Page 1 of One Hotlanta Night
Vivian
april 2001
It probably doesn’t bode well for the future of your relationship if you walk into your boyfriend’s room and find another girl bobbing her head in between his thighs.
Enthusiastically.
And it’s not going to get much better when he looks you dead in the eye, smirks, and doesn’t even try to push her away.
This was not the way I saw my precious weekend off going.
Yep, that was what I’d walked into on an otherwise sunny Saturday morning. Should I have noticed the unfamiliar blue sedan parked outside my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s house? Maybe, but Trent was a drummer, and guys were coming by all the time, at all hours to practice, chill out, get high, and whatever else was on their list of fun activities. And I knew they had a new player, a girl, that was doing a good job of meshing into their testosterone fold.
Well, I guess she was doing anexcellentjob now if she was blowing the guy I’d been with—mostly—for the past few years.Lately I’d been half in-half out of the relationship, not sure where we were going as a couple. Looked like he was all the wayoutnow with his cock in someone else’s mouth. Not that I’d miss that part; Trent’s oral game wasn’t that great anyway.
“So what did youdo?” Claire asks me, leaning against the smooth wooden bar top. My best friend reaches down and unscrews the Barefoot white zinfandel, then fills up my glass again. The first one came after she noticed the state of my hair: wild and disheveled from driving with the car window rolled all the way down.
I wasn’t supposed to be back at The Pork Belly—her family’s restaurant and my place of employment—until Monday. I’d wandered in one day a few years ago looking for a job; Claire hired me on the spot and made me assistant manager within the month. Not only did we hit it off in our work relationship, but we became fast friends as well. Between the two of us, we keep the place running. But that also means time off is scarce. Two days back to back? Pretty much unheard of.
Which was why I was looking forward to some quality time with my guy. Or, barring that, if he was gonna keep droning on and on about his band, then at least some sex.Right. Clearly that wouldn’t be happening ever again.
I brush my tangled, wind-blown hair from my face. “I did what any good girlfriend would do. I asked him what the fuck he was doing. And he said it was to—you ready?—‘Get my attention.’That he’d been feeling ‘neglected,’” my fingers mark the air quotes, “and she’d started unzipping his jeans and going at it, so he let her.” I scoff.
“Well, that’s certainly one way to get your attention,“ Claire drawls. “Effing douchebag.” Her daughter Raelynn might not be at the restaurant, but Claire reigns in her words out of habit. “You knew this wasn’t going to work out with Trent, notlike forever-eva.” She levels me a look as though daring me to challenge her.
“You’re right.” I sigh. Deep down, I’d known it too. “I just… You know how it is. We’ve been through so much, and he still wants me. Or at least I thought he did.” I take another sip of the wine that really isn’t all that bad, considering it’s not top shelf. Swirling it in my glass, I question my lack of devastation.
Three years with someone. You’d think I’d be more upset.
But I really wasn’t. That thirty-minute drive had cleared my head.
Trent had come into my life on the tail end of my first love crushing my heart. The rebound that I kept coming back to, like that ratty old sweater in the closet you just can’t make yourself throw away. He had the whole bad-boy package that I’d fallen in love with. At least, I used to think it was love. He was hot, he was older, and he eased my wounded pride. Gave me the attention I craved and it was good. Until it wasn’t.
The thrill he’d elicited with his badass-biker look and the thick, gravelly voice when he said my name… made me feel nothing right now. Absolutely nada. Fumbling through memories over the past three years, I tried to figure out what had initiated that spark, what had kept me coming back to him time and time again even after we’d taken a break, and I found nothing. Not a damn thing. Just emptiness. And pity for the next woman he would try to wrap around his finger.
So yeah. Sitting here sipping my wine, I was most surprised to feel… absolutely nothing.
I thought it was love, thought that after three years maybe this was it, he was the one. How else do you spend that much time with someone unless you’re meant to be?
Although I could never quite see myself walking down the aisle to him.
Maybe that was why it had been so easy to take breaks. I’d get sick of his BS or he’d get sick of mine, and we’d go our separate ways for a while. But in the end, we’d find our way back to each other, like two toxic magnets.
I didn’t know—or care—what he did on his time off. But then his criticisms started, disguised as “opinions.” Nothing I did was good enough: not my job, not my health, and finally, he started in on my “extracurriculars.”
He’d implied that no one else would want me after “all the guys I’d been through,” as he put it.
If he really thought so little of me, if I was so damn awful, then why did he still welcome me back into his bed? It was a crazy, self-destructive cycle we’d dance through.
Until today, with that girl. She even resembled me, her head of dark curly hair covering the part of Trent’s anatomy I knew so intimately. It was like watching a scene in a movie unfold, going from color to black and white. I stood there staring at his smirking face, challenging me, and felt… absolutely nothing. I should have been upset, furious even.
Instead, all I felt was relief.
I truly didn’t give a damn anymore. All the affection from the past three years drained out of my chest.
I could breathe again.
After letting the cool, sweet wine slide down my throat, I inhale deeply. Being single had never felt so damn good.
