Rock Chick Reborn (Page 22)

And kissing after the movie was over was a revelation. I couldn’t say it started out easy, I was stiff. The ease came later as Moses led me to it, and he made it good before it got good.

Now I was there.

Across the room facing off with a decent, kind, deep-feeling man who could cook brisket and pick wine while the dust of the one from before drifted up in my bones, blinding me and making my mouth feel dry.

“Talk to me,” he urged.

“I . . . this . . . I . . . this,” I stuttered then shook my head. “This isn’t gonna work.”

“She cheated on me.”

I blinked at him when these words came at me.

“Sorry?” I asked.

“At her high school reunion. With her high school boyfriend. She got drunk off her ass and cheated on me.”

He was talking about his wife.

Had to be.

And was she insane?

I’d only had his kisses.

And they were fabulous.

But I’d also had a good amount of what else made him.

So she had to be insane.

“I—”

He cut me off.

“Kept talkin’ to him on the phone after. Believe her when she says it didn’t go further than the reunion physically. But she kept contact. Even after I found out and we got into counseling. She ended it with him only while we were in counseling. But I heard her talking to him, tellin’ him to quit calling, and when I confronted her with it, she admitted she kept that up for a while. Needed it somehow. But it was over. He just wouldn’t quit calling.”

“I’m sorry, Moses.”

He nodded his head sharply, only once.

“I am too. I loved her. And I gotta take responsibility for my fuckup, because I perpetrated one. I was a man and acted like a dumb-shit man. We had babies and I helped her make them and then I did my thing. Went to work. Went to the gym. Might go to the grocery store but other than that, pretty much expected her to do everything. Feed ’em. Bathe ’em. Get ’em to bed. Take care of the house. I spent time with my babies, of course, they were my babies. I’d do the odd thing here or there to pitch in. But mostly I took the good times. Not the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night times. The tough stuff, I was gone. Mostly at work. Could say I needed the overtime, I worked hard, and everyone can use more money. But truth was, I loved my job, so it wasn’t that. I was just doin’ whatever I wanted to do. She had a job too. Two of them, one bein’ a momma, one in an office. She was worn out. She was also fed up with it.”

“I, yes . . . I mean, I don’t know, but I think that wouldn’t be much fun,” I murmured.

“The thing was, she didn’t say dick about it. Not until counseling. So I saw the error of my ways after the fact. And I was good to hold up my hand and cop to it. Even could see, just a little, not totally, but enough to maybe forgive her for having a weak moment, getting hammered and thinking, what if? What if it had worked out with that guy back in high school? What would her life be like if she wasn’t raisin’ two girls mostly on her own with her husband MIA at work? I could also see wanting to go back in time when it was simpler. When there wasn’t the house, the husband, the kids, the job. When it was just dressin’ up, goin’ out, booze and fucking and good times.”

I nodded.

I mean, I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. That was a leap to take and said a lot about him that he’d try to find a way to forgive a disloyalty of that magnitude. That he’d try to understand what lay beneath it.

But it wasn’t my experience, my marriage, my spouse, so it wasn’t my call to make.

For my part, Leon cheated on me all the time.

And when he did, I just found it a relief.

Moses kept speaking.

“Talkin’ to him, though, that I didn’t get. She betrayed our love, me, our vows, and I agreed to try to work that shit out, and every phone conversation from the first after she got back from that reunion, to the last when I caught her tellin’ him to stop phonin’ was another betrayal. Why didn’t she tell me he was calling? Why didn’t she just hang up? And every time her phone rang from then on, was I gonna think it was him or some other guy she was asking ‘what if?’”

“I can see that,” I said quietly.

“She told me in counseling that maybe she needed the attention. To feel attractive. To feel wanted. By that time, it was flowers for no reason and me breakin’ my back to prove I was doin’ my part for our family and regular date nights to keep the us in our marriage. So I did not get why she needed another man’s attention when outside of what I was giving my girls, she had all of mine.”

Seemed to me she was a selfish bitch.

I did not share this.

“So I called bullshit,” he declared.

“I can see that too,” I replied.

And I really could.

“Is that enough to end a marriage, break apart a family?” he asked.

“I don’t know, darlin’,” I answered.

“I didn’t either. What I knew was, after I lost my shit when I found out my wife fucked another man, I got myself together. About that. But those phone calls jacked with my head. I could deal with a one-time thing. A wakeup call for us both. We were on the wrong path and that wasn’t the way to yank us back to the right one, but shit happens. But those fuckin’ calls, Shirleen, all I could think was not about those calls or even about her needing attention. Once I knew he was still phoning, anytime I thought about a call, all I could think about was him inside my wife. Blinded by it. Pissed as hell at it. Couldn’t get it out of my head. And the question became, should I sacrifice my peace of mind for my children, and worse, teach them if, God forbid, they find themselves in the same situation, that they should swallow betrayal and live on the edge with distrust clouding every moment, and in the end give up any chance of true happiness?”

“I can’t answer that for you, Moses.”

“Well I could, after she nearly bankrupted me taking me to court repeatedly to teach me a lesson about how she feels when she doesn’t get what she wants, using our daughters as tools to do that. I couldn’t imagine the woman I married had that in her. But she did. So I got my answer. And so did our daughters, watching their mother put their father through that. Don’t think it was the man she met that made her stop. I think it was the fact her daughters were drifting away, angry at her for making shit ugly. That’s what made her stop.”

“I’m glad something did,” I told him.

“Me too.”

When he said no more, I asked carefully, “How are thing now? I mean, you said at the grocery store that you two had it together, but—”

“I can barely stand to look at her.”

Oh boy.

“That,” he went on, “I do for my daughters when school functions mean I have to be in her space. And don’t take that anger at her as me still having feelings for her. I don’t. That anger is not about what she did to me, to us, but what she did to my girls. No one fucks with my girls, and for four years I had no choice but to put up with my wife fucking with our girls.”

Yep.

A selfish bitch.

“Other than school functions,” he continued, “we do not have one of those arrangements where we share Christmas Eve dinner or I come to her family’s big Fourth of July parties. There’s my house, our family, and there’s their mother’s house and the family they got with her.”