Authors: Bebe Wilde
“Her and every other cunt in this town,” I said.
An eyebrow shot up. “I was wondering when this would come up. What took you so long?”
I gritted my teeth. “How dare you? How dare you sit there and nonchalantly confirm what everyone has been telling me for years?”
“How could you sit there and not notice for years?” he spat, getting angry. “And suddenly you get angry? Suddenly, you decide to bring it up?”
“When was I supposed to bring it up?” I asked and stood, walking over to him and bending down to get in his face. “When you gave me some venereal disease?”
“I always use a rubber,” he said, not skipping a beat.
“Well, you can use them on someone else,” I said and stepped back, crossing my arms. “We’re through.”
“We’re not through,” he said. “I’m the biggest movie star in the world.”
“Ha!” I said, throwing my head back to laugh.
“Right.
And if it hadn’t been for me, you’d still be letting people take pictures of you in your underwear!”
“Bull,” he said. “Shit.”
That’s when I knew his ego had gotten way out of control, that it was so large there wasn’t enough room in the marriage for both of us. It had taken over the man I loved and devoured him. I’d never get him back. It was over.
“Whatever,” I said. “But let me ask you this. Why? Why did you do it? Maybe I could have gotten over you doing this once and twice because of your fame and enormous ego. But you’ve been doing this for years, many, many times over. Why? If you wanted to have sex so bad, why not just come home and fuck me, your wife?”
“I did fuck you, too, if you recall,” he said. “You should. You came enough.”
I balled up my fists, wanting to really punch him.
He stared at me and sighed with annoyance. “You ever been on a movie set?” he asked. “It’s
boring!
You, on the other hand, get to drive around, look at houses and have lunch! I get to sit on a set all day waiting for some asshole to tell me what to do!”
“Oh, you have such a hard life!” I spat.
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I just said it was boring most of the time.”
“It’s boring so to pass the time, you just fuck someone?”
“Something
like
that,” he said and nodded. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
I could have punched him. Quite literally, I could have punched him. I don’t think he even knew how insensitive he was being. “Why not invite me to set?” I asked. “You’ve never once invited me on set! I’m your wife!”
“I… I…. I asked you to come to London!”
“London! That was two years ago!”
“I asked you to come to Moscow for that spy thriller. I did! You can’t say I didn’t!”
“You fucking asshole,” I said. “I can’t just up and leave my job for three months!”
“Why?” he said, glaring at me. “Why not leave for three months? We can afford it. We can afford for you to quit, too, but you would never dream of that, would you? Your career is more important than your husband!”
“Don’t you
dare!
” I screeched, hating the sound of my voice, but knowing he was right to a certain extent. I did continue to work after we were married and I never saw myself as a stay-at-home wife. And he knew this. “Don’t you dare turn this around on
me!
You’re the one cheating on me!”
“That’s just it,” he said. “I’m expected to just let you do whatever, so you can let me do whatever,
Teagan
. Am I supposed to do without while you chase some real estate deal?”
My mouth dropped. There was no getting through to him. He really didn’t see it as anything wrong, what he was doing. Well, I’d show him. I’d turn it right back around on him. “What about me? What if I cheated on you?”
“You don’t have it in you,” he said.
“I do, too,” I said. “I can find someone to fuck just as easily as you. You told me yourself I was the best you ever had.”
And then, in one quick instance, he was on me, grabbing me between the legs hard, his fingers digging in. “Let
me
tell you one thing, you belong to me. Don’t forget it.”
I tried to push him away, shaking my head, wanting to cry. “Fuck you, Kier.”
“No, fuck you,” he said, refusing to let me go, keeping his hand on me, as if staking his claim. “Don’t you ever forget that
that
belongs to
me.
”
“Fuck you,” I hissed, wanting to scratch his eyes out. He was bringing this violence out in me. It was new to me and I had been unaware that it was even in me. I was slightly scared of it, too. I was shaken by his actions but I stood my ground. He wouldn’t bully me
around, that
much he had to know. And we were over, through, finished.
“Whatever,” he said.
I stared into his eyes, not believing we were there, at that low point. We had been so good together and now we were this, this rotten mess. We’d had so many dreams, so many things to do together and now we had nothing. Before I could think, I said quietly, “I can’t believe this. I wanted to have your baby.”
“You still can,” he replied, not skipping a beat.
I was about to burst into tears, this was too much, too real. It was awful!
“I’ll give it to you right now,” he said and moved away, but refused to take his eyes off me. “Say the word,
Teagan
. Make the commitment. Do it.” He paused as if awaiting my answer, then said, “But you can’t. There might be a listing you have to go grab.”
So that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it?
Me and my career, which he saw as being in competition with our relationship.
How dare he use that against me? Him of all people who lived his life in front of the cameras and in the tabloids, whose career made it so we had no choice but to share our lives with millions of people.
Fine.
Whatever.
I said, “I want you to leave. I want a divorce.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t want a divorce,” he said. “And I am not leaving. We’re married. We got married for better or worse, you know that. You were there, too.”
I was aghast, in shock. “Are you serious?”
“I am,” he said and sat back down in the chair. “I am not getting a divorce.”
I just stared at him.
“If you try, I’ll make it hard on you. Believe me, I will.”
“We’re stopping right here,” I said and held up my hands. It was getting to the point where I could start throwing shit.
“Fine by me,” he said.
“But we’re getting a divorce,” I told him.
“I guess you’ll find out,” he said.
“So, just let me get this straight. You want to have your cake and eat it too?”
He turned to stare at me. “Oh. I’ll eat my cake, any day,
any
time.”
If I hadn’t been so infuriated, that would have cracked me up. I refused to be amused by it, however. That’s what he did to me, though. He would do something to piss me off then he’d charm me right back and when I got comfortable, he’d do it again. I knew if I let him off this hook this time, the first chance he got he’d probably still go out and fuck the first thing that batted her eyes at him, and there were lots of those to choose from.
“Why is this happening?” I asked, wondering that myself. Why? How did we get here?
All because he fucked other women?
All because of what?
I shook my head and said, “How did we get here?”
“We got here because we never acted like we were married,” he said. “We were never a couple.”
I stared at him. “That’s absurd.”
“Is it?” he asked. “We never spent any time together.”
“You were always gone.”
“You’ve got no right to talk there,” he said.
“Please,” I hissed, shaking my head. “You can’t keep using that as an excuse.”
“Really?
Why not? I’d come home after a long day and wonder where the fuck my wife was. She certainly wasn’t at home. Just where were you,
Teagan
?”
I blanched. He was calling me out, that’s what he was doing. It was going to hurt, too.
“You know where you were, don’t you?” he asked, getting even more infuriated. “Yeah, like I said, I’d come home after being on set all day and I’d look around and wonder where my wife was.” He glared at me and mimicked my voice, “‘Oh! I got a showing! Oh! I have to meet clients for dinner! Oh! I’ve got a meeting! Oh! I’ve got a broker’s open! Oh! I got a referral!’”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “You know what? You knew what I was before we got married. You knew how focused I was on my job.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But would it have killed you to make a fucking pot roast once in a while?”
I thought about that. He wanted a domesticated wife. That’s what he wanted. That wasn’t me. But he was right. Had I been around more, instead of so focused on my career, we might not be here now. Maybe I should have made a pot roast, thrown it in the oven and went on with our lives. He could have done the dishes. But then I realized he was just mind fucking me, turning this all around so he looked like the victim. Then again, he was good at that, at making others feel guilty. I squared my shoulders and said, “That gave you no right to cheat on me like you did.”
He shrugged. “At first it was just to hurt you but after a while it just became a habit, and a way to pass the time,” he said. “I know you’ll never change and I stopped trying to get your attention a long time ago. You’re afraid of getting too close, of depending on a man, blah, blah, blah. It’s probably because your father left when you were young.”
“Shut up,” I said, hating the way he made me sound so typical, so textbook. “You had no right to do what you did to me.”
“I’m your husband!” he yelled, glaring at me. “You know I started screwing around on you to get our attention but you never noticed because you were oblivious!”
“That is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” I said. “I was here the whole time. Just because I worked late a few times to make more money so we could afford this house doesn’t mean I deserve to have that happen to me!”
“You didn’t need the money!” he yelled. “After I started working, you could have quit! I was making millions with more to come! I paid this house off, remember? I put all that money in the bank, remember? But it wasn’t good enough for you! And you want to talk about having kids? I begged you to have a kid, to stay home with it, that I’d cut back on work, too, so we could be a family! I told you’d I’d quit and take care of it if you wanted me to! But you couldn’t do it because you were too fucking afraid of depending on a man! But fuck! I am not your father,
Teagan
!”
I felt a pain shoot through my heart. He was right. It wasn’t my fault but if I’d just trusted in him, all of this could have been avoided. He was right, there was nothing left to say. I held back and kept myself walled off because he was this good looking, successful man who, on the surface, loved me. But what if someone new came into the picture he liked better? He’d be gone, that’s what. And I’d seen my mother go through that misery and I’d just been trying to avoid it. Well, that didn’t work out too well.
“And I helped you, too,” he said. “I helped you with the house in Ojai, remember? That really put you on the uptick! And you had the cache of having a movie star husband. Because of me, everyone wanted you to be their agent! You used all of this to your advantage and don’t say you didn’t. You might have helped me in the beginning but after I made it, it was me that helped prop
you
up.”
“You’re still breaking my heart, Kier,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “None of that matters now. I wanted a baby with you!”
“We can still do that,” he said and came to stand in front of me. “Let’s do it right now. Let me impregnate you.”
Again, if this hadn’t been so heated, I would have cracked up at him. He was like that. He always did know how to make me laugh, if only I could laugh now, which I couldn’t.
He tried to take my hand. I wouldn’t let him. “I can’t trust you now,” I told him.
“You can. But you won’t.” He paused to sigh loudly. “None of them meant anything to me, none of those women. Truth be told, I don’t think I meant anything to them, either. I was just a movie star they were fucking. That’s where you’re different. You mean something to me.”
I remembered my mother’s words about having a good looking man, about how women always throw themselves at them. It was true and it was, somehow, my problem. But why did I have to put up with it? Now after all he’d done, Kier was telling me how I was different, how I meant something to him. He was so good with that. I’d give it to him. He knew how to turn me around, upside down and make me believe nothing he’d done mattered. He was the most charming bastard on earth, it was that simple. But he’d hurt me and for that, I wanted to make him pay.
“If I mean so much to you, how could stick your dick into all of those women?” I asked.
“I’m a man,” he said. “It’s hard to resist. There wasn’t any emotion to it. It didn’t mean anything. Why don’t you just let that go,
Teagan
?”
“Because I can’t,” I said.
“You’re just afraid I don’t love you,” he said. “But I do. I love you. You don’t feel it now, but you will. One day, you will know the truth.”
For some reason, his words really grated on me. How dare he say that to me right now?
To put me in the position of being the party-pooper?
I was the one with the problem, right? I was the one ruining everything. His words, literally, flew all over me, making me feel like some stupid woman who’d buy anything her husband told her just so he wouldn’t leave. And all he had to do to fix it was to tell her was that he loved her. That’s all. That made it all better, right? Any woman with a heart would buy into that, wouldn’t they? But I wasn’t that woman. I was stronger than that and I was harder than that. Most importantly, I was better than that.
But I let it go and, in order to try and diffuse the situation, tried to joke, “Like I said, maybe I should start sleeping around.”
“I’d never allow that,” he said, the tone of his voice changing. “Don’t even think about it.”