Succeeding Love

Every Woman’s Type

Nick

I groaned, parking my car in the garage next to the courthouse. I still had a splitting headache. The aftereffects of drinking myself to sleep every night and then waking up after just a few hours of fretful sleep.

I keep having horrible dreams. Dreams that start out as memories from the past that shift into nightmares. Those memories slowly transform until it’s no longer me with my wife in them, but her new boyfriend instead.

Last night was worse. It was the first time I picked Jessie up after school all week, the first day I felt like I could hide my pain from my daughter. That was until she asked if she could dance on my toes.

I had no earthly idea what she was talking about until she described it to me. The way she talked about it, I knew she had seen it done recently. Foolishly, I thought maybe one of her friend’s little siblings danced on someone’s feet and Jessie saw it, or maybe she got it from a movie.

When I asked, she suddenly got nervous, biting her lip and looking guilty. I knew I shouldn’t have pushed further, but there was some deep part of me that was just begging for punishment.

She confessed to seeing Fay’s new boyfriend dancing with Fay like that. In my kitchen. In the home that I built with her.

That sent me into a downward spiral again.

I tried to keep it together, hiding my depression from Jessie throughout dinner, but I could hide the pain I felt when I dropped her off at home and I saw Fay with the bastard. He had that dog I bought for Fay on a leash in one hand, and his other arm wrapped around my wife’s shoulders.

When he kissed her right there on the street for anyone to see, both of them lost in their own world, it felt like a knife in the gut. I couldn’t even breathe. I could barely wish Jessie goodnight, sending my worried-looking daughter inside with a forced smile before I broke down. I pulled off down the street, parking in front of a vacant lot with overgrown shrubs along the street to give me some cover as the waterworks started.

So many thoughts went rushing through my head, so many guilt-filled memories. The last Christmas party I threw in our home before the divorce, where I snuck outside with Arlene while my wife was waiting on guests and being her normal, wonderful self. She was the light of the party, but I set my sights on my affair instead of her.

There were so many late nights I spent with Arlene telling my wife I was working instead. How did Fay feel waiting up for me all those times? I could still picture her numb expression every time I came home and headed straight for the shower.

She knew. I tried hard to hide it, but looking back, I could remember her expressions so clearly. At first, she would look pained, but over the weeks, then months of my disloyalty, she detached, going numb.

Fay said her love for me died when I admitted to the affair. That’s not true. I can see that now. She had months to stifle her love for me. I killed it, slowly and painfully. She cleared her heart completely of me, and now she was replacing me with someone else.

I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself for what I did to her. Feeling this pain now, I can’t even imagine how much worse she felt.

Staring up at the roof of my car, sinking into my own despair, a familiar giggle sounded outside the window. I looked over to see my wife and her boyfriend walking down the street, oblivious to my presence. Or, I thought, they both were.

Only one of them was oblivious. As I sat staring, glaring, wishing the tattooed asshole kissing the back of my wife’s to drop dead, he glanced over, and his eyes met mine. It should have been too hard to make out the features on my face because of the tint in the windows, but that asshole managed it somehow.

He smirked, then bent down and kissed my wife right in front of me. Right there outside my damn window. Her dazed expression, eyes fluttering, lips puckered and red as she stared tenderly up at him, almost sent me into a rage. I’ve never been a violent man, but I considered it at that moment.

When I got back to my condo, I downed half a bottle of Johnnie Walker. I passed out in my recliner, then jerked awake a few hours later when my dream of the last time I made love to my wife turned into a nightmare of that bastard taking my place. In my house. In that home I had built with my fucking wife, then threw away for nothing. For a momentary lust that I thought was genuine affection. It was nothing but a fleeting passion that dwindled into guilt and sorrow.

I couldn’t sleep after that. Fear of that nightmare coming back kept my dreary eyes from closing until the sun came up and I had to get ready for work. I drank half a pot of coffee before leaving, after getting sick twice, but the exhaustion and headache remained.

To complicate things further, I am now heading to a case that Arlene and I were partnered on.

Arlene had been hovering, making a nuisance of herself in the office. It’s becoming increasingly annoying. Her attempts to get my attention have become disgracefully pathetic, and sometimes even degrading. The fact that I left my wife for her sickens me more and more each day.

Now, I have to sit beside her in a packed courtroom until it’s our turn to appear before the judge. If it wasn’t for our client paying the firm an arm and a leg to have both of us there, I would have called in sick and let Arlene do it herself.

I used the excuse of having a headache to avoid small talk with Arlene as she tried once again to ask what I was doing after work. I remained friendly and professional to our client, but was dreading this entire ordeal. An arraignment for something trivial like this is not usually in my job description, but high-profile clients don’t care.

Arlene kept trying to press up against me, tangling her leg with mine until I moved it, or stretching awkwardly to lean over and breathe on my neck. It was getting beyond irritating, so I had to eventually move over to the other side of our client, muttering an excuse about wanting her to feel supported on both sides. I added in some nonsense about keeping her protected from the true criminals, which earned me a grateful smile from our client, but a vengeful glare from Arlene.

I didn’t care. She was becoming a pest. Whatever I saw in her before was no longer there. Her desperation destroyed any attractive qualities she once possessed for me.

As we sat and watched, the pleas of the offenders called first. No one enjoys these types of court hearings. Everyone had already come to court ready to argue, and watching the judge flippantly hand down rulings without caring much for the backstories the offenders prepared builds the adverse tone in the courtroom. Things can get heated pretty quickly.

A man with DUI charges was next to appear before the judge. He started in on the judge before his lawyer even got to his feet, complaining about having to pay for an Uber because of his suspended license. The judge was merciless because of the man’s combativeness. Eventually, the man lunged for the judge, resulting in the entire courtroom erupting into chaos.

A woman screamed, and babies started wailing as people jumped away from the first few rows. The two bailiffs rushed to contain the man, but he was large and started throwing punches at them.

One bailiff had the offender by the elbow, trying to pin him, but the man kept throwing him off. They fought for about thirty more seconds before the judge’s chamber door swung wide open and the last person I ever wanted to see came barreling in.

My wife’s boyfriend, Vin, I believe, was his name, was in a pair of slacks and a polo, not your typical bailiff attire, but he had the look of someone in charge. He had on some sort of utility belt with a handgun and compartments for other gear you would see a police officer typically carry. No one but a qualified security personnel or officer could be in the courthouse with a weapon, which had me wondering why Vin was there. I thought he was in the military. Did he work for the city somehow?

He made quite an impression, storming over to the offender and throwing him on the ground like he was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. He came in so fast that the man didn’t have time to react any more than let out a scream as he was tackled.

Vin dug his knee into the man’s back, then had both hands secured in one of his hands within seconds. His bellowing commands to “stay down” and “comply” could be heard clearly by everyone. The man had a fearful expression, and I couldn’t blame him. Vin could exceedingly overpower him, or any other man, for that matter.

A fact that had me vastly irritated and somewhat afraid. I had a wave of fear pass through me, watching. I was suddenly thankful I didn’t challenge him yesterday out on the street.

The collective gasps in the room turned into applause as Vin placed the man in handcuffs. He hauled the offender up to his feet like the man weighed nothing. He forced the man to stand as the two bailiffs collected themselves. One hand was on his neck and the other held the cuffs.

After making sure everyone else was fine, Vin escorted the offender out with the bailiff.

“Wow,” our client whispered loudly, with a hand covering her mouth. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “I bet he can toss a woman like that, too. Lucky her, whoever she is. I’m jealous.”

That brought back one of my nightmares from last night, making my head pulse painfully as my chest tightened. Fay was a tiny woman. Her boyfriend was a giant. The difference between him and me made it so much more painful to imagine.

“No kidding,” Arlene scoffed, staring after my wife’s boyfriend, too. “I think I know him.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “You know that man?” I pointed in the direction he had left. “How?”

Her eyes sparkled, a smug grin lifting the corners of her red lips. “Oh, I just ran into him by chance last week. Maybe I should ask him for drinks to thank him for his service here today? He didn’t have a ring on.”

“Like that would have stopped you,” I scoffed.

Our client’s eyes widened, and I realized too late that I had said that in the wrong company.

“I mean, because the man was clearly, um, her type,” I tried to cover for myself.

“I think that man is every woman’s type,” the client laughed, biting her lip as she stared into space.

Our client seemed satisfied with that excuse, but Arlene most certainly did not. She didn’t bother me after that. She just glared and huffed at me until we left.

I didn’t have the mindset to care about Arlene’s feelings. As I drove home that evening, images of my wife being tossed into bed haunted my every thought.

I stopped by the liquor store once more to pick up another bottle. It was going to be another sleepless night.