InHap*pily Ever After (Incidental Happenstance) (63 page)

            Tia awoke with
a feeling of dread in her gut that she prayed was from a bad dream. It was
still dark and she shivered under a thin blanket on the couch instead of in the
warm cocoon of her bed, which pretty well dashed her feeble hopes that the
horrendous pictures that still burned on the backs of her eyelids were conjured
up by her own mind.

            No way she was
going to fall back to sleep, so she dragged herself off the couch and slipped
into her favorite thick robe before stumbling into the kitchen to make some
coffee. She sat at the kitchen table with her face in her hands as the pain
settled into her consciousness. There had to be some logical explanation; there
just had to be. She had complete trust in Dyl—it had taken her a hell of a long
time and a lot of concentrated effort to rid herself of the jealous feelings
every time she saw a picture of Dylan smiling next to another woman. She had
learned to bite her tongue and smile when  women flirted with him
unabashedly—but she had gotten there; or so she’d believed. Dylan had told her
long ago that pictures could be fabricated and doctored to look real, and the
Penelope situation had proven it beyond the shadow of a doubt. They’d even had
a number of discussions about how she’d have to be more trustworthy than the
average girlfriend, and he’d never given her the slightest reason to doubt him.
Until now.

            Unable to help
herself, she dug her phone out from under the couch and opened the texts,
wincing out loud as the first one popped up on her screen. After having seen
the final picture just a few hours ago, she could now positively ID Dylan as
the man in the previous photos. Although there were at least two different
women in the shots, it was the same man—she could tell by the shirt and the
backdrop—a plaid couch against a beige wall. A wave of nausea rolled through
her stomach as she realized three things. First, they were all sent from
Dylan’s phone, most likely from the party where she knew there’d be plenty of
willing women. Second, although the texts came to her, the messages attached
were directed toward a guy. Did he inadvertently tap her name on his contact
list; actually meaning to send them to someone else? Tim, maybe?

            The third
realization was the one that made her heart break in two. The texts had come in
quick succession—she’d gotten five pictures in the span of less than half an
hour. There was no way they could have been doctored. The only conclusion her
mind could reach was that she was witnessing Dylan breaking every promise he’d
ever made her.

            The
coffeemaker beeped behind her and she numbly made her way over to the counter
and poured, falling back onto the chair and wrestling with the images in her
head. She stared blankly at the rainbow swirls that spun lazily atop the dark
liquid until it went cold, and didn’t bother to pour another cup. It was over
an hour before she could even process that she needed to go—she needed to get
somewhere safe where she could work out what to do next—she was so full of
conflict at the moment that she couldn’t even see straight.
Once a cheater,
always a cheater,
she heard Lexi say over and over in her mind. She stood
up and paced around the apartment that had only recently become her place of
residence; she’d given up her little house and it now belonged to a young
couple with a toddler, so she had no place to call her own. God, she’d given up
her career, her home, her life... All those years, all that work to become
independent—to take care of herself and build a life of which she could be
proud, and she’d thrown it all to the wind for Dylan. He was once the man of
her dreams, but now she feared he would haunt her nightmares; the man who
texted her pictures of himself in various stages of undress with at least two
beautiful women at a music producer’s party. No matter how hard she tried, she
couldn’t see another explanation.

            The walls
started closing in on her, and she felt cold panic rise up from the ground to
swallow her whole. She needed to be anonymous for a few days; to figure things
out. Unfortunately, there were precious few, if any, places where she could
hide away from it all. No way she was sharing the pictures yet with anyone—she
wasn’t about to deal with the pity she’d get from her loved ones, and she
didn’t know how long it would be before she’d be willing to hear Dylan’s voice;
if he even had anything to say to her. She tossed a few things into an overnight
bag and picked up the phone.

            “Hey, it’s
Tia,” she said when the familiar voice came on the line. “I really need to get
away for a couple days. Can I come stay with you?”

            “You know
you’re always welcome here.”

            “I know, and
thank you. Could you be ready for me in about an hour?”

            “I just pulled
a coffee cake out of the oven. If you get here sooner, it’ll still be warm.”

            Tia let out a
long slow breath. “I’m on my way right now.”

            “Damn, dude,
you still in bed?” Bo plopped himself less than gracefully at the foot of
Dylan’s bed and watched him nearly jump out of his skin. “I expected you to be
hung over, but I didn’t think you’d still be asleep at ten o’clock.”

            Dylan shook
his head and glanced over at the digital radio on the bedside table. 10:06. He
looked back and forth between Bo and the clock a couple times and ran his
fingers through his tangled hair, stopping with his palm on his forehead and
wrinkling his face in confusion. “I’m not hanging at all,” he answered. “Should
I be? I don’t remember drinking that much.”

            “What do you
remember?” Bo asked cautiously. His friend had been really out of it—if Dyl
didn’t remember the incident with the ho-bags then he sure as hell wasn’t going
to point it out. Bo had destroyed the evidence, and hoped to hell that if there
were other pictures, the bitches only took them for themselves. He had a really
bad feeling about the whole thing, but time would tell, and Bo wouldn’t.

            “Shit,” Dylan
said, his eyes gazing upward as he tried to recall the previous night. “Not
much, really. I remember talking to Dozer…he told me he’s going to be a dad.
You and Angelo took off and then I never saw either one of you again the rest
of the night.”

            Bo sat
patiently as he watched Dylan try to put the pieces together. He was glad at
least that he had no recollection, at least not yet, of the little tryst in the
back room. As his best friend, he would have stood behind Dylan no matter what,
but he would have definitely lost a lot of respect for him if he’d knowingly
played Tia that way. It left a bad taste in Bo’s mouth that he’d done it at
all, but he’d seen how out of it the man was and knew that the porn stars were
taking advantage of it.

            “I walked you
home, brother,” Bo replied. “It was no easy task, either—I practically had to
carry your sorry drunk ass.”

            Dylan laughed.
“Damn, I knew they were mixing them strong, but I had no idea I had that much.
Thanks for looking out for me, mate.” Dylan hit the button to power up his
phone, and Bo held his breath. “Oh, we’ve got that bloody photo shoot today,
don’t we?” Bo nodded. “Let me just shoot Tia a quick good morning—it’s past
noon by her. I can be ready to go in fifteen minutes.” He was already
multi-tasking, setting up the espresso machine with one hand and texting with the
other.

             Bo exhaled
when he heard the swoosh of the outgoing message. “I’ll just hang out here,
then, and we can ride over together.”

            “You suck for
doing that to her.” Dylan did a double-take at the girl who was trying to tape
a light box to the floor of the ferry.

            It was not
shaping up to be a good day. He’d started it running from behind and it had
just gotten worse as the day went on. A storm blew in (
Really? Who knew that
it might rain in Seattle?
he thought) and they’d had to spend more time on
the boat than they’d originally planned. The water was rough and they’d already
soaked through two changes of clothes from either the rain or the spray, and
they still had two more locations to visit before they called it a day. He was
getting concerned that Tia hadn’t returned any of his texts—he’d sent at least
a dozen since this morning and tried calling twice, and now he had to deal with
one of the minions from ‘Penelope’s Posse’ hassling him at a photo shoot.
“Whatever. She deserves that and more.”

            “I can’t
believe you would even say that!” she yelled, throwing down the roll of duct
tape in disgust and marching off. A minute later, a guy came out to finish the
job and they completed the shots on the ferry before heading toward the dry
land of Bainbridge Island. Dylan was grateful for the clouds when the
photographer decided they should match their expressions to the weather. He
didn’t feel much like smiling.

            Tia was pretty
sure the taxi driver didn’t recognize her, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She had him drop her at Hilton, and promptly jumped into another cab just in
case. The day was dismal; cold, windy, and with clouds that looked positively
pregnant with snow. The forecast was calling for six to eight inches starting
around noon and although Tia often remarked about how being a weather person
was the best job in the world because you could be wrong ninety percent of the
time and still get paid, she could almost taste the storm brewing in the air.
Or maybe it was the vile taste left in her mouth after seeing the horrendous
pictures. Either way, a storm was going to dump over her head. Why not two?

            The further
she got from the center of the city, the more her heart settled into a normal
rhythm. The roads were quiet for a Saturday morning, and they made good enough
time that she decided to take a little tour of her old life. She guided the
driver past her school and then her old house, in front of which stood a regal
snowman with a carrot nose and a hot pink scarf. They drove down Main Street,
past her favorite old café and the boutique where she always knew she’d find
something that she just had to have. When they got to the park where she used
to take her neighbor’s dog, Bonnie, she had the driver pull in. “I haven’t been
here in a long time,” she told him, getting out of the car to take a quick walk
to the wooden bridge that spanned the creek.

            She stood
there and realized that it had been longer than she’d thought since she had
been here. It had been in another lifetime. Already these places felt…
separate,
somehow, and she no longer belonged. This wasn’t her world anymore, and no
amount of wishing would make it any other way.

            Tia took a big
gulp of the frozen air and exhaled it slowly, watching her breath swirl away on
the softer breezes that sifted through the park. For a couple days, at least,
she would sink into the mundane normalcy of her old life. She had the driver
make one more stop where Tia ducked into a store and bought a pay-as-you-go
cell phone so she could let everyone know that she was fine; she was just
taking a bit of a sabbatical. Not wanting to see any texts from Dylan, she’d
left her phone in the drawer of the nightstand at the apartment.

            “It is so good
to see you!” Lilly opened her arms and Tia walked right into them. She’d
considered on the way whether or not she’d tell Lilly the real reason for her
visit, and decided that she would not. Getting away from it all for a couple
days was the ultimate goal, and she knew that Lilly’s company would do just
that.

            “You too,” Tia
said warmly, wrapping her arms around her friend in a tight embrace.

            Lilly pushed
her back and held her at arm’s length with her hands on Tia’s shoulders. “You
look the same. At least your head hasn’t gotten any bigger. Yet.”

            Tia couldn’t
help but laugh. “That’s a relief. I’ve been worrying about my hat size a lot
lately.”

            Lilly smiled
and Tia thought, not for the first time, that her facial expressions reminded
her of Bo. They had the same cocoa skin, the same expressive eyes, and almost
the exact same laugh lines curling alongside lips that were almost always
curved in a smile. “Some things never change,” she said, taking Tia’s hand.
“Come on, best get to that coffee cake before Marcus finishes it off.”

            “I’m savin’
her a piece, don’t you worry your pretty little head!” Marcus popped out of the
kitchen, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I saved you a
big
piece,” he smiled at Tia, pulling her in for a hug.

            “How are you,
Marcus? You’re looking as handsome as ever, I see.”

            “Retirement
agrees with me,” he smiled, patting his stomach. “I live the life of leisure
and my woman won’t stop working. I’m a kept man, and I like it.”

            Lilly grabbed
a wooden spoon from the breakfast nook between the two rooms and swatted him on
the backside. He howled in fake pain and ran back into the kitchen. “You sure
you want to get married, Tia? They seem so charming when you first get hitched,
and then they turn into something else entirely.”