Death by Kleenex.
The box crumbles slightly beneath my death grip. “So,” I say slowly, “you slept with someone else. While you were married. And he found out.”
I’m just relaying what she told me, trying to come to terms with the fact that Andy Kershaw won’t be taking Marla off my hands after all. A lost love wasn’t rekindled tonight. Any chance of a reunion between those two had already been incinerated by a match Marla struck years ago.
Not only did she cheat on Andy. She slept with his brother. His twin brother.
And it tore the family apart.
From what I gather, the Kershaws still haven’t recovered.
I shoot her a look of disgust, one she doesn’t see because her face is buried in the tissue I just handed her. She swipes at her tears and groans. “I’m such a shit.”
Nodding in agreement, I say, “No, you’re not.”
She looks up at me, hope radiating through her tears.
I quickly stall my head. “You were young. And yes, what you did was shitty. But it was a long time ago, and you can’t beat yourself up over something that happened when you were, what? Twenty-three? Twenty-four?” I huff, and my next words are softened by honesty. “We all do stupid stuff when we’re in our twenties, Marla. All of us. No one is immune to the fickleness of that age. We all end up hurting…someone…that we love.”
“But I destroyed a family, Becky. An entire family.” She sniffs, her lower lip trembling. “All because it felt good to be wanted by someone else. It was like a high, a dirty excitement that corroded my morals. Clouded my judgment. I wasn’t thinking when I did it. It was just…I’d been with Andy for so long, you know? We were like an old married couple, yet we were so, so young. When he touched me, I didn’t feel, like, chills anymore. But Derrick? All he had to do was look at me, and it felt like every cell in my body was dancing the freaking Macarena.” Lame pun aside, grief is etched into every line of her face. And yet, the very energy around her screams victim.
The bitch has been babied so much that, even when she’s the cause of someone else’s hurt, someone else’s pain, she can’t see past her own misery.
I can’t help it; I dig. “You weren’t thinking about anyone else. Just you and only you.”
Marla grimaces and crumbles even more. Apparently, the truth isn’t something she’s used to hearing.
But I don’t care. Don’t even care if I hurt her. Because you know what? Good! Fucking good! The bitch needs to be taken down a notch. And I’m starting to wonder why the hell I need her at all, if I ever did. Certainly, I’m enough for Hollis. Me, and me alone. I don’t need to widen any cracks in his marriage, laying the perfect foundation for our reunion. When he sees me, remembers me and the way we were together, he’ll tear apart their whole damn relationship himself.
I mean, my pictures are on his computer. Mine.
And he wrote his book while thinking about me. I know he did.
I suddenly feel foolish. Like I’ve been stalling, taking this ridiculous, circuitous route back to him. Making something that should have been easy more complicated than it needed to be. Getting sidetracked, distracted, seduced by the drama of my own doing because, for so long, I’ve had no one and no thing and holy-hot damn it felt good to be in the thick of life again. To be needed and wanted after going unseen for so long.
But there’s the rub.
Have I been feeding off the drama of it all? My affair with Ford? My meddlesome friendship with Marla? Have I become one of those people? The ones who get their fucking kicks from crisis and commotion?
Am I the one stalling my reunion with Hollis?
“You’re right.” Marla sighs, and for one crazy second I think she’s responding to the questions pounding through my head. But she’s not, of course she’s not, because Marla only thinks of Marla. “I was selfish back then. Selfish and foolish, always wanting what I didn’t have.” She squishes the tissue in her hand and nods. “But then I met Hollis. And it was like all the chaos inside of me, I don’t know, sort of calmed down. Subsided entirely.” She gives me a watery smile that I want to slap right off her shiny face. “Hollis brought me peace.”
I smile. I smile and smile and smile.
“That’s nice,” I say.
“I’m glad,” I say.
Marla nods again, and swipes at her eyes. The tears have halted, and her expression has turned from misery to determination. “I can’t fix what I did in the past,” she says, almost like she’s talking to herself. “But I can make the future better for those I love now. And for everyone else I meet.” She gives me a half smile. “It’s what Hollis would tell me to do.”
Hmm. I cock my head, try to make my question as innocent as I can. “Does Hollis know about Andy? About what you did?”
The look on her face tells me no. No, he doesn’t.
She hems and haws and doesn’t really answer. But I know what she’s doing. It’s a tactic I’m familiar with.
I’ve used it on Nicholas a million times. Only he doesn’t care to push past my bullshit to get to the truth. My truth isn’t something he wants to hear. Or needs to hear, to be more accurate. I don’t make him money. I’m just arm candy. And arm candy is meant to be seen, not heard.
It’s one of the reasons that, over the years, my personality disappeared so thoroughly, and I needed Ford to help bring it back.
It’s time to get my shit together.
• • •
When Marla grows too woozy from liquor and tears, I steer her to the guest bedroom, tuck her in, and resist the urge to press a pillow over her face. She passes out immediately, head tilted at an awkward angle and mouth gaping like a fish. Like a creeper, I watch her for a few minutes, realizing how easy it would be to do it. To take the pillow and just…hold it there, right there, right over her wide-open trap. She’s dead to the world (though not as dead as I’d like her to be) so there probably wouldn’t be any struggle.
Easy peasy.
Any warm, mushy feelings I had for Marla are gone, squashed completely by the inability to use her ex-husband as a catalyst for ending her marriage. Now that I know she won’t leave Hollis on her own, any concern I had regarding her happiness has evaporated entirely, leaving only irritation and anger in its wake.
And irritation and anger? I can work with that.
I pour a glass of wine and head back to the couch. Our evening was cut short, thanks to Marla, and I’m not near buzzed enough to drift into a dreamless sleep. So I turn on the television and thumb the remote, sipping wine as I do. As usual, there’s nothing on – nothing worth watching, anyway – and just as I’m about to flick the damn thing off and take my drink to bed, I feel a soft buzz against my thigh. The muffled sounds of an old Chicago song “You’re the Inspiration” wrinkles my nose, and hopping up, I try to detect the source of the horrid music. Plunging my hand between the couch cushions, I extract a cell phone – Marla’s – and note the name on the screen.
Hollis.
My thumb is spring-loaded, swiping across the screen and accepting the call before I can stop it. I press the phone to my ear – “Hello?” – and can barely hear my own voice over the beating of my heart. It’s knocking against my sternum like a bird made insane by captivity, determined to break free of its cage or die trying.