“Wait. Please, Mark, we can talk about this.”
“Talk about what, Hayley?”
“He meant nothing.”
“But you still wanted his cock inside you. Suggests to me he meant something, or my wife is a whore.” She raised her hand at that, ready to slap me. I smiled at her. “Add a domestic violence charge, Hayley. That’ll work in your favour.”
I turned and slid behind the wheel of my ute. She came to the passenger door but I made sure that was locked before I reversed out of the parking space. She came around to the driver’s window. I lowered it enough. “Please,” she said, crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks, “Please talk to me about this.”
“You’ve just thrown away nearly a decade for what, Hayley?” I held up a hand. “Nothing you can ever say will justify it. I guess I just have ‘schmuck’ written across my forehead. Find your own way home. You’re no longer my problem.”
I drove in the direction of our apartment before turning off and driving to the home of my best mate, Chris. Knocking on his door, he opened it and took one look at me. “What the fuck’s happened?”
I didn’t reply until I was on his couch, sipping at a beer. “Finished work early so thought I’d surprise the wife at university. Maybe take her out for coffee, spend the afternoon together, then have dinner and drinks.” I shook my head. “Walked into one of the offices there to find her…” I shuddered as the images still made me want to throw up.
“With another guy?” I nodded. “Er, who?”
“One of her professors. Guy must have been at least fifty years old.”
“Damn…”
“Yeah, don’t exactly feel great about myself right now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I won’t be staying with her, that’s for damned sure. She was the first and only, Chris. Thought that meant something to her too. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned or something, I don’t know. All I’m left wondering is if this was the first time, or if she’d done it before and I’ve just never noticed.” I finished the beer and shook my head again. “I honestly never thought she’d ever be capable of tearing my heart out, Chris. Sixteen! We were sixteen when we first started dating. Fuck, I knew within a couple of weeks I loved her to bits, and life just got better and better every year. What I’ve learned is that it was all a delusion.”
“Want to stay here tonight, mate?”
“Yeah, please. But I don’t want to impose.”
“Cathy won’t mind, mate. Not once you tell her what happened.”
Once I told Cathy what happened, she insisted I could stay as long as I wanted while she got on the phone to my wife to give her a piece of her mind, considering Chris and I had been mates since we were in primary school, as had Cathy and Hayley. Hearing the former absolutely let rip was something. I’d never seen nor heard her so angry.
Hayley showed up at the door later that night. Chris wasn’t in the mood to speak to her, but it gave Cathy ample opportunity to give her forthright opinion. It’s why Chris loved her.
“Why don’t you go slut it up somewhere else?” Cathy shouted at her.
“It didn’t mean anything. It was just…”
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