4. Petty
PETTY
“Please, I need more stories of the whore chronicles of Kate,” Chelsea says, drinking her mimosa. This is the third time we’ve done brunch this week alone.
It’s summer and with no summer courses, Chelsea and I have too much time on our hands.
“Savannah really fucked up teaching courses this summer,” I say to Chelsea who nods in agreement.
Four months have changed a lot of things for me, to be honest, I almost feel like a new person. I’m down to only one therapy session a month. I’m enjoying living alone more than I ever thought I would, and I feel lighter. So much fucking lighter.
I’m no longer hoarding secrets of myself, all those pieces I gave away to my ex-husband. I’ve been slowly finding them and piecing them together to build who I am today.
It took me time to realize that I’m not trying to go back in time and be the Kate I was at twenty-five. No, I’m living happily as a single woman in her thirties and it’s more fulfilling than I thought it would ever be.
I hang out with my friends. I’ve adopted way too many cats. I go to the movies by myself and out to eat and there’s no shame behind it. I’ve gone on some dates, but with the same end goal in mind, get laid and ticking everything off of my list.
There have been the good and then the outright terrible.
I’ve made a decision about how to move forward and I’m not sure how Chelsea will take it, but I’m going to tell her anyway.
“I’m done with the apps,” I tell her and she gasps.
“But the lore, the endless entertainment we get from you being on apps,” she complains and I give her a glare. “You’re right, this isn’t about me.”
“I’m not looking to date, and while a lot of guys on there aren’t either, so many of them suck,” I complain.
They suck at sex, just looking to bust their load and dip, no interest in exploring kink or power dynamics.
Others are looking to date and see me as someone who’s biological clock is ticking while I clearly state in my profile that I don’t want children.
Which leads me to believe half of these motherfuckers can’t read.
“I figure I can use money to solve the problem,” I tell her and she looks at me wide-eyed.
“A prostitute?” she says, grabbing the stem of the champagne flute like a high society housewife would clutch their pearls.
“No, dumbass. I’m signing up for a sex club.”
“Those are a real thing?” Chelsea asks, and I nod.
“Yes, it’s a real thing. I found one I think will be a good fit. I think it will take a lot of the burden away from what I want, you know?”
“Kate, I mean this with all my heart, no. I don’t know. Explain it to me.”
Chelsea is happily married with a husband who gets her. They’re all over each other like horny teenagers, and she doesn’t have similar interests behind closed doors as I do.
“When I meet these guys on apps, they’re usually a complete disappointment.”
“Like Justin,” she says, and we both wince.
Justin looked good on paper, normal job, nice enough guy. But he wasn’t packing and didn’t know how to overcompensate with his hands or his mouth. When I didn’t finish, he called me a slut and said he wasn’t interested in me anyway.
“I’m on an exploration to find what I like and I’ve seen glimpses of it. But the club will be a place where men have the same ideas minus the mental labor of fielding them out through apps and continually being disappointed.”
All of my hook ups weren’t bad, I actually enjoyed some of them.
Though, when I found myself comparing them to the stranger at the marina, they couldn’t hold a candle.
Maybe I’d built up that memory in my mind, but deep down I know I didn’t.
He was the standard I wanted for myself, and the apps weren’t providing it.
“I know to engage in the things I want to do there needs to be some sort of trust in there, which is hard when I don’t want a boyfriend and I don’t want to take chances on these online encounters anymore,” I reiterate and Chelsea nods her head, seeming to understand.
“I’m picturing a sex dungeon or like the red room,” Chelsea says and I laugh into my glass.
“Of course you would. It’s actually very classy. I took a tour yesterday and filled out all the paperwork.”
“So how much are we talking monthly?” she asks.
I hide myself behind my glass as I mumble the number.
“What was that?”
“Five thousand.”
“A month? Kate! Do you think your Aunt Helene would’ve predicted your trust fund would go to supporting a sex club membership?”
I wince and grab a piece of calamari as my best friend blinks at me. A typical associate art professor wouldn’t be able to afford it, but my situation of where my money comes from is unique and equally complicated.
Chelsea whistles. “If you think about the return on investment and how much each orgasm costs, damn,” she says, her economics brain doing overtime.
“It’s not just about that,” I tell her and she nods.
She gets it, but she doesn’t.
If it was just about coming, I’d continue what I’ve been doing. I have no issue bringing myself to orgasm, it’s just I wanted more. So so much more.
She tips back her drink and her eyes go wide.
“Oh, fuck,” she hisses, and my brows furrow as she looks at me. “Kate, I’m so sorry,” she says.
A stroller pushes past us and I look down, only to glance up and see my ex-husband, his fiancée—sorry, new wife—and their child, age unclear.
“Kate,” Will says, glancing between me and Chelsea.
I say nothing.
“Chelsea, did you hear something?” I ask, and she laughs.
“Uh, maybe I heard an adulterous motherfucker trying to speak?”
“Kate,” he says in a more stern voice and I glance over at him and his new wife, who’s a decade his junior.
I still hate her, hate him, and honestly, as much as it pains me, I hate their stupid baby, too. It isn’t its fault that it was created during my marriage, and I wouldn’t ever be purposefully mean to a child, but it’s my right to loathe them all.
I’m glad to not be married to him. My life is honestly better. Doesn’t mean I don’t hold space to hate him and his new family. He could have ended things with me before cheating, especially before getting someone pregnant.
“Why don’t you take Danger to the table, baby,” he says to his wife.
I have to suck my lips into my mouth before belting with laughter. Chelsea doesn’t help the situation as her mouth gapes open like a fish.
He named his kid Danger.
“Kate, I was hoping we could talk about the shares,” he says. “My lawyer has been trying to contact you.”
Yes, he has, and I’ve promptly told him to fuck himself in every way possible. I even pulled out my Synonym Finder from college so that every response was different enough, but packed just the right amount of punch.
“Come on, you still can’t be bitter,” he says.
Bitter.
The word makes me want to throat punch him and then pull his wife’s hair. Instead, I blink at him, not saying a word, turning back to Chelsea.
“Hey, Chels?”
“Yes, Kate?”
“Do you remember that time I used a big chunk of my trust fund to start my ex-husband’s business and my lawyer wisely advised me to hold on to fifty-five percent of the company when doing so in case anything were to happen?
Like, I don’t know, he went through a midlife crisis and got his young side piece pregnant? ”
Chelsea holds up a finger. “You know, I do remember that. Well, if you got divorced, it would really suck for him that you wisely also had him sign a prenup. You could single-handedly ruin his company.”
Was I petty and ruthless for holding these shares over his head? Absolutely, and I got enjoyment out of it.
Especially when he looked down at me red faced and pissed off.
“Kate, this isn’t fucking funny anymore. I have a family now.”
Well, that felt like my stomach plummeting to the fucking ground.
At one point, Will was the only family I had, and he knew that.
He knew how important his family was to me, and now they no longer existed in my life.
The moment Will was done with me, so was his family.
It was a low blow, and he wanted it to hurt.
I always thought that if I ended up divorced, I’d be mature and civil. I was absolutely wrong. I kinda wanted to ruin his life. I could be over him, want nothing to do with him, while also wanting to make him suffer. My therapist didn’t quite agree, but Janet wasn’t the end all be all of morality.
“I think you should really watch how you speak to the majority shareholder of Dennis Commercial,” Chelsea says, pointing a perfectly manicured nail in his direction.
“Please, Kate. You got the house. Please let me buy my shares back.”
“It was my aunt’s house. It was always my house. I suggest you go have lunch with your wife and kid and leave me the fuck alone,” I tell him.
He glares at me, and it feels good. As he storms over to the table, his wife looks hurt and confused.
I don’t hate her as much as I hate him, she’s young and stupid, and shackled with his kid.
But she had to know he was married, and she didn’t give a shit.
But Will is truly the only one to blame.
He made me a promise, and he’s the one that broke it.
Not his doe-eyed new wife who, according to her LinkedIn, took a long break from work.
I’m sure Will loves having her stay home, making his lunches, and never asking more of him.
Cheating wasn’t the only problem, and I know that now.
Neither of us were giving each other what we wanted.
Will wanted a traditional wife. He told me he was fine not having kids, but that was clearly a lie.
He didn’t understand why I wanted to be a professor, why I didn’t stop after my masters and needed a doctorate in fine arts.
He thought it was stupid, that adding additional degrees was frivolous.
He wanted me to cook more; he wanted simple, and I wasn’t a simple woman and I never would be. I was complicated, messy, something he loved but at some point that changed. Just like I wanted someone who was attentive, open, and not as stringent.
We grew too much. We’re different people now, honestly I don’t recognize him anymore, which is sad as it is eye opening.
He isn’t the boy who pieced my heart together when I moved to Tampa.
He isn’t the man who was there when my aunt died and he became my everything. Nor am I that broken girl anymore.
Part of me wonders if he lost interest when he realized there was nothing left of me to fix. When he realized I didn’t need him. Part of me wanted him, wanted to make our marriage work, but that died a long time ago.
“Wow.” Chelsea breaks my thought process as she tips back her mimosa.
We’re going to need to get an Uber back to my place after this.
“So, do you have some maniacal plan of what you’re going to do with his company?” she asks.
I shrug. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the shares. They were rightfully mine. I invested a lot into Will and his business. My aunt would have rolled around in her grave if she knew what I did with my money. But I think she’d be incredibly satisfied with how I’m using it now.
I smile to myself. She would have loved the idea of me being free and finding myself.
“I’m not sure yet. For now, I’m holding on to it to torture him a little,” I admit.
Chelsea grins at me, which I return.
“I think this is the best version of you,” she says, refilling our glasses with champagne and a splash of orange juice. We clink our glasses and I realize, I agree.
I’m kinda in love with this version of me too.