Page 80 of Heathen

I start off by giving her only minor details, but as the second bottle of wine comes out, I lay it all out, every detail, including the time we spent together in the shower and in the SUV.

She's glaring at me like I've lost my mind by the time I get to what he said last night.

"He's totally into you," she assures me, but I reject her assessment completely.

"He's not. He didn'task me to stay."

"He doesn't sound like the type of guy that's going to coerce you into being somewhere you don't want to be. He's giving you a chance to go back to him with it being completely your idea."

I mull over this as I turn up the bottle, frowning when only a few drops come out into my glass.

"That's not possible. Men like that don't exist," I argue.

"Men like that do exist, crazy," she says, getting up from the couch. Decorating for the party lost its luster after we finished the first bottle of wine.

"I've never met any of them."

"Because there aren't many left in the world, and it was a chance in a gazillion that you found one in Las Vegas of all places."

I haven't spoken much about what he does for a living because he was quite secretive about it with me. I don't want to betray the limited trust he put in me by telling me about his job.

"Well, he can't even be bothered to tell me how he feels, so I don't think that's a man that I want," I mutter, holding myglass up when she comes out of the kitchen with another bottle of wine.

"You're such a liar. The two of you are going to work this out and have lots of babies. If you don't, I'll hate you forever."

"Better not start hating me until after the party, or you'll have to do the rest of this by yourself," I say, taking a long sip of wine.

Chapter 33

Heathen

I met a middle-aged man once at a bar. He was sitting there, staring into a glass of dark whiskey like he was trying to see his future, like the drink cupped between his palms held all his truths and he wasn't very impressed with the answers they were giving him.

I clapped him on the shoulder and started a conversation with him. Turns out, he made a lot of mistakes in life. He wanted to provide the best life for his family, and in trying to make that happen, distance grew between him and his wife, to the point that she left him because he was never around.

"She said I care about my job more than I care about her and the kids," he had muttered, his voice clogged with emotion. "Can't she see I did it all for them?"

I didn't understand back then why he was so torn up about it. What was the point in getting upset over a woman who couldn't take a step back from her own selfishness and take a long, hard look at what was right in front of her?

It wouldn't take years of therapy to try and figure out why I instantly wanted to blame her.Hello, mommy issues.

What I couldn't see back then was his dedication to his wife and family is what got him up every morning. Without them, he felt like he had nothing worth living for.

I don't know what happened to that man. I never went to that bar again, but I'd like to think that they reconciled. Honestly, how many relationships end because one person is blind to how the other person really feels?

Could he have actually changed? Was he a workaholic so his family could thrive or is that just what he told himself to feel better about leaving his wife practically a single parent?

"Does it even fucking matter?" I mutter, the coffee I've drunk burning a hole through my stomach lining.

"What was that?" Rooster asks, making me snap my eyes up to him.

"Nothing."

"Is it nothing that has you sitting in here at the crack of dawn, muttering to a coffee cup?"

"You're up this early also, idiot," I remind him.

"I haven't gone to bed yet," he says with a shrug, heading to the coffee pot, as if he has no intentions of going any time soon, either.

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