Page 2 of Revenge of the Forgotten

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“Oh, and Chase?” Vega didn’t hide the venom icing her tone. He looked up from the floor, tears streaming down his face, skin blotchy from crying. “Go fuck yourself.”

Vega slammed the door in her husband’s face. The worn building rattled with the force. Vega ignored Old Man Morris’s irritated banging on the wall from the commotion and Chase's shouting as she stormed into the rain-soaked night.

The image of another woman’s bare ass on her clean kitchen table would be burned into her memory for as long as she lived.

It was a wet walk to the bar a few blocks away, and the entire time, Vega squeezed her hands so tight, little crescent moons formed in her palms. The world spun around her, nausea causing her stomach to churn like Lake Michigan on a cold winter’s day.

She’d gotten off work earlier than anticipated tonight, the rain affecting the traffic at the scummy diner where she worked. Vega had stopped by her and Chase’s favorite Thai place to surprise him with dinner.

But she was the one who got the surprise instead…

When the door chimed, announcing her entrance into the raggedy dive bar, Vega’s leggings were soaked with cold rainwater. No one looked up from their drinks or the pool tables, and the staff didn’t welcome her. She wiggled out of her coat, hung it on the rack by the door to dry, and then found a seat at the bar.

“What can I get ya?” The woman behind the fading counter looked like she hadn’t slept for weeks, and her voice was rough with the sound of someone who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.

“A shot of your cheapest whiskey, please.” Vega passed a damp twenty-dollar bill across the counter and snatched her phone from her pocket while she waited.

Ten missed calls and twenty-eight texts.

Before he could show up here and persuade her to listen, Vega turned her location off and imagined what Chase’s face would look like when he got the notification that she’d revoked his right to know where she was at all times.

She hoped his sorry ass sobbed a little harder.

The bartender returned with her change and the small glass of amber liquid. Vega tipped the shot back, ignored the burn in her throat, and slid the rest of the money back. “Another,” she blurted.

The bartender cocked her head. Question marks seemed to float above her head while her eyebrows scrunched in the middle. Maybe she wasn’t used to girls Vega’s age coming in and slamming shots of cheap whiskey, or she saw Vega needed to get something off her chest. Whatever it was, Vega took the bait. “I just walked in on my husband cheating on me.”

Right after fucking me before I left for work. She didn’t say that last part out loud to protect what little dignity she had left. She’d worried about this the day he asked her to marry him because nothing in her life ever stayed good for long. Vega vividly remembered when he got down on one knee just months into their relationship, the smell of the salty water wafting off the Pacific Ocean, the way the sun made his sandy-colored hair glisten, and the way his round face lit up with excitement when the single word, “yes,” slipped through her lips. But behind her excitement hid the doubt she would always have when it came to any bit of happiness life allowed her to have.

“This one’s on me,” the bartender said. Vega’s eyes welled with tears, but she forced them away, blinking rapidly. “I hope you clocked him right in the nose.” The woman’s response made Vega chuckle, but it didn’t heal her hurt.

“I should’ve, huh?” Vega asked. The bartender only nodded in response before walking away to tend to her other patrons. Her thoughts wandered back to Chase and Jessica. What did she look like? Did she hear Chase snort when he laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe? Vega hadn’t heard it in so long. Did she come from a good family? Had Chase met them? Did he love her?

She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to taste blood.

Vega wasn’t destined for greatness. She’d known that from a young age. She was destined to be the girl everyone always compared themselves to when they were having a bad day. They would think things could always be worse because look at poor Vega, she couldn’t ever catch a break! “At least we aren’t Vega,” they would say.

In six short months, Vega would turn thirty.

By fifteen, she’d lost her mother to cancer after watching her suffer for nearly a year.

By seventeen, she’d been kicked out of the home she’d been adopted into when they found weed in her backpack.

By twenty-one, her scholarship money ran dry.

By twenty-seven, she’d been fired from her big girl job at Chicago’s most prominent marketing firm after it sold to a Fortune 500 company.

And now, before she turned thirty, her life was being flipped upside down by an unfaithful husband.

Her life had always felt like a long string of bad luck, as if someone above got off on watching her struggle. There weren’t many moments in her life Vega could look back on and smile, none that made her feel warm and fuzzy.

That was until she met Chase.

Chase came from a good family who went to Colorado every winter for ski trips. A family with lots of siblings and Sunday FaceTime calls. A family with enough money to invest in their children’s futures—they were the all-American dream.

And Vega had holes in her memory no one had answers to. She couldn’t remember going to elementary or middle school, couldn’t remember what her childhood home looked like before her mom moved them to Seattle to start treatment. All she knew was nothing ever worked out.

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