by Aurora, Lexi
“Holy shit, you’re kidding, right?” Melony laughed, slapping her knees hard enough to make Liza jump.
“What do you mean? Kidding about what?”
“Did you actually do that? Because I’m not going to lie, if you did, you’re pretty much my new hero.”
“No way, it was such a stupid thing to do!” Liza moaned.
“So what does Wesley say about the family stuff?” Melony continued. “Did he seem pissed?”
“No, he acted like he was happy about it, but-”
“See? There you go. I told you!” Mel crowed triumphantly. Liza held up a hand in protest.
"You didn't let me finish. That's what he said at the time, but that was a week ago, and I haven't heard from him since. Doesn't sound like somebody who's exactly thrilled to me, does it?"
“Who knows?” Meloy shrugged, “He might be busy. He’s probably busy, in fact. He’s a hotshot tv guy, after all. Just call him and feel it out. And then tell him about the freaking baby before you blow up to the size of a hot air balloon.”
"I can't just call him," Liza said uncertainly. It wasn't that she hadn't thought about doing just that a thousand times over the last seven days, but every time she had told herself not to, that she shouldn't. Now, with Melony suggesting it so easily, she was having trouble remembering why.
"Why not? This isn't the dark ages, and there aren't any rulebooks. Anyone who tells you there are is trying to keep you submissive. Call him up and tell him you want to see him. When you do, tell him about the baby. If he reacts well to that, bang his brains out. Easy peasy."
“Melony!” Liza shrieked, her face a veritable sunset of embarrassment. Melony sighed and stood, dusting her hands off like she had just accomplished some long overdue task.
"What? It's not like I don't know you two have sex. If you were trying to deny it, you slipped up pretty monumentally."
“I know, but-”
“But nothing. The time for prudishness is done. Are you going to do it? Are you going to call him?”
“Yes,” Liza said nervously, really trying the idea on for size even while she answered, “yes, I guess I am.”
“Good! Then my work here is done. Call me if it doesn’t go well. I’ll get my gardening shears and make sure the bastard never fathers another child.”
“What do you mean, call you?” Liza asked, feeling suddenly panicky, “Are you going?”
“Sure I am. I love you but I’m not going to hold your hand through the whole phone call. This is all you, Liza. It’s time for you to be a big girl.”
“You mean you want me to call him right now?” She balked, the blood draining from her face. Just like that, she was back to feeling sick.
"Sure do. No time like the present, right? Just don't chicken out again. If you do, I'm going to tell him myself, and I don't think anyone benefits from that," Melony said laughingly as she sauntered back to Liza's front door. Liza was so stunned she couldn't even think up a protest, and before she could even open her mouth to try one out, Melony was out the door. Liza looked around her tidy apartment, totally at a loss. She could always wait, just keep doing what she had been doing and wait, hoping that Wesley would call her up and she would know nothing was wrong. But the waiting was driving her crazy and now that Melony had planted the idea of bringing it to an end in her head, she was sure she couldn't stand it for a moment longer. She would call him. She would call him and lay it all out there in the open, and if he told her he never wanted to see her again, she would go from there. It would break her heart, but she would survive. She knew that now, and sometimes knowing was all of the strength a woman needed. She was reaching for her phone when she heard another knock on the door.
“No way,” she whispered to herself, momentarily frozen in place. It wouldn’t be Melony coming back for another round of psychologist. That wasn’t her style. There was nobody else she could think of that would be rapping on her door. Nobody else except for...
“Wesley,” she whispered, her face lighting up with a massive smile. “Wesley, is that you?”
It was better, so much better than she could have hoped for. She would open the door, and he would be standing there, maybe even with a bouquet of flowers or something. He would sweep her into his arms, kiss her, and tell her that everything in her world was totally okay. It was a beautiful fantasy, one she would later wish could have lasted for more than only a couple of moments.
“I was just about to-”
“Just about to what? Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t care.”
For the second time that day, Liza was shoved aside as somebody pushed into her apartment. Earlier, she had felt relieved to have her guest. This time, she felt like she was going to burst into flames spontaneously. Her entire body was alight with electricity, and for the first time, she thought she truly understood what it meant to be in the throws of a flight or fight reaction. For her part, she wanted to do both.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered, trying to ignore the saliva flooding her mouth and making her feel like she needed to puke. “Why are you in my apartment?”
"Interesting, I was going to ask you why you're spending time with my boyfriend. I guess we both have questions, who would have thought?"
Megan was impossibly beautiful. She was the kind of person nobody really believed was real. Instead, they had disgusted, half-hearted conversations about airbrushing and photoshop while they gorged on the comfort foods that made them feel momentarily better. Liza understood this because she had done it herself on more than one occasion. Now that she was looking at one of said beautiful people in person, though, she knew she had only been lying to herself. All of them had been, all of the naysayers. Some people really were just that beautiful. Some people were so lovely it was almost heartbreaking to look at them, and Wesley's ex just happened to be one of them.
"The two of you aren't together anymore," Liza said slowly. She meant it to sound conversational like she didn't give a shit, but it came out sounding tentative and pathetically weak instead. Megan smirked at her, one hand on her perfectly slim hip. It was a knowing look, the kind that conveyed pity, humor, and disdain all rolled into one.
"Please. Did you honestly think that was going to stick?" she asked, popping bright pink bubblegum between her snow-white teeth.
“He’s through with you. He wanted to get as far away from you as possible,” Liza responded, wishing her response didn’t sound so much like a question.
“Right, and you think he hasn’t said that before?” she quipped.
“I don’t care what he’s said before. He’s through with you.”
"No, sweetheart, he definitely isn't. Do you want to know something? And make sure you mean it if you say yes because this one is going to hurt," Megan said. If Liza didn't know any better, she’d think that the woman was actually sorry. She might have made a good actress, which was what she was trying for if the tabloids were on the mark. It was a convincing persona except for the fact that the sentiment didn't reach her eyes. Those were hard and mean. Vicious, even.
"Tell me," she answered slowly. Her mouth was numb like she'd just come from the dentist and still had a mouth full of novocaine.
"Not only are we back together, we talk about you. He tells me about every little thing you do, and we laugh. Do you hear me? We get together and we laugh at you behind your back."
"Get out. You need to leave my apartment right now. I want you to go, and I don't ever want you to come back," Liza said even more slowly than before. She felt like she was underwater and Megan had just swiped the only life vest. She expected Megan to put up a fight and was relieved when she just turned to go. Then again, there was probably no reason to hang around. She'd done what she had come for. Being succinct was only an added bonus. The girl knew how to get what she wanted. Liza watched her go, then scrambled to the door and turned all of the locks. When that was done, she limped back to the couch and picked up her phone. When the other party picked up, she didn't wait for
a hello and didn't offer one of her own.
“I just saw your girlfriend. She came to my apartment. Do you hear me? She came to my apartment, Wesley. I’m done. You and Megan can go find someone else to laugh about before you screw. I don’t ever want to see you again.” She hung up the phone, dropped her head, and wept. After everything, she had finally found her tears.
Chapter Thirteen
Wesley Baker
“Stop! What the fuck are you talking about?”
Wesley screamed so loudly into the phone that his voice broke, but it was too late. The entire conversation took less than thirty seconds. It couldn't really be called a conversation, either, seeing as he never got to say a word. He spent more time listening to the dial tone after being hung up on than the entire duration of the phone call, and when he finally pulled the phone away from his ear, he looked at it for a second, then heaved it across the room. It hit the wall and shattered into pieces.
"Fuck! What the fuck?!" he shouted into his cavernous loft. The loft had seemed like a good idea when he bought it but looking at it now, he was one step below hatred. It was too much open space. It was everything he'd made for himself and had nothing to show for it. He didn't want to be there. It was his own fucking home, and he couldn't stand the idea of being there. He grabbed his keys and slammed the door, locking himself out. Maybe for good, he wasn't sure about that yet. At this point, he didn't know a goddamned thing.
Walking through the streets, he felt like he was living in a movie. He'd spent plenty of time in front of the camera, but he wasn't sure he wanted to do that anymore. What he wanted to do was forget. His show, his family, his own fucking name – he wanted to forget it all. There was only one place for him to go and even that didn't feel great. He hesitated at the front door, opened the door, and walked inside. Sliding onto his old familiar barstool felt like a mistake, but it was one he was desperate to commit. It was Friday night, and there was plenty of partying going on around him so that the likelihood of being firebombed was low. Milton was behind the bar, too, which was another mark in favor of sitting a while and getting plowed. Milton, who had once called the place his own version of Cheers, took one look at him and let out a low whistle.
“Jesus, friend, but you look like hell. If you don’t mind my saying,” he said in an awed tone.
“Don’t mind a bit, bartender. You’ve told me plenty of times before and this time it’s definitely true.”
“What seems to be the trouble? Or is it something you’d rather keep to yourself?”
“Women, Milton. Women are the fucking trouble. Whiskey, neat.”
"Women, huh?" Milton laughed ruefully like he'd had plenty of his own troubles, "Surely the cause of half of the pains of this world. And impossible to live without, still. I wouldn't want to myself, I'll say that much. Although I'm only a humble bartender."
“Cut this shit, buddy. You’re a hell of a lot more than that,” Wesley laughed. He slammed his whiskey, set the glass back down on the bartop, and indicated he wanted another with a simple nod. It was a nod he planned on repeating several times before the evening was through.
“What is it, though? Really?” Milton asked, pouring another liberal drink.
“Really? I’m pretty sure I’m in love,” Wesley sighed.
“With the young lady here in the bar the other evening?”
"Shit, no. Definitely not. With somebody else, except she doesn't want anything to do with me."
"Come now, I find that hard to believe," Milton said, a little glimmer in his eye. Wesley felt kind of like a dipshit talking about any of this with a guy like Milton. He had no basis for it, but he had a feeling the bartender was some kind of undercover badass, maybe a ninja or something similar. He'd probably heard so many fucked up stories doing his job that Wesley's stupid complaint would seem like total bullshit. What he needed to do was keep his mouth shut and drink. It's what he wanted to do. Just keep his mouth shut and drink until he didn't care about going home alone anymore.
“Something told me you would be here,” a soft, feminine voice said from behind him. A smooth, lithe hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed. He didn’t need to turn to look to know who she was. He knew her by the smell of her perfume and the coconut lotion she used after she hit the tanning beds.
"What are you doing here?" He sighed. He should shrug her hand off of his shoulder. He should tell her to fuck off and go drink somewhere else. Instead, he pulled out the stool next to him and indicated it with a nod of his head. It was the same gesture he made when he wanted another drink, and somehow that felt right. If he was going to flush everything down the drain, he might as well do it thoroughly.
"I'm sorry, are my eyes deceiving me? Can this be the one and only Wesley Baker letting me sit next to him? I feel like the luckiest girl in the lunchroom," Megan trilled, sliding onto the seat next to him. She was wearing some kind of short black sequined number that slid up her tanned thighs suggestively when she sat. He couldn't stop himself from noticing it any more than he could stop her from noticing him noticing it. He hated her for the way she smiled at him when she caught his eye. He wasn't all that thrilled with himself, either, so maybe it was fitting. None of it felt like it really mattered anymore, anyway. All of that turning over a leaf bullshit Liza had made him think about was useless now. She had made that loud and clear.
"Hey, governor, you need anything right now?" Milton interrupted the self-loathing fest with his question, and when Wesley glanced up at his face, he saw eyes full of concern. The guy might as well have been holding up a red flag and screaming abort at the top of his lungs. Megan saw the expression, too, and made a big show of clearing her throat.
"Why don't you run along and pour me a glass of champagne, bartender?" she asked loftily like she was doing him a favor or something just by allowing him to do something for her. "And don't give me any of the cheap stuff. That shit tastes like piss."
Milton smiled and nodded, then looked back at Wesley pointedly before setting about his new task. It didn't take a genius to read his expression. It would only have been a little less subtle if he'd grabbed a megaphone and asked Wesley what in the fuck he thought he was doing with the bitch model in the tight skirt. The second he had his back turned, though, Megan moved her stool closer to Wesley, so close she might as well have been sitting in his lap. He could feel the heat baking off of her skin, and it melted in with his up and coming intoxication effortlessly. He hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime, and he could already feel the fine whiskey doing his work. If he kept up his current pace, he was headed for blackout territory for sure. He was also, more than likely, headed for Megan's bed, which meant that blackout would be a blessing. If he thought too much about the shitshow getting anywhere near this chick again was going to bring him, he might feel compelled to use some common sense. He didn't want that. He felt like shit, and he wanted to make it worse. He wanted to make it hurt, to make it bad enough that Liza's abrupt rejection would make a little sense.
“Are you happy to see me, baby?” Megan whispered into his ear, her rough tongue licking along his lobe as she spoke, “It’s okay, you can tell me. I can’t wait to show you how much I’ve missed you.”
“Sure,” he said dully, “I guess so.”
‘I knew you would. I knew you did. There's no way that bitch was ever going to be as good for you as I am. I think she knew it, too," Megan continued. She was using what Wesley had long since thought of as her faux-sexy voice, an approximation of sexy that never quite got to the right thing. It was distracting, and it was oddly comforting, too, something he'd heard her do plenty of times before. It was so familiar, in fact, that he almost glossed right over the actual words she was saying. When they finally made it through the beginning of his whiskey haze, he sat up tall in his chair and turned to face her for the first time since her arrival. She smiled at him, a victorious smile that made her ugly even though she was hot. He knew that as soon as he got the chance, he would want to take a shower to wash her off of h
im like a germ. He wanted to make every surface she touched clean again.
“What did you just say?” he asked casually. He needed her to think she was still winning because he needed her to tell. Whatever story she had, and he was hanging all of his hopes on the fact that there was one, he needed her to tell him so that he could know for sure. She smiled coyly, then poked out her bottom lip in her patented Megan pout.
“I don’t know, babe. I don’t know if I should tell you,” she said in a childish voice that made him want to ralph.
"Come on, Megan, is that any way to renew a friendship?" he asked, laying a hand casually on her knee. Bile rose up the back of his throat at the feel of her skin, but he swallowed it down and redoubled his efforts. He had to be believable, for Christ's sake. He had to be believable if he was going to get what he wanted.
"It's really nothing if you want to know the truth," she said, her face plastered with a stupid smile, "it was just girl talk, you know?"
“Girl talk, huh? Sounds interesting to me. What kind of girl talk?”
“The kind that makes sure everyone knows her place,” she said, her eyes clouding over with something that made her look sharp around the edges and mean, dangerous, even. He squeezed her thigh harder and bit down on the inside of his cheek when she wriggled in a ludicrous simulation of something meant to be sexy.
“I’m sorry, sugar, but you’re going to have to be more specific. I’m not going to pretend to speak female,” he laughed, surprisingly convincingly.
“I just went to her apartment and knocked on the door, told her we needed to have a chat. I made it clear, Wesley. I made it clear that you and I are together and that one of our stupid fights won’t get in the way of what we have.”
"Is that so?" he asked through the sudden wave of pounding blood that flooded his head. He felt like he might explode, he was so pissed off, but there was also some amount of relief. Now he knew. It hadn't come out of thin air, and it wasn't because he'd been too much of a coward to call her after realizing that he was falling in love. Liza had told him off because Megan had wedged herself in the middle of things and that was something he might actually be able to fix.
