Page 10 of Happy Is On Hiatus
“It’s okay.” It really wasn’t—Rita couldn’t stand people disrespecting her time—but she’d wanted to get to the gist of the matter. “I wanted to talk to you about starting divorce proceedings.” The worddivorcestill sounded foreign, and doubt continued to surface. Was she really doing this?
If Sharon was shocked, she didn’t let on. Instead, she’d gone straight into what Rita suspected was her professional lingo. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Are you sure there’s no chance of reconciliation?”
Doubt be damned. The answer to that was a resounding no. Enough was enough. Then the details began. How long had they been married? Too long. Grounds for divorce? Infidelity times four or five, but who was counting? How many children? Alimony or child support? Assets?
Rita had rattled off all the answers like she was a robot, all the while the last piece of her heart that had once belonged to Nate shriveled up and died.
They were scheduled to meet in person on Thursday, when Sharon would have a draft separation agreement. Rita needed to get her own accountant to valuate the car dealerships and the two vacation homes her name was on with Nate’s. She’d have to talk to Necole and Taryn before then. Maybe she’d call them and have them both come over for dinner tomorrow. She could fix crab cakes, fried shrimp, and fresh-cut fries—they both loved that. And then she could tell them that their parents were breaking up because their father was a lying bastard.
The thought had her pulling open the top drawer of the dresser, grabbing everything inside, and then tossing it into a trash bag that was already half-full with his clothes. With each stack she dropped into that bag, she wanted to toss them out the window and burn them too. But she wouldn’t do that to Sharae. Guilt still nagged at her, and she’d texted Sharae twice already trying to find out if she’d gotten her into trouble at work. Sharae’s reply both times had been a curt “Don’t worry about it.”
Rita did have other stuff to worry about. After twenty minutes and six trash bags full of crap, she realized she had awhole lot moreto worry about. One being how she was going to haul these heavy bags downstairs and out to the garage, where she planned to leave them until Nate came home.
A triple beep and then a low buzz sounded as the house alarm gave notification that someone had used a key and an approved code to get in. Necole and Taryn had gone to Ocean City for the weekend and weren’t expected back in Baltimore until late tonight, and even then, they were going to the apartment they shared in the city. She sighed heavily, knowing that only meant one thing—Nate was home.
“Rita! What the hell happened in the driveway? Did your tacky-ass cousin Cedric try to light fireworks again?”
Cedric was her uncle Jimmy’s son, and he had been here last night, but without fireworks because he’d been working double shifts at the warehouse and hadn’t had a chance to drive up to Pennsylvania, where he could buy them cheap. Over the years Nate had developed a decent relationship with most people in her family. He had no real choice, since the Johnsons were always together for one occasion or another, or just church and dinner on Sundays. But Ced and Nate had had a tense relationship for seven years, ever since Ced had set off fireworks in Rita and Nate’s trash cans and sent them soaring through the air to land in Mr.Myerson’s prize rosebushes. Ced had refused to pay the eight-hundred-dollar bill Mr.Myerson had taped on their front door,and Nate had never forgiven him for being what he called “a reckless and cheap-ass idiot.”
Nate yelled her name again, and Rita moved to the bed they’d shared. She reached for the box of trash bags and pulled out another one. There were two more dresser drawers to empty, and then she had more boxes in the closet. Turning away from the bed, she pulled the opening of the bag apart, then stuck one arm deeper inside to spread it open. Walking over to the dresser, she rolled the top of the bag down a couple of inches and set it on the floor next to her. Then she started taking the stuff out of the second drawer from the bottom. That’s what she was doing when Nate walked into the bedroom.
“What the hell are you doing? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
Nate didn’t like being ignored. In fact, thinking back on their life together, she now realized just how much he’d coveted being the center of attention. Whether he was talking about the dealerships, improvements being made to the house, his newest car, or investments, Nate always found a way to bring any conversation back to him. Funny how that had never bothered her before.
Truth be told, it didn’t bother her right now either. Especially since there was a part of her that had planned to never speak another word to this man again. With a heavy sigh, she realized that part must’ve resided in some delusional world, one where Rita had always told herself she’d never venture. She was a realistic woman, a sensible, God-loving woman. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t face—not even the man who’d once held her heart.
“Packing,” she replied without sparing him a glance.
She smelled his cologne—a crisp, woodsy scent that immediately reminded her of the fire that had burned bright at the crack of dawn this morning.
“You’re packing my stuff?” He came closer as he talked, grasping the arm she’d just reached into the drawer for another stack of clothes.
The way Rita’s body instantly tensed and her head moved slowly to turn so that she now stared at him felt like something out of a movie. She’d been feeling that way all day long—like this had to be someone else’s life she was experiencing because there was no way this was how her life was meant to turn out. Nate must’ve finally gotten a clue to her mood when he stared back at her two seconds before hurriedly releasing her arm.
“What’s going on, Rita?”
She took that stack of clothes out of the drawer, leaving it empty now, and dropped it into the trash bag before standing up straight.
“You should live with the woman you got pregnant. A child deserves to have both parents in their household,” she said, her voice much calmer than she felt. “So I’m helping get all your things together. It won’t take much longer, and since you’re here now, you can take them right down to your car and be on your way.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He took another step back away from her when she shot him a quick searing look. The good Lord must’ve been whispering some sense in his ear.
Nate hadn’t grown up in the church like she had, but he was no stranger to the culture, and since day one of meeting Rita’s parents, Nate had been attending NVB every Sunday that he wasn’t out of town. She’d never been sure how much of the Bible teachings he’d taken in, but one thing was for certain—he was going to need all the Holy Spirit’s help if he wanted to get out of this house unscathed.
Not that she was capable of violence. Rita liked to believe she was too levelheaded to resort to such basic actions. But honestly, there’d been a rage brewing in her all day that she didn’t realize the full intensity of until the moment her gaze rested on Nate’s familiar one.
“Your little slut called me this morning to tell me the good news,” she continued and then turned her attention back to the bottom drawer. “Now you could’ve just told me yourself, but that’s fine. It’s over now.”
“Rita,” he began, “listen to me.”
“I can hear you just fine, Nate,” she told him but didn’t stop emptying out that bottom drawer.
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
She’d just dropped another scoop of his socks into the bag when she stood. Grabbing the bottle of cologne from the top of his dresser hadn’t been what she’d planned, but the second her fingers wrapped around it, she turned and hurled it at Nate. He ducked out of the way, and the bottle crashed against the wall, breaking on contact.
“Not what I think?” she yelled, her fingers trembling. “Who even gives that ridiculous excuse anymore?”
