CHAPTER FOUR
“What do you mean that’s your wife? I know I didn’t hear what you just said to me.”
“I’m sorry, Maude, truly I am. But you heard me right. I’m a married man.” He even showed her the ring on his finger. “It’s official.”
Maude had a fixed frown on her face. It was startling news to her. “But how could you be married when you’re dating me? When did we break up, Johnny? When was it over for us? Did I miss that major event?”
“Yes you missed it. Because it was over for us months ago. When you turned down my proposal it was over.”
“You asked me to marry you after we’d only known each other for a day. What I look like marrying a man I just met?”
“Your stupid ass would have looked like a married woman! That’s what you would not only have looked like, but that’s what you would have been.
A married lady. You told me yourself you were tired of dead-end relationships.
You told me yourself you were tired of these brothers stringing you along.
So I stepped up like the exceptional brother I am, but you turned me down cold. ”
A bitterness laced his voice. “I preferred you. Not anybody else. You. But you turned me down. That does something to a man like me.”
Maude was so outdone she didn’t know what to say. She just stared at this man she thought she knew so well, but she realized she didn’t know at all.
But he kept on talking. “But it’s no big deal to you, is it, Maude?
Because journalism is your husband. That damn newspaper that doesn’t give a damn about you is your spouse.
When you turned me down, it was over for me right then and there.
It was over. You knew it too, but you just didn’t accept it. ”
“I knew it? If you don’t get out of my face with that bull-crap. How could I know the machinations of your mind, Johnny?”
“If you paid any attention to me whatsoever, you would have known! But since you were all into your quote-unquote ‘career,’ I said bump that shit. I decided to string your ass along too.”
Then his look revealed the depths of his bitterness. “Nobody turns me down. All these women out here that want my fine chocolate ass? But yet you rejected me? You?”
Maude was distressed. “I said we need more time. I said we need to get to know each other first. How is that wrong?”
“A turn down is a turn down, I don’t care what pretty words you slap on it! A no is a no is a no. And your no was it for me. As far as I was concerned we broke up that day we met, which was the day you said no to me.”
Now Maude was pissed herself. “It would have been nice had you let me in on the break up.” Then her anger flared.
“How dare you sit up here and try to gaslight me! We slept together three nights ago, Johnny. Not three months ago. Three nights ago! But we had long since broken up, right? Are you telling me you were a married man for all these months?”
“No. Of course not. I wouldn’t do that to you. I got married the next morning in a small, private ceremony. Two days ago. And unlike you, she did it the right way. She kept herself until she got married. She was a virgin.”
That cut Maude deep. She used to believe fervently in waiting until she got married before she allowed a man to touch her too.
But too many cards were stacked against her.
She fell in love with the wrong guy when she was still in high school and was too weak to turn him down.
But he cheated on her anyway. And every man after that, even though she fell for them hard and gave them her all, because they were always all she had, cheated too.
Johnny, at ten months, was her longest relationship ever.
She thought they were headed for the altar someday.
She truly did. But according to him, that was over on day one.
“Just because she was a virgin,” Maude said, “don’t make her better than me. ”
“I agree. But she is better than you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I slept with you three nights ago as a sort of gift to myself. It was like my bachelor party without the fellars and the expense. It was my send off from bachelorhood without any fanfare. It was like my last night at the strip club, but without having to pay the stripper.”
Maude couldn’t believe his nasty-ass just said that about her. And her rage caused her to take her glass of gin and fling the contents into his face. Ice and all.
As soon as she did it, Johnny jumped up as if he was freezing as that ice-cold water hit his face like a block of ice, and then rolled down onto his expensive suit.
But Maude wasn’t done. She then took her now-empty glass and threw it at him too.
His hands knocked the glass away. But just getting wet angered him.
“This is a Versace suit, you bitch!” He yelled at her with clenched teeth, still trying not to make too big a scene because he was a business owner in town and many people that frequented that restaurant knew it.
He grabbed napkins and began wiping off his suit angrily. “I’m so glad I’m done with your trifling ass!”
Then he looked at Maude, ready to go at her even harder. But he saw the devastation on her dejected face. She wasn’t angry like him. She was sad. He had hurt her. Mightily.
And he exhaled. It was love at first sight when he first laid eyes on her ten months ago.
She was small, but shapely. She had those high-cheekbones and that structured kind of face he admired.
And her dark skin. Her beautiful skin. She was like his dream woman even though he knew he would have to spruce her up to bring her up to his standards.
But when she turned him down cold, that was the end of the dream for him.
But he wasn’t trying to hurt her. That was never his intention.
He sat back down. “Maude look. It’s not that you’re a bad person.
You aren’t bad at all. Not in your looks, and certainly not in your body.
And you’re an ethical, honest person. You’re somebody people can trust. All of that is a plus in your favor.
And I’m sure you’ll find a brother that can put up with you.
But I’m not that brother. I want a wife under subjection to me.
I don’t want a quote-unquote ‘career’ woman chasing stories for eleven years and still looking for her first big break.
I want a woman who does charity work around town.
Who attends banquets in my honor. Who makes a name for herself simply because she’s my wife.
You’re not that girl. I doubt if you ever was. ”
“And you think that boss lady with that briefcase that just stood at our booth is that girl? You think she’s going to quit her career and be under subjection to you?” Maude shook her head. “You’re delusional. You don’t even listen to yourself talk. You just talk.”
Then she looked at him as if they were on different plains. He was speaking at a general level. She needed specifics. “I have a question,” she said in a voice so calm it scared him.
“What’s your question?”
“Since you claim we broke up when I turned you down, have you always been cheating on me?”
He paused. But answered her. “After the turn down? Yes.”
Which meant every single man she’d ever been with cheated on her practically the entire relationship.
And every single time she was always clueless.
As if she was groping in the dark thinking she was reaching for Mister Right when in that darkness wasn’t even Mister Right Now.
“Why couldn’t I see it?” she asked him with such sincerity that it cut him deep.
She was looking into his eyes as if she was searching for answers she wasn’t certain he could give her.
Her face was so sincere and so troubled that it did something to Johnny.
And now this woman he thought he’d be glad to be rid of was showing that caring, compassionate, vulnerable side he once fell in love with.
And a kind of regret came over him. “Your job is your life, Maude. It was easy for you not to see anything else. And since you don’t bother to have any friends who would tell you what’s going on, or bother to look around yourself, how would you know? ”
“And you, like all those other men before you, knew I was distracted and you played on that distraction too?”
Johnny nodded. “We all played on it. We played it like a banjo, yes we did. And you know why we did it? Because we could.”
Maude’s anger flared again. Why did he have to be so nasty about it? “You are such a bastard!” she said.
But when she went there, his compassion for her flew out the window too. And all regret was gone. “Call me whatever you like,” he said as he stood up. Then he leaned over, and flashed his wedding ring at her. “But I’s married now!” Then he frowned. “And thankfully it’s not to your ass.”
There was a bitter finality in his tone as he threw those wet napkins up on the tabletop, look at her with far more hate than love in his eyes, and then he left. He didn’t look back either.
Maude just sat there. A few of the customers near her booth were glancing at her as if she was this pathetic, misbegotten woman, but she couldn’t care less what they thought of her.
Because it wasn’t that her heart was all broken up over the likes of that arrogant Johnny Parks.
She loved him, but she was still trying to get to where she could say unreservedly that she was in love with him.
Her heart wasn’t broken over him like that.
But her great hope of someday being somebody’s number one was once again completely severed.
Although many more eyes were upon her as she got up and made her way out of that restaurant, she kept her head high as if it was nothing but a thang to her.
Even when the waiter stopped her and insisted she pay the bill for those drinks, she didn’t hesitate to do that either.
It was her gas money, but she paid it. She wasn’t going to let that episode with Johnny get the best of her.
But when she got into her Camry and leaned her head back, she knew that episode with Johnny had got the best of her.
Because it represented another failed love affair for her.
Another man that she was considering as a strong possibility had long ago taken himself off the table for a reason so unfair that it staggered her still.
Although, she had to admit, of all her ex-boyfriends, Johnny’s actions took the cake.
He got married two days ago? He was dating Maude while he was engaged to another woman?
And where was this private wedding held?
Word got around in Dillon no matter how private something was.
Why did she not hear at all about the wedding? Was she that far gone?
She heard a couple female colleagues talking over the water cooler a few times last week about some man cheating on some woman and the man getting engaged, but she never dreamed they were talking about her!
But now that she looked back on it, maybe they knew far more than she gave them credit for.
Dillon was a mid-sized Georgia town a stone’s throw from the larger city of Macon, but it still had nearly fifty thousand residents.
Maybe word got around faster than she cared to acknowledge.
Maybe, like all those other times, she was the last to know.
And then her phone buzzed. She always had to check because it could be a source texting her with new information that could take her investigation to the next level.
But when she saw who that text was from, and read it, her entire demeanor changed. She was slumped down in her car, but when she saw that text she bolted upright.
Wait what?
This was no longer about her relationship. This was about her survival! She had to read that text message three different times for it to completely sink it. And for her to believe that she had read it accurately those other times.
When she realized it was what it said it was her heart began to melt. But when she started her car and sped away, knowing she had to hear news like this straight from the horse’s mouth himself, she still didn’t believe it.
A mistake. That was what it was. It had to be a gigantic, crazy mistake. Because the alternative would be the worst thing that could have ever happened to Maude, and on a day that was already shaping up to be one of the worse of her life before she got that text.
But it had to be a mistake.
Even as her gut was telling her it wasn’t.
Even as tears were already falling from her eyes as if her mind and her heart weren’t communicating anymore.
And she still refused to believe it.