Page 12 of Our Sweet Revenge

Two months had passed since Abigail filed for divorce and turned Anthony’s world upside down. He was sitting in his apartment and staring at the closed TV for over an hour. He knew he should put on Netflix to fill his head with shallow sights and sounds, but his body lacked the necessary energy.

He hadn’t worked at all in the last five days, too drained to manage his own small business for home renovation.I should find new clients—or at least answer those who tried to contact me. Abigail is about to clean me dry.But that voice of logic was thin and feeble, hardly enough to pull him away from the couch that had lately become his fortress.

He felt that things would have been better if Jay were around to kick his ass and tell him to get his shit together. Jay was due to get out of prison soon, and that day couldn’t have come sooner. Although the two of them were night and day in most things, Jay had been the one Anthony had gravitated toward the most back when their little group first formed in rural Connecticut. Anthony had been more comfortable with Ethan than with a rugged biker who found ways to add profanities to every other sentence, but Ethan and Chris had been too tight for others to fully enter. They didn’t actively push Anthony and Jay away, but their dynamic was so intertwined, it felt wrong disturbing it. He would have felt like a third wheel if it weren’t for Jay.

Anthony was about to shut his eyes and try to fall asleep, hoping his dreams would show mercy, when his phone rang. He knew it was probably Ethan calling to check up on him. By now, Anthony knew how to mask his voice to sound normal so that Ethan wouldn’t worry and drive over, although it wasn’t like Ethan was doing all that great himself with his startup going under. Bad luck had hit them both this year, but while Ethan couldn’t have controlled a global pandemic, Anthony could have controlled his mouth and his decision to come out to his wife after she had caught him watching that stupid porn video. He usually wasn’t even into porn, so having that be the catalyst for his downfall was downright infuriating.

Anthony didn’t have it in him to answer Ethan and fake being okay, although it warmed his heart to know that someone still cared about him. He reached for his phone to hang up, but it wasn’t Ethan who was calling. Chris’s number was on his screen, causing Anthony to frown at his phone. They hadn’t spoken in way over a month, and he was suspecting this call was nothing more than a butt dial.

He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, man. Am I interrupting?”

“No. I was just… doing some work stuff. What’s up?”

“I haven’t seen you in a while. You’re at your new apartment?”

“You know about that?” He’d only moved here three weeks ago, and it wasn’t like he’d posted about that on social media.

“Ethan told me. So… I’m sort of in your area and thought to stop by to say hello.”

Anthony was living in Queens, and he couldn’t think of a reason for Chris to be in the area. “You want to stop bynow?”

“Unless you’re busy.”

He wasn’t, but he was also not mentally ready to have Chris Roberts in his crappy apartment. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to say no to Chris, a weakness he had been possessing for years.

“You can come by,” Anthony said after taking too long to think.

“Sweet. Send me your address. Will I have a hard time finding parking?”

“Not in this neighborhood. You can park a bus here if you want. See you soon.” He hung up and sent his address. For a full minute, he simply stared at his phone, half believing he had just imagined agreeing to have Chris stop by. Once coming to terms with the upcoming visit, Anthony was forced to scan his apartment.This won’t do.

It would never be a pretty place, regardless of his efforts, but he could at least make it more presentable. He jumped to his feet and started picking up clothes from different corners of the living room, forming a plan in his head of what he should clean next. Thirty minutes later, a knock on the door stopped Anthony from washing the last of his dirty dishes. While prepping up his apartment, he had found that his bleak mood was quickly subsiding, being replaced by a sense of excitement.

He dried his hands and hurried to open the door. Chris was wearing one of his nice suits, his dark blond hair neatly combed, and his back—as always—straight as a board. Although he was shorter than Anthony, Chris had a way of making himself appear taller with how well he carried himself.

“Hi, man,” Chris said and gave Anthony a firm hug.

“Come in.”

Chris made his way into the living room and glanced around. He looked like he was about to comment but decided not to.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Anthony asked.

“Yeah, water.” Chris sat on the couch after taking off his jacket and folding it neatly.

Once Chris got his water, Anthony joined him on the couch. “It’s been a while.”

Chris nodded. “Yeah, I had a lot going on with the twins and with work, but I should have stopped by earlier.”

“It’s cool. No big deal. I’ve been busy myself.” Three lies in a row.

“Yeah? Ethan told me you haven’t gone back to work yet.”

If it was anyone else talking about him behind his back, Anthony would have been upset, but if Ethan was the one talking, it was clearly out of concern.

“I was just about to get back to work,” Anthony carefully said. “Been talking with potential clients in the last couple of days, working on making a schedule for myself.”

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