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“There’s no need to apologize. Answer your brother and I’ll see you in a few.”
“How did I get so lucky?” I asked as my thumb hovered over the answer button.
“We’re both lucky, and don’t forget that I love you.”
Ariel’s glow brightened. Her radiant smile struck my heart like a shot from Cupid’s arrow. Blowing her a kiss, I watched her leave my room to head to hers to collect her belongings. It pained me to see the door close behind her back, but I knew we wouldn’t be separated forever. Once I finished this call with my brother, I’d be back in her arms, ready to start the rest of my life at her side.
With a heavy sigh, I answered my phone and took a seat at the edge of the bed Ariel and I had destroyed the night before.
“This better be good,” I answered, slightly huffy that he was keeping me from the love of my life.
“Luke? I hope you’re sitting down. Something has just come to my attention that I think you ought to know about.”
nine
Ariel
Two Weeks Before Vanessa's Wedding
“Whatthefuck?”Icursed as I glanced down at my cell’s caller I.D. I was up to my arms with a difficult and complicated tulip arrangement and did not have time for this bullshit. “Why the fuck are you calling me after all these years?” My anger flamed as I decided to let the call go to voicemail. Seconds later, the call ended, but promptly started ringing again.
“What?” I shouted, furious that Phil had decided to contact me after over two years of complete radio silence.
“Hey, Ari-Bo-Bari,” Phil said smoothly on the other end of the line. “How’s my baby doing?”
“First of all, you asshat, I’m not your baby! I stopped being your ‘baby’ when you decided to fuck around behind my back. Second, why the fuck are you calling me? The last time I heard from you, or should I say when you texted me, I told you that I didn’t ever want to hear from or speak to you again! I meant that, Phil. I don’t want anything to do with you, so why the hell are you calling me all of a sudden?”
I was furious. The last thing that I needed was to hear from the king of all asshats and listen to his bullshit.
“Come on, honey,” Phil continued, obviously ignoring what I’d said and continuing on with what I’d come to learn as his own special line of bull. “Don’t be mad at me. We had a tiff, that’s all. We both took some time to find ourselves and now, it’s time to put things back to right.”
“Phil?” I screamed, incredulous at his nerve. “What in the hell are you talking about? A tiff? We didn’t have a tiff. We fucking broke up because you were sticking your dick into someone else. And then you didn’t even have the balls to tell me that it was over to my face. You did it via text message!”
“I did it because I knew it would break my heart to see your face, baby girl. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You are so full of shit! You know that, right? You are one big piece of shit! You didn’t break up with me like that because it would ‘break your heart’! You did it because you were scared. And you should be. If I ever see you again, you’ll be lucky to walk away.”
“Now baby, don’t get yourself all worked up over nothing.” Phil forced out a heavy breath, doing nothing to hide his exasperation. It was something that he did often whenever we’d have a spat or I did something that he didn’t ‘agree’ with. After our breakup and meeting Lucas, I realized just how condescending it was. It also made me glad that I’d cut him out of my life. Or at least I thought I had.
“Phil, I’m not going to ask you again. Why are you calling me?”
There he went with that heavy breath again and the condescending scoff that inevitably followed.
“Because I miss you. We belong together. There hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think of you and want you back.”
“Even when you were balls deep in another other woman’s pussy? The one that you referred to as ‘a volcano’?”
“That was just something that I needed to work out of my system. And you can’t tell me that you’ve been celibate the whole time we’ve been apart.”
My anger was near its boiling point. If I continued to listen to this jackass, my day and this arrangement that I’d been sweating over would both be ruined.
“That is none of your business. What I do is none of your business. Now, do me a favor and delete my number from your phone. I don’t want anything to do with you, you asswipe.”
“You can’t mean that, Ari—”
“Oh, but I do mean it. You were never there for me, Phil. That was just one of many things that I realized after you dumped me.”
“Come on, baby. You don’t have to say it like that.”
