“She looks like a fucking bitch,” Rosa fumed. “Want me to go in and throat punch her? Mel, you take care of the douche and I’ll deal with the slut.”
“No. No one do anything.” Anna’s voice was broken and soft. “I want to know more. I need to know more, and he’s obviously been lying to me for some time. I want to know why.”
They continued to watch the couple inside. Mason had reached over and taken her hands in his. April laughed and tilted her head endearingly to the side, smiling at something he’d said. The sight of her laughing broke something in Anna, almost more deeply than the kiss had. She knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of his charm. Charm he hadn’t used on her for some time. April was now the target of his sweet words and gentle jokes. She had his attention, while Anna was the one washing the skid marks out of his jocks and the sweat stains from his shirts.
There’s something comfortable about settling into a relationship, when you no longer feel the need to be perfect and beautiful all the time. The “front” disappears, leaving you with the security of being yourself and feeling truly loved for your good and your bad points. You can leave the pimple uncovered at home. You can admit your feet smell after a hard day. But it's not fair if your special someone sees all those sides of you when you're unknowingly competing with the new someone who's only showing their perfect side. Their ungrumpy side. To Mason, April never had morning breath. She never fell asleep on the sofa with her tummy hanging out. She never cut her toenails or scrubbed a toilet with her hair in a messy bun. She was an elegant woman who provided sparkling, flirtatious company at dinner, wore beautiful clothes every time he saw her and had her face made up permanently. Had she seen him with a hangover? Had she slept next to him while he snored unattractively and loved him anyway? Perfect April had never walked into the toilet after him and had to hold her nose. She hadn’t heard him carrying on like a teenage boy when he played online games. Cheaters never saw the ugly parts of life. The real parts of life. They saw the sides they wanted to present because it was their unlucky partners at home that dealt with the coarser parts of them. And wasn’t that the kicker? She dealt with the good, bad, ugly, and smelly, yet it was April who received the charm and the spoiling. Not the woman who truly loved him for him. They walked back to the car in silence. Anna burst into tears as Mel sat beside her in the backseat. Rosa sat in the driver’s seat, her face set in fury. Mel rubbed Anna’s back, offering soothing words.
“We’ll sort this out, Anna. Come home with me tonight. Tell him I’m upset about something, and I need you with me. He leaves Sunday night, so just stay with me and say I’ve had a breakdown and you can’t possibly leave me.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Rosa seethed. “Fuck this Nancy Drew, romance novel shit. Let’s just go with an old-fashioned beatdown. Keep it simple. Old school.”
Anna didn’t speak. She sobbed openly. Everything hurt. Her stomach. Her head. Why did it hurt to breathe? Her wedding. Her future. Was April separated from her husband? Anna couldn’t even remember the other woman’s husband. He hadn’t been at the Christmas party. Maybe they weren’t together and the only betrayed partner was her. Stupid April. That stupid pencil skirt. No doubt she bent over a lot at the office.Oh dear, I dropped my pen. Let me just bend over in front of you so you can check out my ass.Bitch.Oh, goodness. I seem to have spilled water on my top. Wow, let me just fan my top away from my body. Oops, can you see down my top Mason? How careless of me.
Mel and Rosa stared at her, waiting for some kind of direction. Their faces were full of sympathy, and well, a lot of rage in Rosa’s case.
It was Mel who filled the silence.
“I wish this wasn’t a romance novel, Anna. I wish he hadn’t done this, but he did. So let’s see it out. Come back to mine for the weekend. We’ll go get your bag now when he’s at work. You text him about my ‘breakdown’ and we’ll spend the weekend figuring this out. You can cry, you can rage, you can punch Rosa for therapy—”
“What the fuck?! Whatever. If you want to do that to me, you can. But I think it would be more fun to egg Mason’s car at the airport car park,” Rosa offered.
______________________
An hour later, when she’d gained control of her breathing and they’d been to her house to collect some clothes, they returned to the dance school to take care of the admin before closing for theday. Well, Mel and Rosa looked after the admin while Anna lay on the sofa in the office rubbing her temples and crying softly.
Anna: Hey, something’s come up. Mel’s dealing with some stuff right now so I’m going to spend tonight with her. Maybe even tomorrow. She’s struggling.
Mason: Oh shit. Hope she’s okay. Anything serious? Let me know if you need anything. I’ll see you before I leave on Sunday, right?
Anna: Yeah, maybe. I can’t leave her like this though. How did your meeting go? Missed you at lunch today.
Mason: Went as well as can be expected. Robert is pretty hardass about his software, so the meeting went for ages. He’s at least 70 so I don’t know why he’s insisting on being point guy for a deal he clearly doesn’t understand.
Anna: Okay. Will keep you in loop.
Well, there it was. A confirmed lie. A confirmed kiss. A confirmed heartbreak. Unless this elderly Robert who didn’t understand software identified as a woman in her late 20s who wore expensive pencil skirts and slutty lipstick, Mason outright lied to her. She also noted that he didn’t ask anything more about Mel.
Fuck. Why? They were so happy. But obviously not. How can you be happy with someone and profess to love them and then go out and kiss Slutface McSlutsky?
She shared the texts with Mel and a furious yet deadly calm Rosa, who declared it was time for a change of venue.
Chapter 5: Anna—Manky mattresses and popped hips
Several cocktails later, Rosa, Mel, and Anna sprawled on Mel’s sofa, summarizing their findings. Some intense social media stalking of April revealed that she indeed was not separated. Her Insta profile was filled with pictures of her designer clothing-clad ass at social events, bars, and restaurants. Her husband featured in just a few images, but his presence in the shots was recent enough to confirm their marriage was still intact.
“He’s hot in a grumpy, beastly way,” Rosa said. “I could climb him like a tree. Look at those biceps. What does she want with Mason? That little bitch skips leg day way too much. He’s built like a mushroom. Those pins won’t hold him up much longer.”
Anna sniffled but laughed. It was funny how quickly black humor set in and how she didn’t feel the urge to defend him to Rosa anymore. That motherfucker is now on his own, she thought. But even thinking that set off her tears again. They’d been a team. She’d supported him and he’d supported her. Well, maybe not the latter, she thought grimly. How could she just let go? How could she just hate him? Sure, she was furious and hurt, but hating him? She wasn’t there yet.
She looked at the man in April’s profile. Shane Morgan. He was definitely huge. At least 6’4” and built like a tank. She wondered if that was Mason’s attraction. Had his ridiculous self-consciousness about height and build led him to seduce the wife of a man who embodied every one of his aspirations simply to prove he could? That he was good enough?
Rosa was right. April’s husband did seem grumpy. Shane did not smile in a single photo, though many partners of Insta-obsessed women seemed to suffer through the constant profiling of their lives by scowling in their begrudging Insta presence.Anna herself was borderline Insta-obsessed. There was no judgment there. Shane was not an unattractive man, but his features were certainly harsh. He had intense green eyes, light brown hair, clipped military short. His nose was straight, and he had a strong jawline. A large scar ran from the outer corner of his left eye right down to the side of his mouth. It didn’t detract from his unique handsomeness, but it did make him seem dangerous and intimidating.
Did Mason have a death wish? Anna wouldn’t dare cut this man off in traffic let alone sleep with his wife. Mason couldn’t afford to skip any more leg days if he was ever to confront this beast of a man.
Anna spent the rest of the night drinking, commiserating, and crying. After heading to Mel’s guestroom, Anna sobbed herself to sleep, allowing herself to catastrophize but realizing she didn’t need to now. This was worst-case scenario already. She had a week to pull herself together. A week to figure out the whole story with Mason. A week to gain the confidence to confront Mason without falling apart. He wouldn’t get her tears. He wouldn’t see her fall apart. She’d confront him coldly, without emotion. If some part of him still loved her, her indifference would kill him. If he didn’t care for her any longer, her indifference would at least deny him the satisfaction of seeing her hurt, so indifference it would have to be.
Her absence from their home may give him the opportunity to take April there, but that didn’t change anything at this point.
