The Other Side of the Pillow

I walked past her into the kitchen and tossed my briefcase down on the table.

“Jemistry, I really don’t want to talk about this right now,” I finally replied.

“Let me guess. You’re upset with me because I told Courtney about her husband’s roaming dick.”

I pulled a chair out, sat down, and pulled the bottom of my tie out of my waistband. Then I slipped out of my jacket.

“Can you hand me a beer, please?” I asked politely.

“A beer?” She rolled her eyes at me. “Sure, I’ll get you a beer, Tevin. That’s what wives do when their dictators come home from work.”

I sighed as she crossed the room, yanked the refrigerator open, and pulled a Bud Light out of the six-pack on the bottom shelf.

“I’m not trying to be your dictator, baby.”

She slammed the bottle down on the table then sat across from me. We stared at each other for a few seconds.

“Oh, my bad!” She stood back up. “Mea culpa! Let me fix your dinner plate. Sorry that I didn’t have it on the table before your arrival.”

Jemistry walked over to the sink, washed her hands, took out a porcelain plate from a cabinet, then walked over to the stove and started piling what looked to be spaghetti onto it. She put on an oven mitt, yanked a baking sheet out of the oven that had garlic toast on it, and then tossed two pieces beside the pasta on my plate.

She walked over to a drawer, pulled it open, and grabbed a fork, tossing it on top of everything else on the plate. I kept my eyes glued to her every move, wondering how she could be upset after throwing my ass to the wolves. If she had kept her mouth shut, or had at least warned me that she was about to spill the beans to Courtney, my day would have gone much smoother.

Jemistry set the plate down in front of me and then retook the other chair. She folded her arms in front of her in defiance and glared at me.

“This is silly,” I said. “All of it. You don’t need to be all upset and put yourself and the baby under a bunch of stress. We don’t need to be going at each other. Sure, I was upset with you earlier today. I come out of surgery and read your montage of texts, and then Floyd comes storming into a consultation with a patient’s wife.

“He looks like he’s ready to jump me, right there in the waiting room.”

Jemistry sucked in a breath. “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

I smirked. “He thought about it, I’m sure, but Floyd’s not a dummy. I have him by eight inches and at least fifty pounds of muscle.”

“So what happened then?” she insisted on knowing.

“Dinner looks delicious. You mind if I eat it while it’s still hot?”

“You can eat as long as you tell me what the fuck happened while you’re doing it.”

I was about to sprinkle some pepper on my food when she said that. I put the pepper back down and pushed my plate away. “That’s what microwaves are for. Okay, fine.”

“So what happened?”

“You can probably guess most of it. You orchestrated the first part of the chaos, after all.”

Jemistry rolled her eyes again. “It was time for her to know. Courtney’s always singing Floyd’s accolades. Talking about how faithful and honest a man he is. I couldn’t sit by another second and allow him to pull the wool over her eyes. I couldn’t do it and still consider myself her friend.

“It’s not like I gave her any details. Hell, you didn’t give me any. All I said was that you had shared with me that Floyd was fucking a lot of women from work. I told her that she needed to be careful.”

“How did it even come up?” I asked, not that it even mattered much. “I thought that all of that had boiled over, since you’d never said anything.”

Jemistry calmed down a little. “Tevin, I met Courtney for lunch and she was just leaving her gynecologist’s office. She was going on and on about how offended she was that the nurse always asked her if she wanted to be tested for STDs, since her insurance covered most of the tests. She said that she felt like cursing the nurse out, but instead told her that she was married and not promiscuous like that. She said that those kinds of tests are for single people only.”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds and allowed her last statement to sink in.

“Now do you see why I had to tell her?” Jemistry asked.

I opened my eyes. “Yes, I understand perfectly.”