Page 74 of Catching Sparkles

“What do you need, Hailey?” He asked briskly.

“I don’t need anything,” she said. “I’m trying to be nice and give you one last courtesy call as a warning.”

His pale eyes slid over to me, and all I could do was silently shrug.

“A warning about what?”

“I’ve been talking to my father, and he really doesn’t like the mental state that all this drawn out legal shit is putting me in. He’s starting to get pretty worried about my wellbeing.”

I didn’t know much about Hailey, since Rhys didn’t love rehashing too much about the last few years of his life. I mostly just knew that she and Rhys had been terrible for each other, and that after a long time of them living together with no sexual or romantic inclination for each other, she’d gotten with someone else.

One other thing I knew was that her dad was a pretty important rich guy, and he’d actually owned the company Rhys had worked at and gotten fired from. To add insult to injury, the supervisor he’d gotten fired by was the guy who Hailey had been cheating on him with.

When Rhys didn’t verbally respond to what she’d said, she went on.

“And basically after talking to him about some of what you’ve put me through, he thinks it’s time to go ahead and end this. He happens to be in some of the same social circles as Judge Rosenthal, you know.”

“What I’ve put you through?” Rhys responded with a snort. “What exactly have I put you through?”

“The stress of dealing with your unreasonable demands is taking a toll on my health, and he agrees with me.”

“Splitting the shit we own down the middle is an unreasonable demand?”

“Yes, it is!” She snapped. “It’s unreasonable because I’m the one who spent my time and effort procuring things for our home. It’s not just about the money, you know.”

“Look, I don’t want any of your precious fucking art and you know that. I want my car, my clothes, and my power tools. And you don’t care about any of that stuff, you’re just trying to punish me by dragging this all out.”

“I think I’m owed a little compensation for dealing with you for five years, Rhys,” she retorted. “You don’t know what it was like trying to turn a backwoods hick like you into a decent, presentable person.”

I felt my mouth drop open at her words, not only because it was such a cruel thing to say to someone she must have loved at one point, but because the idea of anyone thinking of Rhys Kensington as a hick was blowing my little mind. Then again, I supposed maybe even the star quarterback and prom king would seem like a hick to someone who wasn’t from a town like Cherryvale.

“Yeah, I’d rather be a fucking hick than someone like you,” he bit out. “You cheated on me when you could have just said you wanted to separate, and then had your new boyfriend fire me for no fucking reason.”

“Oh, get over it,” she spat out. “We were barely even together.”

I watched his eyes widen, and they darted back over to me, and then the camera next to me as my heart rate picked up a bit. He’d told me she’d never actually verbally admitted to the affair, even though it was completely obvious what had happened. I was pretty sure she’d avoided copping to it because obviously infidelity didn’t make you look too hot in divorce proceedings. I could tell by the shock on his face that he’d noticed, too.

“Would have been nice for you to let me know about that,” he responded, and I could practically see the gears in his head working to try and determine what would be the best thing to say next. “You didn’t have to tell Graham to fire me, you know. I’d have quit and left on my own.”

“Oh, yeah right. We both know you’d have moped around my house until one of us died of old age if I hadn’t made sure you needed to go crawling back to Mommy and Daddy. I did you a favor.”

The next few moments of silence felt like an eternity, but finally Rhys seemed to recover, clearing his throat. I could tell he was so surprised by what had transpired that he wasn’t even mad about the awful stuff she was saying.

“Yeah, well, uh… Do whatever you need to,” he said. “I have to go.” He clicked the button to hang up, then let his arm drop limply to his side. Blinking a few times, he looked straight into the camera.

“Oh!” I realized, fiddling with it to stop the recording.

“Holy shit,” he said, and I snorted.

“Yeah. Holy shit. Do you think this will actually help you?”

“I… I really don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess it can’t hurt to send it to my lawyer, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. “Let me just clip that part, and I’ll send it to you.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, sounding a bit dazed. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” I said. “Are you… Okay?”