“Okay. I’ll make a quick soup and get your father home.” This is a lie. There is no such thing as her making a quick soup. They’re going to be here for hours pestering and hovering over me. Her footsteps echo back down the hallway.
Focusing my attention back to my phone, I press the FaceTime icon at the top of his texts. I’m breathing too hard, listening to it ring.
The top of Dex’s head appears and there’s a lot of music and laughter in the background. “Dex?” I ask, pulling the phone closer to my mouth. “Dex?” I say louder. “It’s Jane. Pull the phone down.”
A blur of clear, blue sky rushes past the screen, then a white floor, the bottom of a group of people’s legs, then I’m staring into Dex’s bleary-eyed stare.
Shit. He looks wasted.
He blinks and squints. “Jane Nash? Did I DrunkTime you?” His words are a quick slur of sounds.
“No, Dex. I FaceTimed you.” Now, any sensible woman would have realized this wasn’t the wisest time to have a serious conversation. Not me, though. Like I’ve always said, I have never been mistaken, in any way, as a sensible woman. Him being wasted at four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, at a party, doesn’t seem to deter me a bit. Obviously, I’m going to need to revisit all the bad life choices I’ve been making lately. But right now, I plow on, with complete and utter tunnel vision and lack of all common fucking sense.
There’s an explosion of voices and laughter, the camera faces the sky again, then a hand and the screen darkens, but the party still blares out.
“Dex?” My voice cracks.
Pippa’s face suddenly takes up the view. She bursts into a fit of giggles and waves, but she’s not looking at me, she’s making duck lips and looking at the small video window of herself on the bottom. “Who dis?” she laughs, asking someone next to her. She pushes out her arm and rotates the phone to landscape mode and the screen fills with her and Dex sitting on white cushions with a crowd of people talking and drinking behind them.
They’re on her yacht.
My stomach flutters with unease.
“Can I just talk to Dex?” I ask.
“Is that her? The ex or the other ex?” Her words are garbled with a fit of inebriated giggles. She’s wearing astringybikini and her skin looks unblemished and beautifully bronzed and glossy. It’s like someone dipped her in sex-oil.
Dex is dressed in a button-up shirt that’s pulled wide open, the ends fluttering softly in the breeze behind him. His chest and stomach, an expanse of muscles and tattooed skin, tighten and twist as he tips his head back to laugh.
Pippa leans closer to him and giggles into his chest, her hand falling on the corded skin of his stomach.
Neither of them notices my eyes, as they well with tears.
“So why are you calling now?” Dex slurs. “Huh?” His eyes are heavy lidded, bruised purple underneath. “It’s been,” he drunkenly looks at his watch. “I dunno, days? Weeks. Years. What do you want from me? I’m getting over you.”
Pippa whoops next to him.
“I have my work. Tequila. Grey Goose. Lobster…” He mumbles a list of other things I can’t understand.
“I’ve been in the hospital,” I say. My knees tremble and I slide my back down the wall and sit on my floor.
“What?” he puts his hand to his ear and roars, “Ex-squeeze me. I cunt hear you!”
What the fuck? What is he, twelve again?
Pippa and another half-naked girl fall to the floor laughing. They can’t catch their breath, and they crawl around shrieking about peeing themselves.
“I was in the hospital,” I say louder, my voice harsh and emotional, but they are laughing too loud and singing. I stare at the screen, heart pounding in my throat. The music they’re listening to gets louder and everyone cheers and belts out the chorus in unison.
“Dex?” I cry.
“I got your message, Jane Nash. Loud and clear. We’re through. I’m a big fuck-up because I said stupid shit. But I was going through shit that you don’t get. You’ll never get.”
“I do get it.Listen, I have something important to tell you. Please!”
“No. You didn’t want to hear me out. You’re always blaming Karma for shit, right? Well, now she’s on my side. You need to think of someone other than yourself for a minute. Stephanie took Olivia and now she’s gone. I’m never going to see my daugh—" he chokes on the word.
“Hang up. Hang up the phone. Forget about her. Here,” there’s a blur of string and flesh and then Pippa is kissing him. Her tongue is in his mouth and her hands are on his skin and I’m instantly sick, vomiting into the wastebasket I keep near my dresser.
