Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
EZRA
I wrap my arm around Vi as we walk over to my truck.
Her shivers shake my arm as she crosses her arms against her chest. It’s a summer rain shower, and it rarely gets cold to be shivering as badly as she is right now.
Even if it is late in the summer it still gets hot.
Could it be all the stress catching up with her?
She halts her steps as soon as we get to the parking lot.
“What?” I turn to her.
“I need a ride home.”
I glance over at the parking lot and see only my truck. The other car must have left. “How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
My mouth parts in disbelief. “You walked?”
She nods her head, and wipes the raindrops from her face.
I grab her hand and lead her to my truck. I open the door for her and watch her jump her petite self inside before I shut the door.
I rush over to the other side, jump in, start the car, and jack the heat. “Vi, I can’t believe you walked. That’s a far walk from your house.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I needed to clear my head, and it felt good to walk with the sun behind the clouds.”
As I’m driving back to her place, all I can feel is that I don’t want to let her go. But I don’t want to seem pushy either. I want to be here for her and hold her when she cries and talk to her when she feels down.
Even though she said she doesn’t regret what we did, that doesn’t tell me how she feels about me or if it changed our relationship. So far, I don’t think it has. But I can only hope she feels what I feel.
“Have you had dinner?” I ask. By the looks of it, I don’t think she’s been eating much. But she’s still as beautiful as ever.
“No.”
I pull over at Pizza Pie and put my truck in park. “How about some pizza?” I ask, looking over at her.
She looks out the window almost as if she’s in a daze. She nods her head, and I get more flutters in my stomach knowing that at least this will give us more time together.
I’m her best friend. Best friends stay with one another when they’re hurting.
Why do I act like I need to make up excuses for us to stay together?
I’ve been there for her, her whole life, and she’s been there for me too.
We both have been there for each other without making excuses like this.
I’m making a bigger deal out of it than I should.
I need to relax and be there for her like I always have.
But this time feels so much different. There’s more on the line here now.
Especially after our night together. If I don’t keep my cool, though, I might scare her away.
I follow behind her as we walk into her house with the pizza in my hand. The bread and sweet smells that usually fill her house are absent. Not once have I ever walked into her house and my nostrils haven’t been hit with some sort of smell from her baking.
I step further inside, about to set the pizza on her kitchen table. I stop and gaze over all the papers around the table—some are on the floor while others are crinkled up on the floor and table. I look over at her with questions in my eyes.
She looks between me and the table. “Those are the text messages.”
I set the pizza down on the kitchen counter, turn back around, cross my arms, and watch as she shuffles the papers on the table into a pile.
Has she not been staying here? If not here, where? I’m sure these have been here since the day she found out.
I bend down and help pick up the ones on the floor.
“You can read them if you want,” she says, looking over at me.
My eyes raise to her, and I shrug my shoulders.
It’s funny that I don’t care to see the proof.
The proof of my wife and best friend going behind my back.
I guess it’s the final straw for me moving on from them.
After debating for years and going back and forth if I wanted to stay married or stay friends with Zay, I guess this finally settles it.
It was driving me crazy deciding what to do.
I finally feel relief. As crazy as that sounds, I wonder if Rya has found some relief?
It was always hard to get a straight answer from her about how she felt about us.
I always felt that if I’m feeling this way, she has to be feeling it too.
Or at least a little. But every time I would bring us up, she would shut everything down as if we’re fine.
So then, I thought she didn’t feel the same way and maybe it was all me.
After cleaning up the table and floor, I place a slice of pizza in front of Vi as I sit down and take a bite of my own. I watch her as she picks at the pizza and eats one single piece of pepperoni.
“You need to eat.”
We catch eye contact. “I am.”
“Eating a pepperoni isn’t eating.”
She lets out a small giggle like her body wants to, but her brain stops her.
“So how have things been?” I ask, and right after those words come out of my mouth I want to kick myself.
She looks at me with her eyebrows raised. She’s looking at me like are you really asking me that?
“Okay, that came out wrong,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Have you been sleeping here?”
She nods and takes a little bite of her pizza.
Then my stomach sinks knowing she has been here and maybe she has been ignoring me when I come over. I decide against asking her that because I feel like I’m already making a fool of myself with the questions I’m asking.
I want to get a better idea of how she is feeling so I know more of what to do or say. I don’t want to say or do the wrong thing. I want to be there for her, but I don’t want to push.
“Alone?” I ask because I have no idea what happened to that bastard that calls himself a man. He hasn’t reached out to me, and I haven’t reached out to him. I want to rip his limbs from his body for hurting Vi. But for me, the friendship we had hasn’t felt like much of a loss.
She nods and clears her throat as if she is going to say something, but nothing comes out.
Is she having the same problem as me, and doesn’t know what to say?
I get up from the table and head for the fridge. “You got any beer?” Maybe we both need some alcohol courage.
No.
Nevermind.
I know she doesn’t like to drink. I don’t want to be another Rya. She would always get irritated with her when Rya would try to shove alcohol down her throat.
Vi held her own and would always shut Rya up, anyway. Sometimes it bugged me how pushy Rya was that I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to get in the middle of the two because I didn’t want to hear all about it from Rya later on.
“There should be some in there.”
I reach in and grab a Dos Equis, twist the cap off, and chug a gulp down. The soft thud of the beer bottle hitting the table echoes through the house as I sit back down. “Have you been baking?” I ask, taking another bite of the pizza.
“Yeah, but only my regular café orders. I’m not taking any orders from outside people.”
“Oh, really?” That makes my heart pang. She loves baking. She would never let anything or anyone get in the way of it. Especially her business. And now everything is getting in the way. I don’t blame her, but I hate how this is affecting not only her but also her business.
“I’m just too tired. Half the time I don’t want to get out of bed, but I have to,” she says, waving around her hands. “I’m all on my own now paying this mortgage. I shouldn’t turn down any orders, but I just can’t find the strength to do more.”
“Zay’s not going to help you?”
She lets out a scoff. “I doubt it.”
“So he doesn’t care if his credit is affected?”
Her gaze flickers away from me as if she doesn’t want to say something.
“Vi.”
“Only my name is on the mortgage.”
My face freezes. “What?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Zay never wanted to buy a house, and I did. This house was perfect for my business, so I couldn’t let it go.”
Shaking my head in disappointment, I wonder what kind of guy my best friend had truly turned into. What man does that? He’s worse than I expected, to be honest. I knew he was lacking in our friendship, but he was lacking in every relationship he had.
“Did he at least help you pay the mortgage?”
“Yeah. But I’m not able to pay it all on my own now.”
At least he amounted to something.
“Vi, I’ll help you if you need help. I can cover his part.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t have you do that. You already have your own bills to pay, and on top of that I can’t imagine what debt Rya might have put you two in.”
No one knows this, but I have built myself quite a savings account. I’ve always been good with money, starting way back in high school when I got my first job. I would save 10 percent of my paycheck for my own personal spending and put the rest in my savings.
Even after marrying Rya, I saved money. But I knew from the start she wasn’t good with money, so I never told her about it. I never thought of it as a shitty move. Imagine if something catastrophic happened, and we had nothing. At least I knew we would be fine.
But as the years went by, our marriage got worse, and her spending increased.
Even though I’m more on the reserved side, I’m always steps ahead.
The money Rya spent was from her paychecks and money I put in our account from my paychecks.
Besides the money I saved. Sometimes she would over spend before bills were paid and I had to move money from my savings to pay them.
I took care of the finances, so she hardly knew what we had.
Sometimes I think she thought our debit card had unlimited money.
The other problem was she started taking out credit cards under her mom’s name.
I knew the amount of spending wasn’t adding up to what we had in the account.
After doing my own snooping, I found a couple of cards in her wallet with her mom’s name on them.
I know for a fact her mom doesn’t know because she would have already come barging through my door blaming me.
Her mom blames everyone else except for who the problem is.
Just like Rya. Rya always has an excuse, and she never takes responsibility for anything.
I feel sorry for her sometimes because she is the way she is because of her mom.
But it gave me so much relief that I won’t have to pay those off. All I thought was how stupid she was not to think about this further. All she saw was the stuff she wanted to buy.
“Honestly, I’m doing fine. I know it probably doesn’t look like that with Rya’s spending.”
She tilts her head in question. “Really?”
I nod. “I mean, I would have more money in the bank if it weren’t for her, but I have been stashing some away.”
“But aren’t you both in debt on your credit cards? I always saw her with a new credit card every time we went shopping.”
I’m not one to air people’s business out, but what respect does Rya deserve from me after everything?
None.
“She took those cards out under her mom’s name.”
Vi’s mouth drops as a long breath catches her. “No. She didn’t,” she says, shaking her head.
I nod with a wide grin on my face. Karma is going to catch up with her eventually.
It always does.