Page 55 of Soft Tissue Damage
“Isn’t this cozy? Just you and Cullan.” Her smile widens. It’s not a nice smile. “Are you having fun playing house with my daughter?”
Cullan follows her with an expression like thunder. He moves around his ex and stands protectively in front of me. “Rebecca. If you’re not here to discuss our children, get out.”
Rebecca puts her smoothie down with a sharp thump. “Of course I’m here to discuss our children. Leon’s distraught.”
I feel my eyebrows creep up my forehead. Distraught? That doesn’t sound like Leon.
Cullan points at the door. “Then go to the living room and we’ll talk.”
She glowers at him for a moment, and then marches away.
Cullan shoots me an apologetic look. His jaw is tight with anger as he follows her.
I start to tidy up the kitchen, but I stop dead when I hear what Rebecca is saying.
“Leon’s told me all about how the girl who dumped him has got a sad little crush on you. Don’t tell me you actuallylikeit, Cullan.”
“You will not speak about Elena.”
“Oh no, I’m disrespecting Elena,” she says, her words heavy with irony.
“That’s enough,” Cullan says sharply. “Our son has already treated her with cruelty and disdain. She doesn’t need to hear it from his mother as well.”
“Youdolike it that she’s simpering over you. What is she, twenty? You’re forty-one, Cullan. Don’t be pathetic.”
Cullan sighs, and I can picture him rubbing his brow with his fingertips. “You can say what you like about me. Get it out of your system. But don’t drag other people into our fights.”
I clench my fists. It’s generous of him to let his ex say whatever she likes about him, but he shouldn’t let her get away with it. He should tell her she’s out of line for calling him pathetic.
“Oh, I’ll say what I like all right,” she snaps.
“I’d rather discuss our son, seeing as that’s why you’re here.”
“No, no. You invited me to get things out of my system. How’s this for starters?”
I flinch as a diatribe of vitriol pours from Rebecca’s lips about him, their divorce, and his shortcomings as a man. She calls him boring, and complains they never had any fun together. There’s stony silence from Cullan as she rages on. My chest feels tighter and tighter. How dare she lash out at him like this? To accuse him of being boring because he cares about raising good and happy children turns my stomach. It’s not right. Howdareshe.
I glare at her smoothie on the counter. I want to dump it in the sink, or better yet, throw it in her face.
The cupboard next to the mugs is open, and my eyes drift to a box markedlaxatives. These must be the drugs that were prescribed to Leon a few weeks back when a combination of bad diet, dehydration, and exam stress had him clutching his stomach and rolling around in pain. He didn’t go into detail about what the drugs did to him, but he compared it to the eruption of Vesuvius.
Rebecca’s smoothie is unprotected on the counter.
She’s still cutting loose at Cullan.
I reach for the laxatives, quietly take out a spoon and a plate, and pop the plastic top off Rebecca’s smoothie.
Two minutes later, I’m in the laundry room, innocently unloading the washer and putting wet things in the drier.
“Are you done?” I eventually hear Cullan say from theliving room.
“Nothing to say? You’re just going to roll over and take it like a beaten dog?”
“You’re angry that you signed over sole custody of Rosie. You can rant and scream, Rebecca. Throw your tantrum, but it’s too late to take back those papers you signed. I have final say in who cares for Rosie, and Elena is her nanny. It’s no longer my job to deal with your drama and your hangovers.”
Rebecca gives an angry scoff. “I don’t… I’m not… Fuck you, Cullan!”
She marches back into the kitchen and snatches her smoothie off the counter. She glares at me through the laundry room door, and then rounds on Cullan, who’s leaning on the marble kitchen counter. “I hope whoever you marry next is as boring as you are. She’ll need to be to put up with you.”
