Page 11 of Love Finds Home

“His name was—are you ready for this? Bartholomew Jefferson Fuchs the Forth.”

She blinks her eyes, the liquor playing with her brain. “Wait. His name was BJ Fucks?”

We both break out in laughter, and huh, maybe telling this story drunk is the way to go.

“Yes, it was. But we called him Barty then.”

“Barty Fucks.” Ginny cackles at her own joke, and it takes a few minutes for us to calm down so I can continue.

“Anyway,” I start once we’ve caught our breath, “I went on a friends’ trip to Vegas and we got married.”

“Were you dating him?”

“Not so much dating?”

“Ahh, he was a benefited friend.”

“Yup.” I pop the ‘P.’

“Does your brother know?” she whispers like Tiny’s in the room with us.

Poor the shot. Take the drink.

“Not Tiny. Bash does, though. He helped when it finally became too much.”

“What became too much?”

“We decided the next morning, after our hangovers, to stick it out and try to stay married.”

“Really? I mean, that’s kinda cool, right?”

“Would have been if he hadn’t started acting like a completely different person, maybe.”

“What happened?”

“He started having to go away on business trips a lot. I mean, he had that kind of job, but it went from once a month to almost every weekend.” I pause to let that sink into Ginny’s vodka soaked head.

“Hmm,” is all I get.

“Then he started treating me like I should be grateful to be with him because he was such a catch and I was…me. The poor, starving artist who couldn’t get a show.”

“Umm, aren’t you like super rich, though?”

“I have my own money, yes.” I giggle. Vodka’s hitting me good, too. “But I had just graduated, and I had shows when I was in school. I wasn’t applying for shows because I knew I wanted to open my own studio, and he thought that was stupid, too.”

“Kinda like Keith thinks opening a music school would be a waste of money. Or playing with an orchestra. ‘Fanciful dreams for the youth,’ he says.”

You know the drill now, right? Poor the shot. Take the drink.

“Well, he decided the best way to teach me a lesson was to fuck everything in sight. And I do mean everything.”

“Bastard,” she slurs.

I nod in agreement, but this story gets so much worse. “Right. But when I was meeting with a developer on locations and designs, he just got mean. This wasn’t a new plan. I’d known him for ten years at that point, and this was always my goal. I double majored in school to achieve it.”

“Wow. That’s impressive. You know that, right?”

“Thanks, but he became an asshole about it. Kept talking about how I was wasting money doing this and when I was broke, he wasn’t gonna take care of me. Things like that. And then I found out he was cheating on me.”

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