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“I see where this is going,” I murmured.
“Yeah, I'm sure you do. So, well, I kinda knew I shouldn't do it, but because he was so crazy about privacy and never let me even touch his tablet or computer or phone, I just had this burning curiosity. And there his tablet sat… all mine for the weekend. I fought with myself over it. So, I went into the settings and completely disabled the password, but then I left it for the first day. I resisted the temptation to snoop. But there was just something gnawing at me. This gut feeling. Like a knot in my stomach. The next day, after I’d had some wine, I caved. I opened it and started looking through the pictures. That’s when I found…” She paused, took a deep breath, composed he
rself a little, but tears had already began to trickle down her cheek. “I found videos.”
My forehead scrunched. “What? Like porn videos?”
“No. Well, yes. I suppose so. Videos of him.”
“Oh wow.”
“Videos of him having sex with other girls.”
“Wait. Girls? As in plural?”
She nodded. “Yes. He wasn't just cheating on me with one girl. He'd been cheating on me with at least five other girls.”
“Holy hell. Five?!”
“Five.”
“Damn. So, what did you do?”
“What could I do? I ended it. Right there and then. I packed up all of his stuff. Since I had a key, I drove to his place and hooked up the tablet to his giant TV and I left the videos he’d made playing on a loop so he'd see them as soon as he opened his front door when he got back from his fishing trip. I packed up anything of mine that was at his apartment and as I left, I dumped all of his stuff just outside of his door in a pile. I didn’t even bother to lock the door as I left. I drove straight to the maintenance office for my apartment and got my locks changed since he also had a key to my place. I told the security guy at my building not let him in. That was it.”
“You guys didn't talk after that?”
“No. He tried calling, but I wouldn’t answer. What could I say? What could he say? The evidence was there. And it was obvious it had been going on for a long time, it wasn't like it had just been a single, drunken one-night-stand or something. You know, something excusable—not that something like that is really excusable, but it would have been way more excusable than repeatedly banging a different girl every night and videoing it.”
“Yeah. That's a real scumbag thing to do.”
“Understatement of the year. Bottom line, it broke my heart and my spirit for quite a while.”
I wanted to reach across the table and take her hand, but I wasn’t sure if that might be overstepping a boundary and we were just making progress, so I decided against it. I didn't know what to do or say. The story took me a little by surprise. I’d expected him to have cheated the minute she said he’d been private about his tablet. I hadn’t expected to hear that he’d been an amateur porn star. It pissed me off. If a guy wanted to be free to sleep around, then he shouldn’t have been stringing anyone along, lying to them, putting them at risk for God knows what. The guy was a douchebag. Plain and simple. The more I thought about it, the hotter my blood boiled. Before I even realized what I’d said, the words just seemed to slip out of my mouth.
“Want me to kick his ass?”
“I appreciate the offer,” she chuckled through her tears. “But no, I don't want anyone to kick his ass. He’s not worth the effort. I just don't want to ever see him or hear from him again.”
“Well, I can’t make any promises. If I ever see him, the odds are I'm gonna kick his ass.”
Her laughter deepened. “Is that so? What if I told you he's seven feet tall and weighs four hundred pounds?”
“I'd still kick his ass… or get my ass kicked trying!”
Her mood began to lighten and the tears stopped as her laughter continued.
“Uh, is he seven feet and four hundred pounds?” I asked. “Because if he is, he'd do really well in WWE.”
She threw her head back and covered her mouth with one hand to keep from cackling. Her head shook back and forth as she composed herself. “No, he's not. Pretty far from it, actually. He's just an average guy. To be honest, I don’t know why I fell so hard for him. He's kind of an idiot, really.”
“Maybe it's because…” I paused for dramatic effect and lowered the tone of my voice. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” I exaggerated my expression and tried to maintain a straight face.
She crumpled up her napkin and threw it across the table at me. “Jerk!” she mumbled with a playful smile. “I'll show you who knows nothing!”
“Sorry, had to drop a Game of Thrones line in at some stage tonight.” The grin on my face widened. It was great to see her eyes light up with her smile. I was not a fan of seeing Brooke cry.
Our eyes locked and the chemistry erupted. If we had tried to deny the pull before, in that moment, there was no way to refute it. It was almost palpable. The waiter arrived just in time, holding a silver platter stacked with samosas. We both blinked and looked away.
