Turning Thirty-Twelve (12 page)

Then I sighed in resignation. He was still the father of my kids, and I couldn’t leave him just standing there on my doorstep. Flipping the deadbolt, I jerked the door open. I smelled the alcohol before he even walked in the house. The odor surrounded him like a thick cloud.

“Phew.” I fanned my face. “I sure hope you weren’t driving.”

“Took a cab.” His slurred words.

“I suppose I have to pay for it.”

“I paid.” His brows knit in thought. “I leasht I think I paid. Geesh, Jackie. I can’t remember. Can you take care of it?” He had evidently pickled his short-term memory.

With a disgusted huff, I leaned my head out the door. No disgruntled cabbie was waiting, so I assumed David had taken care of that detail. I shut the door and locked it mostly out a habit. I’d be unlocking it to let him out as soon as I called Ashley to come get her Romeo.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

He stumbled into the great room and sprawled out on my couch, staring at the ceiling. “I need to talk to you.”

“At one in the morning? What could you possibly need to talk to me about that couldn’t wait until a decent hour?” I sniffed the air again and wrinkled my nose. “And why would you need to talk to me about it while you’re drunk?”

“I’m leaving Ashley.”

So...
There was trouble with wife number two. Morbid curiosity was definitely getting the better of me, but I pushed it aside. Deep down I supposed I would always believe that marriage was supposed to be a lasting union. Even if most people—translate, everyone—had predicted a rocky road to happily ever after, the fact that David and Miss Hamilton County Fair were having problems was really kind of sad.

I arched an eyebrow. “That’s my problem because?”

“She hates you,” he drawled as he rolled from his back to his side and pushed himself to a semi-upright position. “Shesh jealous of you.”

“You’re drunk. You’ve got no idea what you’re saying.”

I took a couple of steps toward the phone, thinking the ex was delirious.

Ashley is jealous of me?

That was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.

I grabbed the handset and began to punch numbers. “I’m calling your wife to come get you.”

For somebody so drunk, he moved awfully fast. He snatched the phone from my hands, clicked it off, and then threw it on the sofa. “I don’t wantcha to call...
her
.”

I glared at him, growing angrier by the second. “Just because you and Ashley are fighting doesn’t mean I’m the Holiday Inn. Go home, David. I’ll call your wife, or I’ll call a cab. Doesn’t matter to me which.”

“She hates you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“She knows I schtill love you.” He took a couple of awkward steps toward me.

I had to fight the uncomfortable urge to take a step back. “You’re drunk.”
And you’re entirely full of shit.

David was close enough to run a wobbly hand down my arm. That used to be the extent of foreplay the last year or so of our marriage. “Jackie...I made a big mischtake.”

I swatted his hand away, thinking how utterly absurd this whole situation was. When David had come home and announced that he had knocked up Ashley and “owed it to her and the baby” to marry her, I’d harbored all sorts of elaborate fantasies. I’d even admit to some of them involving David’s violent and bloody mutilation, but the most frequent storyline was a version of exactly what was happening now.

Well, not
exactly
. He wasn’t drunk as a skunk in my musings.

He would come back, preferably crawling on hands and knees, to tell me he’d been horribly wrong. He didn’t want infantile Ashley and her perky boobs and flat stomach. He still wanted me—just good ole me. I would welcome him back with open arms. We would have sex that, for once, was satisfying enough I didn’t have to fake an orgasm. Then we’d live happily ever after.

They had been comforting fantasies meant to salvage my shredded self-esteem for being pushed aside for a younger, prettier woman. But that was all those thoughts had ever really been. Fantasies. Because I had to live in the real world where Ashley had married David and had given him a son, fantasies were all they could be.

After the first few months, those silly fantasies faded.
Don’t get me wrong. I still wanted the man hobbled and brought to his knees
. Doesn’t any woman who feels discarded ultimately wish all sorts of bad karma for the guy who threw her away? 

But it didn’t take long to realize I was happier without David than I’d ever been with him, and the dreams no longer involved him coming back. They mostly revolved around winning the lottery and rubbing his nose in it.

I might have been sleeping alone every night, and I might have missed being in love—but I’d come to recognize that a one-sided relationship wasn’t really a relationship. David might have loved me in his own warped way, but he wasn’t
in love
with me. If he had been, Ashley would never have been the irresistible temptation that she was.

A part of me would always love David Ryan, and a part of me would always hate him.

But not a single part of me wanted him back.

“C’mon, schweetheart.” He reached for me again. “I mished you so much. Ashley doesn’t get me.”

“David, I don’t think you should be telling me about your wife.” I moved around him, got to the sofa, and bent over trying to reach the phone.

He grabbed my shoulders, spun me around, and tackled me to the couch. The stupid cordless was pressing hard into my back, David’s sour alcohol breath was in my face, and it took all my self-control not to bring my knee up hard into his groin. “Get off me!”

“Jackie, I’ve mished you so much.” He tried to kiss me.

I turned my head fast enough so all he got was a cheek, which he proceeded to slobber on. “David, so help me... If you don’t get off me...” I squirmed and thrashed, trying to throw him.

My ex started to sob. He rolled off me and landed on the floor. Well, partly on the floor and partly on the coffee table. It sure didn’t look very comfortable, and he was still crying.

“For the love of...” I sat up and tugged at his arm. “Get up here and sit down.”

He slowly worked his way up to sit on the couch, still weeping. “What am I gonna do? Ashley doeshn’t love me anymore. I think shesh got a boyfriend.”

“Who do I look like? Dr. Phil?” With a heavy sigh, I patted the hands he had clenched in his lap. “Let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make a pot of coffee, and we can talk.”

***

“Feeling any better?” I asked after David had finished his third cup of coffee.

My ex shrugged from his chair on the opposite side of my small kitchen table. I could tell he was sobering because he was reverting to his normal stoic personality. I could also tell he was embarrassed at the little dog and pony show he’d put on in the other room.

“Do you want to talk about it now?”

“Ashley doesn’t understand me.” He nervously shifted his coffee cup between his hands.

“Isn’t that cliché? Boo hoo. My wife doesn’t understand me.”

He just glared at me, his usual response to my chastising sarcasm. “I swear, Jackie, the woman’s downright stupid. She’s not like you at all.”

I tried not to smile, but my ego needed to know I possessed some quality that disgustingly perfect Ashley didn’t. “Stupid?”

He nodded. Enthusiastically. “We were watching
Seinfeld
re-runs, and she didn’t even know what they were making fun of. Remember that episode where the baseball player spits on Kramer and they slow it down like the Zapruder film where Kennedy got shot?”

“Duh.”

“Sorry. Forgot you were named for Jackie Kennedy. But do you see what I mean? She didn’t even know anything about the grassy knoll or the single bullet.” His heavy sigh floated in the air. “She doesn’t get
anything
I talk about. She hates my music. She hates my TV shows. She hates that I’m...losing my hair.” He sighed again as he splayed his fingers through his salt and pepper hair.

It
was
getting a bit sparse in places. I tried not to smile.

“What exactly did you expect? She’s twenty years younger than you.” I neglected to add that she was only one year older than Patrick, no longer feeling the need to rub salt in David’s wounds. The poor guy was suffering enough.

“I’m tired of people asking if Duncan is my grandson.”

I snorted a small laugh before I could catch myself, so I pretended to cough into my fist to try to spare his feelings. “What do you want me to say?”
How about, “Teaches you for screwing around with a younger woman?”

“I miss you, Jackie. I miss our talks. I miss that we share the same memories. I miss that I didn’t have to... you know...show off for you in bed. You understood me.” He put his hand over mine where it rested on the table.

I pulled my hand back and stared at him. “We didn’t
talk
, we
fought
. You don’t miss me.”
And I don’t miss you.

“But I do. Shit, Jackie, we grew up together. You’ve always just...been there—almost as long as I can remember. It’s hard without you taking care of me.” I could tell he was uncomfortable because he got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. He sure didn’t need it. His hands were already shaking.

“David...”

“I’m having trouble getting by without you.” The chair made a scraping noise on the tile as he took a seat again. “You always knew where stuff was. You always paid the bills on time. You didn’t go on shopping sprees for ridiculous stuff like couch purses.”

“They’re Coach purses, and Ashley just turned twenty-three. Give her a chance. Have you ever even shown her how to balance a checkbook? Have you ever helped her make a budget?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t have to show you how to do any of that. She’s home with Duncan all damn day and the place is still a mess. I trip over toys, clothes, and–and–
stuff.
” David’s gaze wandered the kitchen and the great room. “Look how nice this place is.”

“Not everyone is as anal retentive as me. And I recall you bitching an awful lot about how messy the house was all the time when the boys were little. Chasing after a growing boy is exhausting. I’m sure she’ll get to be better with practice.”

He might be nostalgic, but my trip down memory lane was only reinforcing what I had thought earlier. Our marriage had never been paradise.

The house had been livable, but messy. I had paid my share of bills late, trying to juggle way too little money and way too much debt. But through hard work, we’d muddled our way through and lived to tell the tale. That remarkable accomplishment, however, did
not
make a good marriage.

Once the kids hit high school, David and I had already realized we had absolutely nothing in common except for Patrick and Nathaniel. For the last couple of years, I think the marriage limped along like a wounded animal.  We had stayed together simply out of force of habit. Neither of us wanted to be the one to admit defeat and take the blame. David’s affair wasn’t what doomed our marriage. It was just the catalyst that finally forced us to admit the marriage was over.

I was happier now. I had my friends. I had my job. I had my boys. I read to my heart’s content. I fiddled with writing books in my spare time, goofy little mystery novels I was sure no one would ever read. Once I’d gotten past the empty nest blues, I enjoyed my life.

I was happier now, even if I was alone.

You’re not alone, Jackie. You’ve got Mark now.

But even if I didn’t, I was still better off. I didn’t need a man to make my life valuable.

Good God, somewhere in the last couple of years, I’d developed something akin to self-worth. For the first time in my life, I was comfortable in my own skin.

I smiled at the new and incredibly surprising thought.

“You’ve never even slept with anyone but me, right?” David pulled me back from my thoughts. “
Right?
” he demanded when I didn’t immediately reply.

“That’s none of your business.”

“I knew it,” he said with a firm nod. “You’ve never been with anyone but me. Who’s this new guy? Mike?”

I smirked because I knew damn well David knew Mark’s name. “He’s a friend.”

“I don’t want you to sleep with him. I–I want you back.”

“Bullshit.” I wished Ashley would miraculously show up and take her husband home. “I’m a toy you didn’t want anymore, but now you don’t want anybody else to play with it, either."

“But I love you,” he insisted.

“You’re the father of my boys. We share a history. I love you too.
But
,” I added when he began to smile, “I’m not in love with you anymore.”

Each and every word was true. I had really moved on.

***

I didn’t crawl back into my bed until almost three. I sat staring at the clock for a long time, scolding myself for drinking anything with caffeine. But that wasn’t the only reason I was still awake. The minutes clicked by slowly, but sleep simply wouldn’t find me because I couldn’t find the “off” switch for my brain.

I thought about David—about everything he’d said—and the only real emotion I could muster was pity. The man had made an awful lot of mistakes in his life, and I was sure he’d make plenty more. But he was Ashley’s problem now.

Thank God
.

I thought about Nate and Kathy and wondered how awkward it would be for them if they broke up while Mark and I stayed a couple. Or worse—how awkward it would be if Mark and I didn’t stay together while they still went out?

I hated that thought. My mind took a side route as I hoped to hell Nate and Kathy were smart enough to use reliable birth control. I sure didn’t want my son having to get married at nineteen like I had.

And I thought about Mark. I thought an awful lot about Mark. Where were we going to go from here?

I never found any answers.

***

Damn doorbell.

The annoying sound seeped into my exhausted brain. I couldn’t tell if it was real or just a dream. It rang again. I groaned and rolled over to look at the clock.