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“I should have checked my phone sooner,” she huffs, eyeing the suit jacket on Stewart’s side of the closet. My half is empty. Absolutely empty amongst the expensive suit jackets and golf shirts.
“Knock it off, Braxton. I would much rather you have been taking care of my sick nephew than dealing with my problems,” I chastise her. “Not to mention you were out all day with your in-laws.”
She curls her fingers into fists. “Either way, I want to string that guy up a flagpole by his tiny balls!”
Her husband, Maddox, winces from where he watches us from his position in the doorway. Sympathy is heavy in his stance, and I continue to ignore it. Sure, my heart might ache like a mofo right now, but this is not the end of my world. Stewart doesn’t deserve to have that power over me.
Maybe if I repeat that over and over and over again, it might help take the pain away as well as the bottle of wine did last night.
“Oh, don’t give us that look, Anna. You’ve never turned down the idea of dishing out a healthy dose of revenge.” Braxton tightens her stare on me. “There are ideas in that beautiful head of yours, I know it.”
“Of course there are. I’m just trying to work out what I want to start with.”
Maddox winces. “That’s never a good sign.”
“You know what else wasn’t a good sign?” I pause, waiting for them to guess the answer to my rhetorical question. Anger flushes my cheeks. “That he refused to let me snoop on his phone! Work, work, work, he always said, but I should have known better! Nobody needs to take their phone to the showerin case of a work call! God, I’m naive. A naive idiot who sat back in la-la land while their fiancé was hooking up with a gorgeous woman who wasnotme,” I rant, a sharp sting attacking the back of my eyes.
Braxton stomps toward me before dropping to a squat, hands on my knees. I hate the way tears drip down my cheeks. Hate that my wounds are still so fresh, my sense of self-worth cracking further and deeper with each reminder of them. Being in this bedroom, a place that was once a happy, safe space . . .
I want to shatter the walls and ruin everything he’s ever loved. But more than that, I want to curl up on the bed, breathe in his cologne, and cry for the foreseeable future. Three years of my life I’ve spent with Stewart. I’ll never get that time back.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask her, my voice little more than a whimper.
“I think you need to get all your shit out of here and then start embracing the rage prowling beneath your skin. Once you’ve let it have its moment, you work on healing yourself. You repair the damage he caused while moving on with your life. You’re too strong to allow this man to stop you from accomplishing everything you’ve ever wanted in life. He was never worthy of you.”
Thick black curls fall into my sister’s eyes, and I fight back a weak smile when she lifts a hand to flick them away. I used to always want hair like hers, and she wanted hair like mine. We used to waste our shooting star wishes on somehow swapping styles when we were younger. My sister is my best friend. Nobody has ever been able to compete with her, even when we used to spend too many days picking on one another growing up.
“If he was never worthy of me, then why did you approve of him?” I ask her.
“I never did,” Maddox puts in. The cheeky grin he gives us has my sister flipping him off.
“You’re a no-good suck-up, Maddox. Go do something useful and keep watch for Ewie Stewie.”
I shake my head, the small flicker of humour that had sparked inside of me quickly snuffed out. “He won’t be home for a few hours.”
He came home last night begging and pleading for me to speak to him.To just listen to what I have to say, he said. But after ten minutes of me screaming at him to go loud enough to wake the neighbours, he took off with his tail between his legs and a promise to try and speak with me again after work today.Once I’ve calmed down enough to listen.
“You know what, Anna? Get up,” Braxton orders with a slap to both my knees. After rising to her feet, she goes right back to the closet, beginning to yank hangers off the rod. “Get up and wipe your tears. I’m not allowing you to wallow. Not when you’re still so angry.Rightfully so.”
“What do you want me to do? Throw a tantrum?”
Maddox lingers still, watching his wife toss hangers of expensive clothes on the bed behind me. “Are you sure I have to watch the door? I think it’s about to become incredibly entertaining to watch.”
“The last thing we need is that piece of shit interrupting us. Can you please watch the door? If he shows up, you have full permission to get him out by any means necessary.”
Like magic, Maddox darts out of the room. Braxton looks at me again before dragging her eyes to the pile of clothes. I swallow the lump in my throat—from emotion or the aftermath of my tears, I don’t know—and focus on the navy blue button-up on the top of the mountain of clothes. I don’t think he’s ever worn that shirt, but I remember gifting it to him last year for his birthday. Another pang in my chest, this one threatening to steal my breath.
Braxton doesn’t wait for me to speak before she’s storming out of the room. I don’t have it in me to follow her. Tentatively, I pinch the bottom button on that blue shirt and exhale. The longer I hold the smooth, cold button, the tighter my grip becomes. When I finally tear it from the string attaching it to the shirt, I feel a rush of relief. Some of the pressure in my chest releases. When the second button tears free, another tiny bit of relief has me moving button by button until none remain.
“Catch,” Braxton says.
I barely manage to catch the bottle of ketchup in my hands before she’s throwing one full of mayo. Then mustard and barbeque sauce. She doesn’t dare throw the heavy jug of bleach that’s swinging in her left hand, though.
“What’s that for?”
“What? This?” She swings the bottle slowly.
“I don’t know about that look in your eyes . . .”
