Later that afternoon,just as I’m waving goodbye to my co-workers, my phone dings inside my pocket. I pull it out and check my notifications. I pause mid-step when I see who it’s from and what the message is.
JBM: Meet me at the motel tonight.
I peek over my shoulder to make sure no one’s looking. I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot today. Bringing my eyes back to my phone, I think about how I want to respond.
My first instinct is to reply, bold and in all caps, YES! But then the rational part of my brain kicks in and screams a big fat no. It’s already wrong to want a married man as much as I want Brady. It’s a whole other ball game to actually have an affair with him. Yes, I’ve already slept with him twice, and there’s absolutely no excuse good enough for either time, but a part of me blames it on the heat of the moment. Neither of us were thinking rationally at the time. The need hit us out of the blue and we acted on pure animal instinct.
If I meet him tonight, I would be doing it with a clear head. I would be making a conscious choice to sleep with a married man. The same applies to Brady. I have no right to judge him, given my own recent bad decisions, but I can’t ignore the fact that, as a man with a wife, he’s knowingly, with rational thought, cheating.
I tap reply on my phone.
Me: I can’t. It’s too dangerous to keep doing this. Not to mention, it’s wrong.
I push out of the pharmacy doors and instead of going to my car, I turn right, heading toward The Coffee Bean for a peach lemonade. My shoulders slump as I walk down the street, my mood suddenly souring. Why did Brady have to send me that message? Now it’s going to be the only thing I think about today. Knowing I could be in his arms with no one the wiser. I hate the man for doing this to me. For tempting me into making another mistake I’ll feel bad about.
As rotten as Addison is, she doesn’t deserve to be cheated on. No one does.
Just before I reach the door to The Coffee Bean, I spot Whitney, a ten-year-old girl, and my neighbor’s kid, walking up.
“Hey, Whit.” I greet her with a smile.
She grins back at me. “Hi.”
I look around for her parents. “Where’s your mom and dad?”
She turns and points to a shop a couple doors down. “Getting Sammy some new shoes.” She pulls out a five dollar bill from her pocket. “They let me come here to get a smoothie all by myself.”
“Wow! I guess that means you’re a big girl now, huh?”
Her smile is so big it shows off the missing molars in the back of her mouth. “Uh huh. They even said I could get a muffin and sit and eat it with my lemonade and they’ll come and get me in a few minutes.”
I can’t help but laugh at her excitement. “That is super cool of them to let you do that all by yourself.”
If we were anywhere else besides Silver Falls, I’d be concerned with a ten-year-old girl being left to her own devices. But we are in Silver Falls. It’s very rare that crime happens here. And besides, most everyone that’s in The Coffee Bean will know Whitney and will keep an eye out for her.
“You ready to go in?” I ask.
“Yep,” she chirps.
She’s standing with the door at her back with me in front of her. I reach around her to grab the handle, but just as I do so, it’s shoved open with force. I quickly grab Whitney and pull her to the side, but in the process, I get whacked on the cheek with the edge of the door. I suck in a sharp breath with the stinging pain then lift my eyes and see a pair of angry blue ones glaring down at a wide-eyed Whitney.
“Watch it, you little brat.”
The venom that spews out with those words should never be directed toward a child, and hearing them now, pisses me off.
Wrapping a protective arm around Whitney’s shoulders, I bring her closer to my side.
“Hey, there’s no need for name calling,” I tell the grumpy bitch.
Addison directs her glare at me. “She needs to be taught some manners.”
“And calling her names will do that?”
“If not, it’ll at least teach her to watch where she’s walking.”
I feel Whitney shrinking beside me. I’m tempted to grab the drink from Addison’s hand and pour it over the woman’s head. If Whitney weren’t with me, I may have done just that. But she is, so I need to keep this as civil as possible.
“She was not the problem. She was standing in front of the door. Had you been looking where you were going, you would have seen her before you came blasting out of the door.”