Page 3 of Bad Husband

If she is, I want season tickets in the settlement so I can heckle his wife-stealing ass.

Once I’m in the parking lot, I park my work truck next to a Mercedes and a Lexus. I weave through the cars like a man on a mission, papers in hand. Fuck yeah, I’m on a mission.

I yank the large glass door open, my calloused hardworking hands probably the only ones to pull open these doors. Maybe not the greatest entrance, but forgive me here because the moment I’m through the door and standing in the marble entryway that greets these pretentious bitches who come here, I slam the papers on the counter. “Where the fuck is Madison Cooper?”

Too harsh?

Maybe so.

The young girl behind the counter jumps at the sound of my voice. “She’s with a client,sir.”

Sir? Who calls people sir these days? Right. She’s like fourteen. Everyone over the age of eighteen is probably a sir in her world.

I lean into the counter and make eye contact with her. I can be intimating when I need to be, which is 85 percent of the time. I do run my own construction company and have four employees. I need to be intimating from time to time.

“You tell Madison, herhusbandis looking for her and she’d better call him the minute she’s done or else I will be back here, waiting for her.”

The cheerleader behind the counter gasps at me, unsure if I’m serious, or just mentally unstable. A little of both today. “I uh….” Her cheeks heat crimson, eyes darting from my mouth to my eyes and the little bit of dark scruff on my jaw. She’s checking me out?

I’m attractive. I know I am. I lift weights, I run, I take care of myself. That’s not me being conceited. That’s me being confident. There’s a difference between confident and conceited. How you ask? That’s like saying you’ve got a big dick when you’ve actually got something your fist can’t even handle. Then you compensate by driving a lifted Chevy with balls hanging from your tailgate.

What’s confident?

Snagging a chick like Madison when in reality, she’s so far out of your league you’d need binoculars to see the playing field. Confidence is the key here.

“I’ll tell her you stopped by,” the girl finally says after clearing her throat.

Knocking my knuckles against the granite counter, I wait for her eyes to meet mine again. “You do that,honey. Andifshe doesn’t call me, like she’s supposed to, I’m coming back here and asking for you…” My eyes drift to her name tag. “Penelope.”

Was that too much? The look on her face says it might be. It’s something similar to the look girls give their fathers when they know they’re in trouble. And I’m giving her one that’s similar to the one a father might use when said daughter tells him she’ll be out past her curfew and dating a guy named Tool who drives a black van with blacked-out windows.

We break eye contact as I slide the papers back off the counter and I turn to walk out.

Once I’m in the truck, I have no idea what to do next aside from call my lawyer and see if this is a joke. Maybe it’s not real?

Glancing to my right, I look at the date wondering if it’s an April Fool’s bullshit.

February 24th.

Nope. Not a joke.

Did I forget Valentine’s Day? Pulling at my hair, I rack my brain for what we did on Valentine’s Day… oh right, we went out to dinner at that steak house she loves. See, we celebrated it. Okay, so we had to go out three days later because I was stuck in Denver on a job. Maybe knock me down a point for that one. She was pretty pissed.

And her birthday… it’s a week before Valentine’s Day. I worked my ass off and bought her those diamond earrings she wanted.

See? No selfless prick here. I treat her good. I may not have a lot of time, but still, I do what I can in between working fourteen hour days. Running your own business isn’t easy, and when you don’t want to partner with a bigger company, you do what you can. I want the quality of Cooper Custom Homes to remain custom and not this commercialized bullshit you run into with these mass housing markets.

Back to my point. This Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Oh God, I can’t think about it anymore. It’s making me nauseous.

Dialing up Frank’s number, he answers on about the third ring. “Hey, bro, what’s up?”

He’s not formal with me. Clearly. Mostly because we’re friends outside of his lawyering duties. “What’s a petition for dissolution of marriage?”

He thinks about it. I can almost picture him running his hand over his jaw or tapping his black pen obsessively against his rosewood Gran Palais desk. “It’s a petition for divorce. Why?”

“Madison filed for divorce. I was served this morning.”

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