Beautiful Mistakes

"Of course I'm going to come back," she muttered. "I'll just bring a rock to crawl under."

"You come, but leave the rock at home. There's nothing embarrassing about what you said. You think I'm attractive? That's awesome. Most people think I look goofy, so it's an uncommon compliment, and I appreciate it."

Julie gave him a dry look. "Yes, I'm sure you're often described as goofy," she said sarcastically.

He nodded. "No joke. All of my teeth are crooked, I walk kind of funny, and have you seen my ears?" he asked, tugging on them. "Dumbo makes fun of me; they're enormous."

She couldn't help it, she laughed at him. "They are not."

"Emma used to call me Dumbo when she wasn't calling me Snagglepuss."

Julie's jaw actually dropped. "You're lying."

He shook his head. "Cross my heart. I bounce when I walk, too. You should watch sometime, it's amusing."

She shook her head. "I have watched you walk, you don't… bounce. You definitely don't walk funny." Privately, she liked his walk quite a bit, and often found herself wondering why her boyfriend couldn't walk like that. While she would never say so to him, she thought he had a sexy walk—in a strictly platonic kind of way, of course.

But then she thought of Emma –his wife—calling him names…

"Wait, you let her call you that? It doesn’t sound very nice."

He shrugged. "It started out as a kind of… cutesy nickname, I guess. Then she quit liking me," he said lightly, "and I kind of started taking it in a different way."

"I'm sure she likes you. You're her husband; she has to like you."

"Not really," he disagreed.

Julie just stood there for a moment. It seemed like the kind of comment one should disagree with just to be polite, but not the way he said it. It was more of a casual thing that he knew to be true, like remarking that the mail doesn't get delivered on Sundays. There seemed to be no point in arguing; it was a rhetorical statement.

"Well, I think I’ve sufficiently mortified myself for today, so… I think I'm going to leave for real this time," she said with a little smile, her cheeks still pink with embarrassment.

"Aw, you're not going to grope me again?" he joked.

"Maybe tomorrow," she teased with a nod, swinging her bag back onto her back once more.

Matt chuckled. "Good night, Julie."

"Good night, Matt," she said, waving as she opened the door and stepped out into the night air.

Chapter Four-

Julie tried to call Jack three times that night, but she was sent straight to his voice mail each time—meaning he had turned his phone off.

Jack didn't turn his cell phone off very often. He left it on vibrate pretty often, but he usually only turned it off when he was having sex with somebody.

He sure as hell wasn't having sex with Julie, since she was sitting at home in their bed all by herself, wondering where he might be and who he might be with.

Refusing to wait up for him, Julie went to sleep, and when she heard him tiptoeing through the apartment at 5:58 a.m. she pretended to be asleep. She heard the shower turn on, and about five minutes later he crept quietly into the bedroom, trying to make as little movement as possible as he lowered himself onto the bed and slowly pulled the covers up around him, squirming to get comfortable.

She remained as still as could be, lying awake in bed for a full hour, her mind wandering all over the place. Where had he been? Had he slept with someone else? He surely hadn't slept in their bed, so whose bed had he been in?

Then she got mad. Who the hell did he think he was?

She ended up giving up on the idea of sleeping. Crawling slowly out of the bed so as not to disturb him, she picked up his phone and slipped into the bathroom, locking the door and leaning against it, staring at the phone.

Should she do it? Should she really stoop to that level? Snooping seemed terribly below her, and it certainly wasn't the act of a trusting girlfriend… but who was she kidding? She knew Jack couldn't be trusted. He had cheated on two different girlfriends with her, and she didn't even want to know how many before her.

So she finally gave in and went snooping through his phone. Of course his text inbox was completely empty except for one text message she had sent him the day before, and his outbox was completely empty. Next she looked through his call log, but according to his phone he had never called anyone or been called in his life. Jack was no beginner; he knew to clear his phone out before leaving it unattended.