Inferno Anthology (46 page)

I did want marriage at that time—the kids and the forever. If I could have seen into the future, I would have waited longer before promising her forever. I would have waited until we grew up and lived a little. Made her come with me to college and then start our forever once we graduated.

It was my fault that we had a broken home. If I were a better man, things would be different. I’ve done a lot of thinking during our divorce proceedings and I hate that I’ve made her cry. I can’t take any of it back. I’m ashamed of how I treated her and each day, I mask my feelings by being a complete asshole. An asshole to her and an asshole to Cheyenne for not being a better father.

But, I couldn’t change what happened seven years ago, and now when Buckcherry was turning me into a sap, I dried my misty eyes with my white-collared dress shirt and whispered “sorry” as if she could hear me. I would never say it to Dana’s face, though. Not after the hell she put me through, trying to take Cheyenne away from me. But I needed to make this right. I needed to be a better man, a better father, a better person.

*~*~*

I pulled into my driveway and didn’t see my peanut’s face that always greeted me, staring at me through the bay window. I knew I was early getting home, but I didn’t think I was that early after being held up by the make-out session with Allison followed by the verbal sparring match with Dana.

“Easton!” my mother, Jane, exclaimed as she stood up from my couch when I walked in my front door.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking at her red, tear-stained face. “Is Chey okay?” I looked around to see only my mother in my living room.

“Yes, she’s in the backyard with your dad.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I figured Cheyenne would tell my parents that she customarily waited for me at the window, but she also needed play time with my folks, so she had probably just lost track of time.

“Okay, well, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Bill called.”

“What a prick!” I said, running my hands through my finger-length, dirty blonde hair. “I know you’re friends…”

“No, it’s not like that,” my mother sobbed, shaking her head and sitting down on the chocolate brown suede couch.

“Well, spit it out!” I could feel my blood start to boil as I envisioned my father-in-law calling my parents about what happened in court.

“It’s Dana…”

“Of course it is. What the fuck does she want? I just saw her thirty minutes ago. Remember I was in court with her
all
day?” I gestured, my hands flying in the air to emphasize how angry and irritated Dana made me feel.

I sat on the couch next to my mom, not wanting to talk about my ex for one more minute of the day.

“Just shut the fuck up and listen to me!” my mother snapped at me. Tears started to run down her face as she started to speak again. She stood to face me, and my heart stopped. I didn’t understand why she would be crying. “After leaving the courthouse, Dana got into a…car accident…”

Yes, at that moment, I hated Dana, but she was my daughter’s mother, and even though I had wished her dead thousands of times in my head, I never meant it seriously. Cheyenne needed her mother, and the thought of Dana being in a car accident stunned me.

“Is she okay?” I whispered, trying to hold back the tears I was on the verge of crying.

“No,” she whispered back, shaking her head again. “She was airlifted, but it was too late. Dana died before they made it to the hospital.”

I don’t know why they say grown men don’t cry. That was the day my daughter lost her mother. That was the day my daughter didn’t get to say good-bye to her mother. That was the day I lost my first love. And that was the day I cried into my mother’s arms, whispering
sorry
over and over again.

Brooke

Five years later…

I
’ve heard that your thirties are the best years of your life. My twenties haven’t been that bad, but I’m hoping this next year will be better since I’m turning the big three-oh tomorrow. Of course, I’m dreading it, even though I’ve been told you become the person you’re going to be during your thirties. I thought that was what high school and college was for.

However, instead of being able to go to a four-year college after high school, I went to a community college to obtain my paralegal certificate on the weekends while I worked full-time as a front desk clerk at a major hotel. I missed out on all the drunken college nights as a result, but my twenties have been fun. I’ve done the bar scene for years, have a good job now as a paralegal, have great friends—but something is missing. While I’m making strides in my career, I’ve unfortunately reached a stagnant point in my love life.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my boyfriend, Jared. We have been together for four years, and I hope that one day he proposes, but that’s the thing—he hasn’t proposed, yet. I’ve dropped hints, most of our friends are getting married—but we’re not. There has been no mention of marriage on his end. When I bring it up, he changes the subject, and you know, I’m not getting any younger. Hell, we even live together. That is practically like being married—why not make it official?

“Brookie, you ready?” my best friend of fifteen years, Nicole, asked while walking in my front door without knocking.

“Yep, does this look okay?” I asked her, turning my five foot three inch frame to look at my ass in the bathroom mirror, the rhinestones on my jeans sparkling in the light as I moved. It was like a sign saying, “Look at my ass, people”. I just hoped my ass looked good in them and not too big.

“You look fine; we’re going to be late,” she said, fixing her long blond bangs that hung across her forehead. Nicole had recently grown out her hair. At one time, she cut it above her shoulders. It was cute, but I liked it long like she had it now. She wore it tonight with soft curls, a light spritz of hairspray, and it hung a little past her shoulders.

“How can I be late to my own party?” I chuckled and rolled my eyes at her.

Nicole hated to be late. I, on the other hand, could stand to be five minutes late, especially when it was my party. Not like they could start without me. Growing up, I was always running late since I had to make sure my sister, Bailee, was ready and on time wherever she needed to be.

“Whatever, let’s go. I’m hungry, and you know how I get when I’m hungry,” she pouted, walking back down the hall, swishing her hips in jeans similar to mine towards the front door.

I took one final look in the mirror, straightening out my sequined black tank top that I had paired with the bedazzled boot cut jeans and black platform heels. Checking to make sure my smoky grey eye shadow was a perfect contrast to my green eyes, I ran my hands through the flat-ironed, dark brown hair that hung to the middle of my back, giving it a little volume, and turned to meet Nicole in the living room.

“Wait,” I said, turning around to go back to my room. “Did you remember to bring socks?”

“Shit, no.” Nicole followed me down the hall. “I still can’t believe you want to go bowling for your birthday. We aren’t ten; we should go clubbing or something.”

“I’ve already told you that I have always wanted to have a bowling party as a kid, but I never got one. Plus, we go out almost every weekend anyway. I just want to go to dinner with my closest friends and get competitive with a few rounds of bowling. I want something
different
.”

I always asked my mom to throw me a bowling party…when she was in town for my birthday, that was…but she never did. She was always out of town on “business” and left my sister and me to fend for ourselves. It wasn’t business trips that she was on though. When I was in the ninth grade, I found out that they were trips with boyfriends to lavish places.

The first time she went on a
trip
, I had just turned thirteen and my sister was six. I walked home from school to find a note left by my mom on the kitchen table with a hundred dollars to feed my sister and me for a week. I had no idea how to take care of a six-year-old, let alone myself. That was the day I became an adult and stopped being just a teenager. That day, I became a nurturer; someone who always makes sure another person came before themselves.

My mother always had a way with men. She could make them do whatever she wanted—like buy her gifts and take her to tropical islands with them. The downside of her plan was that she left my sister and me alone. She never took us with her or introduced us to her companions, but she always brought us back a gift to try to make up for her being gone. Even after I found out about the men, she still told me that they were “business trips”. Little did she know that I would stand outside her bedroom door and listen to her on the phone.

Of course, through doing that, I learned about phone sex. At fourteen, you knew what sex was, but you didn’t need to hear your mother
pretending
to have sex. I never told her that I listened to her a few times. If she was going to hide things from me, I was going to do the same back.

As for my father…what father? My mother had no idea who he was, so how would I know? Not having a loving set of parents when I was growing up probably mapped out why I chose to find a job as a paralegal in Family Law. I didn’t do it for the divorces; I did it for the children. They were too innocent and needed to have someone unbiased fighting for them and what they deserved. I loved my job. I loved my co-workers aside from my pompous boss. Who was having an affair with one of our clients. Thank God, he didn’t have children with his current wife. I’m not sure I would be able to help represent him during his divorce—when that happens.

“Jared, are you ready?” I asked, walking into the living room to see him sitting on the couch with his headphones on, playing Call of Duty—still.

“Yeah, we’re almost done,” he said, his blue eyes never looking away from the fifty-inch TV. He continued to talk to his online friends through his headset as if Nicole and I weren’t standing there waiting for him with our hands on our hips.

I was surprised he heard me while he was wearing his giant gaming headphones with a microphone attached. Of course, Jared wasn’t ready to go on time. His life revolved around video games—especially Call of Duty. At first, it bugged me, but over the past four years, I realized that it could be worse. Nicole and I went out on Friday and Saturday nights and did our own thing while he stayed at home and played with his online friends. I guess it was better than him being out in bars with chicks hanging all over him.

Yes, Nicole and I usually have guys hanging all over us whenever we hit the dance floor together if we go out clubbing, but I would never cheat on Jared. I don’t think he would ever cheat on me either, but I have to admit that I do take comfort in knowing for sure that he is home and not cheating.

“He’ll just be a minute,” I said to Nicole as she waited as patiently as she could, turning to go sit at my dining room table.

“Figures,” she sighed as she grabbed her phone from her purse and began to scroll through it. “Let’s just go without him.”

“I’m not going to my birthday party without my boyfriend,” I said, shaking my head at her.

Nicole wasn’t a patient person. That was probably why we had been such good friends for so long. She took care of me by not letting people walk all over me, and I took care of her like an older sister…even though we were only a few months apart. Her parents had a healthy marriage, at least from the outside. You never knew what really went on in other people’s lives, and she never told me otherwise.

We waited another fifteen minutes for Jared. Nicole wasn’t happy until I distracted her by shoving a shot of tequila in her face, her hazel eyes growing wide with approval. I figured we could take a birthday shot while he finished “saving the world”—a never ending effort that took up ninety percent of his life. You would think I was the other ten, huh? I didn’t think so.

*~*~*

We finally arrived at the Cheesecake Factory about a half an hour later and met up with our friends. Todd and Brandi, another couple that we are friends with, bought me my first drink of the night. After finishing off our meals followed by enough cheesecake to make us want to unbutton our pants, we made our way to the nearby bowling alley.

Three of our friends who couldn’t make it to dinner were there to meet us, and we began a game of girls versus boys. Unfortunately, for me, I wasn’t on my game that night. Usually I could throw a few strikes or at least a spare, but something was off. Of course, bowling and alcohol weren’t a good combination, but I had bowled my worst score ever.

After the game of girls versus boys, my friend, Tonia, and I went in search of the restroom to freshen up. Nicole was busy flirting with one of my co-workers who she met at my office’s holiday party a few months prior, and I didn’t want to interrupt her. She had been asking about Mike nonstop ever since then, and once she found out he was coming to my birthday party, I think she’d been looking forward to this night more than I had.

As I washed my hands and checked myself out in the mirror, I was surprised to see that I still looked good. I thought for sure that my make-up would be running, I was sweating from all the physical exertion…and maybe the alcohol.

“Let’s get another drink before we go back,” I said, drying my hands and fluffing my hair.

“Let’s,” Tonia agreed, smoothing down her short, black hair.

Tonia was beautiful inside and out. She was one of the sweetest people I knew, and physically, she reminded me of Storm from the
X-Men
movies. We met while we were both in school to become paralegals, but she moved to another town after we graduated, and we rarely hung out anymore.

We walked to the bar and, for a split second, my heart sank. A brunette was leaning on the bar, turned towards Jared, touching his arm and he was smiling while talking to her.

That tramp just touched my man!

Tonia moved over to the far end of the bar to order us another round of drinks, but my eyes stayed glued on the pair, curious of what they were talking about. Jared wasn’t a very social person outside of his gaming shenanigans. I mean, yeah, he had friends, and I wasn’t his first girlfriend, but he was just a homebody, and I was a little shocked to see him socializing…and with a girl, nonetheless.