DAIR (2 page)

I did trust him on that.
 
Ironically, I’d come to trust him about a good number of things.
 

Turner had turned out to be a good friend to me, and he was always a great distraction, but as soon as I was alone again, I went back to obsessing about Iris.

How could you be in love with a person you didn’t really know?
 
Someone that had fed you nothing but lies?
 

Someone you knew with certainty you couldn’t trust?
 

I was of two minds on the subject, one telling me you couldn’t, or at the very least, that it was an idiotic thing to do.
 

The other was unmindful of logic, uncaring of consequences, so long as I could have the thing I needed.
 

The woman I needed.
 

And this train of thought was beyond useless, because in the end, everything was out of my control, including my own heart.
 

CHAPTER TWO

FIVE WEEKS LATER

I was just getting home from the gym when I got an unexpected call from the photographer, Lourdes.
 
I didn’t have anything scheduled with her, so I knew it was a social call.
 

We chatted amiably for a bit, and I found myself asking her out for a cup of coffee the next day.
 
The question just sort of came out, and she accepted, her tone warm and friendly.
 

After I hung up, I wondered what the hell was wrong with me.
 

But I didn’t cancel, and I found myself meeting her the next afternoon.

We talked for hours.

We had so much in common.
 
On paper, we’d be perfect together.
 

Also, she was a knockout in every sense of the word.
 
Just stunning.
   

She had natural, tan golden skin and dark, mysterious eyes that were alluring and exotic.
 
I remembered her mentioning something to me a while back about being half Spanish, half French, and she favored the former, looks-wise.

She had a slight accent that I couldn’t quite place, and that she said was mixed, because she’d done so much traveling and living abroad.
 
It gave everything she said a sultry vibe.
 

She was a year older than I was, but her face was unlined.
 
She was one of those ageless women that drove other women
crazy
.

Needless to say, Tammy had always hated when I did photo shoots with her.

She wore a white sundress with a wide collar and flirty hem that showed off her tan cleavage and legs to perfection.
 

She was a gym devotee, like myself, and it showed in every lithe, toned inch of her.
 
She didn’t overdo it, though, managing to keep her feminine curves, along with the muscles.
 

We even used the same gym, though she went at night, and I preferred the morning.
 
We talked about working out together sometime, but both of us knew that if we did, it wouldn’t be a regular occurrence.
 

You didn’t mess with someone’s workout schedule.
 

The very idea was sacrilege, we joked.
   

I’d been a developing a real, honest to God adult crush on her before Iris had come along and scrambled all sense out of my brain.
 

Now I found that, no matter how good Lourdes and I were on paper, I just couldn’t see myself getting romantically involved with
anyone
any time in the near future.
 

Regardless of the absence of its desire, my heart was already involved elsewhere.

“How are your boys?” I asked her.
 

She had two sons, the oldest twenty, the youngest eighteen.
 
They were her pride and joy, and she smiled fondly at the question.
 

“Very good, in general.
 
Both are attending UNLV, though my youngest, Gustave, isn’t sure what he wants to study.
 
That’s normal, though, right, for a freshman?”
 

I wasn’t the one to ask about that, as I’d known that I wanted to be an author since I was six years old, but I figured she wanted a general answer, as opposed to a specific one.
 
“Completely normal, I’m sure.
 
Are they talking to their dad yet?”
 

She’d shared with me before that her sons hadn’t spoken to their father since she’d separated from him, well over a year ago.

She bit her lip and shook her head.
 
“No.
 
They’re holding firm.
 
Both of them swear they never want to see him again.
 
I’m not sure what to do about it.
 
I can’t stand my ex-husband, but I’ve never spoken a bad word about him to
them
.
 
Not one harsh word.
 
In fact, they only heard why we were getting divorced because of
him
, and he told them about it because he was trying to turn them against me.
 
My oldest, Rafael, beat the
shit
out of him for it.”
   

I blinked.
 
This was the first time I’d heard about that part of it.
 
I knew her ex had cheated on her, knew we had that in common, but she’d never given me specifics.
 
“Why would he use
him
cheating as a way to turn them against
you
?”
 

She flushed, suddenly looking extremely uncomfortable.
 
“I don’t want to tell you.
 
You’ll think I’m a psycho.”
 

Of course that had me twice as intrigued.
 
“Well, now you
have
to tell me.”
 

“Promise you won’t judge me?” she asked, chewing on her lush lower lip.
 

“Promise.
 
I told you about my ex-wife deep throating her new fiancé in my entryway story, so it’s only fair.”
 

She grimaced.
 
“That’s true.
 
But you didn’t go crazy on her when you saw it, right?”
 

“I didn’t.
 
I left for a few days, then came back, kicked her out of my house, and filed for divorce.”

“That’s a perfectly reasonable response.
 
Mine wasn’t that.
 
Not even close.”
 

She paused, and I just kept watching her expectantly.
 

“Well, first I should mention that it was Valentine’s Day when I caught him.”
 

“What an ass,” I put in.

“Yes.
 
What an ass.
 
He butt dialed me on Valentine’s Day, right as he happened to be screwing my
ex
-best friend.
 
I heard it all, recognized his voice and hers, calling each other by name, caught all of the noises.
 
Everything.
 
Sadly, it was a very good connection.”

“Wow,” I mouthed.

“Yeah.
 
Wow.
 
So he comes home, a bit later, acting like nothing happened, like he’d done it a hundred times, which I’m sure he had.
 
He came into the house and went straight to the shower, which, after I thought about it, he’d done a lot over the years.”
 

I grimaced, wondering how many times Tammy must have cheated on me before I had a clue.
 

“So I grabbed the
Fabuloso
and sprayed it all over the smooth marble of the bathroom floor.”
 

I bit my lips to keep from smiling.
 

She nodded, seeing that I knew where this was going.
 
“Yes.
 
He stepped out of the shower and went
flying
, cracked his head on the counter, and ended up on his ass on the floor, naked.
 
That’s when I took a belt to him, buckle first.”
 

She nodded again when she saw my eyes widen.
 
“Yes, I know.
 
Psycho move.
 
I beat the shit out of him, then kicked him out of my house, naked.
 
At least neither of the boys were around, so they didn’t know until
he
told them.”

I started laughing.

“And then your oldest beat him up.”
 

“Yeah.
 
Took him to town.
 
Got his ass kicked twice, once by a girl, the other by his own son, and then I divorced him.
 
You think I’m psycho now, don’t you?”
 

I managed to stop laughing, but couldn’t keep the smile off my face.
 
I didn’t think she was psycho, not even remotely.
 
In fact, I thought it was pretty awesome.
 
“No.
 
I think you’re a hero to women everywhere.
 
Any man that does that to the mother of his children should have much worse done to him.
 
There should be consequences to breaking those kinds of promises.”

“I agree.
 
And so do my sons, apparently.
 
Though they were never close to him.
 
He wasn’t exactly an attentive father.
 
He missed every school function, every one of their games, but managed to never miss a football game on TV.
 
I exhausted myself trying to get him to take in an interest in our boys, but he just wasn’t that kind of a father.
 
I think that makes it easier for them to close him out so completely.”
 

“Maybe they just need more time.”
 

“That’s what I’m hoping, though they’re both grown men now, so I have no say in it.
 
That’s something they have to decide for themselves.
 
My ex calls me every few weeks, bitching that I’m putting them up to it.
 
What am I supposed to do?
 
They’re stubborn.
 
They make up their minds and it’s not something I can change.”
 

“I think it’s good that they’re that appalled by his behavior.
 
I think it means you raised good young men.
 
Principled men.
 
Why should they forgive the man who did that to their mother?”
 

“Because he’s their father.”
 

I shrugged.
 
“That’s his fight.
 
You just keep being the mother you need to be, and let them fight their own battles.”
 

“That’s a good way to look at it.
 
I need to block my ex-husband’s number.”
 

“I did that with Tammy.
 
Then she started showing up at my house.”
 

“She still do that?”

“Not for a while, thank God.”
 

“Well, that’s progress, at least.
 
Gives me some hope for my own situation.”
 

We really had so much in common.
 
It was a pity I was so obsessed with Iris that I couldn’t see or even think straight.

When we were finished, I walked her to her car.
 
It was a silver Tesla (See what I mean?
 
So much in common!)
 

She hugged me lightly, one brief press of our bodies, and kissed me on both cheeks.
 
We said a friendly goodbye, and I casually mentioned calling her later.
 

I watched her drive away.
 

My brows drew together as I noticed a dark sedan filing in behind her.
 
The windows were darkly tinted (illegally so) but I could swear I made out the shape of a big man with blond hair behind the wheel.
 

I was well aware of my overactive writer’s imagination, so I quickly shook off the thought.
 

It simply made no sense.
 

I sat in my car for a good long while afterwards and tried to analyze what I was feeling.

Disappointment.
 

But why?
 
What had I expected?

The answer didn’t come easy, and when it did, I felt like even more of a fool.
 

I’d expected to see
her
.
 
To see Iris.
 
In some corner of my mind, I’d done the whole thing in some hope that going out with another woman would draw her out, if she
were
anywhere to be drawn.

Basically, I’d spent the afternoon setting myself up for a letdown and dragging someone else along for the ride.
     

CHAPTER THREE

I pulled back into my drive with a sense of relief.
 
I’d only been gone a week, but a week with my parents over the holidays was more than I wanted to deal with.
 

A week of pretending I was okay, that everything was normal, that it was the divorce that had me acting like a robot; asocial, going through the motions, quiet and stuck in my own head unless directly addressed.
 

But of course it wasn’t the divorce.
 
I hardly thought of that anymore.
 

It was Iris.
 
Or rather, the lack of Iris.
 

My parents had fallen back on protocol, making polite small talk.
 
They were civilized and well-bred to a fault.
 
They may have been worried, but they’d never pry.
 
Even as a child, they’d always given me my space, to a fault, sometimes.

It worked out for the best.
 
There was nothing I wanted to talk to them about.