t want to be late. Plus, you know how much I hate to sleep with someone else in the same bed.”

  By else, he means me.

  Yeah, that’s no secret to me, and it’s not something that I hold against him. In all fairness, I can’t sleep with him in the same bed either, not when he’s using every move I make and every breath I take as a pretext to throw a fit.

  He saunters to the door, and I look at him as if I’m watching bad TV. I know it sucks, but I can’t tear my eyes away from it.

  “Are we on for Friday night?” I ask.

  He turns to me and tosses me a clipped glance, visibly irritated.

  “What’s on Friday?”

  “Maya’s birthday party.”

  “Oh. I forgot about that. I don’t know… I’ll let you know. I’ll call you.”

  That’s a big, fat no.

  Off he goes.

  Butt naked, with a desert between my legs and a bad taste in my mouth, I still stare at the door.

  This was a bad, bad idea. We should’ve ended it three weeks ago when he broke up with me.

  He came back to me and we started all over again, and I said nothing. He never offered an apology, let alone an explanation.

  I could’ve said something, anything, but I haven’t.

  Instead, I felt guilty for a tone of stupid reasons, especially for not being the person that he wanted me to be, and also, for letting that handsome stranger touch me that unforgettable night.

  So, I took him back.

  It was the sensible, practical thing to do. A no-brainer, as my mom would say. I can’t tell if he’s seeing someone else or not. I asked him, but he didn’t want to confess, and short of hiring a private investigator, there’s not much I can do.

  At least, I asked him to use condoms. I no longer trust him, or his judgment. As lousy as it sounds, that little piece of plastic between us makes him bearable, less painful, and easier to take. Like a bitter medicine, you have to swallow with a teaspoon full of honey.

  He didn’t seem to care, at least not then, so we slipped back into our old routine, the rut that he’d always blamed on me, and things have become even simpler.

  Sex a couple of times a week, and that was that.

  Until now. But now, it’s over. It’s been over for so long, but I didn’t want to face the sad reality.

  I leap out of my bed, grab the sheets and the cover and peel them off the mattress. I crumple everything in a big mound of fabric and kick it with my bare feet.

  I want it all off my bed. And I want his scent out of my nose. Everything reminding me of him, I want burned or trashed. I wish I could peel my skin off me. The skin that he touches as if it’s the remote control or a piece of furniture.

  I wonder if the woman he fucks fits his taste. Is she like him? Do they have tent sex? Because it’s so fucking good? Does she get wet for him? Does he make her come? Is he sleeping with her in the same bed?

  The phone starts ringing when I stop, panting, my eyes scanning the room, looking for the damn thing. I hope it’s not him. I couldn’t take another word coming out of his mouth.

  “Yes?”

  Maya’s sobs fill my ear.

  “Maya??”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “What happened? Is everything okay?”

  My heart springs to my throat, my pulse racing.

  “I...”

  “Where are you?”

  “Can I come to your place?”

  “Of course you can. What’s going on?”

  “I need a place to sleep... for tonight. I’ll go to my mom’s tomorrow morning,” she says, sniffling, the sound of heavy traffic filling the background.

  “Are you driving?”

  “Yes.” She pauses. “I left Matt.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you. All I need is a place for tonight and you. I need to talk to someone before I lose my mind.”

  “Sure. Don’t worry, sweetie. Take your time and drive safely. All right?”

  “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  4

  TARA

  “This is the woman,” Maya says through soft sobs.

  I put the sandwich on the plate and slide it in front of her before I take the phone from her hand and glance at the incriminatory picture.

  “What am I looking at?” I ask shifting my eyes to Maya.

  “The women in the purple blouse. The man standing next to her is her husband–– Matt’s boss.”

  “Where’s Matt?”

  “He took the picture.”

  “What kind of sick bastard does that? Takes a picture of his wife, the woman he’s cheating on her with, and her scorned husband?”

  She starts whimpering again.

  “I’m sorry... It was a rhetorical question, sweetie,” I say, racked with guilt.

  Crushed, she looks down, her blank stare hovering over her hands.

  She reminds me of the girl she used to be when we were teenagers. She looks small and fragile, her long hair entangled, her cheeks stained with tears, her shoulders slumped.

  She used to smile all the time.

  Brimming with confidence, we both thought that the world was our oyster. That nothing could stop us from living our dreams.

  What has she done to deserve all this? She wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  She put her heart into her marriage and tossed her dreams to the side for what turned out to be a nightmare. She hasn’t had the chance to live a little, experience men and life. Matt was her second man and her first disaster.

  “Eat. It will make you feel better.”

  She brings the sandwich to her mouth and takes a bite, her expression slowly changing as she starts chewing on her food.

  I shift my gaze back to the picture.

  The woman he has cheated with looks at least a decade older… than him. She’s also twice the size of… him.

  My lips feel dry.

  I cough a little before I take a sip of water and clear my throat.

  I gulp more water, my eyes on Maya as she picks up a slice of tomato and takes a bite.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Agatha Johnson,” she says.

  “Agatha… “ I murmur. “Even her name sounds old,” I mutter.

  “It doesn’t have to do with age or anything,” she says, way smarter than me.

  I know it doesn’t have to do with age, size, or whatever, but that doesn’t mean it’s not painful to her.

  “I know. I know...”

  I bring my eyes back to the photograph.

  Maya fashions a red, strapless, tailored dress that stops above her knees, flattering her silhouette. She looks like a prom girl while Agatha looks like the angry mom who knows that the prom is nothing but a pretext to go out and fuck.

  I don’t know what her problem is, but her frown spreads over half of her face.

  Well, I might have an idea on what bothered her.

  Secret lovers are usually in a foul mood when the scorned plus ones are still in the picture. No pun intended.

  Agatha sports a shapeless print dress, her hair pulled into a bun, her eyes spitting poison at the camera. Her husband sort of pulls away from her, his eyes vacant, his expression sullen.

  There’s a lot of tension between the two of them, and now I know why. The husband might’ve known about his sweetheart’s indiscretions for a while, or perhaps he just got fed up with his marriage and started to roam on greener pastures himself.

  Maybe Matt was nothing but revenge sex for Agatha, although nobody calls it that these days. It’s true love for anyone who asks. F
inding your soulmate. The love of your life… Etc.

  Mmm-hmm.

  Yeah... Sure.

  Anyway, according to Maya’s findings, there was a lot of sex going on between the two lovebirds, so much so they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and that’s how they got caught.

  And I thought I had it bad.

  I place the phone on the table, struggling to keep my emotions under control–– especially my boiling anger, so that I offer her the best support.

  Frankly, I don’t know what to tell her. There’s nothing I can think of that could make her feel better.

  There’s no painless way to handle this crap.

  Telling Maya that she is nothing like Mrs. Johnson and Matt was an idiot for going behind her back, will make the years they spent together look like wasted time.

  And perhaps it was.

  Like the years I’ve lost with Josh. But this is not the time to bring this up.

  It will do her no good.

  “So what exactly happened?”

  More sobs shake her chest.

  “I can’t believe that they’ve come to our house so many times,” she says despondently, her sadness drilling holes into my heart.

  Silently, I watch her wiping away her tears with trembling fingers before she continues.

  “We had dinner, and everything seemed fine. I couldn’t tell that something was wrong. I just couldn’t. We were finishing our meal when I brought out the desserts. Matt’s phone buzzed with a call. He excused himself and walked out in the back. I thought he stepped out on the terrace. I remember hearing the doors open, but I didn’t hear them shut close, so all that time I thought that he was on the patio, talking on the phone. Moments later, Agatha rose from her chair and strolled to the bathroom. Her husband and I started to chat. About Matt, his job, the company, and the real estate market. Twenty minutes later, he went out for a smoke. He walked out through the main door and sat on the porch. I was cleaning the table when the sound of muffled voices drifted to me from the back of the house. At first, I thought they were on the terrace, but something didn’t add up. I headed to the patio, and the closer I got, the more I realized that the voices were coming from the bathroom. I spun around and strode in that direction. Quietly, I pressed my ear against the door and listened for a moment. That’s when they went silent.”

  I bite my lip and slowly shake my head, tears falling from my eyes.

  “I knew it right then. I knew what they were doing. I’m not a child. I pushed the door open. They didn’t even care to lock it.”

  She stops, and cries some more, and then she starts to laugh, her tears still streaming on her face.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not losing my mind although it feels that way right now.”

  She runs the back of her hand over her lips and her shaky fingers below her eyes again, brushing away more tears.

  Her voice rings out again in the silence of the room.

  “Dick out of his pants, he was standing in the middle of the bathroom, finger fucking her ass while she was bent at the waist, struggling to lick his balls.”

  I bite my lip hard to suppress a chuckle.

  “Are you sure...?”

  She looks at me and nods.

  It takes us a mere second before we both burst into laughter, our faces stained with tears.

  “I fucking am... I was looking at the damn thing. That, and the crumpled knickers sitting between her knees.”

  We laugh for a good minute, and I can only call it laughing therapy since, in essence, the whole story is sad as fuck.

  “So what happened?”

  “He saw me first, or rather heard me and then, he opened his eyes. The man was in a trance, looking as if he was getting a taste of heaven. And she wasn’t even licking his dick as I said before––”

  I jerk my hands up.

  “Got it. No need to remind me,” I say as we share another peel of laughter.

  Her smile dies out. So does mine.

  “So he flipped his eyes open and looked at me, and nothing much happened after that. As I was searching his eyes, I couldn’t find Matt, not even the one that I’d loathed for pushing the bowl of oatmeal under my nose every day so I could stay lean for him. Really? I looked at him and realized that he was nothing but a stranger to me, someone who had disconnected himself from me a while ago. I didn’t recognize him, and I couldn’t possibly understand what had made him do that, let alone his choice. But it was his choice after all. As it turned out he'd lied to me for some time. Anyway, he finally noticed me, and they both froze. The woman couldn’t see me, being bent at the waist and all, her ass facing the door, but she definitely had heard me. She didn’t straighten up, and for a moment I thought that she pulled a muscle or something, or perhaps threw her back out. And I stood there for a second, shock barreling through me, my eyes roving over her flowery purple dress, his dick hanging out. I was never, you know...”

  She bites her lip, crying and snickering at the same time.

  “I was never able to convince him to trim that bush. And here I am, staring at something that looks like a cow’s tongue dangling from a bird’s nest, while she works his balls...”

  Clenching my teeth, I crush another painful chuckle, perfectly aware that we are talking about dire things, and yet, the image starts to haunt me.

  “His fingers were still…” she says, and she does this little wiggling thing with her pinkie, and I clamp my hand over my mouth, laughing in my throat.

  “I stepped out of the bathroom and waited in the hallway. He came out first and looked at me as if I set his video games on fire. I asked him if he wanted me to tell her husband, and he said no. He’d do it.”

  Her smile falls from her face and mine too.

  “Then I knew it… It was over.”

  Next morning

  Tucked under a blanket, Maya snores softly.

  It turns out, all those signs pointing to a shitty ending were, well, accurate. Still, who could’ve anticipated this crappy ending?

  How can people get so stupid, so fast?

  I glance at her, again. She looks so young with her hair splayed over the pillow, her profile so delicate.

  She’s my best friend since I can remember. She was always a happy girl, but everything changed when she married the man she thought was the love of her life. We all thought he was the one. Her family, my mom, and me.

  She was happy until she wasn’t.

  I wonder if we were stupid, or life was just too much of a mystery to us and we couldn’t possibly know that things were so fickle and never what we thought they were. I can’t help but wonder. Was it something that she’d done? Was it the other people? Was Matt the wrong man for her? Was Josh for me?

  I wish I knew.

  I glance at my phone. There’s enough time to get ready for work.

  Without rushing, I finish applying my makeup, brush my hair, and stroll into the walk-in closet. I sift through my clothing and pull out a fitted skirt suit.

  I wonder when my relationship started to crumble.

  Hmm… I need to go way back. The sex was never stellar, but I didn’t think a lot about it. It was only sex, after all.

  For the longest time, I thought that there was something wrong with me. I mean not wrong wrong, but rather that I was one of those women who doesn’t feel much in bed no matter what they do, or who they do it with. It turns out it matters who you do it with.

  I run my hands over my skirt, tug at the bottom of the jacket, and twirl in front of the mirror. The navy suit makes my blue eyes look darker, the nipped waist highlighting my body proportions.

  I grab my coffee, the car keys, and my purse, and then I scan the room one more time before I walk out of my apartment.

  Five minutes to eight I walk into my office.

  “What’s going on?” I ask my assistant as I plop my bag onto my desk and walk around it.

  There’s silence.

  I turn.

  “Danielle?”

  My secr
etary’s eyes dart back and forth.

  She seems distracted.

  Three years younger than me, about the same height, she started to work for me a few months ago when I got my promotion.

  She runs her fingers through her hair, blinking quickly and excessively.

  “You okay?” I ask, examining her pale complexion.

  A cotton dress hugs her body, the small print arresting my attention for a moment–– tiny lilies scattered on a pastel background.

  She messes with her blonde curls again, tugging at them and stretching them to her shoulders.

  “Yes,” she finally says.

  “Why are so many people in the hallway?”

  She bats her lashes again in that rapid succession that starts giving me a headache before she purses her lips, her eyes twinkling.

  “All the executives are in the building. The owners as well. Plus all the new hires are here for training,” she says as if it’s news to me.

  “I know. I’m supposed to train them, remember? Are the slides ready?” I ask in an assertive voice, hoping to jolt her out of her daze.

  “Oh, yes… Yes, they are. We can go over them if you wish. The rooms are ready too,” she says, finally snapping out of her trance.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask as she keeps craning her neck, peeking over my shoulder, changing colors like a litmus paper.

  “Yes, I am.”

  A sound of jovial chattering wafts through the air, coming from the corridor, and rolling into my office. I move away from my desk and peer through the open door when the sight stops me dead in my tracks.

  There’s a group of suits across from my office. Men and women. Top management. Claire, my boss, who’s been eyeing the Marketing VP position for some time, talks to some of them.

  I skim their faces until my eyes set on a gorgeous woman, who’s half facing my office and the tall, blonde man standing by her side.

  His back is completely turned to me, but something in his stance and the broadness of his shoulders scrapes my memory as awfully familiar.

  The woman is young, somewhere in her thirties, I’d guess, although it’s hard to say. Medium tall, and fit. A curtain of amber hair cascades past her shoulders.