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“Think of it like a memory of that one time you walked in the park on a nice day,” she said with a smile. He looked again at the little glass ball, then put it in his pocket. Stella looked out at the park and said, “Let’s get some ice cream.”
He smiled a little as she took his hand and they started walking back up the path. Maybe there was some benefit to getting to know Stella beyond what was down in black and white. Maybe there could be more between us than business.
He’d never have considered it, but Richard was finding that he was growing fond of Stella. He didn’t know what it meant or if it would become something more than just a walk in the park with her. As they walked and he looked down at her in the sunlight, he started to feel something new inside. Something warm and inviting.
Maybe there was something more to be gained here. Maybe…
Stella
Stellahadbeenthinkinga lot about her walk with Richard for the rest of that day. When she got home, she found herself imagining him as a small child. In a bedroom surrounded by books and computers. Years ago, she remembered reading about parents who were purchasing black and white toys for their children instead of brightly colored ones because it was supposed to foster smarter toddlers. She imagined that Richard’s parents were probably people like that. He more than likely had a nursery that didn’t even have bright colors in it. It was no wonder he seemed not to know how to have any fun.
She was making herself lunch when she got a phone call out of the blue. Without thinking she answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he said with a little laugh. “I’m surprised you picked up.”
Curtis.Again!She pulled the phone away from her ear and saw that this time he was calling from a different number. “What do you want, Curtis?”
Curtis paused and said, “The same thing I’ve been wanting. Time with you to talk things out. ”
Stella felt like she was in the twilight zone. “You’re joking, right? This is a joke. Or you’re suffering from short-term memory loss or something, right? That’s gotta be it.”
“Listen, Stel, I know our divorce was a messy one,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that everything after has to be that way. We were friends before this. Maybe we can be friends again.” “I don’t think so,” she said, stiffening. “In fact, I’m pretty sure the last thing I would want to be is friends with someone who decided to make it his mission to destroy my life.”
He made a tsking noise with his teeth. “Oh, it wasn’t really that bad, was it?” he said and Stella felt her blood pressure start to rise. “Look, why don’t we go out for coffee and talk this out? My treat. I think that maybe if we had a real conversation about what happened, we can come to some kind of arrangement.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Stella. “I lost my job because of you. My reputation is ruined because of you. How can you do the things you did to me and now come back and act like everything is fine? They’re not! You messed everything up for me.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. He had a strange tone of voice that Stella didn’t like. He sounded like he was placating her. Patting her on the hand and telling her that everything was going to be all right like she was a three-year-old. It was only making her angrier.
“I’ll tell you what. You were right. I shouldn’t have called you. Clearly, you need a little more time to think about things,” he said. “So, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you a few days to think about us some more. After that, I’ll give you a call and we can reconnect. I might even be willing to go to your old boss and clear things up with them. Help you get your old job back. That’d be cool, right?”
“Eat shit and die, Curtis.” Stella hung up the phone and nearly threw it across the room. She gripped the phone for a long time, holding herself back.If you throw your phone, you won’t be able to get phone calls and you need to get phone calls for work…
She took a deep breath, finally, and just set it down on the counter. Curtis really knew how to press her buttons. And she fell for it every single time. It was infuriating how easily he could get to her.
Stella picked her phone back up and blocked the new number too. She didn’t know how he was calling from different numbers. It seemed to be ridiculously stupid to get a burner phone every time one got the urge to stalk someone, but then, stalking someone in the first place didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
After she finished preparing dinner, there was a knock at her door. She answered it only to find Stoney on the other side with a bottle of wine. “Hey, sis,” he said. “Thought I’d stop through to say hello.” He held up the wine bottle. “I brought libations.”
“Come in,” said Stella, her mood still had not recovered since the phone call from her ex.
“Wow,” he said as he followed her to the kitchen. “Who pissed in your cornflakes?”
Stella sighed as she took out a couple of wine glasses. “I got a call from my ex-husband this afternoon. The second one in as many days.”
Stoney stiffened, his smile gone. “What did he want?”
She took a sip from her wine glass. It tasted good and was already starting to calm her nerves. “Can you believe he wants to ‘work things out’ with me?”
Stoney frowned deeply. “You’re kidding. After everything he put you through? Is he insane?”
“He must be,” she said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “I mean, the ink on the divorce papers isn’t even dry yet and he’s pulling this shit. It was like he completely forgot what he did to me. And not even the stuff he did after I left him. Everything. He’s acting like all we need to do was talk and that’ll make everything right. He really acts like the stuff that happened in our marriage was all someone else’s doing and he doesn’t understand why I’m still pissed at him.”
Stoney sipped from his glass of wine, then said, “You want me to talk to him?”
“No,” she said, even though she was almost annoyed enough to say yes. “I think he’ll probably forget all about this in a few days when he comes down from this episode. That’s how it always starts with him. Up and then down like a roller coaster.”
