Page 34 of Such A Good Girl

I followed the sound of digital gunshots to find Jerry, where he almost always seemed to be, rotting in his sticky gaming chair. He faced away from me, blue light following the edge of his frame.

‘Fucking hell, Brett. That was a poor shot. Man up.’ A raucous laugh followed his comment, presumably to a response in his headset.

I don’t know what I’d expected my disappearance to have done, but he acted like nothing changed.

Rage filled me, and I stormed across the room and tore the cables right from the wall, his console powering down instantly.

‘Holy shit! Ashley?’

Jerry gawped at me, the headset framing his face. I waited.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ He asked, almost stupefied. No big hug. No tears. Nothing.

‘Did you even notice I was gone? You seemed to have had your mom take my place pretty fast.’

Jerry pulled off the headset and stood, his clammy hands taking mine and pulling me to his chest.

‘Of course I noticed,’ he said, his Cheeto-tainted breath making me scrunch my nose. ‘But I needed someone to sort the place out. Mom offered.’

‘Did you miss me?’ I needed something from him. A sign that I wasn’t so insignificant in his life that he could replace me with his mother.

‘Yes. God, yes. I was so worried. Where have you been?’ He held me limply, no sign of his apparent concern in his arms.

I wanted to tell him I was busy sucking another man’s cock. Being ridden until nothing mattered but Bobby. That another man had made me whole again. A stranger had cared more about me than the man I’d spent a decade with.

‘Everything got on top of me. I rented a little place in the countryside for a week.’ A half truth.

‘What got on top of you? You don’t have to work, we don’t have kids. All you do is look after me and the house. But you’re here now. It’ll all be okay.’

It wouldn’t be okay. Jerry hadn’t had even a tiny revelation. His wife had gone missing, and it was barely a blip for him.

My marriage was as good as over.

Sleeping next to Jerry resulted in no sleep at all. Not from passionate lovemaking, nor talking into the early hours, but from the crushing need to escape. My home was far more of a cage than Bobby’s real one had been.

Bleary-eyed, I made my way to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of much needed coffee.

Between the police questioning me, and the late hours by the time they finished, I’d mostly avoided my mother-in-law.

No such luck.

The salty smell of bacon hit me as I rounded the corner, and Beverley plastered a sickly sweet smile on her face.

‘Well, look at you. Did my boy keep you awake all night?’ She asked, pouring me a coffee. From my own damn pot.

‘No.’ I took the coffee begrudgingly and sat heavily on one of the bar stools, watching her so comfortably using my kitchen. ‘You don’t have to stay, you know. I appreciate you were looking out for Jerry, but I’m sure your own husband would like you back.’

‘Oh, I’ll stick around. Jerry has been so happy to have me home.’ Beverley caught my expression changing. ‘He was concerned about you, of course.’

Sure.

‘We don’t need you here. We can cope on our own.’

Beverley’s fingers gripped the spatula she held, whitening around the knuckles.

‘He needs me,’ she spat. ‘While you were likely whoring yourself around the state, I was the one here holding his hand.’

‘And probably wiping his ass, too.’

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