Chapter 22
My feet feel like lead. Did Kara go home already? I know Danny's been home for a while, but he hasn't come upstairs. Maybe he's avoiding me, but the house is so big, even if I was upstairs, he can more than avoid me without us being on the same floor.
But my pathetic ass wants to see him. Despite how I feel, thinking of divorce and saying that's a reason to look forward to something…
at least I get something for my troubles.
Because I'm sorry, I'm not a gold digger, but I don't want to walk away from all of this torment with absolutely nothing.
He ensured that he would take care of me, and yes, physically he has been doing that, but mentally and emotionally…
that's baggage that even money can't take away, but it does help.
My foot touches the landing, and then I go down the last of the stairs and take a right, heading into the kitchen.
It's empty but spic and span. Opening the big stainless steel refrigerator, I see the pinging on it letting me know that the groceries are low, but Steve should be coming by at the end of the week anyway.
Taking out the little cutlets of chicken I see that Steve had prepared for lunches, I set it in the microwave. Then my curiosity gets the better of me because it is way too quiet. Unless Danny's in the basement.
Heading to the living room, I look around. The fireplace is going, but there's no one in here, so I head to the primary master bedroom on the first floor.
Most of the time, that's where Danny and I would sleep, that's when we were spending more time together.
But lately, we've taken the master upstairs, mostly because…
well, my art stuff is up there in the loft area, and it felt lonely sleeping in the gigantic bed downstairs.
The bathroom was way too big. Don't get me wrong, I love that walk-in closet, and it's the true room that we were intended to have as a married couple.
Sleeping in that room alone most nights just made it feel as though…
I don't know, like I wasn't married. It felt wrong sleeping in that bed without Danny.
When he would come home on the nights he would, he would come upstairs to come be with me.
Since I was alone most of the time before he would come home, he just joined me in that bed.
That's when he gave a shit and exuded some kind of effort.
Now he barely sleeps home at all. Most of his clothes are down there anyway.
So I go into the primary marriage bedroom. The fireplace is going in here as well. I start to walk through the big double doors that lead to the bathroom and almost have the ever-loving life scared out of me as I shriek and yelp upward, almost colliding straight with Daniel.
“Shit!! You scared the hell out of me,” he says, breathing hard with a slight sweat on his neck.
He's buttoning up his pants. His hair looks disheveled. Why does he look like that?
“Oh… sorry, you scared me too,” I tell him softly.
He stands there at the threshold of the double doors after zipping himself up and doing his belt. He is still out of breath.
“What—uh, what's up?” he asks, not wanting to get out of my way.
“I don't know, everything was quiet so I didn't know if you left or…” I look past him a little bit to the bathroom. I can't see what's in the walk-in closet from here, but he's acting weird.
Looking at him strangely, I raise an eyebrow. “Do you not want me to go into the bathroom?”
“I took a shit in there so… not really, no. It's kind of bad,” he says with a weird, nervous chuckle.
“Oh… kay?” I say very slowly.
My heart is beating so fast. Danny purses his lips, looks at the carpet, and looks at me. The both of us are just staring at each other.
“Did Kara go home?” I ask.
“I'm sure she's around somewhere,” he says.
“Yeah, I'll go um… I'll go look for her.” I give him a very plastered-on smile that's very hard for me to do.
Walking away slowly out of the bedroom, he follows me and then stands at the bedroom door, fixing himself.
My instincts are screaming that he wants me to get away from the bedroom.
Danny has taken shits in the bathroom before and he always used to laugh about it.
He used to get a kick out of it. That's something we used to poke fun at each other for.
Whenever I made a stink in the bathroom, he would yell out, “Ew! Disgusting, baby, come on! Mud monster!” he would call out, laughing.
I would find the softest thing I could to throw at him. Sometimes it would be my bed slippers as we laughed. “Yours literally smells like sewage, stop, oh my God, you're so embarrassing!”
“I'm not the one who shit out a graveyard! Got to open up all the windows,” he used to laugh at me saying.
If I wasn't feeling so wrecked right now, I would laugh at the memory. But the memory itself is making me feel sick. And it's not like he cares about impressing me nowadays to care enough about whether or not I smell his shit molecules.
Something is wrong.
I go around the other way and run down the basement steps really loudly before creeping back up, standing behind the basement door. Then I creep back towards the bedroom.
There's whispering.
I can't tell what it is. Danny walks around the living room, and I notice that he's looking for me. Then he whispers something.
Imagine my fucking surprise.
Kara, our so-called maid, creeps out of the bedroom.
You know when there's only space for one feeling at a time? When you're so angry you don't even have time or room to be sad?
I reveal myself from around the corner where they can't see me.
“Oh, was Kara in the room with you? Why were you hiding that?” I ask, folding my arms and looking at the both of them.
“Mrs. Akari…” she starts to say with a smile.
“Do not 'Mrs. Akari' me, bitch. Are you fucking my husband?” I ask, then I scoff. “You don't even have the decency to do it when I'm not here?”
“Of course I'm not! I would never do that to you!” she yells out, her blue eyes looking panicked, acting as if she's fucking innocent.
I want to scratch the eyelashes off her face.
“You're overreacting,” Danny cuts in, and that was the wrong fucking move.
My head turns slowly to him. “I'm overreacting?” I ask very quietly.
Danny looks at me, swallowing slightly. Maybe it's because I'm quiet and not screaming. Yeah, when I get quiet… that's when you need to be scared.
“That's not overreacting. I can show you what's overreacting, though.”
Even as I walk towards the kitchen and I head for the kitchen knives, I know damn well that I'm not supposed to be doing this. My inner good girl is screaming, “Don't do this! You're going to go to jail! Danny is rich and he has powerful friends!”
But I don't give one flying fuck.
Grabbing the kitchen knives, two big ones, one in each hand, I walk back over to the hallway. Kara apparently was trying to go towards the garage. Her eyes go absolutely wide.
Holding up the knives, I open my eyes wide. “THIS would be fucking overreacting, wouldn't it?!” I ask the both of them, staring at Danny.
I want this bitch to know that she made a motherfucking mistake coming into my motherfucking house to fuck my husband right in front of me.
“Carving your face off your fucking body and throwing it outside so that the coyotes and shit can eat it would be fucking overreacting. Wouldn't it, Danny?! That's fucking overreacting, you fucking bitch!” I scream at Kara.
I don't really intend to hurt her, but in my state of mind, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do.
“Baby, please!” Danny says, looking actually scared. But not scared of me. Scared for her.
This makes me more mad.
“I swear to God if you come fucking near me, I swear to motherfucking God if you come near me, I will fucking kill you!!!” I shriek out at him.
No tears. No remorse. No more.
“You want to ignore me? Fine! You want to go out there and fuck other women? Do you, bro! But what you're not going to do is bring your whores into my house and fuck them right under my fucking nose! Give me that much respect—”
But before I can finish, he steps up into my face.
“You want to stab me? Stab me. But don't get it twisted, this is not your fucking house!
You're going to threaten me in my house?
I pay the bills. I paid for your life. I paid for Kara to be here to make life easier on you, and you're going to threaten her?
You know how many times I've had to endure you embarrassing me?! If you really want to do this, we can do this, Melody,” he threatens as he glares at me, not even scared that I'm holding the knives up to his belly.
Tears saturate my eyes. “You better fucking step back.”
“Oh, I wish you would do something to me.
I don't think you understand who the fuck you're dealing with.
You don't know how easy it is to make you fucking disappear.
You really want to try me? I can deal with your tantrums, but then you threaten me…
you made a big fucking mistake. I don't know what's going on, or where the fuck you dropped your mind on the way here… but I suggest you go back and pick it the fuck up and find it,” he growls, not flinching, calling my bluff.
Because he knows I'm not going to actually kill him. I'm not that unhinged.
I'm embarrassed. Kara is standing there staring at me, tears in her own eyes. It's not her fault. I mean, it is. But the person I should be mad at is Danny.
“I want you out of my house,” I tell her.
“No. She stays,” Daniel states.
“With all due respect, Mr. Akari, I'd like to leave,” Kara says, her voice shaking.
“Fine. I'll drop you home—”
“No, I… I'd like to… I'd like Mr. Rafi to take me, if that's okay,” the bitch says, trembling.
Danny continues facing off with me.
He gets his phone.
Making the quick call, he tells Rafi that he needs a ride for the maid. Never taking his eyes off me, he slowly pockets his phone.
Looking back over to Kara, he turns his back to me purposefully, knowing that I'm not going to stab him in it, but the thought does cross my mind.
“Are you okay?” he asks gently.
My whole body is shivering with absolute rage. What did he mean he could make me disappear? What the fuck does that mean?
“Yes, I… am okay. I'd like to leave, though. I think it's best if… I work elsewhere,” she trembles.
There's some relief in that statement. I need to use the bathroom. I want to throw up and purge everything from my body. It's the most awful feeling; feeling so stressed and nervous that you want to shit, piss, and vomit all at the same time.
It's hard to understand exactly the layout of events that happens after that, because my mind retreats for safety into the depths of my broken soul.
It feels like my worst nightmare has come to fruition, like this is just one of the many musings of my imagination of hypotheticals that could go wrong.
Turning from them as Danny walks Cara to the front door, I head towards our primary master, but before going in there, I pivot my body to the right to go into the bathroom.
My body is wracking with sobs as I sit down on the closed toilet seat. The white wallpaper is littered with the shadowy black vines with open, blooming sketched flowers all over, making me feel as though I'm being choked by them. It mirrors exactly how I feel inside.
My husband threatened me.
I understand I threatened him first. But there's a difference between threatening to hit or cut someone and straight-up saying that you could make them disappear.
Disappear.
Who is this man?
Now that I've provoked him, what am I going to do? Is there no love left for me whatsoever that he could hurt me like this? Where did this even come from?
I thought we were in a good place not that long ago.
Just last month he took me to the planetarium two days after Valentine's Day.
He showed care for me, and then Friday before last, before we were interrupted, it looked as though, even though he was drunk, he wanted to connect with me right there in the gala.
He could have run off to be with any other woman in private, but he found me in his drunken state so he could tell me how beautiful I was and how hard it was to control himself.
Or at least that's what I thought he was saying.
With all my insecurities I was dealing with that night, that assuaged them, only for my emotional stability to be knocked right off its perch by the very obvious implication from somebody else having noticed that my husband probably has proclivities for cheating.
My heart is trying to tell me, through his desperate need to not want to suffer more than it already has, that maybe he just kissed a few women when he was drunk, and it didn't go further than that.
If I'm to ignore Daniel paying online women to entertain him, if I'm to ignore that he potentially has his tongue down another woman's throat and she has hers down his…
possibly more women than one… possibly even Violet…
then it would be understandable. Then I could make myself believe that it's okay, so long as he hasn't had sex with them.
The last time I went to get checked up, which was recently, I was clean. So if he is doing anything, at the very least he's being careful, probably more out of love for himself than me.
The bathroom feels cold. When I finally rise after my leg cramps up, I relieve myself in the toilet, then wash my hands, my forearms, my face, my neck.
The cold water snaps me out of my malaise and I just…
stare at my own face in the large, round mirror.
Every ounce of joy that I had left up in reserve evacuates from my dejected exhale.
Because now, for me, there's no hope. And the only thing I have to look forward to is another five or so years so I can be free of this man and walk away with at least something for my trouble.
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