Never Knew Until You

by L E Royal

  Parker’s heart raced. She couldn’t find the gumption to look contrite when she was actually excited at the prospect.

  “No, sweetheart, it won’t be for your pleasure. Not until you’ve repented for your sins anyway.”

  Kristina caught the collar of her shirt and pulled her back in for a rough kiss. By the time she was released, Parker was gripping the shiny door of the car for support, embarrassingly hot, a mess between her legs, again.

  “I enjoyed last night, a lot, and this morning.” Kristina offered the words with a salacious smile. “Call me, okay?”

  Parker promised she would, reluctantly stepping away and picking up her purse. She watched as the car pulled away from the curb with a roar, until it had disappeared out of sight.

  Wow.

  She was still floating on cloud nine while she dug through her purse for her cell, and hit Marion’s speed dial.

  “You’re alive!”

  She took a deep breath. She felt light. She felt young and free, and happy in a way she hadn’t been in so long.

  “I’m alive, and the reviews were true, all of them. It’s amazing, and she’s sort of amazing.”

  “Oh my God, you did it! I’m old and married. Give me details!”

  Marion was half shrieking, and Parker heard LiLing laughing in the background. Parker started up the path, still digging in her purse for her keys while she held the phone against her ear with her shoulder.

  “Well, she took me to bed, tied me to the headboard, and gave me the best orgasm of my life, and then gave me about four more that were just as good. We drank champagne at midnight and watched the sun rise in the morning. That was between rounds two and three… I just…”

  She was smiling. She dumped her keys in the bowl on the side table.

  “It was good, M. So good.”

  Marion was squealing. All the giddy joy Parker had shared with her best friend a second before turned to ice in her stomach.

  A loud thud sounded upstairs.

  “M… Marion…” She hissed down the phone, frozen behind the front door. “There’s someone in the house. I just got home…”

  A high, long note sounded above her, almost like singing.

  “…rker, just leave… Call the cops.”

  “I’m going up… It sounds like… People talking, I don’t know.”

  She was already padding up the stairs, heels kicked off in the hall. She heard Marion down the line telling LiLing to go. The thought that LiLing would be here soon offered some comfort. What the hell is going on?

  As she stepped into the upstairs hall, her heart was in her throat, fear prickling across her forearms, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

  Marion was yelling her name down the phone, over and over, but it stayed held loose in her fist at her side.

  A long moan sounded and she felt sick.

  The door to her bedroom was ajar, and she pushed it open. The ice in her veins shattered.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  The words were vicious, snarled, feral, and anger exploded in her chest. Was the universe seriously not done with her? Hadn’t it taunted her enough?

  “Shit, Parker…”

  Amanda shoved Emily off her, Emily scrabbling to cover herself with Parker’s comforter, which only infuriated her more.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” She roared the words, angry to the point of tears, because of course, of course things couldn’t be good and easy and mending. Amanda had to fuck it all up, again.

  “You need to calm down.” Amanda was on her feet, that stupid, reasonable doctor mask on her face, hands out as if to soothe her.

  Fuck her.

  “Calm down? Calm fucking down? You’re in my house, in my bed, fucking the woman you broke up our marriage for, and you’re asking me to calm down?”

  Amanda ran her hands through her hair, her eyes wide like Parker was the crazy one in all this.

  “Jesus… Parker, you were supposed to be at the coffee shop this morning doing your grading for the weekend, as usual.”

  She isn’t even sorry, only sorry she’s been caught.

  “My schedule changed.” She grit out the words.

  Behind Amanda, Emily was tugging on her clothes in a hurry.

  “Look, I just came to get the last of my stuff.”

  Is she for fucking real?

  “Oh, this stuff?”

  Parker stormed down the hall, not waiting for either of them to follow. She threw open the window in the spare bedroom where she had shoved what little remained of Amanda’s things.

  She tore open a box and it felt good. She smashed three vinyl albums over her knee, and it felt better.

  “Here’s your motherfucking stuff, Amanda!”

  God, I needed this.

  Broken vinyl littered the yard below like paper. More followed.

  A hand grabbed her arm. Amanda was dressed now, and Parker had never seen her like this. Perhaps before she really hadn’t felt anything for her at all, because now, her blue eyes burned, and Parker wondered if she was going to hit her. Part of her wanted her to.

  “Take your hands off her. The cops are already on their way, Amanda.”

  LiLing was standing in the doorway, breathless, Emily held back behind her arm.

  Parker shrugged the hand off her bicep, hard.

  “That’s right, Amanda, take your hands off me, and go back to your perfect little life with your perfect little slut.” She spat the words before lifting the entire box of records and chucking it out of the window.

  “You crazy bitch!” Amanda was wringing her hands, running her fingers through her hair. LiLing was talking quietly into her cell, and Parker just couldn’t stop. She lost herself in the routine: lift, turn, toss it out of the window.

  When the last box hit the yard below with a satisfying smash, she turned back to the room, her voice raw.

  “There’s your fucking stuff. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

  IN HINDSIGHT, SHE could have handled things better.

  She was sitting on Marion’s sofa, still wearing the same shirt Kristina had peeled off her last night. That felt so long ago now. What was I doing?

  Her phone buzzed beside her.

  “Want me to check it?”

  She nodded, grateful for Marion, for LiLing who she could hear in the kitchen entertaining Roland while they once again dealt with the fallout from her shitty life.

  “Okay, it’s a reply from the lawyer…” Marion was silent as she read, and Parker just let her head fall into her hands.

  “When you settled, the house and all property in it became yours… So she can’t go after you for the vinyl and her other shit. Legal speak, legal speak… In the event that you wish to press charges for trespassing, it would be an airtight case given there’s already a police report detailing her presence on the property. It would also not be hard to prove breaking and entering… Parker?”

  Marion was waiting for a response, but Parker couldn’t even bring herself to lift her head. What the hell was I doing? She wasn’t the person who just flipped out and started tossing things out of the window.

  Then again, she never thought she’d be the person to come home from being casually dominated by a woman almost half her age to find her wife—ex-wife—having sex with the woman she’d left her for, in the bed that was once theirs.

  “Parker… It’s fine. She was just blowing hot air. No one is getting sued unless you decide to go after her.”

  The couch dipped beside her, and a hand settled on her knee.

  “Are you going to go after her? God knows she deserves it.”

  She let the heels of her hands dig into her eyes, scrubbing hard, searching for clarity that never came.

  “I don’t know… I just…”

  She knew the tears were audible in her voice. Marion’s tone was soft as she spoke to her.

  “Sweetie… Come on. You were doing so well.”

  Was I?

  “What am I doing, Ma
rion? All this…just… It isn’t like me. I don’t even know who me is anymore.”

  Her best friend’s eyes searched her face as she finally lifted her head. Parker wondered what she saw there.

  “It’s going to take time. You know that, right?”

  She nodded pitifully.

  “You were so happy on the phone. Do you want to talk about that some more?”

  She shook her head. She couldn’t think about Kristina, not after all this. Everything was spinning out of control, and she realized she had been stupid to ever think it could be so simple.

  “Do you want to talk more about the bitch?”

  “She was my wife for fourteen years, M.”

  She didn’t even know why she was defending her now. Marion was totally right. Amanda was a bitch. Maybe it had just become habit after dealing with her bad behavior for so long.

  She could physically feel the effort it took for Marion to bite her lip. A beat passed and she wanted to apologize, but somehow she couldn’t find her voice.

  “Do you want me to come back to the house with you and help sterilize your bed, or we could burn it? Lily’s really gotten into pyrotechnics since we built the fire pit.”

  She squeezed out a smile. Marion was trying so hard, and she didn’t deserve any of it. Parker just wanted things to be better; she wanted to be put together, and less messy, less broken. Next to Marion she was always flawed, always the best friend who got the raw deal while the other got her happily ever after.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your weekend with your family.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. Marion scoffed, turning to call out of the room.

  “Lily, honey, can you and Roland get your shoes on? We’re going to Parker’s.”

  When Marion turned back to her, fierce love burned in her eyes, and as lost and drifting as Parker felt, somehow it still reached her.

  “Parker, you are our family. Now get your shoes on too.”

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS A pretty day for a party, though everyone wore sweaters. Marion’s backyard looked like a daycare center, at least twenty children under the age of seven taking up the space. Roland was thrilled. Shy as he could be, today, he didn’t seem to mind being the center of attention.

  Parker watched her best friend from her spot by the stereo system. Even picking up spilled cups and walking kids one after the next to the bathroom, she looked happy. Life had been good to Marion, and she was glad.

  The playlist finished, and she quickly switched to the next, thankful to have something to do. Up on the deck, around the fence, a few of the parents who had stayed lingered. When she was surrounded by families, happy, successful, enjoying the celebratory mood, it was hard not to feel obviously, painfully, alone.

  Fucking Amanda.

  She hadn’t pressed charges for her trespassing in the end. Why prolong the back and forth? She knew the woman, and she just didn’t want to deal with the backlash. Better to let it die and hope this time, it really would.

  She still couldn’t sleep in her bed, and the one in the guest room gave her a crick in her back. She stretched painfully, bitter.

  A little girl tripped a few feet away. Parker was halfway up and to her feet, but the girl’s mom was faster. Something inside her tugged at the sight of them.

  She’d always thought she’d have kids, barely realizing it was too late until it was. She’d thought she’d been the bigger person, noble somehow, when Amanda had told her she didn’t want them and she had chosen to stand by her marriage anyway. Now she just felt like even more of a failure. She’d given up so much for someone who, in the end, had given her up anyway.

  “How’s DJ duty treating you, Auntie Parker?”

  Marion plopped down beside her and tossed her a bottle of water before she cracked open one of her own.

  “Good, no major issues so far.”

  She heard the strain in her own voice and tried to shake it off.

  “Did you call her? Text her? Anything?”

  She shook her head. Kristina was another enigma, another decision she was suddenly wary to make. Look at her history.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  Parker had no idea what she would say.

  “You should be out there having fun; it’s your son’s birthday. Go hug your wife and wipe up some more spills. I can hold things down over here.”

  She offered Marion what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

  “Parker, you’re miserable. I’m also tired and I tagged Lily onto bathroom duty so…”

  Parker picked at the grass around her feet.

  “You were so happy, and you were suddenly making progress. I hate to see you stop.”

  “I’m still running, every morning except Thursdays.”

  She heard her best friend take a breath.

  “But you’re miserable again. For a minute there you had your sparkle back. I love you and I want that for you.”

  Children shrieked. She was such a lousy best friend. Marion was always stuck dealing with her tattered life when she should just be enjoying her great one. She had never felt like more of a burden than she did lately.

  “What made you change your mind about Kristina?”

  Parker swallowed.

  “I don’t know. It was good, but it’s also limited. It’s just sex. What if I want to date or talk, or build something more than a physical relationship? Which long-term, I know I do.”

  The next song louder than the others had been, she lowered the volume slightly.

  “I just don’t know, M. I have this horrible track record for making these poor decisions, and I don’t trust my judgment right now. I mean kinky sex therapy with a twenty-four-year-old is hardly the standard protocol…”

  “Parker…” Marion was laughing, disbelief in the sound. “Since when do you care about standard protocol? And all these bad decisions you’re talking about, the majority of them were Amanda’s.”

  Even though it was almost true, Parker knew the fatal decision had been her own. She’d chosen to stay, to ignore it, to bury her head in the sand until the hourglass was empty.

  “Didn’t you enjoy talking to Kristina?”

  She had. Kristina was surprisingly mature for her age, and for what little conversation they’d had, Parker liked her fire and her outlook on life. Besides not being able to commit and call her, she had thought about her on and off, way too much, all week.

  Despite the morning-after fiasco with Amanda, the night was still one of the best in her recent history. She wanted to know more about Kristina, she definitely wanted to explore the physical side of things with her more too, yet somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to make another decision. She felt frozen.

  “Parker?”

  She realized she hadn’t answered.

  “What, no, yeah. I did, I really did.” She rubbed her hands up and down her jeans. “I just…don’t know. There’s no perfect answer.”

  Marion nodded. Together they watched Roland running with a group of kids, his curly brown hair bouncing around his little head.

  “If you don’t want to continue things with her, it’s your call. But you have to trust yourself either way, sweetie. Don’t let all the bad choices Amanda made take away from your confidence in your own ability to make good ones.”

  Is that what I’m doing?

  “Also, you’re not going to find someone perfect right off the bat. If you meet someone who makes you feel good, and treats you well, and makes you want to try, maybe that can be enough for right now. Make sure you’re not using this idea of perfection to sabotage yourself, because we both know it doesn’t exist.”

  It was good advice, but she was still lost and unable to shake the feeling. Maybe she just needed a good night’s sleep. Maybe I just need to talk to Kristina.

  “I think it’s time to do the cake, and then we can start to wrap things up in the next half hour, thank God.”

  Parker couldn’t help but laugh. Marion patted her leg.


  “You’ll figure it out, P-bear. Just give yourself time and trust your intuition. It’s been good all these years about everything except that woman.”

  With a final squeeze of Parker’s knee, Marion was up. She snagged her wife and dragged her with her toward the kitchen, no doubt to retrieve Roland’s special monkey-themed birthday cake.

  Parker watched her go, and found herself wondering what Kristina would think of all this.

  HER STUDY CLASS was filing out, and Parker flopped behind her desk, glad to see Friday. She couldn’t help but think back to two Fridays ago—has it been so long?—when she was finishing this same class, and rushing to leave campus to get home and get ready to meet Kristina.

  Marion had been right. Somewhere between the surprise from Amanda and her shock at her own behavior, her own sense of slipping control, she had let herself fall back down her well. She still ran, yet somehow, she didn’t feel the change in her body. Her route got easier, she didn’t spend most of the day hobbling around sore now, but she still didn’t feel strong, healthy, better, like she knew she should.

  Her presentation from the last hour was still on her laptop screen. Clicking away, she opened up a Google search, knowing already what she would type.

  Kristina Diaz looked the same in the search bar as it had the tens of other times she had reached this point in the last week. Why did she feel weird about looking her up? Kristina had obviously researched her. Parker had googled herself and been horrified that the first result was her staff page at MIU. I have to get that picture updated.

  She hit Enter.

  She was surprised when a few thumbnails, all showing the Kristina she knew, popped up across the top of the page. The first website belonged to some business magazine. She clicked it and scanned the lines—Kristina Diaz, CEO and managing partner of Logistica Logistics.

  The article ended with an image of Kristina in a very snappy business suit, and an older man beside her. She was beautiful with her hair pulled back, makeup just a tad darker than Parker would consider polite for business. Even in the clearly candid shot, she oozed the same sensuality Parker had come to know.

  She clicked away and went to the images page, because screw it. Kristina was actually sort of famous, at least in the business world. It was clear from some of the taglines attached to the pictures there were very mixed views about her. While some sang her praises for her forward-thinking approach to business and transparency, others claimed she was a spoiled little girl gifted the global organization by her father and would no doubt crash and burn.