12. Jenna
JENNA
H e’s wrong. McCarthy is wrong.
Nathan loves me.
He comes to pick up Truman to take him on a nice long walk in the afternoons and has been for the last few months because he said he saw I was stressed out with work.
I should trust Nathan.
I shouldn’t listen to McCarthy. He’s evil. Nathan is good.
So why am I sitting on the early bus, heading out to our townhome?
Don’t you mean Nathan’s townhome? my mind, which has, for some reason, adopted McCarthy’s voice, hisses. Nathan bought it and didn’t put you on the deed, even though you pay half the mortgage. It’s not your house.
He’s not cheating on me. He says I’ll be on the deed when we’re officially married. We both understand that he’s trying to protect himself, and I’m okay with that because I love him.
Everything seems normal when I stand at the bus stop across from the postage-stamp yard filled with flowers I transplanted from my mom’s garden.
I silently let myself in.
Truman looks up from where he’s chewing on a toy… Is that a new squeaky? I don’t recognize it. I shush him before he can bark.
Like I’m in a dream or a waking nightmare, I set my bags down on the couch.
“See? McCarthy is wrong.”
Except… there’s a woman’s scarf I don’t recognize on the back of the armchair.
Except those definitely aren’t my heels on the stairs.
Except when I creep as silently as I can along the carpeted hallway, the telltale wet slapping noises make it obvious that Nathan’s not alone in our bedroom.
The hand I clap over my mouth catches the tears that fall when I gaze, stunned, through the crack in the door to see Nathan, balls deep in a perky-breasted brunette that I recognize from his company Christmas party.
“ This isn’t happening. ”
McCarthy must have drugged me, or maybe this is just another one of his tricks.
Could he have hired actors who look like Nathan and his homewrecking coworker? Isn’t that something a billionaire with a grudge could do?
“ This isn’t real. ”
I meant to only think it, but I must have said it out loud because Nathan’s head rises up .
His moist, half-hard cock flops around comically as he jumps off the brunette, who seems miffed that I dare show up here at this hour in my own freaking home.
I’m not quiet as I sprint down the hallway down the stairs.
“Jenna!” Nathan’s running after me. “Jenna, stop!”
He grabs my wrists, forcing me away from my pile of bags, which hold the papers outlining the ten-step plan that McCarthy turned into a flaming dumpster fire, just like my engagement.
“Let go of me! How dare you? You’re cheating on me?” I slap at him, and he grabs me roughly.
“It’s not what it looks like, Jelly Bean.”
“What, did you two lose a bunch of money for your company and now you’re making an amateur sex tape so that you can pay it back and you don’t get fired?”
He shoves me back so hard I almost trip over the ottoman. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you always so weird and unpleasant?”
“You are fucking your coworker. In our bed.”
“In my bed,” he corrects meanly.
Told you, McCarthy’s voice whispers in my head.
I resist the urge to slap the side of my head to make the voice go away, to make them all go away.
“Now, look, I didn’t want you to find out like this, but we’re going to make some changes around here, Jelly Bean. If you want to stay here, then you need to accept that Johanna is pregnant and—”
“ She’s having your baby? ”
“We’re turning the guest room into the nursery. I’m going to marry her, obviously, but you can still live here. You can be the nanny. ”
I’m stunned. He has to be joking, right?
“I’ll still take care of you like that .” He wraps his arms around me, presses his still-damp cock against my leg. I feel it through my tights—warm and damp like a freshly dead hamster.
“I don’t really want to fuck a big, gross pregnant woman anyway.” He kisses me then, forces his tongue into my mouth so I taste her.
I’m gonna puke.
The room is spinning.
I’m numb except for the hot roiling nausea.
I hate him. I hate her. I hate this. I hate the dissolution of the dream.
Most of all, I hate that McCarthy is right.
“You seem strangely calm about this,” Hannah says.
“I'm really trying to take the scenic route to ‘freaking out,’ but it's still definitely the destination.” I guzzle wine. “Thankfully, you’re in town; I have no one to talk to about this. My life is a disaster. It’s in free fall. How did this happen?”
My phone rings. It’s been doing that among Nathan, Andreas, and now my mom.
Mom: Answer your phone! I read your tea leaves. I have exciting news!
Mom: You’re pregnant!
“Oh my god.” Hannah inhales her wine when she looks over my shoulder to read Mom’s text message. “You’re pregnant with Nathan’s— ”
“No, God, no. We haven’t had sex in…” Five months and eleven days. “A while,” I say hastily because it’s pathetic, right? That I was pining for Nathan while he was off getting his needs met elsewhere?
“Your mom seems pretty sure…”
I delete her messages right as more pour in.
Nathan: Don’t be like this, Jenna.
Nathan: I told you I still want to take care of you.
Nathan: I still love you. I know you. You’re misinterpreting what I said. You don’t know the whole story.
I’m spiraling now.
“Maybe I was too hasty. Am I really ready to throw away the last three years? Maybe there is a reasonable explanation. I was a bad fiancée. I neglected poor Nathan. He had to look elsewhere to get his needs met.”
Beside me, Hannah is screaming silently into her seafood linguini.
“He always said I was working too much. This is all my fault.”
Hannah grabs my phone before I can text Nathan a long-winded, drunken apology.
“Nathan saying he wants to keep fucking you while his affair partner grows their unborn child isn’t love…”
“He says he still wants to take care of me,” I argue. “I know I sound crazy, but maybe I’m not ready to declare this relationship a failure.”
My friend knocks back the rest of her wine then turns to me.
“Look. I’m just going to say it, and I’m not trying to be offensive or anything, but…
you have daddy issues. And yes, we all have shit we’re dealing with, but when the ghosts of the men who harmed you in your childhood start popping up in your present to drain your bank account and your self-respect, maybe it’s time to call the Ghostbusters and plasma their behinds. ”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with my dad running off or all my mother’s flaky-to-creepy boyfriends. This is a rough patch, is all. Nathan and I will get through it.” I sound delusional. “Because that’s what being in a relationship is.”
Hannah looks at me, hand over her mouth, for a long moment. “Fine. I’ll be here waiting with cheesecake and a fire extinguisher when this inevitably blows up.”
I cringe when my phone goes off.
Granny Mavis: Can you make me a cast of his dick?
Granny Mavis: That hot hunk of raw meat you brought earlier, in case you’re confused.
Granny Mavis: Not Nathan.
“Why doesn’t anyone like Nathan?” I wail, fumbling for a Kleenex. “We were doomed from the start.”
“Um… your friends and family not being supportive of you is not the problem here.” Hannah is blunt and drunk. “You have terrible taste in men.”
I scarf down some pepperoni pizza, trying to fill the hole inside of me.
Hannah softens. “My roommate and her boyfriend aren’t fighting right now, so you can sleep on the couch for a couple weeks at least.”
“No, I’ll stay with Nathan.”
“Girl… ”
I wipe at my eyes with a pepperoni-grease-covered napkin.
“Respect yourself. Dump him, and take McCarthy and his brother as fiancés number four and five.”
“What? No.”
Hannah waggles her eyebrows.
“I’m going to hell.” I groan. “I cannot believe I said that to him.” I empty the bottle of wine into my cup. “You read too much fan fiction. McCarthy is never happening. I’ll get back together with Nathan first.”
“You were writing fan fiction in between writing your thesis!” Hannah shouts. “And that Harry Potter slash fic epic was way better than your thesis. I will die believing that. And more people read it than your thesis.”
My phone goes off again. If I had any disposable income, I’d throw it at the wall.
“Oooh! Speak of the handsome devil!” Hannah squeals. “It’s your sexy client.”
I snatch the phone.
McCarthy: I’m right, aren’t I?
I delete the message.
McCarthy: Just admit it.
Delete, delete, delete.
McCarthy: I know you’re deleting these.
“Booty call!” Hannah crows. “This is a sign! ”
“As if. McCarthy was all over my mom.”
“Or was your mom all over him?”
“It’s not fair for her to be that good-looking at her age,” I complain.
“To be fair, your mom wouldn’t have put up with this for so long.”
“Correction. They wouldn’t have put up with her.
In the amount of time I had three boyfriends, she’s had over twenty.
My mom dates for vibes. I date to find the man I want to enter into a lifelong partnership with and raise happy, emotionally intelligent children with. Joke’s on me.” I laugh desperately.
“Is she finally seeing the light?” Hannah raises her arms to the ceiling.
I look longingly at the door, hoping Nathan will come in with an apology, cupcakes, and flowers and tell me he made a mistake, that Johanna is gone and he wants to elope with me.
My phone beeps again with incoming messages.
“Aaaaand that didn’t take long at all.”
Nathan: Don’t ghost me.
Nathan: You better make sure you pay your half of the mortgage. You can’t just flake out because your feelings are hurt. We have a deal.
Nathan: I expect a little more gratitude for everything I’ve done for you.
Nathan: You have no right to treat me this way .
Hannah grabs me.
“You can’t seriously be about to pay Nathan sixteen hundred dollars after he cheated on you.”
“Of course not.” Eyes blurry, I read and reread his text messages. That bastard. He really doesn’t care about me. He was just using me this whole time.
“Who could have ever predicted?” Hannah says into her wineglass.
“I’ve already invested too much in this relationship for someone who doesn’t even respect me.
” I sniffle. “I’ve been helping him pay his mortgage since he bought the house.
I bought the living room furniture. I helped review his reports and create the graphics for his presentation so he got that promotion at work.
I did his laundry and cleaned the bathroom.
I did it because I thought he loved me and valued me. I thought we were a team.”
I hoist my slice of pizza. “No more! I am in my self-esteem era! Part of that town house is mine.”