Page 62 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
I frowned at him. “You skipped something kind of important, I think.”
He sighs. “Maria.”
“Your ex.”
He nods. “Yeah. Maria.”
“You were hoping I wouldn’t notice you’d glossed over that?”
He laughs quietly. “A little, yeah. I don’t like talking about it.” Another long pause; he seems finished with the rabbit, and he sets it on the counter, twisting it this way and that, examining it again. “So, Maria and I got married six months after we met.”
“A little fast.”
He growls. “Yeah, no shit. Everyone warned me. James flat out didn’t like her, Ryder thought she was hot but didn’t trust her, and Jesse told me I was dumbass for taking it beyond a little fun with her.”
“Ouch. But you didn’t listen?”
“Nope. I was in loooove.” He turns the word into a mocking, whining drawl. “Infatuated was more like it. The truth, unpalatable as it may be, was that she was hot as fuck, but it was surface hot, you know? Like, she had no depth. I see that now, after twenty years, but I was clueless then.”
“Twenty-one and blinded by the titties, huh?” I ask, laughing.
He frowns. “Yeah, pretty much.” A pause. “She was just…glamorous, I guess. A little shy, but a tiger once you got to know her. Loved the fast life, shiny things. She liked me because I was a middle finger in the air to her very traditional Columbian parents, who wanted her to marry a good Columbian boy. I mean, I was Catholic so I had that going for me, but I was white, and they hated that. Plus, she was maybe just as blind and infatuated as I was.”
“Cock-blindness is real, Franco.”
He laughs. “Oh, I know.” He nudges the rabbit toward me, and I pick it up, looking at it; it’s a beautiful piece, a true work of art…and he did it just as something to do with his hands while he talked. “It was great for the first six months to a year. We got a nice little place downtown, I had a job at a condo remodeling company specializing in high-end units, and I got paid like a boss. But things started to go downhill fast after the first year. She wanted a new car, and then she wanted a bigger ring barely two years in. And then she wanted us to go out more, even though I was working eighty hours a week to afford the pricey apartment with views of the lake that she had to have. She would stay out after work and not tell me where she was or what she was doing. I wanted to trust her, to be confident in what we had, but it was hard, you know? Because, deep down, I didn’t really trust her, or myself, or our marriage. I think deep down, I knew we were playing house, you know? Two dumb kids playing at marriage. It wasn’t real for either of us.”
“That sucks.”
He laughs bitterly. “Yeah, tell me about it.” He sighs. “That was just the beginning.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. Three years in, and things were terrible. She was never home, always out with her friends, shopping, spending money. She had a job, but it was fluff, paid shit and nowhere near enough to cover her spending habit. But it was the being gone all the time that got me, though, you know? Like, I’d come home to an empty condo, make my own dinner, eat alone, go to bed alone, and she’d come home at whatever time stinking of alcohol. I’d go out with her after work every once in a while, but I had to get up early for work so it was hard, and I just didn’t like her friends or the whole crowd she hung out with. They were all vapid, shallow, and selfish—kinda like her, I guess. Then, one day I was at work and my boss was sick as a dog. It was early, like barely seven—I’d gone in to finish something, and Maria hadn’t even come home from the night before. That happened a lot, so whatever, but that morning I had a niggling feeling in my gut, but I ignored it.”
“This doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah. So my boss sent me to the pharmacy to get some Dayquil and shit. Well, this pharmacy was near the jobsite, but far from our condo. Nowhere near where any of our friends lived, and nowhere near where they partied either. So, I’m in the pharmacy, looking for the medicine for Rob. And I hear a voice up by the pharmacist’s counter. A familiar female voice. Asking for Plan B.”
“Shit.”
He just sucks in a breath, holds it, stares at the counter, and then lets it out slowly. “I froze in place for a minute. Like, no way. What? Why would she need Plan B? We always used a condom and she hadn’t even been home the night before.” He shakes his head. “Then it sank in. She needed Plan B because she had just had sex—unprotected sex—with some other dude.”
