Page 8 of Dread’s Beloved

I know she would want him to be happy.

He says she is irreplaceable. I don’t disagree, but I worry about him.

Sure he hangs around the club and spends his days making moonshine with Uncle Hillbilly, but I know he’s lonely. I go over to my dresser and grab my bottle of perfume to dab a little on my neck and wrists. Not too much, but just enough. If Blair is working, I want her to see that I'm happy and don’t care about her or Zane. How you get a man is also how you will lose him. She’ll see when his head gets turned again. I was with him from middle school until he betrayed me with her. I doubt it was the first time he’d stepped out on me. It was just the first time he was caught.

I called my brother, and he came over with some of the guys to move me out right then and there. I came back home to live with our dad and our grandma, Pricie. Our family has always lived in this house, and we will all likely die in it too.

I’m back in my childhood bedroom with the pink rose wallpaper that my mother hung when she found out I was going to be a girl. I even still have my same furniture. Everything at the apartment Zane and I bought together, but I didn’t want anything other than my personal property. Mainly my clothes. I didn’t take a single picture of the two of us. I left our wedding album. I left the scrapbooks I made when we were dating. It was all lies.

I came home to where I belong.

I walk downstairs and snatch my keys off the hook. Dad is still out and Pricie is out in the graveyard that sits between our house and the mortuary talking to our ancestors. Says it keeps the spirits from growing restless. Says it helps them know they’ve not been forgotten.

I give her a wave, and she flips me the bird. She’s as crazy as the days are long, and I wouldn’t change the fruity old bat for all the money in the world.

I meet up with Sukie in the parking lot of Tonky’s. I catch myself scanning the parking lot for Zane’s truck or Blair’s car and have to stop myself. It’s strange to grieve for people who are still living. I grew up in a funeral home, and I do the hair and makeup of the dead. I’m no stranger to grief or loss, but there was a time Blair was like the sister I’d always wished for. And Zane. I thought he was the love of my life. Believed we’d raise a family and grow old together. All the plans we made were a fantasy, and that love he professed was all a lie.

Of course, I miss things about both of them. I loved them. I didn’t want to believe it when I caught them together, and the saddest part of the situation was neither of them tried to fight for me. Neither begged for my forgiveness.

Blair smiled at me. Fucking smiled. The same friend who listened to me cry and vent when I started suspecting Zane was messing around was the one who was screwing him.

“We can go somewhere else if you want,” Sukie says, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder, staring at Zane’s truck.

I can’t avoid him and Blair forever. This town isn’t big enough to make that possible.

“It’s not a big deal. I’m bound to run into them sometime. Might as well get it over with.”

“Good for you. Fuck’em.”

“Fuck’em. Let’s go ride that bull.”

“Hell yeah.” Sukie high-fives me.

The place is packed. If we want food other than grabbing an appetizer on the bar side, the wait is going to be two hours for a table.

There’s no way I’m waiting two hours for food.

The bar it is.

We order a pitcher of margaritas and some fries and fried peppers to share.

“Don’t look now, but Zane is staring.”

“Great,” I mutter and shove a chip into some of the complimentary salsa.

“He better not even think of coming over here,” Sukie mutters.

“He won’t. He’s probably just…”

“Just what? Hoping you’re crying tears in your beer.” She shakes her head. “I hate him.”

“We got married too young.”

“Fuck that. Don’t make excuses for him.”

“I’m not. It’s just we only ever dated each other.”

“You only dated him, but babe. He was playing the field. Left. Right. Center.”