The house is dark and quiet when I enter, and Mittens doesn’t greet me at the door as expected because the office door is closed. She must have gotten herself stuck in there unless Troy placed her purposely inside.
I sit my bags down on the counter, slide off my khaki trench coat and work shoes, and open my bedroom door to look for Troy and ask him why he’s put my cat on a timeout. Does he do this all the time when he’s home alone with her? If so, the two of us are going to have a long talk.
“Troy, why did you–”
Then, like a skidding car that’s hit a brick wall, I stop dead in my tracks.
My face painfully mushed up against the glass.
Eyes wide open.
Four
ADRIENNE
My loving fiancé,my Mr. Perfect, is buck naked on his knees, serving some woman doggy-styled on my brand new Egyptian cotton sheets. Her facial expression is full of pleasure. His is full of determination. Mine is the look of a woman about to puke all over her hardwood floors.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I shriek in utter disbelief.
Troy’s face turns seven shades of red as I watch him internally search for a lie to talk himself out of this.
He mouths the word fuck to himself several times before he stutters, “Let, let, let, lemme explain.”
I take a deep breath from my diaphragm and exhale with a long controlled breath.
“You both need to get out of my house right now,” I say with deadly calm, before I kill one of them or worse… cry.
I walk over to the long sheer curtains that frame my bedroom window and slide my hand behind one panel. Troy keeps a baseball bat there for my security when he’s not here. It’s so ironic how this situation could be the first time I may ever have to use it. I hold the bat in my hand and stand at the foot of the bed in what I hope looks like a threatening stance.
“Move,” I say, tapping the base of the bat on the floor as I stare directly at the naked woman on my bed. “Faster.”
The woman quickly scurries off the bed, grabs her clothes, and heads for the door.
“I’m sorry,” she says apologetically. “He said this was his place.”
I don’t respond to her lame excuses. There are red flags all over this house that would show a woman lives here. She just wasn’t interested in acknowledging them. But that’s neither here nor there at this point; the real problem is the man I’ve given two good years of my twenties to.
A complete waste of time.
“You’re not moving fast enough,” I say to Troy as I raise the bat like I’m on the batter’s mound.
“So that’s it?” He challenges.
“Is what it?”
“I make one mistake and we’re over?”
“You made one hell of mistake, so yeah, we’re over. You’ve got thirty more seconds or I’m going to start swinging.”
He holds his hands up in surrender.
“Fine, Adrienne, I’m leaving. Don’t bash my head in, all right? You’re going to regret maiming me when you’ve finally forgiven me for this colossal blunder.”
“You’ve got it twisted. I willneverforgive you.”
I can feel the tears swelling. I need him out of here like yesterday. I cry for no man.
“You just need some time,” he has the audacity to say, as if we’ve just had some sort of lover’s spat.
