Page 61 of Ever After

He gives me a slight smile and looks away from both of us. Lia is now standing in front of me with raised eyebrows. I pull her into a hug and whisper, “Thanks,” into her ear. She smiles back at me.

I turn back over and see Aiden sitting on the couch. I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing, I tell myself.

Unsure of what to say,I walk toward Aiden in the living room. I never thought it would escalate to this. Our feelings are at an all-time high right now. The tension is soaring through the room. I slide myself onto the couch, leaning my back on the armrest, facing Aiden. Aiden is in the middle of the couch, hunched over, with both of his elbows resting on his knees. His head hanging low looking down at the ground. I don’t know how he is feeling. He looks so zoned out. I can’t get a reading off him.

Clearing my throat, I say. “You look good.”

He turns his head and looks at me with scrunched eyebrows. I shrug my shoulders. I don’t know how to bring anything up. We sit here as if we don’t know each other. We’ve known each other better than anyone else. Being married to someone for seven years, it’s fitting to know about one another better than anyone else.

He stares at me blankly. “So do you.”

“Do you want a drink or anything? We only have wine if you’re looking for an alcoholic beverage. Now that Lia is here, that seems to be all we keep in the house.”

He’s still giving me a blank stare and shakes his head no.

This is awkward. “How have you been feeling now about everything?” I ask.

He leans back into the couch and shifts his body a little toward me. “I want to know who that guy was. I’m tired of not getting any answers from you. I understand what I did, and I accept there will no longer be an us. The truth is what I want.”

Fidgeting with my fingernails debating if I should tell him the truth. Does he deserve the truth? Do I tell him everything? Down to who Lindsee is? My breathing becomes uneasy. I don’t know if it will make it worse. He says he finally came to terms with the fact that there is no longer and us. Maybe the truth won’t hurt this any more than it always is.

“For it to make a little sense, answer some questions first?”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Did you know that girl you slept with in Hawaii?” Silence fills the room. Does he think this is going to be a one-way conversation? “If you want me to be honest with you, you have to be honest with me. Let’s lay everything out on the table and be done with hiding anything from each other. I don’t know when or how we got here, but none of this is helping.”

He sits up a little taller and his shoulders relax. “Remember when I took that trip to Vegas for James’s bachelor party?”

I shake my head yes. Where is this going?

“We went to a strip club, and I told you about that, and you were okay with it.”

He waits for my response. I say, “Yes, and?”

“There was a stripper that invited us to an after-party. It was in a penthouse at the MGM. I think it was her place. Anyway, we all went. Most of us wanted to see a penthouse and were questioning how a stripper could afford that. After looking at that place, I guess strippers in Vegas make bank.”

What the fuck?Images of him cheating on me in a penthouse with strippers run through my head. He never told me about this party. Is that why he never told me because he did something? My whole body feels clammy and cold.

“No. No. No. It’s not what you’re thinking. I promise you, I have done nothing like that.” He stutters and clears his voice. “Before Hawaii.”

He must have seen my reaction to how quick his response was to my body language.

“We went to the party. Most of the guys were already wasted. I knew it was going to be a shit show because I was babysitting them at that point.”

“Aiden! You’re killing me. Get to the point.”

“Okay. So we get there and there are so many girls. They all looked like strippers or hookers. Yeah, hookers describe them better. It almost looked like an orgy. There were so many men being pleased by these women. Open bottles were everywhere. People were drinking nonstop, and lines of coke were on the tables. I told the guys we were only going to have one drink and get out of there. That’s when I met Lindsee. She was a cocktail waitress. She came up to me and asked if I wanted a drink.”

Cocktail waitress? I’m surprised she wasn’t servicing her body. No one probably wanted that nasty thing. I wonder if Jay knows. Wait? How long ago was this? I try to retract the time Aiden went to Vegas. It was about a year ago. I met Jay a few months ago, and he said then that they had been split up for about six months. Realization hits me. They were still together. Planning their wedding, too. She is such a whore. I’m sure Jay knows she went out of town. Does he know the truth about what she was doing? Why the fuck would she go over there to be a cocktail waitress? Poor Jay. He’s been deceived more than me. Aiden interrupts my thoughts.

“Lilah! Are you listening?”

I shake my head, and I turn my attention back to him. “What? What did you say?”

“I said as the night went on, more and more people kept hooking up. They were too busy to order drinks, so she started talking to me because she had nothing to do.”

“What did she say?”

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