WORTHY, Part 2 (The Worthy Series)

by Lexie Ray

  She paused for half a second before giving me a smile. “Of course. Let me know if you need anything — and I mean anything. Xanax, marijuana, anything. All right? All I want to do is help.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying for a smile but falling flat. I knew that Jane was just trying to make me feel better, but there wouldn’t be a better until I talked with Jonathan. My mind kept casting around for some sort of rational explanation for those photos and the feeling I had inside of me, but there was nothing. I was hoping that speaking with my husband would offer me some insight into this entire situation that I hadn’t perceived before. There had to be a good reason for those photos. I just wasn’t seeing it.

  I practically crawled up the stairs to Jonathan’s floor, surprised that I even had the energy in me to do so, and propped myself up against his bed.

  This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

  I took my phone out of my purse and stared at it. I didn’t know what country he was in, let alone what time of day it might be.

  My mind turned unwillingly to those awful photos of him with Violet. Kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre. The Parthenon.

  He’d told me that he’d thought he was in Italy for a whole day until he saw the Parthenon and realized it was Greece. Was that because he had a distraction in the form of a certain former fiancée on his arm the entire time?

  Jane had presented me with proof. Now it was up to me to decide what I was going to do with it.

  I put my phone back in my purse. Maybe I could catch him in his room, Skype with him, talk to him face to face. That was the right thing to do — the best way to conduct business barring actually going to him — but it sounded horrible. The last thing I wanted to do was look at the man I loved and tell him that I knew everything.

  That I knew he was unfaithful to me.

  Waking up my iPad and tapping on the Skype application, I saw that Jonathan was offline. I called him anyway, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t able to pick up. It was a cowardly thing to do, but it got the ball rolling.

  There. I’d tried to contact Jonathan. Now I wouldn’t feel so bad about not acting. Too bad. I didn’t know where he was or who he was with. I didn’t know when he’d be available to talk, or even if I wanted to talk to him.

  I felt sicker now than I had after trying to drown myself in alcohol that night at the club with Jane and Brock. I didn’t think that was possible.

  But instead of being able to simply swear off alcohol, what were my options? I couldn’t just swear off my husband.

  Retrieving my phone again, I looked at the last text message I’d received from him. It was more than three weeks ago, received the same morning I woke up with such a hangover at Brock’s condo, telling me that he loved me and couldn’t wait to get home, to honeymoon with me back at the cottage.

  Was that just a lie? Had he only sent me that to appease me? Had Violet told him to send that to me?

  I took a deep breath and fired back a response. “Call me when you can,” it read. Simple and straight to the point. There was my effort at contact. The ball was in Jonathan’s court now, and I was somehow relieved.

  Relieved until I put my head back to stare at the ceiling and was startled by my phone vibrating wildly.

  Looking down, I saw Jonathan’s smiling face on my screen, indicating I had an incoming call from him. That was fast.

  Steeling myself for what was about to potentially be one of the hardest phone conversations of my life — and still holding out hope that there was a reasonable explanation for those photos — I answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Jonathan responded.

  There was a long, awkward, gut-wrenching pause before I plunged back in.

  “I hope I’m not bothering you,” I said, my voice soft.

  “I was just finishing up dinner,” he said. “Now’s a good a time as any.”

  His voice sounded stiff, and I wished I could see his face to try and judge what he was feeling. Something was definitely wrong, and I needed to confront what it might be.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Who’d you have dinner with?” Was it Violet, your psychotic former fiancée? Have you been fucking her behind my back? There were so many things I wanted to demand, but I couldn’t give them voice.

  “I’m in Shanghai,” my husband told me. “I was dining with the Wharton Group chairman here at his home.”

  “Isn’t it late over there?” I asked, looking at the clock. It had to be in the wee hours in Shanghai if it was late afternoon in Chicago. I wondered if Violet was listening in on our conversation. Maybe she was on the menu for dinner. It turned my stomach, and I tried to smother a gag.

  “Dinners are a very elaborate affair over here,” he said. “Lots of business discussed, drinking games played, one-upmanship with eating and serving and spectacle. A cultural marvel, these dinners. With as much as you like cooking, I think you’d find them fascinating.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said, wincing at myself and my apparent inability to get to the point, to confront my husband about what I’d seen, about what was going on.

  “So what’s going on with you?” Jonathan asked, his voice strangely tense for such a casually framed question.

  “I wanted to talk to you about some pictures I saw,” each word the hardest I’d ever had to say.

  “What a coincidence,” he said, a hard edge in his voice. “I wanted to talk to you about some pictures I saw, too.”

  That threw me for a loop. What was my husband talking about? Was it the same photos? Why would seeing them bother him so much if he was living them?

  “Jane showed me photos of you and Violet together,” I said. “Is she there with you now?”

  “Who, Jane?”

  “No,” I snapped before calming myself again. I had to be calm no matter how hard my heart was pounding. “Violet. You know, your former fiancée. Your wife would like to know if your fiancée has been traveling the world with you, offering tasty little distractions from your daily grind.”

  “You’re delusional,” Jonathan said incredulously. “No, of course Violet hasn’t been here with me. I’ve been working my ass off. You know that.”

  “Going to midnight drinking dinners?” I asked. “Sure. Sounds really hard.”

  “I am exhausted,” Jonathan said. “And I don’t know where this is coming from.”

  “Your sister had all these photos,” I said. “She said Violet had been sending them to her. Photos of you two kissing by the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre. The Parthenon. Places I know you’ve been lately.”

  “I’ve been to those places, but I wasn’t kissing anyone,” Jonathan said. “Your information’s faulty, Michelle.”

  “I know what I saw, Jon,” I said, feeling more confused and defensive than ever. I hadn’t expected my husband to deny that the photos even existed. That somehow didn’t put my heart at ease at all.

  My phone gave a short buzz, and I pulled it away from my ear for a moment. It was a text from Jane.

  “Thought you might need this when you’re talking to that dick for proof,” it read, and attached was the photo of Jonathan and Violet kissing at the Parthenon. It turned my stomach yet again to see them together. Jane’s text was so well-timed that I wondered if she was listening just outside, but I didn’t care.

  “I’ll text you one of these photos right now,” I said. “So you can see what I’m seeing.”

  I forwarded the photo to his phone and waited.

  “Let’s see,” he muttered, and then I heard a sharp, faraway gasp. “Look, I don’t know what kind of game this is, but this photo didn’t happen, Michelle.”

  “I’m not playing any kind of game,” I said. “All I’m doing is trying to get to the bottom of this.”

  “There is no ‘this,’” Jonathan said, flustered. “I wasn’t at the Parthenon during the day. I was there at night. And I haven’t seen Violet since I kicked her out of our wedding — for whatever that gesture w
as worth to you.”

  I cut my eyes. What did that mean? “Are you sure you’re remembering correctly?” I asked. “You thought Greece was Italy for a whole day. Maybe you were drinking a little too much grappa with Violet.”

  “After I met you, I remembered everything perfectly clearly,” Jonathan snapped, angrier than I’d ever heard him. “And these photos are bullshit. Never happened. End of story.”

  “It’s not the end of story,” I fired back. “There are tons of them, Jonathan. Tons of photos of everywhere you’ve gone. Violet has always been there, hasn’t she? She was waiting in the jet for you when you went to the airport, wasn’t she?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And you’re one to talk about too much grappa. I’ve seen what too much grappa can do to you.”

  Where did that come from? I’d never been wasted in front of Jonathan.

  “You wanted to talk about the photos,” I said. “So let’s talk. Where do you think they’re from if they never took place? Pretty good Photoshop job?”

  “These fakes aren’t the photos I wanted to talk about,” he said tightly.

  “Really?” I asked. “Are there any other photos in existence right now that you’d like to talk about? These photos are the ones at the top of my list.”

  “I’m texting you right now,” he said, his voice faraway again, and I waited for the telltale buzz.

  What I saw on my screen next absolutely shocked me.

  The photo I received showed me sprawled on my back on a bed, my gold dress halfway down my stomach, my breasts spilling out on top of it. I was directing a half-lidded gaze at the camera, my makeup smeared to shit, my legs parted.

  I was still staring at that photo, realizing that it was the night I went out with Brock and Jane, when my phone buzzed again.

  It was another photo, this time of me straddling a man’s bare, hairy legs. The dress was hitched up to my waist from the bottom, and my panties were off, my naked ass presented to the camera. My hair was wild, and I looked to be in mid-head toss.

  Before I could even begin to make sense of that photo, my phone buzzed again.

  Still another photo of me, completely naked this time, my eyes in the process of rolling into the back of my head, lying on my side, pressed into none other than Brock, who was also naked. His erection burned into my retinas, especially because in the photo, I was grasping it in my hand. He was laughing, his head thrown back. How had he taken this photo? Did he have a camera on a stand? Was it timed or something? Did he have a remote control?

  I had no memory of these photos whatsoever and a terrible feeling as I put the phone back to my ear.

  “I have several more,” Jonathan was saying. “Do you need to see them?”

  “No,” I said, feeling nauseated. “I don’t need to see any more.”

  Even if I couldn’t remember those photos being taken, I could remember the night they happened. I had no defense against them.

  “So you know what happened that night?” my husband asked.

  “It was a little more than three weeks ago,” I said. “I went out to a club with Jane and Brock. I got drunk — too drunk — and blacked out. I woke up at Brock’s condo, but he told me nothing had happened, that he brought me there after I threw up outside the club.”

  “You blacked out,” Jonathan repeated. “That’s very convenient.”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “It’s the truth.”

  “Why am I only hearing about it now?” he asked. “What did you have to hide?”

  “I was embarrassed,” I said, tears springing to my eyes. “Brock assured me that nothing had happened, but I didn’t want you to think that I was just back here in Chicago, partying it up while you were gone. It was a onetime deal, Jon. I never did it again.”

  “You mean you only fucked Brock just this once?” he asked bitterly. “Good for you. Only one time. Such restraint.”

  “I didn’t fuck him!” I cried. “I didn’t! He told me nothing happened! That all I did was sleep it off!”

  “Then how do you explain these photos I got?” Jonathan asked. “Can you deny they ever happened?”

  It had been the dress I was wearing. It had been Brock by my side. I had three photos on my phone, and my husband had even more. Could I deny they ever happened?

  “I don’t remember them happening,” I said. “My last memories of the night were at the club.”

  “Don’t throw a lack of memory in my face, Michelle,” Jonathan snarled. “I can’t choose to remember or forget anything before I met you in the woods. Don’t conveniently forget to remember your betrayal. You looked drunk in the photos, I’ll hand you that, but you were lucid enough to pose, lucid enough to fuck my friend.”

  “I’m telling you that I can’t remember,” I sobbed. “I only know what Brock and Jane told me — that I tried to kiss Brock, but I vomited all over myself instead. I don’t know what to tell you or what to think. I was shameful that night, but my biggest mistake was drinking too much. I would never willfully hurt you, Jon.”

  “I wish that were true,” he said. “I wish you could’ve just held on a little longer. I would’ve been home in just a couple weeks, baby. You couldn’t have just waited for me until then? You had to seek out comfort with Brock of all people?”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I said. “You’ve had Violet this whole time, traveling with you, comforting you whenever you got lonely for me.”

  God. I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore. My reality was unraveling before my eyes, and I felt like my sanity was going with it.

  “Violet hasn’t been with me,” Jonathan said, gritting his teeth. “She hasn’t.”

  “Then how do you explain the photos?” I demanded. “Explain them like I’ve tried to explain to you that nothing happened between Brock and me.”

  “I saw exactly what happened between you and Brock in those photos,” Jonathan said.

  “And I saw you and Violet in those photos!” I yelled. “How is this any different?”

  “Because none of that ever happened!” Jonathan yelled back. “That’s how it’s different! I’m telling you the truth, and you’re lying right in my ear.”

  “I don’t remember doing any of that with Brock,” I said. “It didn’t happen, Jon. Why would I do that to us? I love you!”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “Of all the things you’ve said to me, that’s hurt the worst,” he said. “How could you love me if you’re giving your body to Brock, betraying me with my best friend?”

  “I do love you!” I protested. “I gave up everything for you. I gave up the only place I felt like I belonged to be with you, to help you, to love you. Why did you leave me here? Why did you abandon me?”

  “I told you time and time again!” he raged. “I’m doing this for you. For our family.”

  “I don’t think you are,” I wept. “You and I would’ve been just fine without all of this, without knowing you were a Wharton, without you trying to take your place as CEO of the company. We would’ve been just fine at the cottage, Jon. You’re the one who’s selfish. You’re only doing this for you.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?” he demanded. “Can’t I try to do something for myself? Can’t I try to connect to something I apparently used to be? Do I have to be punished because I’m trying to figure out who I am?”

  “Yes, when it includes reconnecting with the woman you used to fuck!”

  “Violet was never here,” he said. “I gave you all of me. I turned my back on her, remember? Or is that something else you’re going to conveniently forget?”

  I felt like I was being pulled apart limb by limb. How could everything have deteriorated between Jonathan and me so quickly? Could we really not spend more than a month away from each other without falling apart? It raised red flags for me, and I realized that it wasn’t a good thing that I’d felt so lost without him.

  I had forgotten how to be by myself. I had given too much of myself to
Jonathan.

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked numbly. “Are you just going to continue to deny what I can see with my own two eyes? Are you really going to keep lying to me?”

  “You’re the one who’s lying to me,” Jonathan said. “And I can’t believe it, Michelle. I really can’t. I told my entire family that you were the love of my life, that I was going to stand by you no matter what they tried to tell me, and that they could all go to hell if they didn’t accept you. I almost disowned my own mother for you. And for what? So you could just sleep around the moment I left you?”