Chapter 3
3
ZARA
T he words slip out of my mouth, almost as if my mind is outside of my body. Like, I’m here, but I’m really not here. “The wedding is off,” I repeat, this time standing up straight and looking around, feeling lost. I continue down the sidewalk to the corner and cross the street because the light is green, walking farther away from my house.
“What do you mean the wedding is off?” Zoey shrieks, but then I hear Nash.
“Hey, Zara,” he greets softly. “I need you to tell me where you are?” he asks, and I blink a couple of times, looking around for the first time.
“I don’t know,” I answer. If I wasn’t in a daze, I would be able to tell him I was two blocks from my house.
“Okay, I need you to take a second and look around you.” His voice is calming. “Look for a street name or anything like that,” he says. I pause when I get to the corner and tell him the name. “Do you see a cab anywhere near you?” he asks, and I look around.
“No.” I shake my head at the same time I tell him.
“Zara, can you see if you can get a cab? Go to the corner and hold up your hand.” I walk to the corner, feeling like a stranger in my body as I follow his instructions. “I can come get you, but it’ll be faster if you can get a cab!” Zoey shouts in the background just as a yellow cab pulls up.
“I have a cab,” I tell him, just looking at the car.
“Get in the cab and give them this address,” he urges. My hand comes up, and I open the back door.
“I’m in the car,” I tell him, then glance at the man looking over his shoulder, waiting for me to give him the address.
“Tell the man you are going to—” he says, and I repeat everything he says to the cab driver. “You’re going to stay on the phone with me, okay?” Nash says.
“Okay,” I reply absentmindedly before looking outside. The cab zigzags through traffic. “Zara, are you still there?” he asks, and I nod but don’t say anything. I’m too busy wiping the tears off my face. “I’ll be waiting for you downstairs,” he assures me.
“Okay,” I say softly, putting my hand on my lap with the phone. I see he hasn’t hung up, so I just let it stay in my lap, my arm suddenly tired. My whole body is suddenly tired, but I don’t have a chance to do anything about it because the car comes to a stop, and the door swings open.
“I got you.” Nash holds out his hand to me while reaching in to give the driver something. “Keep the change,” he says as I take his hand and step out of the cab.
A gust of wind makes my hair fly around me, and I shiver. “It’s cold.” I look at him, feeling like my whole body is going to fall. I take one step with him, and my knees finally give out.
I’m expecting to land on my ass, but Nash wraps his arm around my waist and holds me up. “I got you,” he repeats, walking toward the glass door. “You’re okay.” I don’t know if I’m okay.
“Pretty sure I’m not okay,” I mumble to him as we step into the elevator when my knees buckle again.
“Do you want me to carry you?” he asks when the elevator doors open, and I shake my head.
“I can do this,” I state, not sure if I can do this. I take one step and then stop when I see Zoey there. Her face is white like a ghost, her own tears running down her face.
“Zara.” She closes the distance to me, wrapping her other hand around me. “Zara.” She says my name again as they walk me into their apartment. “What the fuck happened?” I don’t know who she’s asking, me or Nash.
“Let’s get her to the couch before she says anything.” He looks at Zoey, who nods as they walk with me to the couch. She turns me to help me onto the cushion. I plop down on it, letting my body go. My purse falls to the side while my phone slides to the floor and away from me. “I think she might be in shock.”
“You think? She looks like a fucking zombie,” she hisses at him. “I’m going to kill him.”
I put my head back on the couch and close my eyes, which makes it even worse because all I can see is Daniel and Sarah. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I finally say, and the two of them spring into action. Nash runs to the hallway while Zoey rushes to bring me a trash can. I have enough time to grab it before I vomit until nothing is left inside me.
“Here.” Nash hands a wet facecloth to Zoey, who grabs it from him and wipes my face.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asks, and I look at her, my eyes filling with tears, making it hard to see. “I promise you are going to be okay.” She doesn’t get a chance to say anything else before there is a buzzing sound. “Those are the girls,” she explains, and I sit up.
“No.” I shake my head. “Not my mother. I can’t.” I look around for an escape route.
“I didn’t call your mom. I called Sofia, but she was with Gabriella and Ryleigh,” she says. I relax back on the couch for a second before the door opens, and the three of them rush in. They take one look at me before they stop in their tracks.
“What happened?” Sofia asks, rushing over to me.
“It’s over,” I reply, looking ahead in a daze.
“Okay,” Gabriella says, taking off her jacket and tossing it to the side. “She needs a drink.”
“I don’t think she needs to drink anything,” Zoey refutes.
“She needs a drink,” Sofia repeats. “Do you have any sweet tea?” she asks of the concoction her grandfather makes special for us.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zoey warns. “That stuff is?—”
“We have tequila,” Nash interjects from the side.
“That should work.” Gabriella comes to squat in front of me. “We need you to get out of your jacket. It has vomit on it.”
I look down at my jacket, not even realizing I threw up a bit on myself. I start to get up and shrug the jacket off me before plopping down again on the couch. “We need to get her in the shower,” Ryleigh suggests, “and then maybe she’ll snap out of it.”
“Here,” Sofia says, coming back into the room and putting a glass of tequila in front of me. “Take a sip of that,” she urges. I bring it to my lips and just take a sip, but then I shake my head and hand it back to her. “Okay, so where is Daniel?” she asks, sitting on the couch beside me.
“I don’t know.” I laugh and shock them with the laughter. “I left him at home.”
“Did you guys get into a fight?” Gabriella asks, holding my hand.
“Not really.” I look at the four of them. “I came home early,” I tell them. “Apparently, too early since I caught him fucking Sarah in my bed.”
A collective gasp fills the room. “That motherfucker.” Zoey springs off the couch. “I’m going over there right now.” She walks to the door when Nash grabs her around the waist and pulls her back.
“Zara,” Gabriella urges, “look at me.” I look at her. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything really. I asked him how long it was going on.” I try to recall the conversation, and bits and pieces are coming to me. “I think he said three years.” I shake my head. “That doesn’t make sense, right?” I look at them. “Like I would have known if he was fucking her and me?” No one says anything as I sit up. “Like, how the fuck did he do this for three years and I not even know?” I shake my head. “How dumb am I?”
“You are not dumb,” Gabriella snaps. “You trusted him.”
“They were always together in the corner laughing about something,” I tell her, “and it was always ‘I had lunch with Sarah’ or ‘I’m going to scout clients with Sarah.’” I slap my forehead with my hand. “Good God, it was right in my face.”
“Isn’t she married?” Sofia asks. “Like, we met her, didn’t we?”
“She is, and she just gave birth to her third child six months ago,” I say, and now it all is just spouting out of me. “Those are probably his kids,” I say. My phone rings, and I look down, seeing it’s him.
“Don’t answer that,” Zoey instructs while Gabriella squeezes my hand.
“Do you want to talk to him?” She ignores the hiss that comes out of Zoey and Ryleigh. “Ignore all of us and focus on yourself right now. Do you want to talk to him?”
“Want to talk to him?” Zoey blurts out. “That motherfucker could be the father of Sarah’s kid.”
It’s then that I snap, “Two of her kids.” I get up and grab the phone. “Her other kid is two, and the oldest is three.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ryleigh swears, reaching over and grabbing the glass out of Sofia’s hand and taking a shot. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
“I know what you would have done,” Gabriella says, “and there would be pieces of him scattered along the way.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Zoey snaps. “Zara.”
My body shakes but not in the part where I’m going to collapse. No, in the part where I have to move. “He was fucking her on my bed!” I roar.
“Dear Lord,” Sofia observes, taking a shot of the tequila, “someone woke the beast. This isn’t good.” I see them exchanging looks.
“In my fucking bed.” I point at myself. “On my fucking favorite duvet!”
“Should I call anyone?” Nash leans over to ask Zoey, who just shakes her head.
“He said, ‘we can talk’?” I repeat as I walk wildly around the room. “Like, it’s a onetime thing and not that he was with her for three fucking years.” I throw up my hands. “During our whole relationship, he’s been fucking both of us.” The phone rings again, and I stomp over to it, seeing it’s him again.
“What?” I answer.
“Oh, God, Zara, I was so worried,” he says breathlessly.
“How worried?” I ask, looking down at the phone and putting him on speaker.
“I was out looking for you.” He sounds like he’s panting.
“Obviously, you weren’t trying really fucking hard since you didn’t fucking find me.”
“Snap,” Ryleigh adds.
“So how hard were you looking, Daniel?” I ask him.
“We have to talk,” he says.
“I’m pretty sure all the talking we had to do has been done,” I inform him. “I need to come and get my things,” I tell him of a plan I didn’t even know I was doing.
“Can we talk when you come home?”
“No, considering you won’t be there.” I laugh. “And if you are there, I’m going to burn every single thing I look at that is yours.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Ryleigh states, looking around. “She did not just threaten him.” I look at her. “You can’t threaten him,” she whispers, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m not threatening him.” I look at Ryleigh. “I’m not threatening you, Daniel. I’m merely stating that if I come home tomorrow from ten a.m. to one p.m. and you are there, I’m going to burn all your shit.” I shrug. “I might do it even if you aren’t there.”
“Zara, please, we can work this out,” he pleads, and Sofia pffts.
“How do you think we can work this out?” I ask, but I’m not actually waiting for him to answer me because I know, deep in my heart, I’ll never, ever forgive him. “Should we work this out, and you keep fucking Sarah?” I ask. “Like, how would it work?”
“If you want me to stop seeing her”—he exhales deeply—“then I will do that.”
I can’t help but fucking laugh. “That is so kind of you,” I say sarcastically, “but you can totally keep fucking her until your dick falls off. I’ll be there tomorrow between ten and one, and I don’t want you there. You can go and sit with your girlfriend while you tell her husband you might be the kids’ father.”
“It’s not like that,” he retorts. “I don’t want kids with her. I want kids with you. I want to marry you.”
“Do you know how sick and disgusting that is?”
“With Sarah, it was just fucking.” He tries to plead his case.
“How many times?” I ask, and I can feel everyone’s eyes in the room go big. “On average, how many times a week would you fuck her?”
“I don’t know,” he huffs. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.” I don’t even know why I’m asking him this, but I suddenly need to know how much of my life was a lie.
“Four, maybe seven, times a week,” he shares, and I gasp. Trying to see how he could fuck her seven times a week and maybe get it up only a couple of times for me, but now it all makes sense. “They were just for relief.”
“Where?” I don’t want to hear his stupid excuses. “Where did you fuck her? Was it at our house? Her house?”
“Zara,” he says my name, and I cringe.
“Where?” I hiss out.
“A bit of both, really,” he finally gives in. “Our house, her house, the office, when we would go away.”
“Jesus, no wonder you wouldn’t be in the mood when you were with me.” I shake my head. “Red flag number one.” I laugh. “Am I right?”
“Zara, I love you.”
“Good, I’m glad,” I tell him. “Now, tomorrow between ten and one.”
“We need to talk.”
“We just did,” I inform him. “There really isn’t anything else left to say. I think we said it all.”
“The wedding,” he finally says. “I want to marry you.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I ask. “Like, seriously, did your dick steal all your brain cells? You don’t think I’d actually marry you after all of this.”
“We can go to therapy.”
“I mean, you should go to therapy,” I agree with him.
“Where are you going to stay?” he asks like he’s suddenly worried about me.
“I can tell you where I’m not going to stay, and that is at our house.” Even saying the words makes my skin crawl. “I never, ever want to step foot in that place again.” I look around. “But for now, I’ll be there tomorrow. Then I guess we need to put the house on the market unless you want to buy me out so you can use it to keep fucking Sarah?” I don’t even give him a chance to say anything. “Goodbye, Daniel.”