Chapter 47 Winnie
WINNIE
“Winnie, your boyfriend is the goat—a big-balled goat! You need to see this house!” Gran crows when my parents pile back into the living room.
I’m sitting on the couch, drunk and crying, alone. Fidget’s head is in my lap.
“He’s perfect, isn’t he, Winnie? I mean, he’s definitely husband material. He’d be an excellent father.” Kathy’s excited.
“We need to invite him for dinner,” Mom tells me, taking the bottle from me. “Winnie, what’s his favorite food?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble.
“Winn, what happened?” My dad clutches me and starts sobbing with me.
“Mark!” Gran swats him. “Now look, you have a billionaire boyfriend—there’s nothing to cry about. Let’s get it together. I Primed you a sexy outfit. It’s going to be here in two hours. You need to thank him properly.”
“I can’t.”
“We’ll put you on a quick lemon-cayenne cleanse. You’ll be ready to go,” Mom says firmly.
“We broke up.”
“Winnie, no!” Kathy cries.
“How’d you blow it? God save me from my granddaughter.” Gran pulls at her hair. “Why can’t either of you keep a man?”
“We’re not giving up,” my mom says firmly. “Winnie’s going to pull herself together and tell Fitz she was just hormonal and to please take her back.”
I can’t stand there and tell my parents that I’m pretty sure Fitz and Kathy are sleeping together and lying about it.
“Why, Winnie?” Kathy shakes me. “What happened?”
“It’s just not working out,” I sob.
“Well, you’ll find someone better,” my dad says, trying to cheer me up.
“We’ll all move back in here,” Mom tells me soothingly. “And keep you company.”
“No!” Gran wails. “I already told my knitting group that I have a place for us to meet.”
“Why don’t we call Fitz?” Kathy says. My sister’s eye starts twitching. “I’m sure it was a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t want to see him,” I say, sniffling.
“I mean, she looks like that—no wonder he broke up with her,” Gran complains.
“I highly doubt he broke up with her,” Kathy says, mouth a thin line.
“Winnie, you better not have broken up with him. You’re almost forty,” my mom scolds. “You have maybe three eggs left.”
“Great-grandchildren I’ll never—”
“Why don’t we leave Winn alone for a little?” Kathy shakes her head. “I’ll call Carolina. This is crazy.”
“Winn, we’re going to go get dinner. We’ll bring you something, okay?”
“L’Altalena is nearby,” I mumble sadly. “They have crab ravioli.”
I burrow down into the blankets on my couch.
I need to get it together.
Fidget licks my face.
I can’t fall apart because of a man. I never honestly thought it would work out.
Outside it’s dark and gloomy, the clouds heavy and low in the sky.
Now that’s one more thing ruined. I can’t even have a cozy rainy day.
Anyone who says relationships are awesome is a liar. I would have been better off alone.
And now I’m hungry. My stomach growls.
“Where’s my pasta?”
Ugh. There’s only my mom’s healthy food in my fridge. I can’t even have a snack.
Fidget pads over to me with a Reese’s breakfast bar and drops it in my lap.
“I really don’t want to know where you found this.”
I do really want that pasta, though.
“Tomorrow,” I tell Fidget, “I’m getting back to the old me. These last few months—temporary insanity. We’re going to SoulCycle classes and to eat salads. Kathy can go live happily ever after with Fitz. We don’t care.”
Fidget obviously cares about the food situation.
“After I eat my pasta.”
The front door opens.
“Did you get breadsticks?” I croak.
“Still hitting the carbs?”
Fidget barks.
“Knox.” I jump up off the couch.
“Get out. What are you doing here? How do you have a key?” I rush over to him. “Give that back. Did your mom give that to you?” I grab his wrist and try to take it from him.
“My mother is right about you—you’re not wife material.” He jerks his hand away.
“Sure, and that’s why you still like jacking off to photos of me, pervert.”
Knox grabs me by the arm and throws me into the end table in the foyer.
Fidget barks, snapping at him, as I scrabble upright. Fortunately, I have experience trying to wrestle Fidget into a bath since she’s been banned from a number of groomers, and this is no different.
“I’m calling—”
“Your boyfriend?” he spits out. He’s dirty and unshaven and reeks of stale beer.
“You don’t deserve to be with him. I bet he’s as disgusted at himself as I am for fucking you.
No man wants you on his arm. It’s embarrassing that the owner of one of the greatest NHL teams in the league is parading you around—some disgusting cow. ”
The verbal blow stings.
Knox is right, isn’t he?
“You need to leave him before he dumps you. He’s going to cheat on you if he hasn’t already,” Knox says nastily.
I’m not going to cry in front of him.
Fuck him.
“I don’t”—I clench my fists—“need a man to give me purpose or meaning. And it’s not some sort of feminist awakening. This is how I live my life. This is why I don’t have the likes of you in my life.”
Fidget is next to me, growling softly.
Knox suddenly looks apprehensive.
I look down at the dog.
She has a meat mallet in her mouth.
I take it, ignoring the slobber.
“So get”—I swing the mallet at him—“out. Of. My. House!”
Knox shrieks when I lunge at him.
“You screwed over my sister, and you cheated on me! You’re a waste of space, and I hate your mom!” I scream as Fidget and I chase Knox around my house.
Fidget snaps at his heels, nipping at his calves.
“Winnie, Winnie, please!”
Fidget barks and jumps, knocking into him.
He stumbles, and Fidget sinks her teeth into his leg, and he goes down.
Hands up, he cowers on the floor as Fidget and I stand over him. “Winnie,” Knox begs, “please, you don’t understand. I’m only acting this way because I love you. You know, boys pull the pigtails of girls they like.”
“You called me a slug. You remember that? In high school. You and all your shitty little brain-dead hockey buddies—you all laughed when I went up to you in the hallway and tried to hug you,” I holler at him. “Said you were just getting your dick wet. So no, you don’t love me.”
“I was corrupted by toxic hockey culture!” he screams when I bring the mallet down, stopping just short of his nose. “Winnie, I made a mistake,” he says, gasping. “I’m sorry I stole your stuff, but I just needed to be near you. I need you. I love you.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re a goddess, a queen.” He sniffles. “My life would have been so much better with you in it. I see that now. You know about money and investing and stuff. I don’t,” he admits. “All my money is gone. Because of the gold diggers in my life, but you’re not a gold digger.”
“Stop trying to pit me against my sister,” I warn. “I know she’s not a gold digger. She didn’t get a penny out of being in a relationship with you.”
“No, no,” Knox gasps. “Not her. My mom made me give her money for her sisters and fancy vacations, and then my—”
“Mistress?” I cut in, hefting the mallet threateningly. “Don’t blame her either. You dumped her in my house, remember? I know the whole thing. I know how you treated her.”
“No, not her. There’s another—” His eyes shift nervously.
“How many women are you sleeping with?” I scream at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he whines, “because I just want to be with you.”
“Translation: You want me to financially support you while you manwhore around.”
“I’m living on credit cards,” he pleads. “I thought Brinley’s parents had money, but they are just burning up her granny’s inheritance. I’m broke. I have to rent.”
“That is not my problem.”
“But I can give you children,” he offers.
“I can go to the bar and hook up with a guy and get a child that way if I want to. Your balls are not special.”
“I’m going to come back tomorrow,” he says, slowly sitting up, “when you’re feeling better, and we can talk about it. You and I both know we belong together.”
“No, we do not.”
“Winnie—”
“You’re not staying in my city. You need to get the hell out.”
“But I work here!”
“How much credit card debt do you have?”
“Like eight hundred thousand dollars.”
“Jesus Christ.” I make a disgusted noise. “Tell your agent to move you to a different team, and I’ll help you with getting rid of that debt. It will be worth it to get you the fuck away from here.”
“You will? See, this is why I love you.” He tries to come in for a kiss.
I swat him in the chest with the meat hammer. He grunts in pain.
“Next time, this is coming down on your knee.”
“I’m texting my agent right now,” Knox promises, skittering to the door.
“See?” I dust off my hands. “I don’t need a man, Fidget. I can handle my business on my own. Definitely don’t need Fitz’s help. We’re better off without him.”
I’m trying to reset my living room when the doorbell rings.
Ugh. The sex outfit Gran bought me.
I stumble to the door. Oftentimes, the delivery driver will just dump it in the yard, then the box gets soggy and icky, and of course, it’s raining again.
I peek outside and see a shadowy figure leaving.
There’s a black van parked past the neighbor’s house.
I retie my robe around me and grab a broom to go ahead and sweep off the leaves on the porch before they get too soggy in the rain.
I’m feeling good.
This was a weird few months, but the next quarter will be better.
We’re buttoning up our finances, going to jettison Knox. Sure, I might have to deal with him a little bit, but now he knows who’s boss. I mean business. I’m not letting my ego get wrecked by some man who can’t even manage his finances when he’s making millions of dollars a year.
“And they say women are the emotional, irrational ones.” I snort as I sweep the leaves. “Where is that package? They better not have dumped it in the bushes. I swear to god.” I poke around with the broom.
I don’t register the footsteps behind me.
Suddenly, I’m falling off the low porch into the bushes.
“What the—” I can’t scream, can’t speak. There’s rope around my throat. My heartbeat thumps in my head.
The last thing I see is Fidget barking furiously from inside the house, her breath fogging up the glass.
Fuck.
Guess I didn’t have it all under control after all.