Page 3 of What Happened Last Night

“And half Santos,” my abuela put in.

“That means you can do anything. You’re strong enough and smart enough to do this,” my mom said.

I felt myself nodding in agreement. Of course I could do this. All cops have that one case that haunts them, and they still get the job done. Maybe it’s just that I had finally become one of them.

My mom gave my hand a last squeeze and then sat back in her chair and looked at me, her eyes narrowed. “Now, when are you going to find a nice girl and settle down, Jamie? I want grandkids while I’m still young enough to enjoy them,” she said.

I felt my cheeks turning hot as I blushed with embarrassment. I shook my head firmly. “We are not having this conversation,” I said. I stood up and grinned at the kids. “Lucy, Mason, want to go play in the back garden with me?”

“Yay,” they chorused, jumping up from the table and running for the door.

“Sorry, Mom. Favorite uncle duty calls.” I grinned, hurrying away, leaving my mom grinning and shaking her head behind me.

“Don’t think this means we’re never going to talk about this,” she shouted after me.

I pretended I couldn’t hear her as I ran after Lucy and Mason and back into the warmth of the outdoors.

Chapter Two

Carlotta

Iturned my back on William for a moment, going to the liquor cabinet. I needed a drink badly, but it wasn’t just that. I needed a moment to think, a moment where I didn’t have to look at William’s face and see the betrayal there.

I poured out a large measure of scotch and started to put the lid back on the bottle, but then I thought better of it and added another large slug of scotch to the glass. I replaced the lid and moved to the window for a moment, nursing my glass.

I looked out over the Hollywood Hills, and for a moment, I felt lost looking at the familiar scenery. I asked myself, not for the first time, how I’d ended up here. How I ended up married to a man who cared only for himself. I mean, sure, he claimed to love me, but his actions told a very different story. How could it be possible that he loved me when he was constantly cheating on me with dolly bird interns? Airheaded little sluts who thought they could get ahead by sleeping with their boss. Gold digging little whores who slept with my husband to get the gifts he no doubt lavished on them.

William’s cheating on me was nothing new. The first affair happened after he redesigned the docks. Or at least the first affair that I found out about happened after he redesigned the docks. I believed it was the first one, though, because subtlety was never William’s strong suit, and I couldn’t imagine a world where he managed to keep something like that under wraps from me.

The docks project was a big one, even for him, an accomplished architect. The buildings he designed were breathtaking. They were striking, functional, and all sharp angles, almost brutal to look at. But they were soulless, like him. He asked me to breathe life into them, and I painted a mural that ended up getting more attention than the buildings themselves. I'd thought we were a team, that my success was his success, but he didn’t see it that way. He saw it as an insult to his work, and his ego couldn’t take the hit. Instead of questioning why the mural was the life and soul of the design, or even taking the credit for choosing to add it, he decided that somehow, I had intentionally upstaged him and that I was to blame for his not getting the recognition he deserved.

I suppose it made sense, in a way. By blaming me, he didn’t have to question his abilities, his designs. He could continue to think he was perfect and never made a single mistake and that I was some sort of weight around his neck, pulling him down, holding him back. Yes, it was much easier for him to assume I had sabotaged him than for him to try to see the truth of the situation.

I found out a week or so later that he was sleeping with one of his interns. He was hardly subtle about it. It was like he wanted me to find out. I thought he was doing it to hurt me, that in his mind, this was fair payback for his bruised ego. I should have spoken up then. I should have packed his bags for him and shown him the door.

But I didn’t. I was afraid to lose him. I was afraid to try to make it in the world on my own, and so I played the role of the dutiful wife, pretending that I hadn’t noticed the smell of perfume on his shirt when he returned from another night working late. That I didn’t notice the constant phone calls and text messages, the weekends away, the way he was careful not to leave his cellphone unattended.

It all came to a head about two weeks ago when there was a knock at the door. I opened it and there was a girl standing there. A girl no older than nineteen, with red hair and blue eyes. There was a look in her eyes that I recognized. She looked lost, like she was drowning and desperately searching for an anchor. And I knew instantly who she was. William’s newest toy. She made up some story about needing a file from William’s office, but I knew William. If they had needed that file, he wouldn’t have forgotten to take it with him. He always packed his files for work the night before and then double-checked them the next morning. It wouldn’t have been forgotten.

She was sizing me up, looking me up and down, and I saw that lost look in her eyes fade away, replaced with a smug, amused look as she took in my paint-splattered overalls and my brown hair thrown back in a messy bun.

I wanted to shake her, to tell her William would never leave me for her. I was the wife he took to corporate events knowing I'd say all the right things, act the role perfectly. And when I was out of the overalls and in a ball gown, I looked the part. Not like this dolly bird who looked rough around the edges. She would never belong in William’s world. I did.

He didn’t want some loose cannon of a kid on his arm who would flirt with his bosses and show him up. I wanted to tell her the affair they were having wasn’t even about her. It was about me. That William was only using her to punish me. I didn’t say any of that. I bit my tongue, gave her the file, and watched her leave, her hips swaying as she walked. Even her hips looked smug.

I wanted to go back to my little world of denial, but I found that I couldn’t. It was one thing turning a blind eye to what happened at the office or in some seedy motel on the outskirts of town, but having that little skank turn up at my doorstep, judge me, and find me lacking... that pushed me over the edge into a rarely shown anger, and when William came home that evening, I confronted him.

We argued, but I could see that William was seeing me differently that night. Gone was his meek little wife, and in her place was a woman who was no longer willing to tolerate his disrespect. He agreed to end the affair, and the very next day, he did just that. I know he did because I got a scathing phone call from the girl, Candy, telling me what a bitch I was and how I had ruined her life.

I was angry with her for intruding on my life once more, but mostly, I was angry with William. Because I realized something on that phone call. Candy didn’t know she was just another in a string of affairs. She had fallen for William’s charm, just like I had all those years ago, only when he told her she was special, it had been a lie. She had really believed William would leave me and that they would live happily ever after. She wanted more than just the money and the lifestyle because if she’d played her cards right, she could have had all of that as mistress. She wanted him all to herself. She was still young and naïve enough to believe that if he was hers, he would never cheat on her. I had been that girl, the young, naïve one who thought he would never cheat, but I never could have convinced myself of that if our relationship had started out as an affair.

I heard William moving behind me, and I turned away from the window to see what he was doing. The air was thick, charged, another argument brewing, and for a moment, I thought he was coming toward me. I don’t know whether I thought he was going to slap me or kiss me, but I thought he was going to do something to me. Instead, he went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. I looked down at my own glass, a little surprised to see it was empty, and I held it out.

William filled it for me, and for a second, our eyes met. I looked into his piercing blue eyes, searching for the truth about his feelings for me, but I saw only anger there. He sighed loudly as he moved back to his chair and slumped down in it.

“Why do you have to be like this, Carlotta?” he said.

“Like what?” I demanded.

---