Page 19 of Marriage Ever After
“Look, you’re my brother so I’m not going to repeat myself.”
“What is it?”
“Tell Rissa the next time she wants to take my wife to an abortion clinic to stay there with her instead of having me pick her up all in the way feeling like I don’t even have a fucking say in anything. I respect and love you, Channing so I’m coming to you. I don’t want to fuck around and put a strain in our friendship over shit like this.”
Before he could respond, I walked out. I’ve had it with people’s shit.
****
I sat back on my chair as I waited for my client who was in the restaurant bathroom. I needed to go swimming tonight to release more tension. If I didn’t do that then all hell would break loose. Just as I was about to flag a waiter down, I heard my wife’s laughter. It was as if the world stopped. I slowly turned my neck in the direction that her laughter was coming from. After the bullshit and tears she gave me this morning, she was fucking laughing it up. When I spotted her, she was with a co-worker. Manny or some shit like that. I didn’t like that slimeball and I told Mila a million times to stay away from that creep. He rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t like the way he looked at Mila and now, he had his hand on top of hers making it seem like they were two lovers on a lunch date.
I threw my head back, chuckling as if this was the funniest shit I had encountered today. Which really it was. I stood, fixing my suit and rolling my shoulders. I walked over to the table with my right hand in my pocket while my left thumb played with my ring.
“Bunny… that’s cute.” I heard Manny say. “I should call you that too.”
Mila’s brows furrowed as she pulled her hand from his. She hadn’t seen me yet.
“No. You can’t call me that. Only my husband calls me that. Look, Manny, I thought this was a lunch between coworkers but you’re making me uncomfortable. I’m going to go back to work now.”
She answered and he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Wait… no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Don’t leave, Graham is in the bathroom and he’ll think it’s weird if you leave. Please, don’t tell him about this or what I did before. I wanted to be part of this lunch because I wanted to apologize. I was out of order.”
“What did you do that was out of order?”
I asked when I made my presence known behind them.
Mila turned to face me,
“Kash? What are you doing here?”
“Bunny,” I said to her then looked at Manny again. “What did you do that was out of order?”
Manny’s eyes widened.
“Nothing, it was nothing. It was an honest mistake. I didn’t mean to kiss her.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Bunny, did you want him to kiss you?”
If I were Manny, I’d be gone before she answered that question because I was asking in a very calm tone. One too calm.
“No.”
I nodded.
“When did this happen?”
“When I first found out about my diagnosis and I was out of it even at work.”
Manny glared at Mila.
“She said she wanted to feel, to feel anything for someone to help her feel and I thought she was talking to me.”
“Did you drive here, bunny?”
“Yeah…”
