Unexpected Love Story (Love 2)

Chapter Six

Gabe

“Is that banging?” I ask as my head comes off the couch, my tongue thick. “What is that?” I ask, looking around. Where the fuck am I? Looking down, I see I’m still wearing my wrinkled tux pants and white shirt.

And it all comes back to me. I was left at the altar. Coming to the home we didn’t even live in yet. Having only moved our stuff in, we were waiting for the wedding night to officially move in. I went to the kitchen and pulled out all the booze, all the fucking booze, and guzzled it down to stop the pain in my chest. I look over to see Walker walking into the room with coffee in his hand and Advil in the other. “You need to sober up just a bit.” He set the cup on the coffee table tray. “We need to do a couple of things.”

“I’m pretty sure me getting stood up at the altar wasn’t on the list of things to do, yet I did it.” I try to make a joke of it before I drink the scalding coffee, which burns all the way down my throat. “What the fuck could we possibly need to do?”

“We need to pack up Bethany’s things.” He looks over at me.

“Fuck that. I say we have a bonfire on the beach and burn all her shit.” I smile, thinking that the fire would probably be out of control for all the shit she has here. “Scratch that.” I shake my head, the pounding making me wince. I walk into the kitchen, open a drawer, and take out a pair of scissors. “Grab some boxes from the garage.”

I walk to the winding steps in the middle of the house, taking them two at a time on the way to our bedroom. I walk into our huge master bedroom with wooden beams across the ceiling.

Passing the king-size bed in the middle of the room, I head to her walk-in closet. It’s the size of an office, but I couldn’t say no to her. Her clothes are all hung by color; I guess she was planning a wardrobe change as well since everything looks to be here. Meaning she took fucking nothing with her. I rip piece by piece down, cutting each one right down the middle and then throwing it on the floor. The whole time, Walker leans against the doorjamb, letting me do my thing. I get to the pants, cutting off a leg from each of them. “Good luck trying to get that back in one piece.” I laugh at myself. I cut the skirts in half. “That isn’t going to be good to wear.” I look over at Walker, who just shakes his head. I pick up the shoes—oh, her perfect shoe collection. “Do you know she made me pay four thousand dollars for a pair of shoes for the wedding? Four fucking thousand dollars!”

I pick up a dainty pair of shoes with the red bottoms and snap off the heel. “That’s not going to work.” I go all through her shoe collection. “I must have spent twenty grand on shoes.” I look down at the dismantled shoes. “What the fuck was I thinking?”

“You just wanted to make her happy.” Walker finally speaks.

“A lot of good that did me.” I look around. “I’m stuck in a million-dollar home with cut up women’s clothes.”

“At least she didn’t leave you with a child who she decided wasn’t good enough for her.”

I look up at him. “Touché.” I sit on the bench she has in the closet, leaning my hands on my knees. “What the fuck do I do?”

“First, we clean this mess and dump all the shit at her parents’ house,” he says. “Then we go into town and have a bite to eat. You know the rumor mill is already going into overdrive.”

“So we go and pretend everything is okay?” I ask him as my chest gets tight.

“We pretend every single fucking day till one day it is okay, and no one will know but you.” He looks at me. “I mean, you get drunk as fuck the whole weekend, but Monday morning, you get up and go to work, and it’s business as usual.”

I agree with him. “I’m going to fake the fuck out of this,” I tell him as I get up. Unbuttoning my shirt, I peel it off my body, uncovering the ink on my arms. “She fucking hated my tats. Did I tell you that?”

He shakes his head while I continue undressing. “Oh, yeah, it’s not professional, she said. She actually looked up laser removal. It should have been my first clue she was not the woman for me.”

I scoff. “High and proper all the time. She didn’t even like to hold my hand in public.” I raise my hands while I rant. “And forget about kissing in public. Dude, she thought it was like we were shooting a porn.”