10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
When David got to the waiting room, he found Hale asleep on one of the couches and as David sat down across from the other man, the slight squeak the chair made was enough to awaken him.
“How is she?” Hale asked, blinking against the fluorescent lights as he sat up and stretched.
David gave him a quick update on Paige’s condition and this time when Hale asked about seeing her, David agreed. In silence, they took the elevator up to Paige’s floor and then walked down to her room. Dr. Wiseman was gone, leaving Paige alone and looking resigned, almost like someone who’d been told they might suffer from recurring headaches for months on end.
For a moment, David second-guessed bringing Hale up to her room and essentially springing him on her without any warning. What if she didn’t want to see him just yet?
When Paige saw Hale, however, she gave him a small smile, which was David’s cue to back out of the room and give them some privacy. Not wanting to be hanging out in the hall like a creeper, he decided to go hit the vending machines across from the elevators and get a crappy cup of coffee.
Not even five minutes later, as he was taking his first sip—and almost gagging—he was shocked to see a decidedly unhappy Hale at the elevators, pressing the call button. The doors opened almost immediately and as he stepped inside and turned around, he spotted David. Hale’s expression darkened to outright anger and as he pressed a button on the inside panel, he raised his other hand and extended his middle finger. “Do me a favor and pass this message on to your girlfriend,” he called out, holding David’s gaze until the doors closed.
Wishing for the thousandth time that this night had never happened, David dumped his coffee in the nearest garbage can and went back to Paige’s room.
“Are you okay?” he asked, taking in her state of exhaustion.
She didn’t even try and fake it; she didn’t have the energy. “No.”
“Is it your head?”
“It’s everything. This evening was supposed to be a new beginning for me, but life doesn’t always go according to plan, does it?” she murmured. “Especially not for me.”
“New beginning?”
Paige didn’t answer right away. She was thinking about the decision to meet Hale at Bender’s and how it had significantly impacted her life. If she’d agreed to meet him somewhere else, they simply would’ve eaten dinner and probably had a good time, which likely would’ve led to a second date.
And she’d still be completely ignorant of David and Ashley. And Jacob.
She really wished that was her reality, instead of the one she had, because it really sucked.
She could feel her eyes starting to sting with tears and she grabbed a few tissues from the rolling nightstand/table next to her bed. “Never mind.”
He hated seeing her like this. “Can I do anything to help?”
She sniffed and looked at him. “Yes. You can leave.”
“No,” he immediately said. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I won’t be alone for long. After talking with Dr. Burns—er, whatever his name is—I called Jules.”
It was then that David noticed a phone with a totally blinged-out silver case held loosely in her hand.
“She’s coming in the morning when I get released,” Paige continued. “She’s going to take me home and stay the weekend with me.”
Silence descended over them and while he knew he couldn’t be there to take care of her, it also bothered him that he couldn’t. It didn’t seem right to just leave her.
“Please, David. It’s so hard to look at you.”
Her plea almost robbed him of breath and he slowly nodded, giving in, because there was no other way this played out. Going to the side of her bed, he took her hand and gently squeezed. “Okay. I’ll leave.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m truly sorry, Paige,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Her deadpan response made him feel like shit. “Please let me know if I can do anything. I mean that.”
A look crossed her face, half Yeah, right and half You’re a dick, as she pulled her hand away. Then, before he could say anything, she gingerly turned on her side, giving him her back, apparently done with him.
Knowing something had just happened—but not knowing what—David left Paige’s room. He couldn’t bring himself to completely leave, though, so he sat in a chair just outside in the hall, getting as comfortable as possible in the plastic contraption, intending to stay until Jules arrived in a few hours. However, he should’ve known Jules wouldn’t wait that long to come, not after hearing her best friend was in the hospital and less than half an hour later Jules was striding toward him.
Not surprisingly, due to the early morning hour she looked a little rough, her copper-red hair in a haphazard ponytail and her make-up noticeably smudged.
When she saw David sprawled in his chair, she blinked, not trusting her vision. “David?”
He got slowly to his feet. “Hi, Jules.”
In the medium lighting of the hallway, she set down the small duffel bag she was carrying and looked him over with a rather frosty expression. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
He had been good enough friends with Jules that he’d missed her a lot after the divorce. But it was clear that she was in no way happy to see him and that hurt more than he thought it would. “I’ve been here all night, actually.”
“Why?”
“What did Paige tell you when she called?”
“That she was in the hospital with a concussion and would need a ride home. So what am I missing? I’m guessing it’s a lot.”
Her tone was deceptively soft, but David knew better than to think Jules wasn’t ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Mentally preparing himself for the unpleasant conversation they were about to have, he began filling her in. “Paige and I ran into each other at Bender’s earlier tonight—well, I guess technically it was yesterday evening—”
“Jesus Christ, no one cares,” she rudely cut him off. Then, lowering her voice a little, added, “Look, I got out of a perfectly good guy’s bed to come here and I don’t need you to go wandering off into the weeds, all right? You and Paige ran into each other at Bender’s and then what happened?”
He cleared his throat. “She saw me with Ashley and—”
“Hold up. Ashley? As in, your office assistant with the big tits and even bigger mouth? That Ashley?”
David almost took a step back at Jules’s full-throttle animosity toward Ashley; it was even more perplexing than Paige’s had been. “Yes. Do you know her?”
“I know of her. So, are you and Ashley together?”
“Yes. And Paige got upset—”
“Upset?” She gave a humorless laugh. “For fuck’s sake, David.”
They looked at one another in charged silence and then her eyes narrowed. “Please tell me you waited at least a year after the divorce to start fucking that girl.”
“Jules—”
“Oh, my God, you didn’t.”
He took a deep breath. He was really goddamn tired, but even when he was at full strength, Jules could be formidable. “Look, not that it’s any of your business, but we were friends first, all right?”
“Friends? Are you serious?”
“Yes. I don’t expect you to understand it—”
“Oh, I understand it perfectly. Don’t worry about that,” she told him snidely. “It’s you that doesn’t understand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“David, pull your head out of your ass. You had a target on your back and you didn’t even know it. Ashley had you in her crosshairs before you and Paige were even separated, so whatever ‘friendship’ you think you had with Ashley was total bullshit.”
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
Jules crossed her arms over her chest in typical battle stance and he knew he wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
“Paige and I went out for dinner one night about a month before your divorce was finalized,” she said. “We ended up in the booth next to your young assistant and a couple of her friends. Paige had told me a few things about Ashley, but this was my first real contact with her, so to speak, and it was quite enlightening. We overheard her talking about you, which wasn’t hard because she was more than half trashed on Tequila shots and loud as fuck. She talked about how thrilled she was that you were getting divorced from your ‘ugly’ wife and she didn’t know how Paige ever landed you in the first place, since you were way out of her league—”
“What?”
“That’s right. She also said that Paige must be a frigid bitch because you always looked like you ‘needed to get laid’ and as soon as the divorce was a done deal she was going to ‘get you’ and take care of that, pronto. Repeatedly. She went into excruciating detail about what she was going to do with your dick when it became hers, which couldn’t happen soon enough, because she was getting tired of waiting for it. In the meantime, though, until she could get her hands on it, she was taking the edge off with a few other dicks, because she had ‘needs’. I wanted to go and kick Ashley’s ass, but Paige begged me not to. She didn’t want Ashley to know we were there, so we sat and listened to all that shit, even though it nearly brought Paige to tears—”
“Jesus, that’s enough.” David scrubbed at his face, picturing Paige hearing all of this and being devastated by it. He hadn’t thought it possible for this night to get any worse but he’d been wrong.
“So, this ‘friendship’ you had with Ashley?” Jules asked sarcastically. “I’m guessing it started off with her being sympathetic to the divorce you were going through and understanding your ‘pain’. She wanted to be there for you and help you through it, so she started making you laugh and became the cheerful face at work that lifted your spirits when you needed it. It was all very innocent and you got used to it. Then there was some harmless flirting on her part and you got used to that, too. Pretty soon you two were texting after hours, sending funny memes to one another … whatever.” She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “This led to having a friendly drink after work once in a while, which became the occasional dinner, until one night she crossed the line, you grabbed a condom—hopefully—and the two of you fucked like bunnies.” Jules tilted her head. “Is that about right? Did I miss anything?”
David just looked at her.
“That’s what I thought. So, how long did it take before you two fucked like bunnies?”
After a slight pause, he answered, “Six months.”
Jules’s disappointed shake of her head triggered a defensive posture. “I was divorced,” he pointed out.
“Barely,” she said, only to add, “But I’m sure to Ashley that was a long time. You know, since she was having to go without your dick, and all.”
“Damn it, Jules—”
“You want to know what the worst part is?”
“Not really.”
“I told Paige you would never get involved with that girl. Those were my exact words. And I believed them. But boy, was I wrong—and I really hate being wrong.”
There was dead air between them for a long moment, then Jules squared her shoulders. “So, Paige sees you with Ashley and gets ‘upset’ and then what? How did she end up in the hospital with a concussion?”
Reluctantly, David filled her in on what had happened, starting with Paige telling Ashley to shove her ‘Hello’ up her ass, which made Jules smile. By the time he was finished, however, she was no longer smiling and looked like she wanted to introduce a sledgehammer to his face, then shove it up his ass.
“You cock-sucking wanker,” she spit out.
David’s face flushed at the insult, which had been delivered at full volume, with hospital personnel nearby. “Fuck you, Jules.”
She exhaled through her nose like a bull seconds away from charging a matador. “No, fuck you, David. You know, for someone who supposedly loved Paige so much, you were able to move on in a goddamn hurry. A three-year-old? And you named him Jacob? I literally want to crush your nuts with my bare hands. And don’t get me started on what I want to do to your cunt of a girlfriend for what she did to Paige.”
Trying like hell to control her anger, Jules glanced in at Paige still asleep in her room. “I hope to God this doesn’t set her back.”
“Set her back?”
“She’s had a really shitty past couple of years. Unlike you.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned to give him a cold, unforgiving look. “Sorry, but your opportunity to hear about all of that came and went.”
“I’m confused as shit right now. I literally don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you don’t, but that was your decision,” she said, then added, “Which makes your decision to stay with Paige all night a little surprising to me.”
His jaw tightened in anger at her blatant bitchery. Did she actually think he’d have just waved to the ambulance as it drove away with Paige? “Are you fucking kidding me, Jules?”
“Sorry.”
“You know, that wasn’t even remotely believable.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, this time sounding somewhat convincing. “But, honestly, your track record when it comes to Paige in the past several years hasn’t been very good.”
The circular conversation was killing him and he rubbed the back of his neck wearily, feeling like Napoleon right after Waterloo. She watched him, her expression leveling out and losing some of its edge.
“I appreciate that you stayed with Paige. I really do, but you don’t need to stay any longer now that I’m here. You know I’ll take care of her.” She then bent down and picked up the bag at her feet. “And you should know that if I ever see Ashley again, even if it’s in the organic produce section at Trader Joe’s, it won’t end well for her. You have my fucking word on that.”