Page 12 of Forty

What am I doing here? I was having a nice dinner with a nice woman, and I dropped her off early to drive out to the boondocks and waste time on a crazy bitch who couldn’t stay faithful for aweek. I’m a fool. I need to say my piece and get gone.

But all the words I want to say would shame me as a man. No matter what a woman shows herself to be, it isn’t right to call her names to her face.

“Well? You gonna stand there and hate fuck me with your eyes all night long?” She raises her eyebrows. She’s got nerve. Always did.

“You gonna stand there and act all innocent?”

“Not all night, no.” She taps her foot. My pulse skyrockets.

“Why did show up at the clubhouse? You know you’re not welcome. What’s your game, Nevaeh?”

“No game.”

I bark a bitter laugh. “It wasalwaysa game with you.”

She snorts, but her eyes drop to the ground. “I guess it could have seemed that way.”

“It was that way. How long after I left before you were spreading your legs for any random asshole? Did you even wait until I left?”

She wrings her hands and rocks on her feet. She was always fidgeting like that. I attributed it to nervous energy, but from where I stand now? It looks a hell of a lot like guilt.

“I never cheated on you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I know what it looked like.”

“I got pictures of you crawling on men from here to Pyle. You snuck into Heavy’s room topless and asked him to fuck you.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but I guess she thinks better of it. Instead, she draws in a deep breath, and instead of hanging her head again, she comes at me with those huge, brown eyes.

“Yeah. I did do that.”

I wait. Crickets chirp. Leaves whisper in the huge maple beside the house. What am I even waiting for? An apology? An explanation? As if anything she said—then or now—would change anything. She’s disloyal. Selfish. Nuts.

Her throat bobs as she swallows, and she shifts. It’s like she’s waiting, too. What for? What’s her game now?

“You seriously want me to believe you never cheated? If you didn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

Fuck. Why do I still care about this at all? It happened a lifetime ago. I’ve been around the world since Nevaeh Ellis. Stared death in the face. Came out the other side, scarred and fucked up, sure, but alive.

And some girl screwing around on me back in the day has got me this twisted? Why am I not at my house in Gracy’s Corner right now, balls deep in Amanda or Amelia or whatever her name is?

Nevaeh chews on the inside of her cheek, and stares at her feet. “I wanted you to get jealous and come home. Or, like, confront me. I was desperate. I wasn’t thinking straight.” She glances up, and her eyes are shining.

The tears piss me off. “That’s childish as hell.”

“Iwasa child!” Her voice breaks, and there’s pain in it. Something inside me lurches for her, and I barely stop myself from loping up the steps and folding her in my arms.

That hurt in her voice? It’s fake as hell. She’s not innocent. She never was. She’s a liar.

I’m about to tell her so and bail, but she keeps going.

“You know, I’m still mad, too.”

She scrubs angrily at her eyes, dashing away those tears.

“I hate you, too, so you can just fuck off with your wounded, wronged man routine. You said you’d always be there for me? Well, you weren’t, and I know that’s the way the world works, and you’re a hero or whatever, but you can just go fuck yourself, Forty Nowicki. And fuck your fancy ass truck andfuckyou coming here with lipstick on your collar. You look like a detergent commercial.”

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