Page 42 of Happy Is On Hiatus
He sighed. “What am I supposed to do? Eat alone?”
“Or die alone, we’re not picky,” Sharae snapped.
“I don’t care what you do,” Rita said while Nate frowned over her shoulder at her cousins.
“Don’t perform for them, Rita. You know we’re better together. Our lives are together, not apart. We can work this out.”
She was shaking her head before he finished that last ridiculous sentence.
“Oh, I see,” he continued. “The Three Stooges strike again.”
He’d always called them that whenever they got together to push back on something somebody said or did. It wasn’t often that he was their target because Rita had claimed any personal issues with her husband off-limits between her and her cousins. As close as they were, whatever Rita chose to share with them, it was with the caveat that they never go back to him and repeat it or interfere in any way. She hadn’t really had to say all that to them; they were blood, they knew how to be there without noticeably being there.
“Only because the asshole is determined to show just how shitty he can be,” was Jemel’s quick retort.
“We’re done,” Rita said, raising her voice and then immediately regretting it. “The marriage is over, and we’ll work out all the other details. You can return to your date. We’re leaving.” She turned away from him then because she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
Not after all the years she’d given him, all the intimacy they’d shared. He’d been her first and her only and now ... fuck him! The words seemed so loud in her mind that she trembled but kept on walking.
Chapter 17
ACT LIKE A LADY, AND KEEP A BLADE ON HAND.
“What the hell are you doing?” Rita yelled as Jemel walked through the hotel parking lot.
“Looking for his car. What do you think I’m doing?”
“Why are you looking for his car?” Rita was so confused. After the scene that had just played out with Nate and Sharae holding some strange man’s dick in her hand a little while before that, combined with the mojitos, her mind was shot.
“So I can tear that shit up!”
Rita stopped, but Jemel kept right on walking.
“That bastard’s fanatical about his car,” Jemel said as she walked. “Whichever one he’s driving at the time. He flaunts every vehicle he leases, just like he flaunts his business, his house, that big-ass gold pinkie ring he wears like he’s part of the Black mafia.” She stumbled and then leaned over to look closer at a car.
Shaking her head, Rita tried to clear it. She hoped when she stopped, all this would’ve been a very bad dream. Including the phone call that had started all this drama.
“Can you believe he actually stood there telling Rita they could work out their marriage when he had another woman sitting not evena few yards away waiting for his return.” Jemel was yelling at Sharae now, and Rita turned to see where she was.
She’d just come to stand next to Rita and was staring ahead at Jemel as well.
“He’s so fuckin’ foul!” Jemel yelled. “But that’s okay. My petty-o-meter is on full blast tonight!”
“Went straight back in there to that child like it wasn’t nothing, the flat-foot bastard!” Sharae added and put an arm around Rita’s shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rita said. And it didn’t. She’d never let anything Nate said or did matter to her again.
Jemel continued moving, looking over her shoulder once to see if they were with her.
“If you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do, I’m out,” Sharae yelled to her from their distance of about seven or eight cars away. “I share your fury, but I’m a cop, remember?”
“Noooooooooo.” Rita gasped after exaggerating that word in what definitely sounded like a tipsy accent.
Gracious, she hoped she wasn’t drunk. But Jemel probably was, and if she was thinking of doing what Rita suspected Sharae thought she was gonna do, then they were all in a world of trouble. She left Sharae’s side and started toward Jemel because she couldn’t let this happen.
“Well, yeah,” Jemel said as her legs wobbled and she reached into her purse. “You turn around and close your eyes. You can’t stop what you don’t see,” she said to Sharae.
“You can’t do this, Jem.” Rita was up on her now, tugging at her arm so hard, Jemel’s hand popped out of her purse.
