by Iris Morland
“Dad, you were a professional floral designer,” said Mari wryly.
“I owned my own business. That’s different.”
“Liam owns his own business, too,” said Mari.
After that, Mr. Wright decided he’d rather concentrate on his meal than on me. The conversation flowed, with Dani and Jacob telling a story about a recent client who’d stormed into the shop when she’d discovered an insect in her bouquet.
“She was so upset about it I thought her head was going to explode,” said Dani. “I told her sometimes that happened. Plants grow outside, and bugs get on them. She didn’t believe me. She said I’d done it on purpose.”
“Who doesn’t plant an aphid or two in someone’s bouquet just because?” said Jacob jokingly.
“You should’ve put a cockroach in there.” This was from Kate.
“We’re trying to make money, not be shut down,” said Dani, rolling her eyes.
Mari shot me an apologetic grimace. Sorry, she mouthed.
You can repay me later, I mouthed back.
She blushed, which only gave me a reason to touch her knee under the table. She wore tights under her white sweater dress, but it was a very thin layer that covered her silky skin. Her breath caught when I traced a single finger up, up, up, edging the hem of her dress away from that pussy I’d had my mouth on in the wee hours of the morning.
She covered my hand with hers and pinched me. All while not looking at me.
I smiled and pinched her back. But it wasn’t her hand that I pinched: it was the inside of her thigh.
She jumped in surprise, her leg hitting the bottom of the table with a loud thump. Water sloshed from her glass onto the table.
“Good lord, what was that?” said Mrs. Wright from the other end of the table.
Mari was so red that I had to almost stuff my fist into my mouth to keep from guffawing. When she reached over and dug her nails into my thigh—perilously close to my bollocks—I had to bite my knuckle. Mostly so she didn’t completely unman me, the harpy.
“Aw, the lovebirds are playing footsie,” crooned Kate, her chin in her hands. “You’re so adorable.”
After dinner, Mrs. Wright took me aside, her wrists jangling from all her bracelets.
“Don’t let George upset you. He’s all bark and no bite. He’s just mad that he paid so much for Mari’s wedding to David and look what happened there.” She winced. “Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned He Who Should Not Be Named. Especially not to Mari’s new husband.”
“Did your husband like David that much?”
Mrs. Wright considered the question. “He seemed like a nice young man. Mari loved him, so we loved him. When Mari told us she was calling the wedding off, we couldn’t have been more shocked. She never told us exactly what happened, just that they were over.”
I looked at her in surprise. Mari had told me the details of her failed engagement, but not her family?
“Come with me. You look like you need a reading, young man.”
Mrs. Wright took me to an office that was filled with more plants than I thought possible. She motioned for me to sit; a small table at about knee-level separated us. Mrs. Wright began to take out various things from under the table. Soon the heavy scent of burnt sage filled the room.
“For cleansing,” she explained, waving the sage leaf, her eyes closed. “The energy tonight is full of ragged edges. Especially yours.”
I didn’t bloody know what the hell she meant by that and I wasn’t tempted to ask for clarification. Mari had warned me her family was weird. I hadn’t realized they were actually loony.
Mrs. Wright inhaled. “I sense that you need to hold some selenite.” She reached inside a velvet pouch and handed me a milky clear stone. “Hold it over your heart chakra. It needs to open.”
“My heart what?”
“Close your eyes and feel the white light pulsing through you.” Mrs. Wright inhaled deeply. “Can’t you feel your chakras opening up?”
“Erm, sure.”
“Excellent. I can see them opening up right now. What a bright, purple light you have inside you! Oh, and it’s taken the form of a…squirrel? I believe that’s what I’m seeing.”
The thought of a purple squirrel inside me almost broke me. I had to chew on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Or crying. Those were the only two options at this point.
Mrs. Wright opened her eyes and began to shuffle a deck of cards. “What is your question that you would like to ask Spirit?”
“My question?”
“It can’t be a yes or no question.”
Mrs. Wright seemed so serious despite telling me I had a fucking rodent in my soul or whatever that I forced myself to think of a question.
“What will happen with Mari and me?” I said, instantly cursing myself.
You already know the answer, bloody idiot.
Mrs. Wright hummed under her breath as she shuffled. And shuffled. And then shuffled for so long I almost fell asleep in my chair. When she finally chose a card and flipped it over, it was upside down.
“Oh, dear,” she murmured, tapping the card. “Oh, dear.”
“What?”
She clucked her tongue. “This is a protection message, since it’s upside down.” She showed me the front, which was an image of a burning tree and in the corner, it read regeneration. “Sometimes you have to let go of things, end things, to let them become new,” she said calmly. “What are you holding onto that you should set free?”
An icy claw grabbed my heart and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe. And then I was pissed because the entire thing was so stupid.
I’d already known I’d need to let Mari go. I wasn’t cut out for commitment. I’d break her heart just like Da had broken Mam’s.
I stared at that card until my eyeballs were liable to fall out of their sockets. I shouldn’t have let Mari get under my skin like she had. I knew better.
It was the sex talking, I told myself. Once we fucked enough times and boredom set in, letting her go would be as easy as all the other women.
“There you are,” said Mari, breaking through the vicious thoughts coursing through me. “Oh, did you give him a reading?”
“Of course I did. He’s my son-in-law.” Mrs. Wright patted my knee. “I hope you found that helpful.”
My voice was strained as I replied, “So helpful. I never would’ve thought there was a squirrel inside me.”
“A squirrel?” said Mari.
“Yes, a purple one. Didn’t you know?” said Mrs. Wright.
“Yes, wife,” I said wryly, “didn’t you know about the squirrel inside me?”
Mari, for her part, kept her expression completely serene. “No, but it makes sense. Does this mean you have a fascination with nuts now?”
“Only if you have a fascination with my nuts, too,” I drawled.
“Excellent.” Mrs. Wright clapped her hands together. “Now I really want to roast some chestnuts. Who’s with me?”
Chapter Eighteen
Mari
The car ride home from my family’s house was silent. I tried to get Liam to tell me what he and my mom had talked about, but he just said she’d only read his cards. “A bunch of bollocks,” he’d muttered more than once.
Tonight hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. Despite telling my dad to lay off Liam, he’d been like a dog with a smelly, disgusting bone. While Liam had been with my mom, I’d told my dad to cool it. He’d countered that he’d “cool it” when he’d seen evidence that I hadn’t married a hooligan.
“Dad, a hooligan? Seriously? What year is this, 1955?” I’d said in exasperation.
“That was the nicest term I could come up with.”
Lucky for me and unluckily for Dani, our dad had decided that he’d wanted to discuss something with Jacob. Apparently both Dani and I had struck out in the dad approval department. It was up to Kate to win that award—God help us all.
By eleven o’clock, I got dressed in my prettiest new li
ngerie—a ruby red babydoll that I’d bought for my honeymoon, believe it or not—and waited for Liam to come to bed. He often stayed up late to work. Where I was a morning person, he was a night owl. But he usually forced himself to stop work around this time.
When he was still working by eleven-thirty, I put on a robe and went into the living room, one corner of which he’d made into his office of sorts. He wasn’t even working: he was sitting in his chair, staring out onto the night skyline.
“Liam? Are you coming to bed?” I said. If I sounded too much like a wife in that moment, I decided not to think about it. I’d be stupid not to admit to myself the lines had blurred like crazy within the past few weeks living with Liam.
Liam glanced at me, like he was surprised I was even in his apartment. “What time is it?”
“Past eleven-thirty.” Pushing my hair over my shoulder, I settled down into his lap, letting my robe open. “I was waiting for you.”
A flash of desire sparked in his eyes, especially when he got a nice eyeful of my breasts. “Where did you get that?” he rumbled.
“This? Oh, I’ve had it forever. But I just hadn’t worn it for you yet.”
That made his face crease, and I realized what my statement implied. I’d worn it for David. I winced, adding, “Nobody else has seen me in it.”
He gently moved me off his lap. “It’s fine. Go to bed. I’ll be there soon.”
Rejection made my cheeks flush. Too afraid to ask why, I did as he asked.
Maybe he’s just distracted with something with his work. Maybe he has a headache.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. You’d think I could ask my husband, but we weren’t at that point. Because we’d never get to that point.
I lay awake in bed until my eyelids were too heavy to keep open. I fell asleep alone.
Work the following morning was hell: first, I didn’t put enough water in the coffeepot, and the coffee burned and made the office reek. Then Leslie got on my case for not answering the phone within two rings. By lunch, I was tempted to say I was having uncontrollable diarrhea and needed to go home.
But none of that mattered with Liam’s silence hanging over us both. He hadn’t even told me goodbye this morning. Even as grumpy as he was in the morning, he always said that when I left. I’d gotten so used to that husbandly gesture that when I hadn’t heard it today, I’d almost started crying.
“Too bad I can’t drink at work,” I said to myself as I made a cup of tea in the break room. I made a point to choose the tea that needed to steep the longest, just to avoid having to go back to my office.
At least when my marriage to Liam ended I’d have the money to do what I loved. I had that consolation.
Five minutes passed, my tea thoroughly steeped, and I took a sip of it right at the same moment that the one person I thought I’d never see again appeared in the break room doorway.
David.
“Mari,” he said heavily. “There you are.”
I did what any shocked woman would do: I spit my tea all over my ex and the table between us.
I hadn’t meant to—I really hadn’t. But seeing David’s bespectacled face after months of no communication between us, and at my work, no less, well, spitting was inevitable.
I watched in slow motion as my tea splattered David’s face and his glasses, along with his stupid, blue-checkered shirt and even his Dockers. He yelped, putting his hands up.
“What the hell!” he screeched.
“Oh my God.” I set my tea down and went to grab a bunch of paper towels. “What are you doing here?”
“Why did you spit your tea at me?” David countered, taking the paper towels in a testy motion. He took off his glasses and tried to wipe them clean, but it only smeared the tea all over the lenses.
I covered my mouth, but the laughter burst forth anyway. Then I collapsed into a chair in a fit of giggles. David glared at me and wiped as much tea-saliva from his face and shirt as he could.
“Is this really that funny?” he said.
“Oh yes, and I’m not at all sorry.”
David sighed and sat down across from me. “I can’t say that I didn’t deserve that.”
“Why are you here?”
Annoyance filled me. David and I were over. I’d mourned our relationship, our almost-marriage, all of it. But having him appear like this only brought the memories to the surface.
He deserved an entire pot of boiling tea dumped into his lap for what he’d done.
“I wanted to see you, but you wouldn’t answer my calls,” he said.
“I blocked your number.”
“I figured that. And when I went to your apartment, you’d moved. This was the last place I thought I’d look. Well, besides your folks’ place, but I didn’t think that’d be a smart idea.”
I crossed my arms. “Either tell me what you want or leave. I need to get back to work.”
I waited for David to speak. He’d never been all that verbose. He tended to be a man of few words, and he never talked about his feelings. The fact that he’d taken the initiative to come to my work like this said a lot.
Not that I cared. He wasn’t my concern anymore.
“I wanted to tell you that Samantha and I broke up,” he said quietly. “And how sorry I am for what I did.”
“For cheating on me with her, you mean.”
“Do you have to say it like that?”
I stared at him. “How should I say it? That you had sexual intercourse with a woman who was not me, and we never agreed to have an open relationship? Does that make it sound better?”
“You don’t have to be so harsh about it,” he mumbled.
More and more I wondered how I’d ever fallen in love with this man. Maybe I’d never fallen in love with David: I’d fallen in love with the idea of him. He represented what I’d thought I’d needed.
Leslie walked past the break room, but she was on her cell phone and didn’t notice my visitor. It was enough of a reminder that I didn’t have time to listen to my ex-fiancé.
“Look, I don’t have time for this,” I said.
“I know, I know. You have to get back to work. I do want to explain, though. Me and Samantha really are over.”
“Okay. Good for you guys?”
“Look, I’m going about this all wrong. I’ve wanted to talk to you. To explain. You deserve that much. After we broke up, things were…complicated.”
I snorted. “You realize that was your fault, right? Not mine. I didn’t cheat.”
His cheeks turned red. “Accusations aren’t helpful right now.”
Where was the kettle of boiling water when a girl needed it? Getting up, I said, “I have to go back to work. Please leave.”
He rose from his chair, but he managed to stop me with three words: “Your makeup thing.”
“My makeup thing?”
“Yeah, I have it. It’s gold? I think it’s blush or something. I found it a few weeks ago.”
Okay, he’d caught me. “My Pat McGrath palette?” I’d thought I’d lost it, which had pissed me off immensely. That thing had been over a hundred bucks but was one of the best eyeshadow palettes on the market. It was also sold out everywhere. It had been a limited edition palette. The few on eBay were upward of a thousand dollars now. I’d checked when I’d realized mine had disappeared into the ether.
“Yeah, sure,” said David. “Whatever that is. I wanted to give it back to you.”
“Okay…then give it back to me.”
David stared at his feet. “I knew you wouldn’t see me a second time if I didn’t have it. I just wanted to make sure you’d meet with me and really talk.”
The little weasel-faced bastard.
“Seriously? You’re bribing me? Or blackmailing me, I guess. You wouldn’t give it back to me if I just asked you, would you?” I said.
“I will. I just want to talk first.”
The palette wasn’t that important. It was eyeshadow, for Christ’s sake. But the thought that David wouldn’t ret
urn it to me because he thought I was scared of meeting with him? That was unbearable. I could listen to him ramble for a half hour for that palette—and for my pride.
“Fine. But if you don’t bring that palette, you’re dead.”
“Thanks, Mari. Unblock my number and I’ll text you when and where, okay?”
I rolled my eyes, but not before tossing him some of the leftover paper towels. “You have tea on your crotch, by the way.”
When I arrived home, Liam wasn’t there. For some reason, I was almost relieved at his absence. Maybe because he’d see in my face that not only had I seen my ex-fiancé, but I’d agreed to meet with him.
Liam’s not your real husband. You don’t have anything to apologize for.
Yet why did I feel guilty? Like I’d agreed to an affair or something?
Liam had already thought I’d been cheating on him. Now I was…sort of. Ugh, talk about overly complicated.
David’s visit and Liam’s absence brought the memories back: my first date with David; first kiss; his marriage proposal. The first date had been awkward, with David attempting to kiss me but missing my lips and instead kissing my jaw.
He’d been a terrible conversationalist. He’d asked me maybe two questions about myself, instead telling me all about his job, his parents, his older brother, until I’d been close to sneaking out through the back of the restaurant.
But he’d won me over by sheer persistence. And he’d been safe: he hadn’t pushed me, he hadn’t done anything unexpected. Until the whole cheating thing, obviously. He’d been as steady as the tide. I’d fallen in love with him for that very reason.
Yet now I wondered—could that be the sole basis for loving someone? Before, I’d been confident that David was the best choice for a husband. Now, I didn’t know what I wanted in a marriage. In a husband, or a lover.
I hadn’t known that passion like what I had with Liam existed. I hadn’t known a man who’d pushed me, who’d treated me like I was his equal and not someone simply to protect and place on a high shelf like a porcelain doll. I hadn’t realized how limiting my relationship with David had been until I’d rushed into marriage with Liam.