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“I’m Tara. We met at the fair in Castleton,” I remind her.
Mike looks up at me warmly. “Nice to see you again. What a small world to run into you here.”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m out with my girlfriends. We have a table outside.” I thumb toward the outside patio, as if to further explain where we’re sitting.
Christine’s mouth opens, as if she just placed me with where she knows me from. “Tara. Yes, the one with the goldfish. You’re helping Rob out this summer.”
Knowing Rob would hate for Christine to know his personal business, I just nod and don’t offer any more info about my helping him—or lack thereof.
“Your kids are amazing,” I say instead.
“Thank you. Molly speaks very highly of you,” she says, and my heart flutters with the notion that her kid talks about me. It also makes me a little sad. I look at the table set for two and at the half-full wineglasses. “I just wanted to stop and say hello. I hope you have a nice night. Celebrating something special?”
“Our anniversary,” Mike states eagerly, certainly proud of his relationship with Christine.
“Congratulations. How many years?”
“Four,” Mike says, to which Christine quickly and very sternly adds, “Three.”
His brows curve in as he stares at her for clarification. She darts her eyes my way and back to him with a pinch of her lips.
He nods in understanding. “Yes, three years.” He doesn’t sound happy, having to utter those words.
Now, I know why I walked over here. A woman’s intuition is something to be reckoned with, and you should always follow your gut.
“Cut the bullshit,” I state. “If you’re gonna have the balls to have an affair on your husband, then at least be adult enough to own it. Four years. Happy anniversary. You must be very proud of your infidelity.”
Christine’s face lights up, as if she’s about to launch many words at me, but Mike places his hand on hers and pulls her attention toward him.
“Christine, let it go.”
“But she—”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell Rob.” I stand tall with my hand on my hip, and explain, “I won’t tell him that the complaints you gave him for years—he wasn’t spontaneous enough or romantic enough or fun enough or plainly just enough of a man—weren’t true. It was because you wanted to have sex with someone else.”
A woman at the table behind me gasps.
I turn around and let the woman know, “You’re gonna wanna keep listening. This is good dinner entertainment.”
“Tara,” Mike warns, but I keep speaking.
“To have an affair on your husband with a dad from your son’s baseball team? Girl, you give housewives a bad name. A man supplies an amazing life for you, works to the bone, and you can’t handle that he doesn’t have enough time for you.”
“I’m not a housewife. I work.”
“Semantics.” I turn back to the woman behind me and explain, “When people are in the wrong, they always find that one incorrect word you used in your argument and hold on to it for dear life, as if it negates all the other things you said.”
The woman nods with me in agreement, so I further explain to the stranger, “The man she left for this guy”—I point to Mike, who buries his head in his hands—“the man I’m talking about, his name is Rob, and he is gorgeous. Like, physically perfect bone structure with the right amount of scruff, and his body is like an Adonis, and his hands are callous from working in construction. You picture what I’m talking about, right?”
The woman fans herself, so I hand over her water glass and then turn back to Christine. “That man is also an amazing father, an incredible artist, phenomenally cool, and a dreamer who had his hopes crushed by a woman who said he wasn’t good enough.”
Christine throws her napkin down. “Tara, that’s enough. You have no idea what Rob is like.”
“Yeah, I do. He’s a man who bought a ranch with a dream. A ranch you let him buy so he had a place when you left him. The man can be overpowering because he expects so much from those around him. He has a high moral ground, and when you fall, he can’t handle it. Yeah, the man’s a dick. He also has a really big dick, which you didn’t deserve either.”
There are now more gasps and a fork drop or two from people in the restaurant. Is there music in here? Because there should be. It’s suddenly very, very quiet. The maître d’ starts to make his way over, along with another gentleman.
“He’s also a man worth being in love with even when you want to wring his neck and storm out of his house. He’s a brute, and imperfect, which makes him everything a woman has ever wanted.”
