Jessalyn
Last night, I’d woken in the early hours and watched the sunrise from Justin’s bed with his arms wrapped around me and Shiro snoring softly on the floor alongside. And I’d imagined Ridge in his Mercedes, driving through the night, already halfway to Virginia, intent on dragging me back to Maine.
But I should have known. I should have known Ridge would find a sneakier way to twist the knife. Showing up outside would reek of desperation and poor impulse control, and he was all about manipulation.
So he’d made a video.
And posted it on the Sprinkle of Happiness cooking channel.
“That…that asshole.”
Justin didn’t say a word about my language, just pushed a mug of coffee across the counter. “You need more Tylenol?”
“I need more wine.”
“It’s only nine thirty.”
I played the video again, seething at the fake niceness in Ridge’s tone. At the story he told. At the overall reasonableness.
“My wife has been struggling recently. We tried to work through things, but she decided she needed some space, and now…now I fear very much for her well-being. If the reports are true, she’s been hoodwinked by a dangerous man, and I pray for her safety.
Jessalyn, if you’re listening, I forgive you.
The hurtful things you said don’t matter.
We’ve both been under a lot of stress, and in that situation, it’s so easy to say words you don’t mean.
Just call me. Or come home—the door is always open.
And to you, Jessalyn’s followers—if you’re feeling this way, there’s always someone willing to listen.
I’m putting the number of an organisation that can help in the caption. ”
He’d included the number for a suicide prevention charity and a freaking Bible quote. Ephesians 4:32—Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Jerk. I wasn’t suicidal. In fact, I was feeling slightly murderous.
“Saylor found the video,” Justin said.
“Did she? How do you know?”
“She left a comment.”
I scrolled until I found it, below a reply that said “OMG, Jessalyn! Are you okay? Blink three times if you need help.” Saylor had posted a meme, a painting of Queen Elizabeth I with the caption “Someone fetch me my dick guillotine, the little one.”
The comment had seventy-three likes, and I began laughing. I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks, and Justin was looking kind of concerned.
“Should I be worried?” he asked.
“You work construction—how difficult would it be to build a dick guillotine?”
“I mean, I could do it. But I think the bigger problem would be keeping him still.”
Yes, and I already knew how ineffective Benadryl was when it came to drugging a man.
“Plus I’d need a microscope to find it.” Wait, wasn’t there an emoji for that? Oh, it was a magnifying glass. Close enough. I replied to Saylor’s comment and added a laughing-crying face too.
Me:
“In all seriousness, do you want me to have my lawyer write him a letter?”
“That’s real sweet of you, but I don’t think it would help. Ridge is a lawyer. Even though he’s spouting a bunch of lies, you can bet your ass he read his script twenty times over to make sure it skirted the boundaries of defamation.”
“I don’t care if he’s the Attorney General; you don’t need to stay silent and take this. We could at least give him a warning.”
We. That one word made my heart swell. I wasn’t alone in this anymore.
I had Justin, and Ridge was trying to hurt him too.
A letter would do no good—Ridge would just laugh and file it in the shredder—but Justin was right about the silence.
Ridge presented an image to the world, the one he wanted everyone to see.
The abuse, the cruelty, the harm he did happened behind closed doors.
Now, once again, he was trying to shape the narrative, and he expected me to comply the same way I always had.
But I was a different person.
Justin had changed me.
He’d shown me support and kindness, and no way was I allowing Ridge’s slander to undo that.
Fuck him.
Fuck him and his reasonableness.
My hands shook as I pulled open the refrigerator and scanned the ingredients. A cold burrito, unsweetened almond milk, ground beef, hot dog buns, a bunch of weirdly small eggplants.
Huh.
Eggplants. I could do something with that.
Fuck him.
I began pulling drawers open.
“Jess? What are you doing?”
“He took everything from me. My education, my friends, my happiness, even my freaking dog. And he took my hobby too. I used to cook because I enjoyed it, and he turned it into a chore. Do we have tape?”
“Tape?”
“Packing tape, electrical tape, painter’s tape. Tape.”
Justin opened a cupboard and handed me a roll of duct tape. I attached my phone to the faucet and checked the picture. Not quite straight, but I could work with it.
“Jessie?”
“He wants me to stay in the dark, but I want the light. He wants me to keep quiet, but I have a voice.”
A voice and a new cooking channel.
I pulled ingredients from the refrigerator, from the cupboard, from the shelf. I found my mom’s casserole dish and set it on the island beside a chopping board, and then I selected the biggest knife in the block and gripped the handle.
Considered the optics.
Put the knife back and picked up a meat cleaver.
Fuck him.
He didn’t even go to church, but Mom used to take me on Sundays, and I still remembered some of the Bible passages we’d learned. I opened BuzzHub, typed in the words from John 3:19-21, and started a live-stream as Justin settled onto a stool.
“Dear Saylor, today we’re going to learn a new recipe. Have you ever made moussaka? This one’s actually inspired by Ridge, my hopefully soon-to-be ex-husband.”
I lined up one of the tiny eggplants. Thwack. The end flew across the chopping board and skidded onto the floor. Oops.
“I left him at the start of the month, and when I say ‘left him,’ I mean I snuck out in the middle of the night because I feared for my life.” Not slander. Truth. “I didn’t plan to make a video today, but I also didn’t plan on him telling lies about me in public, so here we are.”
Thwack.
“Here I am. I’m not even wearing make-up because for the first time in I can’t remember how long, I don’t have any bruises to hide.”
Thwack.
“I’m not suicidal, I’m not in danger, and I’m not being held hostage.
I’m staying with a good man who’s taking care of me.
Okay, so we’re having a small problem with podcasters at the moment…
” I laughed, and did I sound hysterical?
Possibly. “But that’s only because the police don’t have a viable suspect for a crime they don’t even know has taken place, and I guess they want to look as if they’re doing something.
So anyhow, I’m going to cook. For fun. Not because a sponsor’s paying me, or because I’m looking for a book deal, or because I want to grow my freaking channel.
I’m going to cook because it’s cathartic. ”
Thwack.
“Some eggplants can be bitter, so we’re going to rinse them, salt them, and let them rest while we prepare the rest of the ingredients.”
Whenever I made a video, Ridge used to play director, standing beside the camera and making hand gestures to direct me.
Hurry up. Slow down. Stand up straighter.
Smile more. Justin just watched with an indulgent smile as I finished with the eggplants and started on the potatoes.
People were watching. The likes were going up.
Comments were scrolling up the side of the screen.
I didn’t care about anything except the fact that people were finally seeing my truth.
Fuck him.
Thwack.
“Ridge posted a Bible quote earlier, but do you know where he worships on Sundays? The golf course. And no, I’m never going to forgive him.
He dumped my dog at a freaking shelter, and who does that to family?
” I fetched a frying pan and checked the camera angle.
“Can you all see the stove? Good. We’re going to shallow fry the potatoes and the eggplant, but if you’d prefer, you can bake them to make the dish healthier. ”
“Saylor’s watching,” Justin said, and I realised he was checking the comments on his own phone.
Ohmigosh. I grinned and waved. “Hi, Say.”
“She says, ‘Love you, carry on.’ And someone wants to know if you should add oil to the eggplant when you bake it.”
“Uh, yes, drizzle them with a little olive oil. And eggplant tends to stick to the sheet pan, so use non-stick if you can, and you can also overlap the slices so they’re easier to lift at the end.”
The oil heated, and I dropped slices of potato into the pan to brown, then realised I had a problem. Where were the spatulas? I tried a drawer and found a phone charger.
“What do you need?” Justin asked.
“A spatula.”
Ridge had cast himself in the role of doting husband, and our appearances together were carefully choreographed to show him in the best possible light.
He literally wrote scripts and screen directions.
Jessalyn smiles at Ridge. Jessalyn gazes adoringly at Ridge.
Jessalyn definitely wasn’t supposed to make disparaging comments about the size of his equipment.
Justin preferred spontaneity. He brushed past me and rested his hand on my hip, high enough to be family friendly, low enough to be suggestive, brief enough to look natural, lingering enough that my ovaries exploded. Our gazes met. Before I caught myself, I bit my lip, and heat rushed through me.
“How long does moussaka take to cook?” he murmured.
“Too long.”
“Hurry up.” He cleared his throat, reached past me, and retrieved a spatula from a drawer. “Here you go.”
The comments went wild. They were scrolling up the screen so fast they were a blur. What was moussaka? All I could think of was Justin’s eggplant.
“Babe? Something’s smoking.”
Yes, my freaking libido. Justin had torched it. I hastily flipped the potato slices and turned down the heat. Focus, Jessie. Brown the potatoes, don’t burn them.
“Uh, you did say there’s a sprinkler system in this place, right?”
“More of a water mist system, but yup.”