“Why do you want to know?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Just wondering when to expect you,” she said lightly.
Fuck that, I thought, with sudden vehemence. I wouldn't make it easier for her to cheat.
“I don't know,” I said.
It was a tiny little power move. Something that should have given me a tiny little ounce of satisfaction, but it didn't. It just meant that whatever she was planning to do, she would have to be fast, or risk being caught. The idea that that jackass might be about to come into my home, maybe even into my own bed, nearly made me want to puke.
This was so fucked up.
I wanted to scream and beg her to stop.
How the hell could she do this? The thought was like a goddamn record stuck on repeat.
It was humiliating.
I knew I should stay home and face it all head on, but instead, I was going to go out and get so shitfaced I couldn't remember what the hell was happening.
That was what I wanted. To get black out drunk, like I used to when I'd been young and stupid. Around when I'd metMelissa.
College had been fun that last year. With Melissa and Ryan and the other guys too. We'd turned into a unit. One that I'd thought would last and it had for years now, even though life had changed.
I'd gotten the position at the factory to program and repair the machines pretty early on, and she'd started working for the marketing company she was still at now. We'd suddenly started to make good money, got married and bought our house together.
Honestly, I'd thought that kids were next, but we were both so busy that the timing hadn’t seemed right yet.
In fact, nothing had really seemed right for a while now. That was the truth of the matter. I'd fallen into this routine, the one that was allwrong for a married couple.
For some reason I'd accepted that somewhere along the way we had become more like friends than husband and wife. Itwasn’t just the lack of sex either. The intimacy was gone. In fact, if I was being honest with myself, it had removed a weight off my shoulders. Deep inside, the fact that Melissa never expected anything from me was something that I hadliked.
How fucked up was that?
It almost made me feel like I had walked into this situation, like I deserved it.
Despite all the comforting things Ryan had said to me last weekend, the blame felt like it was on me somehow even though I couldn’t entirely explain why.
Those thoughts were still swirling through my head when I stepped into the pub a short while later.
When I saw Ryan, my feet seemed to stick to the floor.
He was leaning against the pool table, cue in hand, chatting with Ollie while Dave took his shot on the other side of the table.
Like a lion standing down wind, he seemed to sense me and glanced over, pinning me with those warm brown eyes.
The smile on his face shifted into something almost uncomfortable—more of a grimace than a smile.
He didn't need to say anything, didn't even need to come closer than twenty yards for me to know what he was thinking about. That little thing where I had laid under him, rock hard, while he touched and kissed me and for some reason, I'd liked it.
Yeah,thattiny little thing.
I hadn't been drunk enough to forget it, just drunk enough to let it happen.
I'd managed to mostly push away thoughts about it all week long. There were other things going on, after all, but it was like an ever-presentitch.
I thought I’d handled hanging out with him well enough yesterday but suddenly standing here without Melissa as a distraction, the niggling thought that had been in the back ofmy mind came forward too strongly to ignore. Whywould Ryanwantto do that?
