HotTango

by Sidney Bristol

  That was his wife.

  Ball of sunshine.

  They made it through the press of people, down the stairs and found their row. Jake, Nicole, Aaron, Angel, Becca and her date were either on the same row or the one below theirs.

  “Hey, guys.” Cole edged past Jake and Nicole, choosing at the last second to sit next to the woman and let Tanya sit next to the half wall that bordered one of the entries for the players.

  “’Bout time you made it,” Aaron called over his shoulder.

  Angel glanced up, a tight smile on her face. Half her features were hidden by excessively large sunglasses. She was dressed to the nines in a white sundress, more makeup than Tanya owned and hair unnaturally high. She was such a contrast to Becca, whom she sat next to. Where Angel was a fake blonde, Becca’s dark-brown locks were natural, straight and sleek, her face fresh and clean, save for some shiny stuff on her mouth.

  “How’s my boyfriend doing?” Tanya settled into her seat and winked at Aaron.

  “I’m doing just fine, baby. How you doing?” Aaron winked at Tanya, despite the obviously cold shoulder Angel was giving the both of them.

  Cole merely rolled his eyes. The two had been at this playful banter since they first met. It wasn’t anything serious or concerning.

  The day was beautiful, the sun shining, not a cloud in the sky. It was almost a shame they’d scored tickets to the United States versus South Africa soccer game, but there wasn’t any saying no to free tickets. The crowd was electrifying, people shaking flags and blowing on horns, and the game hadn’t started yet.

  “Thank you.” Tanya accepted her drink. Behind the cover of her oversized cup she whispered, “Oh my gosh, is that Aaron’s fiancée? I don’t think I’ve ever met her. I thought he was still with that black-haired woman.”

  Cole shook his head. “That was Lauran. She broke up with him.”

  Tanya leaned over him and tapped Angel on the shoulder. “Hi, we haven’t met yet. I’m Tanya, Cole’s wife.”

  Angel’s smile was fleeting. “Charmed.”

  Becca watched the seconds-long interaction with eyebrows raised. Tanya glanced at Becca when Angel turned around without another word. Becca and Tanya seemed to have an entire conversation without moving their lips.

  “What was that about?” Cole whispered to his wife.

  “Ohmygod, she’s a snob,” she whispered back.

  Further conversation was rendered impossible by the opening game festivities. The crowd seemed largely American, but as the host country that was to be expected.

  It was crazy, but Cole found himself sneaking sidelong looks at his wife. She’d donned a festive blue and red sundress that left her shoulders bare, plumped her breasts together and displayed enough leg to make it more than a little interesting.

  As the game got underway, Cole wondered just how far he could push Tanya.

  “Hold this for a second?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She shifted the cardboard carrier into her lap and tossed some of the popcorn into her mouth.

  He shifted in his seat until he could turn, blocking the others from view.

  Tanya glanced away from the unfolding soccer game to peer at him. “What are you doing?”

  Cole slid his hand up her outer thigh under her skirt.

  Her eyes fluttered open wide and she wiggled in her seat. “Cole.”

  “What if I finger-fucked you right here? Is there a card for that?”

  Tanya gasped, clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Want to try me?”

  She shoved his hand away. “Not with our friends so close,” she whispered.

  “Okay, what if it was just us?”

  Tanya paused to consider it. “Maybe, but not right now.”

  “Want to find a family bathroom somewhere?”

  “Eww, really? No. That’s just not right, Cole.” Still, she laughed and fended off his one-handed attack. She grinned at him, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “What about when we get home?”

  “We have all those flowers to plant.” After their frenzied coupling in the kitchen yesterday, they’d spent the rest of the day being lazy and watching the Olympics, intentionally avoiding the news. On a late-night whim, they’d decided to add flowers to the landscaping and raided a local nursery of all their yellow, white and orange flowers, which now sat in their garage.

  Tanya leaned toward him until their noses touched. “Fine, plant flowers, then sex.”

  “I like this plan.”

  “Mm, me too.”

  Now if he could just wait that long.

  * * * * *

  Cole sipped his lemonade and sat back on his heels. The backyard smelled of freshly cut grass, there were birds chirping from the wooden bird condos and it was cool for this time of the year. He dusted some of the sod off his hands and surveyed his work on the flowerbed. It was a far cry from their first home, where they’d had two square boxes in the front yard. This house had more than he could count on both hands.

  He didn’t hate the house, but it stood as a symbol of change in their lives he didn’t like. Tanya had built this as her dream home. And that bothered him. More than he’d let on.

  “Hey, do we want these back here or in the front?” Tanya emerged from the garage, a small pallet of flowers in hand.

  Cole glanced at her and swallowed his resentment. Nothing good would come from talking about it. “I think they should go in the front.”

  “Okay.”

  She disappeared back into the garage and he gathered up the last tools.

  In a way, it felt as if they were in a different time all together. One where Tanya and he gardened, cooked and even talked. Together. All the walls he’d built between them over the last few years were coming down and it both felt good and left him in something of a panic and pretty raw. If she knew what was really in his mind, would she leave him?

  He pushed those thoughts down and headed to the front yard to join his wife, pausing in the garage to pick up more flowers.

  Tanya was on her knees, dirt up to her elbows and digging holes for the new flowers. She glanced up and grinned at him.

  “I’m so glad they gave you today off.” She gently set a bunch of flowers into a hole she’d dug.

  “Yeah. Five days of twelve-plus hours suck.”

  Cole eased a set of flowering plants out of the plastic pot and rolled the tightly compressed sod and roots in his hands. It was a large bundle of roots and what looked like two plants. The flowers were so tightly packed, he wondered if he could separate them and plant them in two places. He dug his fingers between the two large stems and began slowly easing the plants apart. He could feel small tremors of the hairlike roots snapping, but it wasn’t separating. Since the plants were almost apart, he yanked them the rest of the way.

  The plants snapped and ripped into two bundles.

  Shit.

  It was one plant, and he’d just ripped it in half.

  “Cole, what are you doing?” Tanya leaned around him, her mouth hanging open.

  “I thought it was two plants.”

  “They only put one plant in a pot. You know that. Now we won’t have enough orange flowers to complete the pattern.”

  Cole’s spine straightened and he gritted his teeth. “Never good enough, I get it.”

  “What? That’s not what I said.”

  “You don’t have to say it for me to hear it.” He stood up and shook the dirt from his pants.

  Tanya pushed to her feet, gaping at him.

  Everything that had been on repeat in his mind bubbled to the surface and Cole couldn’t stop himself. It was an odd sensation, as if he were watching someone else operate his body while he desperately struggled to throw the brakes on.

  “I never deserved you. Did you know that’s what your father told me? I should have listened to him, because he was right. You’re too good to be with a dead-end public servant like me. You know, I even thought about doing you a favor and divo
rcing you a few years back for your own good. Hell, I can’t plant a flower. I probably can’t be a good fucking husband.”

  “Cole?” Tanya’s eyes were cloudy with unshed tears, her face creased and growing pink.

  “Yeah, I’m a fucking monster.” He turned toward the house.

  “You don’t get to walk away from me.” Tanya bolted past him and stood in his path, fury radiating from her. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you want a divorce?”

  “Did those words come out of my mouth? Open your fucking ears. I said I should have for your own good. You don’t listen.”

  “You don’t say anything for me to listen to.”

  The sudden silence prickled the skin on the back of his neck. Cole glanced around and found three of their neighbors openly staring at their unfolding drama. He grabbed Tanya’s wrist and urged her toward the house, but Tanya balked.

  “We need to get inside,” he muttered.

  Tanya twisted her arm in a maneuver he’d taught her and stalked inside, her golden-brown hair flowing behind her.

  Cole gave their audience one last glare before he followed his wife inside.

  The rational part of him knew he needed to stop talking. Stress and too much change had him on edge and he’d snapped at Tanya. But the other part of him, the one that was a bundle of rage and bitterness, didn’t want to be silenced.

  “What the hell was that?” Tanya roared as soon as the front door was closed.

  “I’m talking to you. I thought that was what you wanted,” he shouted back.

  “Why are we yelling?” She shoved her hands through her hair and paced the foyer, stopped abruptly and stared up at him. “Why haven’t you brought any of this up before? If you aren’t telling me you want a-a divorce, what are you saying?”

  Cole watched the play of emotions across Tanya’s face. The shine of tears in her eyes, the pink tinge of rage on her cheeks, the pained creases on her brow and around her mouth.

  He’d done this.

  All on his own.

  Did he really want to give her up? Even if it was for her own good?

  He stood at the precipice, words on the tip of his tongue he’d thought about saying, rehearsed in the mirror ages ago, but they evaporated. There was no way he could follow through with it. He stepped back and leaned against the entry table.

  “Cole, please say something.”

  He gripped the edge of the table and stared at the floor.

  Where would he be without Tanya? He’d rejected undercover work though his superiors had tried to recruit him. Maybe he’d be deep undercover, miserable and alone, with no one who knew the truth about who he was. That he was the kind of person who stood up for the Deborah Smiths and helped plant trees.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.” His voice shook and he tasted bile.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. You don’t get to spew accusations against my dad and say the D word, then walk away. Where did this come from? I thought we were getting to a better place.”

  He met her glare with his own. Being young and headstrong, he’d told her father he loved Tanya and wasn’t letting her go. Over time he’d developed a relationship with his father-in-law, but those first years had been rough. “If you want to know what your dad said, go ask him.”

  Tanya reached behind him to her purse and fished out her cell phone. She jabbed in a number and held the phone to her ear, her gaze never leaving him.

  “Hi, Dad. I have something to ask you. I want you to tell me the truth, please.” She paused and listened to the other end of the line. “Did you ever tell Cole he didn’t deserve me?”

  Tanya’s father was right. Cole didn’t deserve her, but he loved her with his whole being. If he could shove those words back in his mouth, he would. The look she’d given him outside had made him feel as if he were six inches tall and about the most disgusting creature on the planet.

  “Dad, we’ll talk about this later. I need to go. Love you too.” She hung up the phone and turned away from him, one hand covering her mouth.

  “Tanya, I’m sorry.”

  She whirled on him, jabbing her finger against his chest. “Why would you keep something like this from me? We’re supposed to be a team. Through good times and bad, that’s what we promised, Cole.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Well, congratulations, you have.” She wiped her nose and the first fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I want to know why, Cole.”

  There were so many answers. He didn’t know where to start. He shrugged for lack of a better answer. “Why what?”

  “Do I need to go halfway across the fucking planet for us to have an honest-to-god conversation? What’s wrong with us that we can’t be in the same room and talk?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I just want to know what you want to know the why of.”

  “All of it.”

  This was a mess. He should never have snapped.

  Cole scratched his head and gestured toward the den. “Maybe we should sit down.”

  “Fine.”

  Tanya marched ahead of him into the same room they’d had their picnic in. The candles still sat on the coffee table. She crossed to an armchair and sank down in it, effectively cutting him off physically.

  He didn’t blame her. It gave her a defensible position, and he’d sure as hell attacked her. The rotten feeling grew, eating away at him worse and worse.

  “I never told you about what your dad said because we were young, I wanted to prove him wrong and I didn’t want to drive a wedge between you two. I was determined to make him like me, and though we’ve never gotten close, I think I’ve changed his mind.” Though now he seriously doubted if the man would ever speak to him again. All that work for nothing.

  “I would have gone to bat for you.” Her voice was cold, bitterly so.

  “I knew that, and I knew it would change your relationship with your dad and I didn’t want that.”

  “So you were just being selfless?”

  He shrugged. At the time he’d felt like a martyr, but now he didn’t think so.

  Her hands fluttered as if she were trying to catch butterflies. “What about the—the—”

  “Divorce?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cole sighed and cradled his forehead in his hands. How did he even begin to explain it to her? Tanya was everything that was good, promising and happy in his world. There was nothing she couldn’t do.

  “Sometimes I think about where our lives would be if we hadn’t gotten married. I’d probably be in a smaller city, closer to my family. I’d have never made it to Metro City. It’s too big sometimes. But you, I wonder how much more you could do if you weren’t tied to me. If you could have stayed in Burma for that two-year stint they wanted you for, or what opportunities you’ve missed out on growing your business because you chose to stay home with me. Then I think, what happens when Tanya wakes up and realizes how much better off she’d be without me?” He shrugged and stared at the geometric pattern of the rug. “Divorce was a logical next step from there.”

  “You don’t want a divorce?” The light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows bathed her in a golden glow. A real angelic light.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  She held up her hand. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. My dad tells you that you don’t deserve me and somehow it warps into this idea that I would be better off without you and you should fall on the sword of mercy and divorce me? Do I have this right?”

  Cole winced and rubbed his face again. “When you put it like that, it sounds pretty stupid.”

  Tanya jumped to her feet and began pacing. “Yeah, it is stupid. This is stuff we should have talked about, Cole. I’m your wife. We should be in this together, not working it out on our own. These are our problems. Not yours. Ours.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Good. I hope you’
re real fucking sorry.”

  “I am.”

  “I just can’t deal with you right now. I need some space.”

  Tanya retreated to the office and slammed the door so hard he felt it in the very fiber of his being.

  * * * * *

  Tanya dragged into The Warehouse ten minutes past when she should have reported for setup duty. She needed another whole week to get back in the mindset for today’s game, but derby waited for no one.

  “Hey, where you been?” Spanish Rose, a heavily tattooed Latina, strode up to Tanya, clipboard in hand and attitude firmly in place. She was head of the set-up committee for the year and was incredibly serious about her role.

  Tanya groaned. Spanish Rose was their best jammer and a complete bitch. She was not the person Tanya wanted to deal with first thing.

  “Sorry, got here as soon as I could.” She’d considered not coming at all, but she’d be damned before Cole’s admission from yesterday ruined everything else.

  “Get your stuff in the locker room and start helping to lay the track.” Spanish Rose pivoted and headed for another group of girls who’d just arrived.

  Tanya nodded at a few of her closer derby friends but otherwise kept her head down as she made her way to the locker room.

  Last night had been brutal. Cole had been this large silent elephant in the next room, just around the corner. He’d stayed as close as possible without actually crowding her. She understood now that the divorce thoughts were from the past, not their present, but it still hurt. He was her other half, and he’d considered leaving her.

  The trust she’d never doubted was bruised. She didn’t know what their next step was. Maybe counseling or a trip away where they focused on them, but they would survive. She wasn’t ready to give up yet, and neither was Cole. His quiet presence and repeated words of comfort were proof enough. But that was for tomorrow. Today their lives went on. Cole should be off work soon, she’d play tonight’s bout, and tomorrow maybe they’d figure everything out.

  Tanya stowed her gear in what served as the locker room. The Warehouse was exactly what its name suggested. It was a large metal and cinderblock building that had once housed merchandise for some long-gone company. Now it was an event space. Roller derby games, concerts, raves, art galleries, holiday balls. For such an industrial structure, it was versatile.