“Answer me, Stella.”
She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked completely distraught. I felt torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to scream at her for whatever the fuck craziness she had going on.
Unfortunately, the latter won out, and I barked, “Goddammit, Stella. Answer me!”
She jumped in her seat and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Because…there are things…in the diary entries.”
“What things?”
Lexi and I didn’t have a great relationship, especially at the end. But I wasn’t ever cruel to her. I hadn’t given her anything to write about that would freak Stella out.
Stella started to cry harder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I couldn’t take seeing her upset, so I walked over and kneeled in front of her. Pushing strands of wet hair from her face, I spoke quietly. “Relax. Stop crying. Nothing Lexi could have written in some diary is going to hurt me. This hurts me, seeing you so upset. What’s going on, sweetheart?”
Trying to calm her only seemed to trouble her more. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. So I pulled her in for a hug and held her until she calmed down a little. Once she did, I tilted her chin up so our eyes met. “Talk to me. What has you this upset?”
Her eyes jumped back and forth between mine, and it felt like I was watching her damn heart break.
“Lexi…” She sniffled. “She talks about having an affair.”
I blinked a few times. “Alright… Well, I didn’t know she had an affair. But I guess I can’t say I’m shocked. I caught her in lies about meaningless things over the years, and at one point I had suspected she might be seeing someone, although she always denied it. Lexi’s pretty selfish and did some shady shit, including hiding money and disappearing until late at night. Is that what’s been eating at you? You thought I’d be upset to find that out? It’s not pleasant to hear, but that part of my life is over.”
Stella closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s more.”
“Okay…what? What is it?”
“The man she was sleeping with, she wrote that he was your best friend.”
My face wrinkled. “Jack?”
“She never says his name, but she refers to him with the letter J... And...” Stella swallowed once more and took a deep breath. “Lexi doesn’t know who the father is.”
I had to be in some serious denial, because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. “Father of who? What do you mean?”
Stella’s lip trembled. “Charlie. She doesn’t know who Charlie’s father is. She was sleeping with both of you at the time she was conceived.”
***
Until a week ago, I’d felt like I had the world by the balls. I remember watching my little girl cook me dinner with the woman I was crazy about—the two of them laughing and smiling—and thinking how right everything finally felt after so long. And now…it felt like the world had me by the balls.
At first, I didn’t believe it. Not that Lexi wasn’t capable of doing that type of shit, but I couldn’t believe my best friend was. At a very minimum, that part had to be wrong. J could stand for a thousand names; there was no way Jack would do that to me.
But when I was on my third scotch, sitting at a bar where I’d met my buddy countless times, I remembered a particular Valentine’s Day years ago. I’d been up in Boston on business for a few days. My flight home had been scheduled for the evening. I’d told Lexi I’d take her out to dinner when I got home, but I’d finished up early and decided to take a midday flight and surprise her. When I walked in, Jack had been in our apartment. I remember having a fleeting uneasy feeling, but then Jack had said he’d asked Lexi to go shopping with him to buy his new girlfriend—now his wife—a gift for Valentine’s Day. He’d said she loved emeralds and remembered Lexi had a necklace with one, so he’d figured she would be able to help him pick out a quality stone for a ring. I’d honestly thought nothing more about it—this was my wife and my best friend, for fuck’s sake.
A few years later, I’d sat across from Lexi in my attorney’s office. She had her hands folded on the conference room table, and I noticed an enormous emerald sparkling on her finger. Our negotiations had gotten contentious by that point, so I’d made a comment about her ridiculous spending and motioned to the ring. She’d flashed a wicked smile and said she’d had it for years—a gift from a man who actually appreciated her. I’d never seen the ring before, but Lexi had a shitload of jewelry, so again, I chalked it up to nothing and my ex just trying to get under my skin.