Unbeknownst to us, Grey had pulled up and had overheard the whole thing. When Tom, the contractor, saw him walking towards us, he was all smiles. Grey had ignored him and walked straight to me. “Is what you just said true?”
“Yes, every word.”
“Who are you?” I explained who I was, that I owned my own construction company yadda-yadda, and before I knew it, Grey was telling Tom to get his crew off his site, then turned to me and said ‘I’ll give you four days to get your team together to finish the job. Do you think you can handle it?’
I damn near shit myself that day I was so excited. My mind hadn’t gone to the money I’d make but to the fact that if I got my name connected to one of this guy’s buildings, things could only go up from there. It was days later when I saw what I would be making and damn near had a heart attack.
Since then, we’ve built three more hotels together, and I’ve gotten many more significant projects through his word of mouth, something I can never repay him for in this lifetime. But now he was acting out of character. “What’s up? Something on your mind? Something wrong with what the guys are doing here?”
“No-no, it’s nothing like that, um, when last have you heard from your ex?”
“Janine? She called me earlier: why?” He and her husband are in some of the same clubs as far as I remember and have played golf together a time or two in the past.
“I heard from my wife that she’s planning some shit.”
“Planning what? What’re you talking about?” He shrugged his shoulders and looked away. I could tell he had more to say.
“I’m not sure what she has planned, but my wife was pretty upset about it. Keep a close eye is all I’m saying.” He’d barely got the words out before I was walking back to my car.
“I’ll see you later,” I called over my shoulder.
“Good man!” I heard him say with a grin as I started jogging in my three thousand dollar suit.
Justine
I rolled over in bed and stared up at the ceiling, still wearing a stupid smile on my face. As I stretched, I could feel the sting from our lovemaking between my thighs; that sweet ache that he always leaves behind, and the slight pull deep within. My cheeks warmed with pleasure, and I snuggled into his pillow, even more, inhaling his scent that only made me miss him.
I can’t believe that this is my life; some days, I have to pinch myself to be sure that it’s real. I never in a million years would’ve dreamed that mine and my daughter’s lives could change this drastically. After her dad left us for someone else, things had been really hard. My barely above minimum wage job was hardly enough to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table, and my ex hadn’t given a damn.
It’s as if once he left, we no longer existed, and the child support he was supposed to pay had not been forthcoming, not after the first few months anyway. Because of the horrible insults and softly veiled threats, I’d swallowed it all and forged ahead on my own, not willing to battle it out with the my ex and his new wife who seemed hell-bent on destroying me for whatever reason.
I hid a lot of this from my daughter because I didn’t want to put too much on her plate. As a teen, she was already at that stage where life was changing too rapidly, and learning what a jackass her dad was wouldn’t have helped matters any.
He and his new wife had gone out of their way to be cruel as if trying to erase the last fourteen years of his life with me. We’d been high school sweethearts, and he’d been the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. All those words of love and forever had blinded me to reality, and I’d fallen for it all.
I’d gotten pregnant with Lora during my last year of high school, and my parents decided that it was a good time to wash their hands clean of me. I found a job waiting tables while Sam went to work for his uncle at his mechanic shop, which he was good at. We didn’t have much, but neither were we living hand to mouth like so many around us were.
We got married and settled into our little life of happily ever after, which had lasted longer than our friends’ relationships. I always thought Sam would be there for our daughter and me through thick and thin, just as I stood by his side whenever things went south for him. Like the time he lost his job for messing up for the third time and almost causing an accident on the job.