Page 1 of Sunshine
Prologue
Tess
When Gary shuts the door, I stumble back, landing on my backside, bouncing a little on the cushions of the sofa.
I’m still reaching for explanations even though I walked in to see a naked blonde wearing my husband on our living room floor, and then continued to watch as they did a naked scramble to locate her clothes before he whisked her out of the door. The door where my suitcase and bag lay tipped onto one side from their sudden plummet to the floor.
“What is this?”
My shamelessly naked husband holds his hand up, leaves the room and returns a few minutes later wearing a robe and carrying a heavy crystal tumbler filled halfway with dark liquid.
“Here.” He hands me the glass.
“Alcohol isn’t going to fix this, Gary. I need an explanation.” I’m surprisingly calm but I take a swallow anyway—a large one. It burns going down, but I don’t even blink.
He frowns down at me as if I’m simple… idiotic, dim, deficient in brain cells, and says, “I’m leaving you. I’m in love with someone else.”
I swallow, waiting a beat for the pain to hit, but it doesn’t come. “I’m assumingthatwas the someone else.” I motion toward the door with my glass, my eyes still fixed on him.
“Yes, Tess, she’s thesomeone else.” He slows his speech for the last two words to accentuate them as if I’m a moron. I look from his floppy, over-the-top, swoopy hair to his thin lips and back to his dark eyes.
“And yes, I’ve been spending time withand fuckingher for a year. Her name is Marie.” His eyes narrow as he watches me.For a reaction maybe? I down the entire glass of whiskey mostly to buy time because I feel absolutely nothing. Nothing, except for the liquid burning a fiery path down my throat.
“For fuck’s sake, Tess, are you even listening to me? Do you even care? I didn’t just forget to pick up the dry cleaning… I’m. Leaving. You.”
With that he has the courtesy to look away and it allows me another moment to think before he adds, “We’re madly in love.”
I walk to the little bar and poor myself another drink. I don’t down it this time though. I gulp, breathe in deep, think, mull, and contemplate, and gulp again, and then, repeat the process all over again. I should at least feel angry at his betrayal, right?
Swallowing the last bit of my drink, I frown at him.
“You’re. In. Love? With Marie,” I say, my voice a little weary. I’d been traveling, after all, only looking forward to a hot bath and my Egyptian cotton sheets and doesn’t that say it all. “And you decided the best way to tell me was to act it out for me in some sort of pornographic theatre performance as I arrived home?”
He opens his mouth, but I hold up a finger and continue, “After a month at my grandmother’s bedside? Her deathbed, Gary? Are you for real?”
“God, Tess don’t be so dramatic, and don’t make this harder than it is. Gran was eighty-seven and like you said, you’d beenat her bedside for the last month. It’s not like her death was a surprise.”
His voice rises. “Pay the fuck attentionto mefor once in your goddammed life.” His hands fly up and then fall at his sides. “Yes, I’ve fallen in love. But no, what you walked in on was not intentional.” He crosses his arms, his look nothing short of irritable. “I wasn’t going to tell you until next week when I planned to move out, but we got carried away while I stopped home to change.”
“Which is it, Gary? Do I not care or am I too dramatic? And she was eighty-seven?” I move toward him. “Did you seriously just say that?”
“I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean it that way.” Again, he looks away, this time rolling his lips before sighing defeatedly.
I look down at my left hand, the rock and band looking lackluster on my third finger. Once sparkling full of promise, it’s old news now.
Just like me. Old news.And in more ways than one according to my publisher, but that’s a separate issue.
“You bought those rings yourself,” he says, mistaking my staring at them as an accusation, and looks away from me.
“Because you said you couldn’t afford the kind of ring I deserved, Gary. But you still asked…Youproposed.Andyou waited at the end of the aisle,” I say pinching the bridge of my nose, one of my headaches forming behind my eyes. When his brows rise, I add a muffled, “You made vows. And I certainly didn’t drag you.”And I hadn’t. Out of the two of us, he was the one that had wanted to get married. He’d convincedme.
“I did, but that was before I knew you were already married.” He walks to my desk, grabs a bottle of analgesics and tosses them at me.
I mumble my thanks as I unscrew the cap and take two tablets, but I don’t acknowledge his statement. I know whathe’s talking about though. He’s been telling me for ages. ‘You’re married to your laptop, Tess.’ I just didn’t know he was all that serious.‘Hell, you even take it to bed.’Not literally. But it does sit on my nightstand because sometimes Gary’s snoring gets to be a little too much, or inspiration hits. Or rather it used to.
“Mostpeople have to work, Gary.” My job may have had atypical hours the last year or so, but it’s still what pays the bills. And before that, I kept a decent schedule. A nine-to-five of sorts, other than a few tour dates here and there, some conferences and dinner meetings. “Not everyone has the luxury of not working.”
“Oh, here we go.” He shakes his head, a forceful sigh on his lips. “You’re my work, Tess.”
