Sweet Revenge

I had that. I had that in spades. I’d never had a problem moving someone out of my way to get what I wanted. It was all good as far as I was concerned.

Now Leia on the other hand… she was too kind. She was just too nice for the cutthroat world of business and she had no way of knowing if she was actually earning her fair share or not. As far as I could tell everything was on the up and up, but it could have gone south at any time. That made me nervous. I’d decided I was going to learn as much as I could and then I was going to start running things properly.

It was basically my company now, too.

I poured another whiskey and then took a few shots, sinking several balls including a nice combo shot. Pool was the most relaxing game ever created, I thought. It was perfect in its smoothness, its flow, and its geometry. I’d been getting very good at it lately as I played daily.

After clearing the table, I racked them again, got into position, and let fly a wonderfully hard shot that scattered the balls well across the table and even sinking a few.

As I began to play my game, my mind drifted back to the argument from before. I chuckled to myself as the memory came back.

“That bitch…” I muttered. “How dare she try to tell me what to do?”

I was going to hang with my friends whenever I wanted to and that was all there was to it. There was no way in hell I was going to let this woman tell me what I was going to do with my life and my time. Besides I never complained when she had her idiotic friends over to gab about nonsense or how their relationships were going.

“Well, now she has something to tell them,” I giggled.

But my joy quickly turned sour as I continued to play. She’d better not say anything to her friends about what I said to her. She made me angry coming home and ignoring my friends, trying to pick me apart, and asking me if I’d done this or that like I was her Goddamn errand boy. How dare she?

“Bitch,” I muttered again as I sank another ball into the corner pocket.

She had some nerve. But I’d put her in her place and for the first time she could see what a real dick I could be and how miserable her life could be if she pushed me and didn’t let me do my thing. The honeymoon was over. It was time for her to wake up and smell the coffee.

I had arrived and I was there to stay.

Chapter Thirteen

Leia

One Month Later

I slumped against the refrigerator and took several deep breaths. After a moment I found the will to open it and grab a yogurt. I shut the door, picked up a spoon from the silverware drawer, grabbed a banana, and sat down at the table only to realize I wasn’t hungry at all. I just felt nauseous.

I wasn’t sure what to think or what to feel. The past month of my life had been one crazy extreme to another. The angelic married life I had dreamt of my entire life was slowly becoming more like a nightmare with no end in sight.

Ted had changed. He was almost a completely different person than he’d been when we first got married. He had no motivation, he had no ambition, he was always short and ill tempered, and he had given me the impression he might get physically abusive if I didn’t just respect his space and not meddle with him.

It was like being married to a stranger.

“Maybe he is depressed,” Penny said one day over lunch.

“I’ve thought about that, but he won’t talk to me.”

“Well, his whole life has changed, too. That injury and not being able to do what he loves—I imagine that has hurt him more than he ever let on to you.”

I nodded. “I know it has, but his injury doesn’t seem that bad at times. I mean, I’m sure it hurts but he won’t talk about it so it is impossible to know what he is feeling. If he won’t communicate then I can’t reach out to understand him or try to help him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want help,” Penny said. “Maybe he just wants to be miserable and wallow in it.”

“I’m sure he feels that way, but that’s when you need to snap out of it the most. No matter what you have to keep moving forward. I went through that when I lost my parents. I didn’t want to be around anyone or do anything, but I had to get back out there and keep going. I just wish I could help him do the same.”