Page 65 of I'm Not Yours
“And I will take my business with me.” My voice pitched high.
“The house for the business, June,” Grayson said, ducking again. “That’s the deal.”
So that was it. That was the exchange. I would lose all my money in the house in exchange for a business that I was barely making money on. I thought of how much equity I had in that house. “No. Never.”
I grabbed another book as Walid’s pokey head poked above the table.
“That’s for you, you freak. I thought you were my friend, Walid.” He hid again and squealed.
“Never,” Cherie said. “Ever. Ridiculous. Tiny dinosaur man, you are ridiculous. Small and flippy-floppy ridiculous.”
Grayson flushed again. He was mad, but I saw what I always saw in his beady eyes: relentless stubbornness and a sick desire for control over me. “Then no divorce. That’s what I wanted anyhow. We’re still married, June.”
This time I didn’t bother to grab only one book, I grabbed two and threw them at the same time until he and Walid scuttled out, like infected warthogs. Both books smacked Grayson in the butt.
“Monsters!” Cherie called out. “Limp monsters!”
“I’m afraid, June,” Cherie said later, as we both nursed Bloody Marys at a bar around the corner, “that you’re in a bad place.”
“How can I be?” My hands were still shaking I was so infuriated. And I was mad at myself for letting Grayson make me infuriated. “I was sewing at night when I was married to him, Ididn’t have a business, I wasn’t even planning on a business for a long time . . .”
“But you made patterns for about a year before you left him. Patterns for wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, the white lace shirt and skirt you have now. You started selling your clothes when women came up to you and asked how they could get what you were wearing. That’s an issue.” She ate peanuts. I knew she was thinking hard. She’s a bulldog with sharp teeth. “I will harass him for you repeatedly, and I don’t think he has a solid case, but he clearly doesn’t want a divorce and he will drag it out and drag it out and eventually you’re going to have to settle.”
Financially, I knew that. Cherie and I were longtime friends and she’d discounted the divorce costs, but hey, I’d had to write her a check with several zeros. If Grayson and I went on much longer it would be more economical to eat a hundred-dollar bill for breakfast each morning for two years.
“How badly do you want this to end? How much longer do you want Grayson in your life, manipulating your emotions, bringing all this negative stuff in?”
“I wanted him out of my life years ago. I can’t stand that the guy is renting space in my head. I have to work to never think of him and it takes so much energy. Plus, this divorce is so wearing. Sometimes he’ll send something, like flowers, or call out of the blue. He does it deliberately to antagonize me. It’s sick.”
“You have a magazine editor fromCouture Fashioncoming to your home to photograph your studio and dresses soon, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s big-time. It’s imperative that we get the papers signed before then. Your sales are going to skyrocket. The more successful you are, the harder Grayson will hold on. He’s seeing money, June. He’s smelling it. He doesn’t get how flippinglysuccessful you’re going to be, but he will soon. He’ll demand half of June’s Lace and Flounces and then he’ll be in your life for years to come.”
Gall. “I will hand over proceeds and control of my company to Grayson only after I have constructed a home-built spaceship and launched myself off my own roof.”
“Then, my friend, we need to talk about that house.”
I ordered another Bloody Mary.
Early the next afternoon, a florist truck rumbled up to the front of my blue cottage.
Leoni rushed to the window to join me, as did Estelle, our faces plastered to the glass. They both bounded down the stairs and brought up a huge bouquet of roses and lilies.
“It’s for you, June,” Estelle said. “Hopefully it’s not from that leach of an ex-husband of yours; you lost your mind when you married that one. What were you thinking? Had someone taken a hatchet to your head? Were you bleeding?”
“Probably, Estelle,” I said. “Probably.”
“Don’t be so tough on her, Estelle,” Leoni defended me. “She didn’t know he was a vulture. Vultures can hide their vulture-ness. I should know. I married a vulture myself.”
“I hope our ex-vultures eat each other one day, Leoni,” I said.
I ran a finger over the fragrant roses and lilies. Flowers! As old as time. You send your justifiably raging wife flowers and she swoons and forgets that you were a wicked beast. Did Grayson honestly think I was going to swoon over his bouquets? Did he honestly think we could erase the last hideous two years as he incessantly fought our divorce, not to mention the two years before that, withflowers?
“I’ll drive them down to the assisted living center again,” Leoni said. “We don’t want the vulture among us.”
“A bleeding head,” Estelle said, tapping her forehead, “is no excuse for marrying him. Don’t you forget that, June. Use your noggin next time.”
