Chapter 7 – Aricia
Chapter Seven
Aricia
I’m lucky I made it to that man’s place with my phone. I get to the curb with a dress that makes me feel like a hoochie because I was wearing it last night and I feel way too old for those types of antics. Kennard’s body isn’t even cold…
The second I request a rideshare, I call Rana, who picks up after two rings with a hushed whisper.
“You wouldn’t believe where I am.”
“Um… where are you?”
The sun is so fucking bright today. Side effect of the liquor and the drugs someone slipped into my drink. Could it have been his sister? Another man? I don’t remember anything and my head hurts so damn badly. But I’d better let Rana tell me her story too…
“I met this Turkish guy and he took me back to his apartment. It was crazy, Aricia. He ate my ass!”
“I’m going to throw up.”
“It wasn’t that gross! He’s Turkish. He has a bidet.”
“It’s not about your ass eating,” I groan. “Something bad happened to me last night.”
“What? Did he have a small dick? Please say he didn’t have a small dick. That would literally ruin my life.”
“Rana, I have to get home and shower so I can make it to the funeral home today. I shouldn’t be thinking about anyone’s dick or trying not to throw up because—”
“Oh my God, are you okay, Aricia?”
“No. I think someone drugged me last night.”
“The Italian guy?” she says. “Should we call the police?”
“I think he was just as out of it as I was. Can you leave your Turkish man and come to my place? My rideshare just pulled up.”
“I’ll be there,” Rana says. “I’ll leave my thong behind so he remembers to call me.”
I don’t know if her strategy will work, but I’m not in the position to argue with Rana. The car pulls up and I worry that if I don’t get out of here soon, Peter will follow me. I shouldn’t have done this. I shouldn’t have slept with him…
His cum oozes down my leg and nausea flips my stomach again. The driver climbs out of the silver Hyundai Elantra and holds the door open for me. I say goodbye to Rana and step inside.
“See you soon,” I tell her, sliding my phone over my thigh as I slip into the backseat. Speaking of thongs… What the hell happened to mine?
Rana gets out of the cab at my place a few minutes after I get out of the shower.
I get clean, but nothing can remove the evidence of this man inside me except…
Plan B. But I don’t have time for Plan B because at 2 p.m., I have to go to the funeral home and do something I always knew I would have to do at some point, but always expected to feel sad about.
Now, I’ll have to avoid acting like a psychopath in the funeral home because I’m not exactly going to put my business out there about the situation I caught my husband in that caused him to have a heart attack on my front lawn.
My sister, Olivia in Pittsburgh and Rana both think that I’ll laugh about this one day.
I just feel dread right now. Rana walks into my house and heads straight towards my refrigerator like every real ass best friend. As she pours herself orange juice, she gets straight down to business.
“What the hell happened to you last night? The Italian?” Rana’s eyebrows raise and I feel like I’m going to disappoint her by refusing to share the salacious details.
I can’t even remember what happened between us.
I don’t remember saying no. I remember him trying to stop the moving train at one point.
But we’re grown… and we still have those desires… and sometimes all that self-control you have as an adult woman hits a wall and unravels all at once. I’m not embarrassed that I had sex, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
“I left his house this morning,” I mutter, as if Kennard’s dead spirit might be lurking in the Orchard Park house we bought when we first started the law firm and moved to Buffalo together.
If my head didn’t still hurt, I would be tempted to have another drink.
Rana remains unbothered by the potential of my husband’s ghost haunting me for moving on too quickly.
“Did he take your number?” Rana asks. She looks incredible for someone who also spent the night at someone else’s house. Her long, waist-length black hair is rolled up and clipped back in a tortoise shell clip and she’s dressed like a Gen Z influencer, which adds to her ageless look.
“No. I hope I didn’t tell him my last name,” I groan. Rana thinks it’s ridiculous that I care and I can tell she’s excited by the idea of Peter tracking me down like some kind of fucked up Cinderella situation.
“If he’s in the mob,” Rana says with gleaming dark brown eyes. “He can probably track you down. Wouldn’t that be sexy?”
When did stalking become sexy? Maybe to young women or people who don’t work in the legal profession. I raise an eyebrow, because Rana has enough experience not to be so unserious as to suggest that this man stalking me would be a turn-on.
“If I were a jobless twenty-one year old, maybe. I own a law firm and my 50% partner just passed away on my front lawn.”
Rana sighs. “It would still be hot. It’s not like he looked scraggly and gross. Do you think he’s really in the mob?”
“I shouldn’t have done anything that happened last night.”
“Something did happen last night, then,” Rana says. “I’m alert. I think I need prosecco for this orange juice.”
“Top shelf of the fridge,” I respond with a sigh. “I never said anything happened. I’m just saying that I shouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for…”
“It’s just dick, Aricia. Calm down,” Rana says, punctuating her statement with a loud pop as she gets the cork off my prosecco. “Kennard didn’t stop himself from getting dick when he wanted it.”
She smirks and even if I want to be mad at her, I can’t blame her for making light of the situation. I lowkey forced my trauma on her. I grab a flute for some of that prosecco and my best friend takes the hint, making me a drink.
She’s the only one sober by the time we have to drive to the funeral home.
I give everyone at the firm two days off for Kennard’s funeral.
Rumors are already spreading around the office thanks to Inessa.
It’s her life and her story to tell, so I can’t blame her, but I don’t want to put myself through this ordeal along with the additional humiliation of my employees gossiping about my marriage. When they go low, we go higher.
Kennard’s family came up to Buffalo from Atlanta – his parents are both retired doctors and I don’t think they had any idea about how their son behaved when there was nobody looking.
They came with his two sisters – Keyonah, the oldest of the two is in her early twenties and I think she might be attending college somewhere in the Midwest. The other sister is around seventeen years old, and it’s weird that I was together with her brother so long that I remember when Kamilla was born.
I don’t make it through the funeral or the repast without medical assistance, but I at least stay for the whole thing.
We arranged to have the will read the day after the funeral so that Kennard’s family can get back to Georgia.
I know what’s in his will and even if I know what’s in there, it still scares me to think…
It’s all mine.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to leave my ex-husband without losing at least half of what I’d built. Kennard would obviously fight every claim in court and I thought I would have to quit criminal defense and take up something more calming like estate planning.
But everything is mine – Plant, Parker & Nigel, LLC belongs to me… And my cheating ex-husband is no longer a problem.
Kennard’s life insurance payout leaves me with an additional $2.
5 million dollars in cash – more than enough to leave the Orchard Park house if I want to.
He leaves $500,000 to his parents and his speed boat to his father.
He leaves his Airstream camper van to his younger sister, Kamilla, and $75,000 to his sister Keyonah, plus a trust for a few of his younger family members.
He might have been a demon, but at least when he died, he took care of his family.
I have mixed feelings when I send them back to Georgia and have to face heading back to work and the office alone.
I’m a woman in my forties accustomed to ignoring my period, so I forget to take Plan B and don’t notice anything when my peri-menopausal ass misses one period…
I totally forget about that wild night at the bar and try to settle into my new normal without Kennard.