Be Careful What You Wish For (17 page)

Whether it was willful ignorance or the deep need to believe him, I didn’t know, but I stroked his cheek, unable to walk away, and I’m not sure what I said to him, but he knew then that I’d forgiven him and was prepared to start anew.

Chapter Twenty-seven

JUST AS IT had happened in the past, Kage and I settled back into a routine and my doubts faded to the background again.  There might have been little things here and there that set off alarm bells, but I figured it was my overactive imagination not wanting to believe that I deserved happiness.

Yeah…in the pit of my gut, I couldn’t one-hundred percent trust
Kage.  The longer we were together, the more I realized that, even if I was the first and only time Kage had cheated on his wife, he
had
cheated, and I had no assurance that he wouldn’t do it again.

In fact, I could see how it would be easier the next time…especially if you were cheating on the
homewrecker, the bad guy who’d started the whole thing.

Holly, Mark’s on-again/ off-again (mostly off lately) metal girlfriend, the one who’d stripped for
Kage, gave me a half-hearted “sorry” the next time I saw her, but she never actually said what she was sorry for, nor did she reassure me that Kage had had nothing to do with it.  For all the good it had done, she shouldn’t have said anything.

By August, I was…jumpy, for lack of a better word.  I was convinced he was cheating on me.  I had no proof, none whatsoever.  It was just a feeling, but it grew stronger every damn day, and I had no idea how to lose it.  It just grew like a festering wound, its infection spreading, and I was merely looking for proof.

What was funniest was that his divorce had been finalized, so I should have been happy…but I wasn’t.

Still, I tried to be the good girlfriend.  Worrying and stressing out about something that might have been happening but for which I had no proof would only send him running.  I knew that.  I knew I had to chill.  I managed to settle on an idea for my thesis and got it approved by my advisor, so I tried to focus on it. 
Doing so was productive and, I hoped, would keep my mind from worrying about things over which I had no control.

One Saturday morning, I was working on it at the kitchen table. 
Kage was still sleeping, so I thought I could get some writing done on it.  I knew how I was going to organize my thesis but hadn’t done enough research for the last three chapters; that would involve reading more books.  For the time being, however, I knew I had enough to get started on the first part, the part in which I set up my premise for the rest of the oversized essay.

About an hour later,
Kage came in the kitchen and we chatted a little, but he could tell I was distracted.  He knew about the thesis, knew what was involved and how big it would be.  He knew it was the capstone of my master’s degree and that, if I didn’t get it done, I wouldn’t earn the title.  So he kissed me on the temple and slid a chair next to me and didn’t say another word.  He was glancing at my computer, reading the document I was writing in Word, and I wondered what he thought.  I didn’t know if he was familiar with the evolution of the novel in the United States, which was what my thesis focused on, and—even if he was—I wondered if it seemed interesting to him at all.  I couldn’t worry about impressing him, though.  I had my advisor and thesis committee to impress.  They were all that mattered when it came to this project.

I’d been poring through a journal article I’d printed a week earlier, looking for a quote that would underscore what I’d been trying to say in the paragraph I’d typed minutes earlier.  Having failed, I sighed and placed it next to the computer and then decided to get a cup of coffee. I looked over at
Kage and smiled, kissing him on the tip of his nose.  “Want more?” I asked.

“No.  I’m good.”

As I sat down again, fresh cup in hand, Kage pointed to my computer screen.  “What’s that?”  His finger hovered underneath the word
oeuvre
. I’d chosen it for its succinctness—rather than say something about Mark Twain’s entire lifetime of written work, it was easier to say “Twain’s
oeuvre
.”  I told Kage that.  What I didn’t tell him was that I often used words in class or in my academic writing that I would never use in “real life,” words like
oeuvre
,
hegemony
,
empirical
, and the like.  I knew my professors would expect that effort in my thesis as well, and I didn’t plan to disappoint them.

Kage
said, “How do you even
know
a word like that?”

I shrugged and tried to play it down.  “From all the reading I have to do for classes, I guess.”  I could tell something about it was bothering him, so I tried to make a joke out of it.  “You use those words when you want to blend in with stuffy professors.”

He smiled and stood, saying he needed to shower and get busy with his day, but I could tell it didn’t set well with him.  And I didn’t know how to make him feel more at ease without making him more uncomfortable.  He’d never acted like my academic pursuits had bothered him before, and I’d never made a big deal out of it.  I was pursuing a passion, but that didn’t make me think or feel like I was better than anyone else.  I certainly didn’t feel like I was smarter than he was—more educated, maybe, but definitely not smarter.  Still…I could tell from his reaction that he was uncomfortable, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

I suppose, though, that that little episode started the crack in our relationship that ultimately drove him away.  Well, that and what happened next.

One night not long after the thesis incident, Kage was sleeping in my bed next to me.  My room was on the warm side but bearable.  We’d made love an hour before talking for a while, and we had finally stopped chatting ten or fifteen minutes earlier, drifting toward sleepiness.  We’d been discussing his new place.  He hadn’t moved in yet, but he’d rented an apartment on the north side, not too far away, and he had to wait a week for the existing tenant to move out.  We hadn’t discussed the possibility of moving in together, but I could feel it behind our words.  I didn’t plan to invite myself, and part of me felt like the time wasn’t right.

I had started drifting off to sleep, but I wasn’t quite there.  I heard his phone buzz, and he sat up to check it out.  It wasn’t a steady noise, so I was pretty sure it was a text message.  I feigned sleep, wondering what was happening
and why a three AM text had his attention, but I knew I’d have a better chance of finding out if I kept my mouth shut.

He typed a text back to the sender and then set his phone on the bed beside him.  He picked his jeans up off the floor and pulled them up his legs.  He stood then so he could finish putting them on.  I took a chance, lifting one eyelid,
but it was dark.  I could see the glow of his phone as the screen faded back to black, but he wouldn’t be able to tell I was looking.  I could sense that he was in a bit of a hurry.  I wondered why, but I wasn’t going to ask.  I had a bad feeling about it.  I knew if Kage was cheating on me, I’d have a better chance of catching him if he didn’t know I suspected him.  I could follow him and see the woman whose arms he was running to and then either walk away or make a scene.  The mature part of me—the woman pursuing a master’s degree in English—wanted no drama.  That part of me planned to step aside and then lock up my heart for the remainder of my days so I could protect it.  I could ensure this would never happen again.  But the part of me that was still a damaged girl inside wanted to call him out and slap his face in front of God and everybody.  I wanted to make him hurt as badly as he was hurting me.

When he stood, I could feel the spring of the mattress as it let go of his weight.  Its emptiness was heavy and I closed my eyes, trying to hold back the tears that he wouldn’t know I was crying anyway.

As soon as the door to my bedroom was closed, I jumped out of bed and pulled a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out of my dresser drawers.  No underwear because I knew I had no time.  I felt around on the floor for the sandals I’d been wearing earlier and slid my feet into them.  I pulled my purse off the dresser and began fishing for the keys inside while I made my way toward my bedroom door.

Kage
had just closed the door to the outside when I opened the one to my bedroom.  I only knew because I heard the click.  When I reached the door to the outside, I turned the knob, realizing it was locked.  That was what had taken him so long—figuring out how to unlock it and then lock it again before closing it and doing it in the dark.  So, after I unlocked the door, I took my time opening it.

At least he was thoughtful enough to want to keep me and my
roommates safe…like that was any consolation.

Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light
at the edge of the parking lot, I saw him at his truck getting in.  I eased out of the door, deciding that if he spotted me and said something, I’d admit it and ask to see the text that made him jump out of my bed.

Fortunately, my car was closer to my apartment than his truck that was parked
most of the way across the lot.  I jumped in just as he was backing out.  I realized again that he might have seen me, and I didn’t care.  I would keep my distance on the road, but I wasn’t going to be more secretive than that.

Well…my mind battled over that one, because I backed out of my parking space without turning the lights on.  I knew white lights on the tail would have lit up, but he was already out of the parking lot.  I still didn’t turn on the lights when I drove through the lot, and by the time I got to the exit, he was halfway down the road, heading toward the highway.  I didn’t turn on my lights until he rounded the corner.

He was going the speed limit, probably a good idea at this time of night, since traffic was lighter and misbehavior would be easy to spot.  It wasn’t long after he turned onto the freeway, and I did the same.  I maintained my distance, though.  I needed to know where he was going and what he was doing.

In the pit of my gut, I just knew I was going to discover he was being unfaithful.

The tears were gushing like a waterfall, and I barely noticed them.  I was intent on keeping his truck in my sights.  It was hot out and my windows were down, and the wind whipping through the car tried to keep my cheeks dry, but even that couldn’t help.

Soon enough, he took another exit and we were close to downtown Pueblo, but we weren’t heading there.  I realized we were heading into Mineral Palace Park, one of the bigger parks in town
.  He slowed his speed and so did I until I saw him park a few feet ahead.  I kept driving and parked a little farther away, then turned in my seat.  He was walking across one of the green patches of grass in the park, under trees, and I could barely see him.  I got out of my car and walked across the street toward his truck, and then started following him across the way.

I saw someone sitting on a bench across the way.  All I could see was long hair, not unlike mine. 
Kage’s pace seemed to increase when he spotted her, and he rushed to her side.  My eyes started watering again, because that was all the proof I’d needed.  I didn’t have to follow them anywhere else.

God, please let me be wrong.  Please let that be a friend who needed comfort or a long-lost sibling he’d just discovered he had.
  I sobbed for a while as Kage and the girl continued their conversation in the dark.

When I was able to get control of my emotions, though, I came to a decision.  I would
not
be my mother, just standing back, pretending I couldn’t see what was going on, playing the part of a pathetic doormat.  I couldn’t be used and made a fool of, no matter how much I loved this man.

With my resolve firmly in place, I marched over.  I was about to interrupt a touching moment, and maybe that would allow this woman to see
Kage for what he was before he hurt her like he was hurting me.  I had the words formed in my head, and I was going to say them before he could cut me off.

But, as I rounded the picnic table so I could be in front of them
where they sat on the bench, the words tumbled from my lips unspoken.  Yeah, Kage’s arm was around this person, but the person was a young man who just so happened to have long hair.  They were having a quiet but deep conversation—I could tell that much by their faces, even though they were in shadow.

Words continued to escape me. 
Kage and the young man looked up and Kage said, “Jessica, what are you doing here?”  I fumbled, still unable to grab onto some words, not even managing to do more than babble.  I must have looked completely stupid, as though I had been sentenced to death and I was standing in front of a firing squad.

Finally, though, I swallowed the saliva that had pooled in my throat.  “Uh…I’m sorry.  I’m leaving now.”

Almost as if he hadn’t heard me, Kage said, “Jessica, this is my brother, Flynt.”  I knew the young man wasn’t Kage’s brother, was instead his brother-in-law through Fay, but I wasn’t about to correct him, because I knew the bond between them was more like father-son.

I muttered something akin to “Nice to meet you,” and then I excused myself.  I apologized again for interrupting and wandered back to my car. 
Kage said something about calling me the next day.

Bottom line…I felt like an asshole.  I hadn’t trusted
Kage, and it was my own fears, my own paranoia that had eaten me alive.  I knew then that the lack of trust I had felt had eaten a hole in our relationship.  I’d seen it on Kage’s face when he’d looked up from his conversation with Flynt.  I only hoped he could find it in his heart to forgive me.