AllFreeNovel
Share Us
57 Miranda
LAST NIGHT, Lily hadn’t questioned me on the way to her apartment. She had only taken care of me. I loved her for it.
The sun peeked through the sheer curtains covering the patio doors. As much as I wished last night had just been the worst, world-record-breaking nightmare ever… it was not.
Unfortunately, it’d been arealongoing nightmare that began months ago.
Here I’d thought Will and I were sailing along in a gentle sea with blue skies above us. Had I paid closer attention, I would have seen the dark clouds off in the distance, strengthening into a mighty storm that would be the hurricane of the century.
Its name: Jason Sayton.
I remembered Jason cruising into town one sunny June afternoon, smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of year for me with weddings every weekend, sometimes multiples a week. I was rarely around physically, much less mentally.
I’d wanted to give Jason the benefit of all my doubts. After all, he was Will’s closest friend. Then July had arrived. Jason still wasn’t working full time, and like a kid, he’d guilted Will into entertaining him. If I could go back to the beginning, to when Jason had first arrived, I’d change a great many things.
But that was neither here nor there.
Will had changed seemingly overnight.
My head spun from everything I had missed. Jason Sayton, the man whose surname fitted him to a T, had managed to steer us off course with his massive waves.
As I reflected now, in the early morning sun, I questioned my sanity for staying with Will and giving him chance after chance.
What else was I to do when Will had begged me to stay and I was pregnant?
Seeing Will with Cori last night had broken me. I’d known about her for months, but now I had a face in my head when I imagined him making love to her.
How weak and pathetic was I?
I should have dumped his ass months ago, as Lily and Tate had urged. I didn’t because I loved him, but this person he’d become wasn’t my Will. I didn’t know who he was.
After he destroyed me in front of hundreds of people, I still couldn’t walk away, even when my heart had stopped beating and all the air had left my lungs.
Fucking pathetic.
If I could just wake up from this nightmare, then maybe the truth would be revealed.
For some reason unbeknownst to me, I believed Jason was the link to all the bullshit that had entered Will’s and my life. I just didn’t have any way to prove it, but then it wasn’t like Jason had been holding a gun to Will’s head when he’d kissed Cori.
No, Will had freely betrayed me for months. He hadn’t been tricked into cheating. He’d changed all on his own. Maybe Jason had influenced him, but what were we, in middle school? Maybe Jason’s womanizing ways had rubbed off on Will?
Whatever the answers were, I didn’t care anymore. Public humiliation and the gutting pain I’d felt seeing Will with Cori had been the final straw. I could leave him now, once and for all, except I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d get back to normal if Jason wasn’t around.
Jesus Miranda, stop!
“Good morning, sunshine,” Lily chirped, startling me out of my reverie.
“Morning.” I reached for my phone on the coffee table, but Lily grabbed it before me.
“No. Don’t check your messages. We need to talk first.”
“I’m not in the mood for talking. Now give me my phone,please. Tessa always texts me the morning of a wedding.” I held my hand out weakly. I didn’t want to argue with Lily. I needed to reserve my strength to face Will.
“Ha! Liar. You want to see if Will texted you, not if Tessa did.” Lily shook her head, one hand on her hip, the other pressing my phone against her breast. “No, you aren’t getting your phone back until we talk about last night. Jesus, Miranda, I waited and waited for you to return from the bathroom. After fifteen minutes, I worried something had happened to you.” Her eyes turned glossy. If Lily cried, I would lose it. “When I didn’t find you in the bathroom, I freaked out. I searched for our waiter, which was not easy to do in that place. I bet you didn’t know the layout is like an H with the kitchen between both sections.”
“No, I didn’t.” I could imagine searching for anyone in Charlie’s would be quite the undertaking. The mere fact I’d run into Cori in the bathroom when I had was a miracle. Or maybe a curse.
“Thank God our waiter had seen you, or I’d have called the police. He showed me where you were talking to ‘a group of friends.’Friends,” she scoffed. “That asshole was with the other woman, out in public for the whole world to see. And you had found them! How? They were in a totally different area than us.”
