by Falon Gold
Not waiting long to replace me, he glanced up, nodding as he would at an old friend. Violent fury merged with the jealousy mincing my chest, fighting for supremacy. I battled to take in air and yanked my head to the front, feeling holes being drilled in my back. By whose eyes, I didn’t know.
As instructed, my feet never stopped moving across the restaurant in the opposite direction of Bradley, through the tables for two in the center, to a booth on the far end of the establishment. It wasn’t far enough and I grabbed on to the mantra, Business now, personal shit later, like a lifeline.
Choosing the tableside with no chances of seeing the patrons of the diner, it hurt like dull razors hacking at flesh to deny myself even a sneak peak of Bradley. That he waited a whole goddamn week, if not sooner, to move on. Was what we had even real?
Clueless to my heart breaking, or at least I wanted him to be, Gavin sat down. A waitress took our coffee orders, reappearing with steaming mugs then promptly vamoosed.
Gavin pushed his phone in my face with a muted video already playing on it. “Do you have any idea who sent this to me? It showed up in my email last night about eleven. It was difficult not to call you right up.”
I hardly heard him. Everything ebbed into white noise but the video. A too young guy was giving it to Rafe up the…
“God, no, I don’t know about that!” I screeched into a hand that had slapped itself over my mouth. Horror and outrage trumped the envy and wrathful fury. “Turn it off.”
Thankfully, he did as requested.
Inhaling, I tried and bombed at finding my Zen. “How could Rafe do… this? I knew about the receptionist, head nurse, chief of surgery, all women. Not… this! He’s bisexual. No wonder he won’t let me go. He needs a beard.”
Gavin pointed at his phone. “He’s not bi, he’s fully gay, has a batch of Viagra for the women he does cheat with women as a cover up for what he really does on Wednesday night. Give them one scandal that’s acceptable in his circle, people won’t look any deeper. He says all that word for word on the video, and that male he’s with is a few months shy of being underage. Rafe was this close from breaking the law with a minor. So, do we use this in—”
“No.” I clipped his line of thinking right there. “Thank you for bringing this to me first. I don’t care about his sexual preference, his image, but don’t want this as public record. Someone will see it in black and white, carry the information home as gossip. It’ll spread to a child’s ears. Kids carry words like weapons to shoot at other kids.” My father’s proclivity for high class female sex workers had visited me in the classroom a time or a hundred.
Gavin’s sympathy was almost tangible.” You’ve been there, huh? What do you want me to do with this?”
“Blackmail,” I deadpanned, slipping into the old me. She was needed for this occasion and I fully intended to use her for my, Olivia’s, and Bradley’s sakes. It helped that a lot of West Virginia laws had yet to be applied to leaking videos without consent.
Gavin blinked. “Blackmail’s against the law, Delilah.”
“Only if I demand money or threaten his life, which I’m not.” I had something else in mind and made grabby fingers. “Send me a copy of the video.”
After considering, he tapped on his screen a few times. “It’s terrifying you know how to bend the law.”
My phone pinged. “I spent a lot of time around law students in college, lawyers here, and wanting to be a lawyer. My parents nipped that in the bud with only paying for paralegal courses.” Which had never been applied in a job setting—high society wives didn’t work in my family, a college degree a prop for my image.
No longer wanted in or wanting to be in high society, I sent the video to Rafe with accompanying text.
Quit stalling the divorce today or this goes viral today.
YOU BITCH!!! Fine., came back in less than a minute. Outed before ready beat beard-less and divorced hands-down. He was too stupid to live in his truth, outside the mucked up sense of self his parents drummed into him.
First smile in a week out to play, I shared Rafe’s text.
Gavin’s grin swamped his lips. “Yeah, I don’t think he’ll be pressing you to stay in the marriage anymore or pursuing custody. I wonder who sent the video. I’d hire them. This feels like some ‘big brother’ shit.”
Putting the phone away, I raised my hand, beckoning the waitress over. “If I knew who sent it, I’d kiss them tongue and all, but I don’t. As a thank you to them, let’s celebrate with sweets for breakfast.”
He snickered hysterically. I ordered pastries to go. Dessert was banned in my old life, breakfast too depending on the menu. What was one more pound to the twenty I gained since cutting off my fat-shaming family?
Contrary to popular belief among my friends, I liked carbs and sugar. The weight looked good on me and Bradley liked curves that made him feel he wouldn’t break me.
Stop right there, my mind bade. Right. He had moved on, currently doing it behind me as a matter of fact. I lost my appetite for the pastry, grew livid and vicious all over again, but had to suck up losing him… while in public at least.
You will accept it with grace, period, flowed through my head—uninvited advice of my mother’s. I was going to heed it because I wanted to. Besides, she was right, bizarrely, and silver bracelets slapped on by cops weren’t cute at all. Best not look back then, and start sucking it up now.
I took big, deep swigs of oxygen. Gavin shot me a ‘what the fuck’s wrong with you’ glare. Closing my eyes, I waved him off, Zen not forthcoming as long as he was interrupting my search for it in any way.
“I’m fine. I’m looking forward not back.” To the future.
“Okay,” he responded too loudly, still talking. “Delilah, what in God’s name is going on with you?”
He was panicking as well he should—the woman sitting with Bradley had laughed again. The cheerful sound was like nails on a chalkboard. My jealousy had spiked to nasty ‘throw hot dishes and drinks’ levels—something the old nor new me would do.
Whoever I was at the moment was going to cost me my spotless criminal record. I had passed that girl, who had once called the brokenhearted pathetic, to a woman who wanted to strangle Bradley not his date. She was only getting what he was willing to give; his precious time that I spent my days pining for, cut off from, waiting on to return. But, it wasn’t coming. Zen neither.
Bradley was gone. I was in love alone and there had to be a way to subsist with that without snapping. There was. It just wasn’t possible to implement here. I had to get out of here now.
Scrambling for my purse on the seat beside me, I dug for cash. “Meet me at court. I’m driving there now.”
“Delilah, tell me what’s wrong!”
Flinging bills on the table, I clambered to my feet. Hurtling toward the exit on heels wasn’t easy but doable. Bradley hopped up in my peripheral as I tore outside, insides ripping apart and backs of my eyes on fire. I. Would. Not. Cry. Here. Not now. There was the rest of my natural, single life after court to indulge the bawling like a baby.
********
~Bradley~
“You should show me around your town sometimes, Sergeant,” Lt. Shaw intimated, shoveling papers across the table my way.
“I have someone, Lieutenant.” I gritted my teeth through her subtle come-on as I had her giggling while watching Delilah dine with a suave dude that wasn’t me.
I didn’t recognize him, hated him for being more in her league, hated that I ever let her go. By the time she beamed a grin at him, I had imagined forty ways to kick myself and kill him. The only reason why I hadn’t done those things was because something was off about their date. They were in the least romantic place in the world at damn near the butt-crack of dawn, showcasing shit on their phones and wearing business attire, which I didn’t own. Who does that on a date?
“Delilah, tell me what’s wrong!” Suave dude demanded as I signed my name on the first sheet.
My head snapped up.
Delilah was loping for the door like the place was going up in smoke. Swearing to maim the motherfucker she came with—he’d hurt her somehow, I’d hurt him—I hurled myself from the booth, chasing after her.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” I yelled after her.
She cleared the door. The cold snap framed her rapid exhales in white puffs. She threw me a glare over her shoulder so fierce it almost stopped me in my tracks. Almost.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she spat, marching through the near empty lot. “Go back to your date, Bradley.”
“My what?” Oh, she was pissed at me. Shaw would like to be my date, but I wasn’t dumb enough to say that. “Lt. Shaw brought me paperwork and did some legwork for me.”
Shit, Delilah isn’t stopping.
“Dammit, stop and talk to me.” She had to for my sanity.
Well, she didn’t, speeding up instead to her vehicle parked on the back side of the parking lot. “I’m leaving before I hurt you, Bradley. You waited a whole damn week to find someone else. I can be the bigger person and let you go only if you go anywhere but where I’m going.”
“Honey, you could be headed to Bumfuck, West Hell and I’d still follow. After being even this close to you again, I’m not going anywhere else you aren’t again. Now, talk to me about what’s got you so heated. Well, I know what, but I met her here so she didn’t have to drive to my house. And we need to talk about the video your lawyer has of Rafe.”
She pointed her key fob at her SUV, deactivating the alarm. Then, she ceased forward movement without warning. Had I been closer, I’d have walked right up her backside. Only a few feet away, she pirouetted on black, shiny stilettos with red bottoms. Damn, those shoes were sexy, elongating her legs that should be wrapped around my waist with the heels on. Nothing else. Yes, please.
“What did you just say, Bradley?”
“Hmmm?” I visioned the points of her shoes pressing into my ass and quivered as a bolt of bliss cut through me.
“What. Did. You. Say?” Her biting out each syllable got my attention.
Raising my eyes to her suspicious ones, I cleared my throat and tried slyly adjusting the damn tent rising in my jeans. Not helping, so I crossed my hands over it and spread my legs to fake being at military parade rest. “I said Lt. Shaw met me here so I could sign paperwork to put more money in Aiden’s college fund, and we need to talk about the video Lt. Shaw sent to your lawyer of Rafe boinking another dude. Maybe the dude was boinking him. I’m not sure how it works between two men, don’t care.”
“That’s what I thought.” She propped one wrist on her hip, stretching out the opposite leg in a ‘I’m so fucking pissed’ pose. “How do you know about the video?”
“I hired Lt. Shaw to dig into Rafe’s background and find dirt. She used her government IT connects to access his devices, found the motherlode and I hoped it helped your divorce case because one more night without you and one more time of seeing your eating with another man, I’m going to kill a man, starting with the one you came here with.”
The mistrust receded from her expression. The corners of her luscious mouth, her very much missed mouth lifted up one at a time. “You hired a soldier moonlighting as a PI, who found the video of Rafe on his laptop probably and sent it to my lawyer to get Rafe to stop contesting the divorce.”
I nodded. “That’s what I said. Don’t forget I also did it to get back to you. I miss you. I’m lonely and don’t sleep without you. I’m not seeing anyone. Don’t want you dating anyone else under any circumstances, but I won’t be your regret or a part of the reason you feel stress either. So, if that video doesn’t make Rafe back off, I’ll come up with something else from your arms. First, you have to tell me if it worked. Please say it worked.”
Why couldn’t I feel as cool as I had sounded?
My damn heart was attempting to beat its way out of my chest to get to Delilah. She was the picture of beauty, my every waking dream. Hell, she invaded the ones taking place when I slept. When I did sleep. Not sleeping and being without her was taking its damn toll. I was fantasizing about her shoes for God’s sake. I needed her back and now.
“Bradley,” she called, with a devious tilt of her lips. “It worked and I promised my divorce attorney in there, the man you threatened to kill by the way, that I’d kiss whoever sent him that video. I’m really thankful to Lt. Shaw for sending it. Now, I know why it came by cryptic email account. You deserve a hell of a lot of credit for getting her to do it, but I’m only kissing one of you.”
God help Shaw if she tooted her lips near my woman.
“A kiss, you say?” I heard the jealous rumble in my tone and couldn’t have evicted it if I tried.
“Uh huh.” Delilah licked her lips, eyes gleaming with the sultry warmth of a volcano waking up.
Silent as an animal on the hunt, I crept up to her, circling her. “What if someone had sent the video on their own?”
“I’d kiss whoever I had to, to get back to you.” She dipped her head, swiveling it to keep track of me.
Laying one hand on her hip, I circled her for the last time, wanting her eyes on mine. “Is that right?”
“Uh huh.”
“I could forgive you kissing someone else for that reason. You should know though that I’m going to start killing men for real if I ever have to leave you again for any reason and I think your lips owe me and only me something. I’d like for you to put them to work now.”
And she did. The last thing her mouth said before we left for the courthouse together in my ride was, “I love you, sweetheart.”
“I love you too, darling.”
Walking into the courtroom with her then hunkering down at the back for an hour-wait was a scandal of its own. All her friends and folks knew we were together by the end, the real end of the divorce proceedings. Delilah grinned from ear to ear the whole time. Rafe’s jaw was clenched. It was a wonder it didn’t shatter as he was relegated to the outskirts of our world and a weekend dad who suggested an astonishing amount of child support and alimony himself.
I’d bet my life on everyone but the judge knowing it was hush-mouth money. Rafe even submitted a visitation schedule at least the adults could live with. The less we saw of him, the better. From that moment on, Delilah, I, and Olivia were inseparable as a family. Like clockwork, Rafe stopped by on Sunday evenings to show his face to Olivia for thirty minutes to an hour then disappear again without throwing even one bitch fit. Sometimes, he looked as if he wanted to though.
Maybe, his secret had forced him to humble himself somewhat finally, but the man wasn’t a daddy by any stretch of the imagination. I did my best to make up for that with Olivia. Often, she came with me on excursions with Aiden and Bryony to whatever fun place that was the current rage for second graders who dubbed me part man, part robot and one of the cooler dads. I wore that label with pride.
In a year and a half from the day Rafe and Delilah were deemed exes in the eyes of the law, I would be honored with a few more titles.
Epilogue
The starched collar around my neck was killing me, and I remembered why I didn’t own business attire. It scratched. I itched, tugging at the indigo-blue shirt under my double breasted suit for the hundredth time in two hours.
My wife’s hand—I loved saying that—my wife’s hand topped mine from her seat at the head of one table. There were six in all, stretched to seat twenty apiece—a-piece—of Delilah’s folks and our closest people at the mansion. The place was adorned with indigo-blue and white streamers, balloon art, and floral masterpieces. Elevator music played softly. Maids cleaned constantly. Servers circulated trays of champagne and juice for the kids zipping around the adults.
This wasn’t a party but a high society event toned down.
“Just a few more minutes, sweetheart. Then, we can leave,” Delilah mouthed to me.
I harrumphed, “You said that a few minutes ago, baby.”
She leaned over her baby bump toward me sitting just around the bend
of the table too far away from her. “If you promise to strip down to nothing but the pants and coat of your suit when we get home, I’ll take you home now, love.”
I cocked my head to get my ear closer to her mouth. “Nothing but the coat and pants, you say?”
She nodded. Her eyes and hand roved pervily over my chest. No, pervily wasn’t usually a word, but it had been for the last seven months. She discovered she was pregnant with our son and had been acting pervily ever since no matter who was in the area. I didn’t get enough of it, didn’t get to keep my clothes on when she was around. Usually.
Today’s request for clothing was a new one.
In sequined, formal attire as well, Lilah strolled to Delilah’s other side, shaking her head at both of us. “Ed, they’re about to abscond like criminals again.”
His husky laughter hailed from the next room over where he, his cronies, which included his family, and my friends—some old, some new—enjoyed whiskey and a cigar before the baby’s birth. “Olivia’s room’s been cleaned since the last time she wrecked it. Give them my love for me, Lilah.”
Delilah and I had developed a pattern for events no matter who hosted; sneak off to run home and fuck like rabbits. Today was Delilah’s baby shower. Five months ago, it was our wedding reception. A month before that, Olivia’s birthday party. All took place at the mansion.
Lilah bent at the waist that wouldn’t dare spread in her middle age, pecking Delilah lightly on the brow. “You guys can flee when you get ready. I’ll take care of my granddaughter and the guests for the rest of the evening.”
Shocked, aren’t you? Not as much as we were when Lilah and Ed let’s not forget Donovan—the male version of Delilah—showed up on our doorstep by then, their hats in hand, wanting her back in the family fold and ushering me in after the divorce casting Rafe out was fact. It took them over a year to figure out she had grown a spine and wasn’t taking any more of their shit. Delilah forgave them for taking that long to come around—everybody can’t be the sharpest knife in the drawer.