Chapter 21
Slim
Using the ungodly volume of the stereo playing “Ace of Spades” as a guide, I find Rebel sitting cross-legged on the couch downstairs, applying her makeup. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and nothing else.
Normally, I’d be hypnotized by the steady, skilled strokes of the brush and how it transforms all of her features to somehow become more, but my eyeballs are pulsing painfully, and my mouth tastes like pickled vomit.
I’m hungover and irritable as fuck.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve been irritable ever since reading those damn emails. I’ve been having a hard time letting go of the burning anger I’ve been carrying around these past few weeks after seeing Marissa's side of our arguments.
It was jarring to get such an unfiltered window into her inner world. Who was the woman writing those? Smart and funny, and yet so soft and vulnerable. Why had she never talked to me like that?
I must have reread them a hundred times before forcing myself to log out of her account for my own sanity.
I grab a few of the takeout containers from last night off the coffee table and use my foot to shove them into the already overflowing trash can with more force than necessary.
“What’s crawled up your ass this morning?” My wife asks me as she turns her face left and right to examine the symmetry of her eyeliner in the little handheld mirror.
Her eyes are striking. The light from the window has caused her pupils to constrict, and the blue has taken over almost completely.
She could have been the queen of a drug empire, but instead, she chose to be here, with me. I take a deep, satisfied breath.
“How the fuck are you not hungover?” I clearly remember her knocking back as many drinks as Prez and I last night.
She winks at herself in the mirror. “I have a higher tolerance. Catch up, will ya?”
I stretch and rub my stomach absentmindedly. I have slowed down with the drinking in the last few years, that’s true.
“Did you have any breakfast?”
“Not yet, I’m still drinking my coffee,” she says as she points to the pile of her makeup on the couch cushion, where I detect a precariously positioned mug.
“Any left for me?”
“Nope. I made instant. Didn’t feel like brewing the whole thing.”
“You never do,” I mutter to myself as I walk to the kitchen to make coffee and figure out breakfast.
There’s seven cans of beer, an expired carton of milk, and a bag of slimy salad mix in the fridge, along with a jar of mayo and some sort of jam.
I remember Marissa’s message about what foods to buy for DJ, and I press my eyes with my thumb and index finger, hoping to stop the headache at least for a moment.
“I’m heading to the store,” I tell Rebel as I pick up a shirt from the armchair and sniff it.
Good enough.
She is returning the mug to its insane place. “What for?”
“There’s nothing to eat in this house, and DJ’s coming tomorrow.”
“We can always order in,” she says before rubbing her lips together to distribute the lipstick evenly.
“Marissa said he couldn't have salt yet; she sent me a list of what he likes to eat.”
Rebel looks away. As soon as she’s pregnant again, she’ll feel better about being around him. The thought of putting a baby inside her gives me a chubby.
“Can you get me some candy bars and chocolate, please?” My wife bats her eyes at me sweetly, and the chubby turns into a full hard-on.
I grab it and step closer to her.
“I have a candy bar for you right here,” I mutter, and I swear, she licks her lips in anticipation.
She enthusiastically sucks my dick until my headache is a distant memory, and then I get on my knees between her legs, lift her shirt, and fuck her nice and slow until I empty my balls inside her hot pussy.
Rebel sighs happily, keeping her arms around my neck as I soften inside her. She never rushes to clean up immediately after. That’s one of the things I love about her; she knows how to enjoy sex.
“We spilled my coffee,” she pouts.
“Shit.” I quickly take off my shirt and press it against the dark stain on our new couch.
“It was worth it, though,” my wife laughs as she stretches like a cat.
I shake my head, laughing as well.
It was worth it. It was all worth it.
*
As I browse the supermarket for what feels like two hours, I realize I don’t like this new Marissa at all.
She’s belligerent, confrontational, and frankly, annoying. The email she sent me was nothing like the long, tender ones she’s sent her bald buddy.
DJ eats three meals of solid food now and drinks 8oz of formula at bedtime. He drinks water throughout the day, I offer every hour or so.
For breakfast, we usually have pancakes or muffins, no sugar in either. I use banana or apple puree as a sweetener. And some fruit; he loves berries and bananas. Avocados as well. You can put a little bit of peanut butter on the pancakes; he likes that. I attached the recipes I use.
For lunch, he eats some small pasta with homemade tomato sauce or a soup.
For dinner, I steam some veggies and serve with rice/mashed potatoes and, say, chicken meatballs or some white fish, but if you’re unable to cook for some reason, get some GLASS jars of pureed baby food. ORGANIC!!!
For snacks, he eats fruit or baby pouches, fruit AND veggies. I usually buy the green ones with the bear on the packaging.
Never leave him unattended while he eats!!!
I’ll send you another email this evening with an outline of his usual daily routine and the times he usually eats and sleeps.
I decide to call my mom to vent.
“Hey, Mom,” I say when she picks up.
“Hello, Dylan,” she responds, a bit unenthusiastically for my taste.
She’s been kind of weird lately. She probably misses Junior.
“I’m at the store, getting some stuff for DJ. He’s coming to stay with me this weekend, and I was gonna bring him by on Sunday.”
“I know, Marissa told me.”
“What the hell is she talking to you for?” I ask.
My face is itchy.
“If you must know, I call her whenever I want to know how my grandbaby is doing. Is that a problem for you?” She asks sternly, and I feel like an ass.
I should probably call her more often and be the one to update her on DJ.
“Fine, okay. I… Marissa’s been getting on my nerves lately, especially about this visit. It’s like she doesn’t want me to have him,” I say, needing my mom to be on my side.
“That doesn’t sound like Marissa,” Mom says carefully.
“Oh, you don’t know what she’s been like since the breakup. She started throwing things she’d done during our relationship in my face, and I told her, Did I ever ask you to cook for me or act like a maid? Fuck, no!”
I know how it sounds, but I plow on, because if I don’t, I might remember the other things Marissa threw in my face that day, and the shame I’ve been successfully repressing would return.
“What the fuck are you getting the court involved for? Are you trying to say I don’t take care of my kid?”
I can’t believe she’s gonna file for child support. I feel like someone’s choking me. Marissa, on the other hand, looks eerily calm. She’s sitting on the couch as I pace the room, and her hands are neatly folded in her lap.
“I’ve burned through my savings now that I’m out of work. And due to the kidnapping and everything that happened, I had to stop breastfeeding, so there’s the added expense of formula. The 150 dollars you gave me a month ago isn’t enough to help with all that.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I snap. “I’ve always told you, anything Junior needs, you tell me!”
It is then that I see something inside her snap as well.
“I’d be calling you every hour of the day!
Don’t you understand how much a child costs?
Who do you think has been buying his diapers and clothes and paying for his daycare since the day he was born?
You bought him a crib, a stroller, and a car seat, and gave me a few hundred dollars here and there.
Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know that wasn’t enough! ”
“You wouldn’t have had to pay for daycare if you weren’t leaving him there to go to work,” I say, desperate to give back some of the debilitating shame she just handed to me, and it works.
Marissa looks like I stabbed her. I want to take it back. I really do.
“Get out. Get out!” She shouts through the tears, and I tell myself that she wouldn’t be crying if what I said wasn’t true. Right?!
But it doesn’t make me feel any better.
Later that day, when I return to the clubhouse, Rebel is sitting on one of the armchairs in the corner, with Prez and Angie cuddled up on the couch next to her.
I give her a brief kiss and motion for her to get up and sit on my lap.
“How did it go?” She asks quietly, aware that there’s always some fight or other waiting at the house for me whenever I go to see my son.
“Bitch is filing for child support,” I say, relishing the taste of the righteous anger that cuts through the shame.
“What the fuck?” Prez growls. “That ain’t right. Is she going for full custody, too?”
“I have no idea, man, I got out of there when she told me, otherwise who knows what might have happened,” I say as I shake my head. “She’s already taking my son to Phoenix, and now this. All because I didn’t want her anymore.”
Rebel nuzzles into my neck, and I feel so much better.
“At least she’s finally moving out of the house,” Angie remarks, and it rubs me the wrong way. Me and her, we aren’t close like that. “What a joke, filing for custody after freeloading this whole time.”
“You could probably get full custody,” Prez says. “You have more money, and you’re a two-parent household and all that, now that you and Bell are married.”
I sit up, and the motion makes Rebel stiffen in my arms. “I haven’t even thought of that. Fuck yes!”
“I don’t know about that,” Angie chimes in. “The courts always favour the biological mother. That’s what that lawyer told me when I went to inquire about us taking Molly, do you remember?”
Prez nods, “I do. Damn it. Maybe things have changed; you should look into it.”