“What the hell are you doing?” Sam asked.
“Nothing.” She tried to sound innocent, but she wasn’t innocent, so that made it tough.
Sam frowned, a deep groove between his brows. “Are you ... are you trying to make him jealous?”
“He has a problem with you.” Her voice was small, the confidence she felt a moment ago drained away by his anger.
“Yeah, I know.” Sam looked legitimately disgruntled. “Jesus, at least ask me before you bring me into your drama.”
“Sam, you’re my best friend. You’re permanently in my drama.”
Her phone rang. Ben.
“Oh, look at that. He called your bluff,” Sam said.
“I’m not answering it. He said he didn’t want to speak to me. And anyway, he’s cheating on me. Last time he called, it was to give me an audio-erotic experience that made me want to die. Let him wonder.”
“Yeah. Great. Let him wonder.”
Soraya
“John, hi,” she whispered. “Is Stephanie here?”
She looked around and didn’t like the fact that she had an audience for this interaction.
“Somewhere,” he said. “I need to know what you know.”
“I didn’t know anything about their affair. I didn’t leave him because of Stephanie.”
She had issues with John.
He’d been one of the people who had absolutely thought she needed to go back to David.
He hadn’t been on her side.
But if she’d known his wife was cheating on him with David, regardless of how he’d treated her, she would’ve made sure he knew.
She was glad David had been embarrassed on the level he’d been. She didn’t feel as triumphant about other people being dragged into it. She knew her husband wasn’t faithful. She genuinely felt bad that John had discovered his wife wasn’t in a room full of his congregants.
Her own baggage with the church aside.
“He’s your husband,” he said.
The words made it clear he didn’t truly believe she hadn’t known. Made it clear he still felt she was responsible in some way.
Anger spiked inside her, hot and fast. It didn’t matter that he was the senior pastor of the church she’d gone to for years. It didn’t matter that she’d once seen him as a spiritual leader.
She didn’t need him to tell her what was right and wrong, not now. Not anymore.
“I didn’t know. But I did know he wasn’t faithful to me, and I knew I couldn’t stand to be with a man who didn’t honor me the way I did him.” She took a deep breath. “You didn’t support me. No one in the church did. I already knew he wasn’t a good man. Now you see it, but only now that it affects you. And you’restilltrying to blame me.Still.Why don’t you lay blame on the person who deserves it for once? Because it isn’t me. I am not taking the weight of his sins.”
She felt alive. Filled with righteous fury. Filled with certainty. “He’s not my problem anymore. I left him. I’m not going to be your example of sacrificial love. I’m not going to be at fault for all his transgressions. How does any of this make sense? That women are at fault for everything and yet in charge of nothing. That women are expected to have the greater ability to forgive, to carry the weight of men’s sins, and yet we’re supposed to be weaker than them. I feel sorry for you right now, but you arepartof this. Put the blame where it belongs. Not on me.”
She turned and walked away, shaking. She’d really done it now. She had blown up at her pastor. She would never be welcome back again.
The truly wonderful thing she realized as she walked back to Sam and Nora was that she didn’t care.
Daisy
