Chapter 2
ANNALISE
I can still feel the extinguisher foam on my fingers the next morning despite how many times I scrubbed my hands. My sister is practically burning the carpet with her frantic pacing, rage lighting her usual soft eyes. They’re a bright blue, so unlike my brown.
She apologizes for what feels like the millionth time, and I tell her to cut it out for the millionth and one.
When I showed up at her rental house last night after nearly tossing my ring into the marina and sobbing in my car for an hour, she took me in without a word needing to have been spoken between us.
One look at me and she knew. The apologies came once I told her what happened.
Every gut-wrenching detail of it. It took everything in me to convince her to hold off until today to enact our revenge.
We took one step into the condo Stewart and I share— shared , I guess—before she was stalking off to the bedroom to find my luggage. An hour later, all of my clothes and important belongings are tucked away, ready for a new home. I wish I felt the same.
There’s nothing about this condo that expresses who I am, yet it was home. The place I thought I would be coming back to after my wedding. Where we would start our newlywed life together and create a lifetime more memories. Good ones and bad ones, but not like this.
“I should have checked my phone sooner,” she huffs, eyeing the suit jacket on Stewart’s side of the closet. My half is empty. Absolutely empty amongst the expensive suit jackets and golf shirts.
“Knock it off, Braxton. I would much rather you have been taking care of my sick nephew than dealing with my problems,” I chastise her. “Not to mention you were out all day with your in-laws.”
She curls her fingers into fists. “Either way, I want to string that guy up a flagpole by his tiny balls!”
Her husband, Maddox, winces from where he watches us from his position in the doorway. Sympathy is heavy in his stance, and I continue to ignore it. Sure, my heart might ache like a mofo right now, but this is not the end of my world. Stewart doesn’t deserve to have that power over me.
Maybe if I repeat that over and over and over again, it might help take the pain away as well as the bottle of wine did last night.
“Oh, don’t give us that look, Anna. You’ve never turned down the idea of dishing out a healthy dose of revenge.” Braxton tightens her stare on me. “There are ideas in that beautiful head of yours, I know it.”
“Of course there are. I’m just trying to work out what I want to start with.”
Maddox winces. “That’s never a good sign.”
“You know what else wasn’t a good sign?” I pause, waiting for them to guess the answer to my rhetorical question.
Anger flushes my cheeks. “That he refused to let me snoop on his phone! Work, work, work, he always said, but I should have known better! Nobody needs to take their phone to the shower in case of a work call! God, I’m naive.
A naive idiot who sat back in la-la land while their fiancé was hooking up with a gorgeous woman who was not me,” I rant, a sharp sting attacking the back of my eyes.
Braxton stomps toward me before dropping to a squat, hands on my knees.
I hate the way tears drip down my cheeks.
Hate that my wounds are still so fresh, my sense of self-worth cracking further and deeper with each reminder of them.
Being in this bedroom, a place that was once a happy, safe space . . .
I want to shatter the walls and ruin everything he’s ever loved. But more than that, I want to curl up on the bed, breathe in his cologne, and cry for the foreseeable future. Three years of my life I’ve spent with Stewart. I’ll never get that time back.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask her, my voice little more than a whimper.
“I think you need to get all your shit out of here and then start embracing the rage prowling beneath your skin. Once you’ve let it have its moment, you work on healing yourself.
You repair the damage he caused while moving on with your life.
You’re too strong to allow this man to stop you from accomplishing everything you’ve ever wanted in life. He was never worthy of you.”
Thick black curls fall into my sister’s eyes, and I fight back a weak smile when she lifts a hand to flick them away.
I used to always want hair like hers, and she wanted hair like mine.
We used to waste our shooting star wishes on somehow swapping styles when we were younger.
My sister is my best friend. Nobody has ever been able to compete with her, even when we used to spend too many days picking on one another growing up.
“If he was never worthy of me, then why did you approve of him?” I ask her.
“I never did,” Maddox puts in. The cheeky grin he gives us has my sister flipping him off.
“You’re a no-good suck-up, Maddox. Go do something useful and keep watch for Ewie Stewie.”
I shake my head, the small flicker of humour that had sparked inside of me quickly snuffed out. “He won’t be home for a few hours.”
He came home last night begging and pleading for me to speak to him.
To just listen to what I have to say , he said.
But after ten minutes of me screaming at him to go loud enough to wake the neighbours, he took off with his tail between his legs and a promise to try and speak with me again after work today. Once I’ve calmed down enough to listen.
“You know what, Anna? Get up,” Braxton orders with a slap to both my knees. After rising to her feet, she goes right back to the closet, beginning to yank hangers off the rod. “Get up and wipe your tears. I’m not allowing you to wallow. Not when you’re still so angry. Rightfully so .”
“What do you want me to do? Throw a tantrum?”
Maddox lingers still, watching his wife toss hangers of expensive clothes on the bed behind me. “Are you sure I have to watch the door? I think it’s about to become incredibly entertaining to watch.”
“The last thing we need is that piece of shit interrupting us. Can you please watch the door? If he shows up, you have full permission to get him out by any means necessary.”
Like magic, Maddox darts out of the room.
Braxton looks at me again before dragging her eyes to the pile of clothes.
I swallow the lump in my throat—from emotion or the aftermath of my tears, I don’t know—and focus on the navy blue button-up on the top of the mountain of clothes.
I don’t think he’s ever worn that shirt, but I remember gifting it to him last year for his birthday.
Another pang in my chest, this one threatening to steal my breath.
Braxton doesn’t wait for me to speak before she’s storming out of the room.
I don’t have it in me to follow her. Tentatively, I pinch the bottom button on that blue shirt and exhale.
The longer I hold the smooth, cold button, the tighter my grip becomes.
When I finally tear it from the string attaching it to the shirt, I feel a rush of relief.
Some of the pressure in my chest releases.
When the second button tears free, another tiny bit of relief has me moving button by button until none remain.
“Catch,” Braxton says.
I barely manage to catch the bottle of ketchup in my hands before she’s throwing one full of mayo. Then mustard and barbeque sauce. She doesn’t dare throw the heavy jug of bleach that’s swinging in her left hand, though.
“What’s that for?”
“What? This?” She swings the bottle slowly.
“I don’t know about that look in your eyes . . .”
Maddox shouts from the living room, “She’s vicious! Make sure all of your things are tucked away, Anna!”
“Don’t listen to him. He’s just jealous he isn’t about to take part in this destruction. Take the jug,” Braxton orders, extending the bleach to me.
My fingers itch with the urge to take it, and I no longer have it in me to resist the rage warming my blood. “Fine.”
The sudden weight of it threatens to tip me off balance as I loop my fingers through the handle. I steel my spine and take the cap off. The smell is immediate, and I scrunch my nose before turning to the bed.
“Let it out. He deserves to feel your wrath,” Braxton coos.
“My wrath?” I want to laugh, but it dies in my throat.
“That’s right. The wrath of a scorned lover. A bad bitch’s revenge.”
I’ve never considered myself a bad bitch, but maybe that’s part of my problem. This is my initiation, it would seem, and I refuse to not make the club.
With one swing of my arm, the clear liquid is splashing over the bed and settling over the pile of expensive clothes. The scent of it fills the room, burning my nose, but I don’t stop dumping it. Not until only a few drops linger, splattering onto the ruined dress shirt, and then . . . nothing.
Dropping the bottle onto the ground, I prowl to the ensuite bathroom and dig through the cabinet beneath the sink until I find the small bottle of blue toilet bowl cleaner.
Unscrewing the top, I step in front of the closet and squirt the thick substance over the clothes still hanging on the rod.
Suit jackets, folded pants, a long wool coat that he claimed was too luxurious for the streets of Vancouver.
When that’s empty too, I move on to the dresser drawers.
One after the other, I alternate between the condiments Braxton brought from the fridge, soaking the clothes with ketchup, mayonnaise, and vinegar.
The stench is almost stomach churning, but I can’t stop.
Tears burn my eyes, pain heavy in my chest. A pain that only dulls when I’m destroying an item that I know means something to him.
It’s evil beyond belief, but I don’t allow myself to focus on that guilt too much.
The moment Braxton silently hands me a bag of flour, I’m spinning to deposit it on the bed.
Clouds of white fill the air as I hit the clothes.
Over and over, my palms make contact, the slick of bleach mixing with powder beneath them, sticking to my fingers.
A cry climbs my throat and pierces the silence before I use all of my strength to shove the clothes off the bed.
They fly across the room and land on the floor with a wet plop.
My hands are shaking. I wipe them on my thighs and then realize I’ve smeared the white goop all over them.
Tears burn my cheeks. They don’t stop coming, regardless of how furiously I blink.
My breaths are shallow and tight. Each one is more painful than the last. My sticky fingers curl into the chest of my shirt, tugging and tugging.
Arms wrap around me, and I bury my face in my sister’s shoulder. Her hold is warm and familiar and comforting, but the sobs don’t stop. Only once I’ve cried so long my throat is raw and my eyes are so swollen that they’re hard to keep open do I peel myself away and wipe at my face.
Maddox lingers in the bedroom now, a pained expression on his face. I focus on my sister and the shine in her blue eyes. Her smile is as wobbly as mine.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Don’t apologize. You needed that,” she replies. Her hands cup my shoulders and then squeeze. “Ready to go?”
I take in the room and swallow my gasp. It’s a disaster. One I’m almost a little proud of. He’s going to lose his mind when he sees what I’ve done, but isn’t that karma? At least now he has an idea of the destruction in my chest.
There’s no future for us anymore. If he ever wanted one with me in the first place, the events of the past twenty-four hours would have been nothing but a nightmare. This isn’t my home. It never was.
I stare at the ring on my finger and fight another wave of tears, these ones angry and bitter. The thin silver band slips off easily.
When I toss it on the bed, it hits the dirty comforter with a thump so loud it echoes in my mind long after we wheel my luggage out of the condo and I shut the door for the final time.