Page 98 of Nailing Heat
I nod and tear out of my office. My trip over to the diner will be longer than hers.
I check my messages from August; nothing yet. Thankfully, he’s letting me stay with him and he went to pick up my belongings. I wanted to do it, buthefelt that it would be best if I wasn’t there to see her. He’s probably right, but it doesn’t erase my need to see her and talk to her.
But that will come in time. First, I need to talk to Elise.
I make it to the diner and find that she’s sitting in a booth in the back. There’s a cup of coffee in front of her and a menu off to the side. I join her and watch as she lifts a perfectly manicured hand and waves down the waitress.
“My husband is here, please bring him some coffee too,” she tells the waitress who answered her call.
“Husband?” I question her.
She shakes her head. “Sorry, it’s a habit and technically truesince these haven’t been filed.” She pats her bag that must house the papers beside her in the booth.
I nod. “Might want to try and break that habit so that you can move on with your life, Elise. You do deserve to be happy.”
“Yeah, I suppose I do. I never figured that you would make yourself happy so quickly.” She leans back in the booth, appraising me for a moment before asking, “Did our marriage mean anything to you? I mean you slept with god knows how many women while we were married and then you move here and meet the soccer player so quickly.”
“Yes, our marriage meant a lot to me in the beginning, Elise. It really did. But you and I started living separate lives and we weren’t us anymore,” I tell her.
“We did, and I know that. You didn’t want to be that husband that attends charity events with his wife. Going home every night to a wife that didn’t work; attended charity lunches, served on committees and played golf at the club,” she admits.
“I didn’t. No, I didn’t. You were such an accomplished student. You graduated with honors, I just couldn’t reconcile how someone that driven would want to sit at home, go to lunch and have tea. I thought you would have wanted more than that,” I explain.
“So, you cheated because I wasn’t driven enough?” she asks, shaking her head.
“No, that’s not why. Our lives, weren’t what I thought they were going to be. I could tell that you were resenting me for spending so much time at work. Or hanging out with the people I worked with. The truth is, I was doing it to avoid being at home with you. Because when I was there, it seemed like I was your whole life. There was no space, nothing else. You and I would go to dinners, benefits and all these other events where I had to dress up in the monkey suit. I didn’t want that. And I honestly had no idea how we got there.”
“Me neither. I guess we weren’t the best at communicating with one another, huh?” she asks.
“Well, I remember you tried. You really tried, but I got angry and shut you down.” The waitress delivers my coffee, so I take a breath until I’m sure she’s cleared out. “That was the beginning of the end. I wouldn’t listen to you or talk to you about how I was feeling. I felt trapped in a relationship, sure, but I never tried to fix that with you. And that’s on me.”
“Wow. I never thought I would ever hear you admit to that. I didn’t exactly help either, though. You never knew that I hadn’t intended to work,” she admits. “Well, at least not right away, I pushed so hard all throughout my schooling that I wanted a break. We had my trust fund, and I saw that as an opportunity to relax and breathe for a bit.”
I nod. “And I never talked to you without fighting about it. So how could you explain anything to me? Why would you want to, if you knew that it was going to immediately turn into a fight?”
“That’s true. And then by the time I was ready to start going back to work, into our second year of marriage, I figured out that you were cheating on me. I decided if you were going to cheat on me then I was going to stop working and piss you off further.”
“And it did, trust me, it did,” I say laughing. “But by that time, I was chasing that high and acceptance that I found when I was inside someone else.” I see her grimace at my choice of phrasing. “Sorry, that was rude of me to put it like that.”
“No, I’m a big girl. Say it however you want. Besides, it’s not like it matters anymore.”
“It still does to me because I never gave you a proper apology for everything. That night that we called it quits, and I went to stay at work, I never said I was sorry,” I remind her.
It’s Elise’s turn to laugh at me. “No, you sure didn’t. I think your words were, ‘Oh, so now you know that I’ve been sleeping around. Guess we’re getting a divorce.’ I thought that was the funniest way to say it, but I agreed with you that we were, andyou left that night.” She shrugs her shoulders and adds, “You know, I never even really cried after we agreed to divorce. I mean, I cried like a baby when I found out that you were cheating those first few times, that was enough to kill me. Then I cried. But not over the divorce and I think that’s because our marriage was already ending.”
I nod, “It sure was. How did you figure it out? How did you know I was cheating on you all those years?”
She watches me for a beat. “You’re not going to like this.”
“I don’t care. Just tell me.” I take a sip of my coffee and look around at the other patrons in the diner. No one else appears to be having a heartfelt conversation with their ex-wife. They are all sitting there eating, enjoying the good food and conversation.
“I had you followed at first, when I had suspicions. A private investigator was able to give me some intel. And then Drake, your assistant, apparently knew all about your extra-curricular activities. He was pissed because he went for the same job as you. You got it, right out of PA school and he didn’t. Even though he worked there for so long. So, he was more than happy to tell me everything.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, he may have been. But he was useful to me, letting me know that I wasn’t going crazy, that you really were cheating.” She bites her lip and then continues. “If it helps, I didn’t feel good about it. I wanted enough evidence so that I had peace of mind.”
“Peace of mind in knowing that I was cheating on you?” I scoff.
