Page 11 of The Rule of 3

Tanner opened the door. And there she was. His Zoë. The most beautiful creature in the world. He just stood there admiring her before she broke his reverie by asking, “Tanner, may I please come it?”

Feeling like an ass, he stepped back stammering, “Oh, uh, sure. Sorry. Can I get you anything? Something to drink maybe?”

“Sure,” she agreed. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.” She looked around his living space and decided to take a seat on the couch. There was a large manila envelope sitting in the middle of the coffee table that drew her attention.

Tanner set down two glasses of sweet tea and sat beside her. Clearing his throat, he said, “Zoë, I hope you don’t think I was somehow invading your private life, but I hired someone to check out what Brandon does all day long. He’s such a blowhard about his business, but I know for sure that there isn’t enough real estate changing hands in town to keep him as busy as he claims to be.”

Leveling him with a look, Zoë answered, “Itisan invasion, Tanner, but I would have hired someone too if I’d felt like I could afford it. So, I’m not as mad at you as I probably ought to be. I’ve spoken to Brandon about his so-called business meetings, but he’s always been cagey and super defensive. I’ve even made some inquiries and found out investigators are too expensive for my teacher’s salary. I thought of following him, but he’d have caught onto that in a hurry. So, I just waited for him to make a mistake. And now, apparently, you’ve done the dirty work. Show me what you have, please.”

Tanner unclasped the envelope and pulled out a series of time-stamped photos. They were all taken from far away, and some were clearly blown up details taken from quite a distance. In each one, Brandon was with a woman. Three different locations and three different women. Among them, there was a group of shots of Brandon and a woman standing in the doorway of a house. In one of the photos, they were kissing, and it was not the kind of kiss you’d give a casual friend or relative. It was the full-on groping, “I can’t get enough of you” kind of kiss. Both Brandon’s and the woman’s faces were recognizable in the shots where he’d turned to leave.

Another group showed Brandon checking into a cheap local motel. The most damning of the pictures was shot through the partially opened curtains of a ground floor room. It showed Brandon’s bare butt with his pants pulled down. He was angled so that the shoulder of a woman with long blonde hair was just visible as she knelt in front of him. It was pretty obvious what she was doing, especially since Brandon’s head was thrown back in apparent ecstasy. His face was clearly recognizable in semi-profile.

The last bunch was taken in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly at night. Brandon stood next to a car where the driver’s door was open. He was nuzzling the neck of a woman who stood quite close to him with her hand grasping something between them. It was impossible to see exactly from the angle the shot was taken, but the assumption was that she had his dick in her hand. This suspicion was solidified when the next shot showed him turning away and tucking himself back into his pants. Classy!

“I bet each of the timestamps are from days he claimed to be closing a deal,” Zoë mused dispassionately. “What a scumbag. Thank you, Tanner. May I have these?”

“They’re all yours, Zoë. What will you do now?” He was too afraid to hope this gave him a chance with her.

Slipping the photos back into the envelope, she thought for a moment. “Well, first of all, I’m going to get rid of all of the crap he’s strewn all over my house. Then I’ll get the locks changed because I stupidly gave him a key. Then I guess I’ll have to confront him again, only this time with proof.”

Itching to run his fingers through her hair, Tanner asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Her eyes flashed at him, and she blurted out, “I think you’ve done plenty already.”

“Only because I didn’t want you marrying that cheater. You know your happiness is very important to me, Zoë.”

She looked down and admitted softly, “I wasn’t going to marry him.”

Jolting back a tiny bit, Tanner asked, “Then what were you doing with him for so long? Why waste your time on someone like that? I don’t get it.”

Zoë hung her head and said softly, “He was so nice and attentive at first. It was as if I could do no wrong. My ego had taken some pretty big hits, and I needed it.” She raised her face and looked him in the eyes for a second, letting that sink in. “But I could never make myself fall in love with him. He just never felt right. Still, it was nice to get out and have someone to do things with. The more he asked to move in, or have me move in with him, the more I pulled back. And then he asked me to marry him, and I told him I wasn’t ready. That’s when he started showing up late, and sometimes, he’d smell faintly of perfume or he’d be too tired to… you know…”

“Please,” Tanner put up a warning hand, “don’t go into details for me. I get it.”

“It wasn’t often at first. And it was just a feeling I got, but in the past few months, it’s become more of a pattern. I actually asked him about it just a few days ago, and he got really angry with me. He promised me he loved me more than anything, and he’d never, ever do such a thing.”

Tanner waited to see if the tears would come, but Zoë either wouldn’t cry in front of him or she truly was resigned to a life without the cheater. He longed to take her hand and offer her his love. It was too soon, even if she was over the jerk—he knew that. Nevertheless, he told her softly, “Zoë, you are the most perfect woman I’ve ever met. I want to be something more to you than an old friend or an ex. I won’t pressure you, but please… I would so much love to have a second chance with you.”

Looking at her hands resting in her lap on top of the envelope, she chewed her lip for a moment. Finally, she looked up and told him, “I’ll think about it.”

Letting out a relieved breath, Tanner said, “Alright. That’s more than I could hope for. I know I hurt you, Zoë, and I’d love to spend the rest of my life proving to you that I’ll never do it again. I’m not an eighteen-year-old who’s full of himself anymore.” He finally reached for her hand and clasped it.

Zoë snorted, “No, you’re a twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine-year-old who’s full of himself. I know about all of your political ambitions, Tanner. Your sister’s my best friend, remember?” She looked at her hand in his. “Frankly, that’s another thing to come to grips with. I’m not sure I’m cut out for a life in politics.”

A wide grin split Tanner’s face. “Well, it’s good to know you’ve at least thought about me and what kind of a future we could have together.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Tanner. I said I’dthinkabout it. That’s all.” She pulled her hand loose. “I better go. There are some things I need to do.”

When a woman says she has “things to do,” men better pay attention, Tanner knew. But he had no idea the lengths Zoë would go to.

The next morning, he was out of cereal so he decided to make quick a run to the Piggly Wiggly for a carton of eggs and some cream for his coffee. Even though it was early, there was a crowd of people standing in the parking lot talking animatedly and laughing their heads off. Each of them had a shopping cart they were staring at and guffawing about. Tanner couldn’t stand the suspense, so he exited his car quickly and approached the crowd.

Noticing Tanner’s approach, one of the men who served on the town council hollered, “Mayor Lassiter! You’ve got to see this!” He turned his shopping cart around so that the small poster inside was visible to Tanner. “He’s definitely ‘getting the job done’ here,” the councilman snorted.

Where the annoying, grinning photo of Brandon had been, now the photo of him with his pants down and his bare butt showing had been glued over the top.

My God, I love that woman.

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