Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

I just stared at him. He missed the way I buttered his toast? My purpose in his life was to laugh at his jokes, scratch his back, and butter his toast? I was vaguely sick to my stomach, but mostly, really, really sad. That was my marriage? Not once had he said he was wrong or that he was sorry. He was just telling me what he wanted. Nothing had changed.

“I just need some hope that there might still be a chance for us.”

“Mike, there is no us,” I told him firmly. My voice lowered to a less harsh whisper when I said, “There is no you and me. That’s all over now.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he insisted. “Everything can go back to where it was. We can have it all back.”

Wait a minute. This was all pretty proactive for a man who used to have me pre-peel his fruit for him. I narrowed my eyes at him. “So how did Beebee take it when you told her it was over?”

He gave me a sheepish look.

“So you’re going to do to her what you did to me?” I yelled and started toward the cabin. When I heard Mike’s footsteps behind me, I whirled around and stuck a finger in his chest. “You can’t even stay loyal to your mistress, Mike! What kind of degenerate does that make you? Why would I even consider being with someone who can’t stay faithful to the person he cheated on me with?”

The shift from kicked puppy to wounded martyr happened so quickly, it was like a ripple under the skin. Mike’s eyes narrowed, his lip curled, and he looked at me like I was something he scraped off of his shoe. “I’m trying to give you, us, another chance. You could at least give me that much credit.”

“You’re trying to get out of the mess your hormones made.”

“I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this!” he shouted, his face flushing red. “What’s wrong with you, Lacey?”

“I’m a wild woman. I skinny-dip. I have orgasms that don’t require heavy equipment.”

“I can’t believe you’re sleeping with someone else!” he cried.

“How exactly do you have the balls to get angry with me about that, Stinger?”

Mike looked like he might take a swipe at me when something he saw over my shoulder made his face melt back into a more “social” mode. I turned to see Monroe’s truck pulling into his driveway and felt both relief and annoyance. This was not an introduction I needed to make at the moment.

Monroe stepped out of his truck and looked from Mike to me and back. From the look on my face, he must have thought that Mike was a door-to-door evangelist or a census taker or something. “Everything okay, Lacey?”

“I’m fine, Monroe. This is Mike.” I huffed.

Mike’s back stiffened. He sucked in his stomach and glared at Monroe. “Who is this, Lacey?”

I sighed. “This is my neighbor, Monroe. He’s renting the McGee place.”

Monroe gave Mike an appraising once-over and offered his hand for a shake. Mike reluctantly accepted and I could see the tension in their hands as they each squeezed far harder than was socially necessary. The message could not have been clearer if there had been telegraph wires stretched between them. Monroe was letting Mike know “I’m sleeping with your woman now.” I was being marked, like territory. I was being peed on. Wonderful.

“If you don’t mind, my wife and I are having a private discussion.”

Mike’s prissy tone was enough to break the tension. I had to bite my lip again to keep from laughing. Monroe and I shared a look that made Monroe smirk. Mike saw this and scowled. “How well do you know my wife, Monroe?”

“Why the hell would you care?” I asked him.

“Oh, come on, Lacey, what’s the point of hiding it?” Monroe asked, slipping his arm around my waist. “Very well. You know, it’s not every day that a woman so spontaneous and open minded and well, flexible, moves in right next door. Am I the luckiest guy you’ve ever seen or what?”

Monroe leaned in and gave me a long, loud, smacking kiss. As Mike’s face drained to paper white, Monroe gave him a cheeky grin and slapped me on the butt before walking away. “Nice to meet you, Mark,” he called over his shoulder as he ambled to his front door and walked into his house without so much as another look.

“Right.” Mike began to roll his sleeve up, stomping toward Monroe’s door.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, what are you doing?”

“You think I’m going to just let him put his hands on my wife in front of me?” Mike demanded.

“I’m not your wife anymore.”

“So this is why you won’t come home?” Mike snarled. “We hit a rough patch and you shack up with the first ex-con you meet?”

I spluttered, “Wha - what -? Yeah, Mike, this is why I’m not coming home. My reluctance has nothing to do with the fact that your mistress is living in my house now. It would have to be because of another stud in the corral, right?”

“I told you I made a mistake! Why do you keep harping on me when I’ve said I’m sorry?”

“Actually, you haven’t said you are sorry. You said you made a mistake. It’s not the same thing,” I told him.

“I tried to give you another chance,” Mike said rather snottily. “If you’re not willing to take it -”

“Just leave, Mike.”

“You’re not going to get another chance,” he warned me.

“I don’t need one. Tell Beebee I said hello.”

Mike stormed off to his car and peeled out, flinging no small amount of gravel my way. Monroe stepped outside and waved at Mike’s departing car. He grinned at me.

“What on earth has gotten into you?” I demanded as I marched up his front steps. “I thought you had this whole ‘divorce drama’ phobia.”

“You wanted him to stay?” Monroe asked.

“No, definitely not. But I didn’t need for you to step in. And there was no reason for you to manhandle me in front of him. I did not like that.”

Monroe snorted. “Right, why make him think that you’re unavailable?”

“Don’t do that,” I ground out. “Don’t make this into a you – versus - him thing. There’s no contest. Why would I care what Mike thinks? I do not want Mike back. I am not still in love with him.”

“And you’re saying you didn’t enjoy that just a little bit, making Mike think you might spare him a lifetime of alimony?” Monroe asked.

“I’m not taking alimony from Mike. I don’t want anything from him. Hell, if Maya keeps throwing money at me, I’m not going to need it anyway.”

Oh, double damn it. From the look on Monroe’s face, I immediately wanted to change the subject back to my ambiguous feelings toward my soon-to-be ex-husband.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “I thought we agreed you were going to drop the newsletter thing? You said you were going to rethink writing the letters.”

“Well, I did rethink it,” I said. “And I decided, for myself, that it might not be such a bad idea. I could make a lot of money writing the newsletters. And I could help people. Mostly it would be about making money, but I would have a lot of satisfaction in my job. I’ve never had that before. Even your mom said that writing that e-mail was what I needed to move on. I could do that for someone else.”

“My mom said it made sense for you to do that. She wasn’t writing a blanket prescription for everybody,” he insisted. “And you’ve been making so much progress on your book. Why stop now?”

“I don’t have the dedication that you do when it comes to writing,” I told him. “I don’t know if I’m going to finish that book. And let’s face it, even if I finish it, I have a better chance of getting hit by lightning while scratching off a million-dollar lottery ticket than getting that thing published.”

He followed me as I turned to walk away. “You want to know why your life hasn’t turned out? Why you’re not going to finish what you’ve started? Because you take the easy way out. Whenever something’s hard or doesn’t just fall into your lap, you give up or you let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. You’re just waiting for someone else to hand you the answers, to make the decisions for you. Mike, your parents, Maya.”