She was a zing of a presence right through it all though, Anna Blackwell. Rife in my thoughts as we ate our cottage pie at the dining table and I prepared to drop Millie back home for the night.
Memories of us. Of her laughter. Of her dirty grin as she coaxed the filth out of me. How she lapped it up and begged for more. Always more.
Of the way she would bite her lip as she came, and I’d bite it right back after her. Harder.
How I took every fucking thing her body had to give me, and she took it all right back from me.
Dirty. Little. Slut.
I’d almost forgotten what that felt like. Almost.
I’d almost forgotten the very depths of the beautiful filth we’d summoned from each other, but not quite.
I’d never quite forget that.
“I don’t want to go back to Mummy’s yet,” Millie said once my mother had done her hugs.
“Hopefully it won’t be for too much longer, sweetheart. Hopefully you’ll all be living back at Daddy’s soon,” Mother whispered, and I almost spat out a curse.
Her eyes spoke volumes as they met with mine. Disappointment. Disgust.
She could be disgusted all she liked without bringing Millie into it. Our stare off was heated as hell, just like everything else lately. She shrugged like she was stating the obvious, and I was grateful we didn’t have any alone time left for her to grill me on what the hell I was doing to fix things with Maya.
Maya the angel. Maya the perfect mother and perfect wife and perfect everything as far as the rest of the world were staring in at, jangling her crystals around in the air for her angelic self-development bullshit.
Me? I was just the selfish prick with the mountain of failings.
“School tomorrow,” I said to Millie once we were back on the road. “Got to get you a good night’s sleep and ready to roll.”
I was lying. We didn’t need to get her anything that required me dropping her back to that self-righteous cow for the night, but as usual it would do me no good to protest.
Predictably, Maya pulled Millie around when we were back at hers, checking out her shoes, and dress, and hair before giving me a scathing nod. Part of me wished I’d spent the day laughing and joking and dancing with my little girl in the puddles just to be an asshole, but it would’ve cost me dearly for weeks.
She shooed Millie into the house before joining me back at the gate.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No, I haven’t been fucking drinking,” I said, and made to walk away, but she pulled me back.
“We still have a whole load of things to finalise. You need to give me some assurances. I need to know what you’re doing to get yourself back on track.”
I shook my head. “I’m not doing this now. It never gets us anywhere.”
“Nothing ever gets us anywhere with you,” she spat. “We have so much ground to cover, Lucas. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Do we matter a shit to you anymore? What did your mother say today? She’s just as keen for you to sort yourself out as I am.”
Fuck the never-ending rat run of criticism. I was nothing but a wages workhorse there for the milking and had been for years. A failure at everything other than stuffing the cash into the bank account every month.
Pervert.
Alcoholic.
Filthy smoker.
Arrogant piece of shit.
“Maybe you should just move in with my mother. You can spend all your time bitching about what a useless cunt I am.”
I walked away with nothing more than a wave up at the window. Millie waved in return.
“Fine,” Maya snapped at my back. “Fuck off again. It’s always you, wrecking every attempt at working things out. I’m sick of it.”
But she was wrong.
It wasn’t the fucking off again that caused the issues, it was the clashing and cursing and screaming that ensued when we tried to build any damn fucking bridges.
She hated me and had done for years. She’d looked at me like I was a piece of shit for years. Judged every fucking thing I ever did as worth nothing for years.
On top of that, she’d spat at me for being some kind of deviant every time I’d tried to fuck her for years.
Maybe I really was too much of a deviant to make a life with. To want to be with.
Anna had never seemed to think so.
Anna whose life I’d fucked up and mine along with it a whole decade ago.
Maybe this was karma. The universe sucking me in and retching me up the way I’d done to her. I should ask Maya for her fantastic bloody psychic perspective on it.
It came again out of the blue, before I was back at home and through my own door that night – the next text message that set my blood pumping like it hadn’t done for months. Years maybe.