The door lock clanked closed. Too exhausted to even turn over and see who was there, I assumed it was a fellow resident coming in to get some sleep. Until lips met the back of my neck. Even if I hadn’t known Bridget’s touch, I was like Pavlov to her smell. Only this dog wasn’t ready to face his master quite yet.
Taking the cowardly way out, I pretended to be asleep. She wasn’t on the schedule for a shift this morning, so I wondered if they called her in because someone called out sick. For a few minutes, I listened as she tiptoed around the dark room and then she brushed her lips on my cheek.
I waited until the door opened and closed to roll over. There was a small nightstand next to the bed I was pretending to be asleep in. Bridget’s handwriting slashed across a folded piece of paper—Simon. Next to it was a brown paper bag. I grabbed the note first.
Simon,
I stopped by after dropping Brendan at school to bring you some treats. Hope everything went well yesterday with the lawyers. Looking forward to seeing you tonight at home. I left something to remind you what’s waiting for you after shift.
-Your luv,
Bridget
P.S. Yes, I am.
Yes, I am? She’d folded the note in half and sealed it with a lipstick kiss along the crease—she’d been wearing the red lipstick. Fuck. My head and heart were in pain, but apparently my cock was chipper this morning. I was growing stiff from a fucking note while I was miserable inside. I blew out a frustrated breath and grabbed for the brown paper bag.
The minute I opened it, the smell of fresh-baked, banana nut bread permeated my nose even though it was wrapped in tin foil. I lifted it from the bag to see what was underneath and found it still warm. She baked me fresh bread. The bag also had an orange juice, coffee, and what I initially thought was some wadded up napkins. But upon closer inspection, I realized that wasn’t what was at the bottom of the sack—it was a pair of Bridget’s knickers.
I pulled them out. Wednesday. Since that was today, the first thought that ran through my mind was Is she walking around commando? It dawned on me that she’d already answered my question. P.S. Yes, I am. The woman knew me so well, that she answered my questions before I even asked them. How the hell was I going to lie to a woman who could do that? She’d see right through my bullshit. I hated the thought of lying to her even if I could get away with it. But I hated the thought of hurting her just as much, if not more.
After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the woman who was suing me was my girlfriend’s dead husband’s mistress, I went into a period of denial. It had to be a coincidence. There could’ve been two Ben Valentines that died in a car accident a couple of years ago. It was a long shot, but I had nothing else to cling to. When the deposition was over, I asked my lawyer some follow-up questions regarding the driver of the car. Of course, sleazy Arnie Schwartz was happy to tell me whatever dirty shit they’d dug up on the plaintiff.
The hospital had hired an investigator to surveil Gina Delmonico in an effort to catch her doing things that a person with a bulging disc shouldn’t be able to do. They’d also done a full background investigation on her, including her relationship with the driver. My heart sank when Arnie mentioned that the driver’s wife was also an employee of the hospital—a nurse, and the two of them had a child together. But I felt sick thinking about the last half of the conversation we had.
“Birth records list the father of Gina’s child as unknown. Doubt the kid will ever know she probably has a brother,” he said.
“A brother?” I was confused, or perhaps it was willful ignorance.
“Wife has a son, girlfriend has a daughter—chances are they share DNA. Hope the two don’t unknowingly meet in college and hit it off.”
I couldn’t face her. I also couldn’t break Bridget’s heart by telling her that the man she had been married to wasn’t the man she thought he was. I’d be opening up old wounds that would never get a chance to heal. But how could I not tell her? Brendan could possibly have a sister.
My head was spinning so fast after the deposition that I needed to take some time to think things through. In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea to spend that time thinking in a pub. Nothing was any clearer with my brain marinated in alcohol. I was a bigger mess now than I’d been earlier in the evening. Hence, the reason the alarm was going off at nearly four in the morning, and I was trying to climb in through the living room window. In my drunken haze, I couldn’t remember the code to punch in.
Nigel came to the front door carrying a bat and found me wedged half in, half out of the living room window.
“What the hell, Simon? You could have gotten your head bashed in.”
I lost my balance and fell face first through the window and yet somehow landed on my very drunken arse. “Good thing you didn’t lock the window.”
Nigel walked to the keypad and punched a code in. “Yes. We could have kept out an intruder. We wouldn’t have wanted that, now, would we?”
I stumbled attempting to get up just as Calliope walked into the living room to join us. She pulled her bathrobe shut and squinted. “What the hell, Simon?”
“That’s exactly what your better half said.” For some reason, I found that hysterical and started to laugh.
“Are you drunk?” Calliope asked
“Are you?” I responded, still laughing.
Nigel sighed, “I’ll put some coffee on. You two have fun.”
I managed to get myself to the couch and plopped down on it.
“What’s going on, Simon? What are you doing here in the middle of the night climbing through our window?”
“You changed the alarm combination?”
“We didn’t change the combination, Simon.”
“Well, then it must be broken.”
“Sure, it’s broken. But why aren’t you at Bridget’s? Did you two have a fight or something?”
“Nope. Everything is brilliant.”
“If that’s the case, then why are you here?”
“Ah.” I held up my pointer finger. “Because incest is bad. They could have a two-headed baby. I went to medical school. I know these things.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Suddenly feeling like the room was spinning and a giant weight was crushing my chest, I leaned my head back on the couch and shut my eyes. “I love her, you know.”
“Who are we talking about? Bridget or the two-headed baby?”
“I’d love the shit out of a two-headed baby if it was Bridget’s.”
“Okay, Simon. It’s four in the morning and you’re talking in drunk circles. Why don’t we go into the kitchen and have some coffee. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out.”
The following morning, Bridget was already dressed in her maroon scrubs, getting ready for work when I walked in the door. I’d texted her last night before heading to Calliope’s, explaining that I was too wankered to drive. Thankfully, Calliope’s house was only a half-mile walk from the pub.
Leading Bridget to believe that it was simply the deposition that had me stressed, I knew she was probably confused as to why I’d chosen to drown my sorrows alone in a bar instead of coming home and relieving my stress inside of her. That was uncharacteristic of me, for damn sure.
I placed my hand around her cheek and kissed her forehead. “Brendan’s at school?”
“Yes. I just got back from dropping him off.” Bridget seemed oddly sympathetic when I had expected her to be more pissed at me for not coming home. “How are you feeling? Want some coffee?”
“Sick. I nearly honked on their couch. No coffee, thanks.”
“Honked?”
“Vomited. I was stupid to drink so much.”
“Well, you were stressed. We all deserve an escape once in a while. As long as you don’t do it all of the time.”
“Believe me, I don’t intend to, my luv. I’m fucking miserable away from you at night. Thank you for being so understanding.”
Her warm lips covered my stale mouth. “I missed you.”
Anticipating what was to come, my heart was breaking as I whispered, “I missed you, too.”
I longed to return to the days before this mess came about.
She frowned. “I wish I had more time to spend with you this morning, but I’m already late for work. I just stuck around long enough to say hello. You’re off today, right?”
“Yeah. I don’t have to go in until tonight. We’re going to just miss each other’s shifts by like an hour, I think.”
“You can catch up on rest today then, stay hydrated.”
“I intend to.”
God, I hated this façade.
After she left for the hospital, my mind was racing. Calliope had warned me I could probably get in trouble for contacting Gina Delmonico directly because I was a party to her lawsuit. I’d watched enough Law & Order reruns to think she was right—but I needed to talk to her privately before telling Bridget anything at all. That way I could go into that inevitable conversation armed with information. As much as it made sense, I dreaded calling the woman. I just wished all of this were a bad dream.
Wandering around the quiet house aimlessly, I stopped into Brendan’s room. There was a framed picture of his father atop the chest of drawers. It was in a baseball-themed frame.
I lifted it and spoke to him. “What the fuck were you thinking…messing with that broad when you had Bridget? If you weren’t already dead, I’d fucking kill you, you know that?”
This situation was causing me to completely lose my marbles; now I was talking to a dead man and threatening his life.
“Alright, maybe I don’t mean that, because you’re Brendan’s dad. But I’d definitely rough you up a bit, maybe make you watch while I fucked your wife nice and good right in front of you. Although, maybe you’ve been seeing us from where you are. If so, then you’ve already bore witness to that. Serves you right.”
I looked up at the ceiling before talking to the photo again.
“Thanks a lot for leaving me to clean up your mess, mate. You’d better hope this little girl’s not yours. Get to work…talk to some people up there and bloody fix this.”