“Pardon me?” I reply, my smile still firmly in place even though I want to slam the door in her face.
A lady never slams the door on a guest. Even if that guest is well-endowed and wearing a tight tank top showing off entirely too much of those endowments and, as rumor has it, only moved onto Fairytale Lane to snag herself a new husband to pay for a new . . . endowment lift and injections to her already plump red lips.
“I said yo. It’s a greeting. Sort of like hello, or what’s up, asshole. But that last one is just for friends, and we’re not friends, so I figured yo was the safest bet,” she says with a shrug.
“Can I help you with something?” I ask, wanting to end this conversation quickly, before any of the neighbors see this . . . person on my doorstep.
“Glad you asked, Cindy!” she chirps happily, sticking her hand down the front of her shirt and pulling a folded piece of paper out of her cleavage before holding it out to me.
I grimace, taking a step back from the paper she’s thrusting toward me, refusing to touch something that has been burrowed down in between the assets she has on display for God and the entire neighborhood to see.
“My name is Cynthia, not Cindy,” I inform her, still refusing to take the paper from her hands.
“Whatever,” she mutters with a roll of her eyes, not unlike Anastasia moments ago. “And my name is Ariel, not homewrecker or redheaded harlot. I know all you busybodies on this street have nothing better to do with your time than gossip about me ever since I moved in, and this is just going to add fuel to the fire, but I don’t give a shit.”
I wince at her crass language, and my eyes widen in shock when she moves closer to me in the doorway, unfolding the paper in her hands as she gets right up into my personal space.
I have no choice but to grab on to the paper when she rudely smacks it against my chest.
“What in the world . . . ,” I mumble in a shocked voice, pulling the paper away from my chest as I stare at the woman standing in front of me.
“That’s a doctor bill, Cindy. Tell that lying, scum-sucking piece of donkey dick you call a husband he owes me two hundred and forty-five dollars for the test, seventy-five dollars for the prescription, and if he can contort his body enough, I’d really like him to go fuck himself,” Ariel announces, letting out a huge sigh as she backs away from me, turns her face up to the sky, closes her eyes, and smiles. “Wow, that felt good. Better than I thought it would. I’ve been burning incense for a week, did three juice cleanses, and attended seven hot yoga classes, and nothing felt better than getting that off my chest. Thanks, Cindy. You’re a peach.”
With that, Ariel turns and starts walking down the steps, leaving me in the doorway with my mouth dropped open, wondering what in the devil just happened.
Shaking myself out of my stupor, I race out of the doorway and down the steps after her.
“Excuse me! Could you please explain to me what exactly you’re talking about and what my husband has to do with this?” I shout after her, my feet stuttering to a stop when I see a woman walking down the sidewalk glance in our direction. The beep of a car being locked forces my gaze away from her, noticing a man I’ve never seen in this neighborhood before. He’s standing in the middle of the street next to a black truck with his key fob in his hand, staring right at me. His piercing blue eyes make goosebumps break out on my arms, and I almost forget why I’m standing in the middle of my front yard until I notice a smirk on his face. That smirk is what stops me from appreciating anything about the dimple I can see in his cheek, or how nicely he can fill out a pair of black slacks and a white button-down.
I can’t believe I just shouted across my front lawn like an unrefined woman with no manners.
Turning my head away from the rude man who still continues looking across the street at me, I push him out of my thoughts before I start doing the math on how long it’s been since a man looked at me like that—slightly amused and wondering what I might look like without my clothes on. Giving the woman walking by, who I don’t recognize, a shaky wave and a smile as she drops her head back down to the book she’s holding in her hands, I continue moving again until I catch up with Ariel.
“Pardon me, but could you please tell me what’s going on?” I ask again, this time in a hushed voice.
Ariel finally stops walking and turns around to face me, pointing at the now-crumpled paper still clutched in my hand.
“It’s all there on the bill, Cindy. Tell Brian thanks for the herpes. I guess what happens on Fairytale Lane doesn’t always stay on Fairytale Lane. Am I right, or am I right?” she laughs, giving me a light punch on the arm.
My body sways to the side and little sparkles of light creep into the edge of my vision. The last thing I see before I crumple to the ground in my front yard are a bunch of weeds right at Ariel’s feet that I know I’ll never be able to afford to get removed. As the blackness takes over, I mentally add find a job and pay for herpes to my to-do list, realizing that THIS must truly be rock bottom.
Chapter 2: I Tripped and Fell on His Penis
“Maybe she had a brain aneurysm. Wait, no. Don’t people die from those?”
“Ruptured brain aneurysms are only fatal in forty percent of cases. But I don’t think it was an aneurysm. Her breathing is fine, and her heartbeat is regular.”
The muffled sound of voices I don’t recognize penetrates my ears and I realize I must have left the television on when I went to bed. I try to shut the noise out and go back to sleep, but it’s no use. They just won’t quiet down.
“You’re like a walking encyclopedia. Tell me another random fact.”
“The average woman uses her height in lipstick every five years.”
“Oh-em-gee! I just want to shove you in my pocket and bring you out at parties!”
Realizing I’m not going to get any sleep anytime soon, I slowly open my eyes, blinking them into focus as I stare up at the bulbs in the chandelier above my head.
Why am I on the ground staring up at the chandelier in the sitting room?
A head suddenly moves over me and into my line of sight, blocking the light. Curtains of long, wavy red hair fall down around my face, and a face that is unfortunately recognizable smiles down at me.
“She’s alive!”
My eyes widen, and I quickly scrambled my arms and legs against the carpet to move out from under her until I can get up on my knees.
“What in tarnation are you doing in my home?!” I ask Ariel angrily as she casually sits with her legs crossed in the middle of my sitting room. Then I notice there’s someone sitting next to her.
A petrified-looking brunette with her legs pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them brings a hand up to her face and uses her index finger to push her black-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of her nose.
“And who are you?! Why are you people in my home?!” I screech, realizing I sound like an insane person, but unable to help it. I just woke up on the floor of my sitting room with the street hussy and a stranger staring at me.
“Calm down, crazy. Isabelle was walking by when you passed out on the lawn, and with the help of a gorgeous knight in shining armor who was standing out in the street, we carted your ass into the house. You should be thanking us,” Ariel explains.
“That man who was standing out on the street was in my house?! You let some strange man touch me?!” I shout, not even caring about decorum right now.
“You act like I roofied you and let him have his way with you,” Ariel complains with a roll of her eyes. “He saw you going down like a ton of bricks and holy shit, I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. He vaulted over a shrub and caught you before you could face plant into the grass. What was I supposed to do? Pull a knife on him and tell him to drop you? He was a perfect gentleman. One who smelled delicious, I might add. He kept insisting we call nine-one-one, but I told him you were fine, just probably knocked up, and we’d take good care of you.”
She laughs at her own joke while I’m
busy trying not to panic that the first encounter I had with a handsome, albeit nosey, man in months happened while I was unconscious.
“You told him I was pregnant? Why would you do something like that?!”
And why do I care if he thinks I’m pregnant? He’s a stranger. Someone I’ll never see again.
“Would you rather I told him you passed out because I just told you your piece of shit ex-husband gave me herpes, which would then lead him to believe you have the herp? Seriously, all of these favors I’m doing for you today, and I don’t even get a thank you,” Ariel grumbles, holding up one of the unfrosted cupcakes from the kitchen, which has a huge bite taken out of it. “Also, these cupcakes taste like horseshit. I think you forgot to add sugar. And flour. And butter. And pretty much everything that goes in a cupcake that brings people joy. You should really think about providing better snacks for guests.”
Leaning forward, I snatch the cupcake out of her hand.
“These are NOT snacks and you are NOT a guest! I did not give you permission to enter my home OR go traipsing around looking for sustenance. And for your information, these are gluten-free cupcakes and they bring plenty of joy to people’s lives,” I argue.
“The fuck you say?” Ariel mutters in confusion.
“Gluten free means it excludes a mixture of proteins found in wheat and related grains, including barley, rye and oat,” the brunette states, pushing her glasses, which slid down her nose again, back up where they belong.
“Isn’t she just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? I want to adopt her,” Ariel chirps, shooting a beaming smile at the woman sitting next to her.
“I’m Isabelle Reading, by the way. I live around the corner. You have a lovely home.”
The woman holds her hand out to me, and having no other choice, since I don’t want to be rude even though she’s a stranger sitting in my home, I shake it.
“Thank you. And thank you for your assistance during my . . . episode. It’s nice to meet you, Isabelle.”
When our hands drop, she looks over at Ariel.
“I think you should apologize and tell her what you did,” Isabelle speaks quietly.
“But it’s so much fun watching her lose her shit. She’s like a bat-shit crazy wind-up toy, just spinning around and around until she smacks into a wall,” Ariel replies.
Isabelle sighs and nods her head in my direction.
“Ugggghh, fine. You’re cute, but you’re a buzz kill,” Ariel complains, rolling her eyes before looking at me. “Your husband didn’t give me herpes. I made the doctor’s bill I gave you in Photoshop and just said that to get a rise out of you. I figured you knew what that lying sack of shit was up to, so you started spreading rumors about me around the neighborhood.”
My mouth drops open in shock before I realize how unladylike I must look and quickly close it.
“So, you didn’t sleep with my husband?” I ask in relief.
“Oh, no. I totally banged him. But in my defense, it was right when I moved here, and we ran into each other at a bar one night. He gave me this sob story about how you two were getting a divorce because you’d been cheating on him. I felt sorry for the guy. I even shared my own problems with that fuckwit over entirely too many glasses of wine. One thing led to another, and I guess I sort of tripped and fell on his penis.”
My heart is beating so fast I’m pretty sure I might be having a heart attack. I can feel my face getting hot, and my scalp tingles with sweat.
“It was only that one time, seven months ago, and it was subpar at best, let me tell you. I don’t know how you put up with that two-pump chump for all these years, but you must be praising the good lord that he skipped town with your babysitter,” Ariel finishes.
I start patting my forehead, trying to remember how to breathe.
Ariel leans forward and grabs the cupcake out of my hand that I didn’t even realize I was using to wipe the sweat from my brow.
“They taste like shit, but look at that! They double as sweat rags!”
“I thought we agreed that you’d tell her gently,” Isabelle says.
“That was gentle! The guy skipped town and hasn’t been seen for six months. She knows he was banging the babysitter. Jesus, everyone knows he was banging the babysitter,” Ariel mutters.
“He didn’t skip town! He’s away on business!” I argue frantically, trying my best to pick up the pieces of my life, which I thought I had a good handle on until they were vomited all over my sitting-room floor.
“He stole money from his own father’s company and most likely fled the country with a woman-child who used to babysit for you.”
Just the mention of Brittany, the twenty-one-year old I’d known since she was thirteen—I first hired her to sit for Anastasia when she was five and Brian and I had to go to a PTA function—makes me feel sick to my stomach. Not to mention the fact that a woman I barely know, whom I didn’t like before I knew she slept with my husband, knows entirely too many intimate details about my life. The life I’ve tried so hard to keep intact, to not let what Brian did mar it in any way.
“Brian didn’t steal money from Castle Creative, that’s just preposterous,” I reply with an indignant huff, crossing my arms in front of me, still trying as hard as I can to stop my life from unraveling.
I refuse to be that girl from the trailer park ever again, and if lying my way through this nightmare is the way to do that, then so be it.
Brian had been the creative director at his parents’ business since he graduated college. Castle Creative is their pride and joy, a company that manufactures custom-made princess beds. As much as I want to pretend Brian would never do something so low and disgusting, I have hundreds of voicemails from my in-laws on my phone stating otherwise. They want to know where he is. They demand that I tell them where the money went. They think I actually knew about him stealing from them for years, and they won’t leave me alone until they get answers.
Get in line.
“Ohhhhh, I get it. You’re in denial, aren’t you? Can we just go ahead and skip to the rage part? I’d really like to help you set fire to his clothes out on the front lawn or something equally therapeutic,” Ariel says.
“Did you know it’s estimated that roughly sixty percent of married individuals will engage in infidelity?” Isabelle says, giving me a sheepish look as she shrugs her shoulders. “Sorry. I read a lot. I tend to spout a bunch of useless facts when I’m nervous.
“I am not in denial, and we’re not burning anything on the front lawn,” I tell Ariel, ignoring Isabelle.
“Babe, it’s fine. Everyone knows.”
I smack Ariel’s hand away when she reaches out to try and pat me on the shoulder.
“No one knows anything, you have no idea what you’re talking about, and don’t call me babe.”
Ariel sighs, pushing herself up from the floor and holding her hand out to Isabelle to help her up.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, but I’m telling you, everyone knows. Walking around pretending like it’s not true and telling people he’s away on business is just stupid. You look stupid. Own it. Hold your head up high. He’s the one who fucked up, not you. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Well, aside from that pile of monstrosities you call cupcakes in the kitchen,” Ariel says with a shake of her head as she moves toward the doorway, Isabelle right on her heels.
“I don’t need advice. Especially from you.”
Ariel pauses, slowly turning around to face me. The sarcastic smirk and joking sparkle in her eyes from moments ago has been replaced with clenched teeth and the cold, hard eyes of anger.
“Of course you don’t. Because your life is so perfect, right? So what if your husband cheated on you. Guys cheat. You aren’t the first woman to get fucked over by a man, and you certainly won’t be the last. Suck it up and quit feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t know anything about real problems, sitting up here in your big fancy house, looking down on people and judging them.”
I
don’t move as I watch them disappear around the corner and into the foyer, Isabelle giving me a small smile and wave as she goes. I hear the front door open and close and I drop my head into my hands, swallowing back my tears.
She’s lying. She has to be lying.
But what if she’s not? What if everyone really does know the truth? They’ll know my life isn’t as perfect as I’ve led everyone to believe. They’ll know Brian not only stole from his parents, but that he took every last cent we’d saved during our marriage, leaving me with absolutely nothing, aside from a small handful of credit cards that are dangerously close to being maxed out after six months of using them to pay bills and put food on the table. Who the heck is she to tell me I don’t know anything about real problems?
I spent the last thirteen years as a wife and a mother, catering to the people I love, doing everything for everyone else without giving a second thought to myself. I have no job, I have no money, and I have no marketable skills aside from organizing PTA bake sales and Halloween street parties.
Getting up from the floor, I smooth my hands down the front of my pale-blue tea dress before retying the apron around my waist, marching into the kitchen with determination.
I’m going to frost the cupcakes that are not monstrosities, organize all of the Halloween decorations, call the neighbors and make sure they remember what food items they agreed to bring when we had our neighborhood meeting last month, and I am going to ignore everything Ariel said. I’m not in denial. I’m doing what I can to hold my life and my daughter’s life together, and that means business as usual. I don’t need some crazy woman who says she slept with my husband giving me bad advice. I am not going to light anything on fire, like a low-class citizen. One hour in Ariel’s presence and I almost let her bad influence rub off on me. It’s bad enough I let some of her promiscuous ways rub off on me by giving more than a second thought to the handsome stranger from the street who carried me in his arms and held me close to that muscular chest of his.
For the love of God, Cynthia, a lady definitely shouldn’t be having these kinds of thoughts about a strange man who isn’t her husband!