Chapter 36
SIENNA
Zane found me in the bar room, brought me my phone, and told me it’s time. He didn’t tell me much else, except that I should call my husband and tell him I’ve been abandoned and need his help. That I need him to come get me. That I want to come home with him.
“How am I supposed to lie like that and be believable?” I asked.
And he just gave me this weird look that suggested I’ll find a way because I’m a world class liar.
I didn’t like that.
Probably because it’s actually the truth. My whole life is one giant lie after another, interspersed with a billion smaller lies. And I am a world-class liar. The only true time in my life was the love Zane and I shared when we were teenagers. And this time we have now.
I don’t want to call my husband. I don’t want to hear his voice. I don’t want to pretend I’m the woman I was when we were together.
The lost, hopeless, shell of a person.
I don’t want to ask him for anything.
“Just call him,” Zane says. “Get it over with.”
We’re in an empty room at the back of the dive bar slash diner near the clubhouse. The Flamingo Saloon. I vaguely remember it as a place Zane took me to once or twice back when we were teenagers. Now that we’re here again, I remember more and more.
We danced here. And drank too much. And made love against the back wall, the loud music making the walls vibrate as he made me his and I made him mine. I wish we were here for more of that and not what we’re actually here for.
“Can you open the window or something?” I ask, my voice all strangled and hoarse. The room we’re in is furnished with a rickety wooden table, a couple of equally rickety chairs and so many cardboard boxes they’re like a second wall in the room. A very dusty, smelly wall.
He gives me another one of those strange looks and then walks to the window and does like I asked.
Once his back is turned, I finally have the strength to unlock my phone and find my husband’s number. My hands are shaking like crazy when I press the call button.
Fresh air streams into the room and I’m beginning to think that maybe I can do this after all.
But then he turns and his bright eyes are like a couple of blue lasers cutting through me.
So I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe saying he left me here won’t be a hundred percent a lie after all.
Because his eyes are telling me he doesn’t trust me.
The line rings and rings, but I just know that my husband’s on the other end, holding his phone. Deciding whether to pick up.
“What?” he finally barks.
I hiccup in surprise. “Kurt? I made a huge mistake.”
I sound very weak, he’ll like that. The problem is, it’s not an act at all.
My husband is silent on the other end of the line. Waiting for me to go on, to humble myself as much as I can. I know how to do that.
“That guy… he just left me… in the middle of nowhere. I barely made it to LA,” I say. “I was so stupid. I never should’ve left home.”
He scoffs. “That’s because you’re a dumb bitch. He probably realized that even sooner than I did.”
The anger I feel at being called dumb and a bitch courses through me like fire. It’s been years since Kurt’s insults had that effect on me.
I glance at Zane, who’s still looking at me with a weird expression on his face. But there’s something that looks a lot like fear mixed into it now. Why? Is he afraid that what I’m saying to my husband might actually be true? This makes no sense to me.
“I’m at some dive bar, near downtown LA, I think,” I say. “It’s called the Flamingo Saloon. I have no money and no clothes. Can you come and pick me up?”
There’s just dead silence on the other end. Maybe I rushed it. Maybe I should’ve groveled more. But the anger at being called a bitch burned away most of my shakiness and I can’t call the weakness back.
“Just like that? You think I’ll come just like that?” he says. “You’re even dumber than I thought.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I say. “I’ll do whatever.”
He scoffs again.
I hold on tight to the last of my weakness. “Please, Kurt. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It will never happen again.”
“You better believe it won’t,” he says harshly. “Wait for me there.”
I breathe a loud sigh of relief that he came around so easily. Because I don’t know how much longer I could’ve continued begging him to come.
“When will you be here?” I ask, relief plain in my voice. But it’s coming from the fact that I can finally end this call. And my marriage to him.
“I’ll come when I come,” he barks. “You just sit tight.”
Then he hangs up. My hands aren’t shaking anymore as I lower the phone.
“He’s coming,” I tell Zane. “But I don’t know when.”
“Then I better leave you here now,” he says and chuckles. “For real this time.”
Even though he’s grinning, there’s an edge in his voice that I really don’t like.
“Don’t you ever do that,” I say. “I can’t imagine living another day without you.”
My words caught him off guard. I can see it plainly in the softness that washes over his eyes.
His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “I won’t ever do that again.”
He’s no longer looking at me weird. He’s looking at me with that sweet first love he used to look at me with back before everything went to hell.
“Just so we’re on the same page about that,” I say, stand up and pull his head down for a kiss.
The kind of kiss we should’ve been sharing all these years. Deep, passionate, and full of certainty that this is finally our time that no one can take from us.