Chapter 19

I was saved from further debate by Barb returning and she wasn’t alone. “John, Mom, Dad,” she said. “This is Cathy. She works in the office with me.”

All three of us greeted Cathy pleasantly. She was a slender, pretty brunette with brown eyes and a slightly tan complexion that hinted that she might have a trace of Hispanic heritage to her credit. This was clearly Barb’s prime choice and she sat her next to me while she pulled a chair from a nearby table and crowded in beside her father.

Cathy appeared to be a little awkward meeting us all, but the music had started in the ballroom and couples began filing out, eager to hit the dance floor. “Have you met many people here tonight?” Cathy asked me, trying to start a conversation of some kind.

“A few,” I admitted. “I had a nice chat with Tara and a few odd talks with most of the rest of the office. A fair number of people have been a little uncertain how to relate to me.” Arthur and Janice quietly excused themselves and went to join the first couples to use the dance floor.

She nodded. “Well, we mostly talk housing when we’re all together like this. It’s a little hard to break the habit sometimes.” She smiled at me warmly, with just a hint of nervousness in her manner. It could have been that she was trying to dance around the fact that Barb had recruited her to be sacrificed to me. It could have been that she was a little intimidated by the condition I’d left Barb in earlier this week. Or it could have been that she was trying to avoid mention of Barb’s office affair. I decided to find out.

“Barb, would you excuse us?” I asked her pleasantly.

“Just forget I’m here,” she said with a smile. “I’m just here to make sure that you don’t run into any misunderstandings. I promise, I’ll keep quiet.”

I gave her a scathing look and then tried to ignore her. I turned to Cathy, who’d watched the exchange silently. “Cathy, you seem a little nervous. Is everything okay?”

She shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I mean, I’m just meeting you for the first time, right. I don’t really know much about you other than you’re married to Barb.” I shrugged ambivalently about that, but didn’t argue the point. “Cecilia talks about you more than Barb does, so I heard that you’re a fighter, but you also work as an architect. That must be interesting work.”

“It can be,” I said, “but I think it’s probably more interesting to people that are in the same field, kind of like real estate. If I talk about load-bearing walls and roof angles, you’d start to zone out and nod to humor me.”

She laughed a little at that. “I’ve seen that blank look a few times tonight,” she admitted. She was starting to warm up, but I wasn’t. Barb being here to cast a watchful eye was creepy as fuck. “So what’s it like, fighting?”

“It’s a lot of training,” I admitted. “When they televise the events, they do a minute long clip of what the training is like. The truth is that it’s months of going to the gym and working with coaches on the mats to get ready for a fight that might not even last a minute.”

“That sounds like a lot of work for nothing,” she said, frowning a little.

I shrugged. “It’s all how you look at it. I wrestled in high school and college, so I was always good at that aspect of the sport. To me, it’s fun. I get to mix it up a few times a year and if I win, great. If not, it keeps me coming back to the gym.”

We talked back and forth like that for a little while and then I asked her to dance. She nodded and took my hand, letting me lead her out onto the dance floor. They were playing a lot of slow dances this early in the evening. The faster stuff would likely start later on once the older couples ran out of steam and yielded the dance floor.

I took Cathy in my arms and started to dance with her comfortably. “She didn’t follow us, did she?” I asked her.

She giggled at that. “No. She’s off talking to a few people, but she’s keeping an eye on us.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, now that we have a few minutes without her listening, what’s up? You really do seem nervous.”

She shrugged awkwardly. “I ... I’ll be fine,” she assured me.

“If you’re sure,” I said. “I figure there’s a few different reasons you might be uncomfortable with this situation. I don’t mind discussing them, if you want.”

She bit her lip and finally nodded.

I smiled comfortingly at her. “Thanks,” I said. “It IS kind of an awkward situation. I guess my first concern was that you might be trying to avoid bringing up any subject that could touch on Barb’s office romance.”

She looked startled for a moment, stumbling, but she recovered well. “You know?!!?” she gaped.

I nodded. “She told me at the beginning of summer,” I said quietly.

“And you’re okay with her having someone on the side?” she asked, surprised.

“Not really. I’ve done everything I can to hold our marriage together, but she’s not helping. I moved out of the house the other night and I told her I want a divorce. She’s kind of in denial about it. She thinks that finding me a girl on the side will fix all her lying and cheating and the ways she’s treated me like shit.”

“And it won’t?” she asked, curious about where my head was.

“Not in the slightest,” I said. “It balances what our sexual situations would be going forward, but it doesn’t change that she cheated on me for a year, lied to me every day and treated me like garbage ever since she told me she had a lover.”

“I didn’t know she was treating you badly,” she said, surprised.

“She’ll do anything her lover asks,” I said candidly. “I’m starting to think that he’s trying to get me to go after him so he can sue me for damages.”

“Yeah, I never would have thought him capable of that, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for him this past year,” she admitted. “I’d never say anything at the office, but he doesn’t seem so nice as he used to. So, if she’s treating you like this, why are you here with her?”

“Cecilia asked me to be here. Sissy is probably my best friend. Barb was my way in the door. She’s also pushing the idea of me dating one of her co-workers.”

“You’re not interested in that though?” she asked gently.

“I think it puts me and whoever I date in an awkward position. Barb’s good at her job. That gives her a lot of influence in the workplace. She could make life difficult for you if you got involved and she wasn’t happy with you. I think she’s looking for someone that she can use to manipulate me,” I shrugged. “I’m not suggesting that you’d sell me out to her, but she could pry for information and cause problems for you around the office if she didn’t like what you were telling her or didn’t like that you weren’t telling her what was going on.”

“I never thought about that,” she admitted, looking troubled. “You think she’d actually do that?”

“I think she has less influence than she thinks she has,” I said carefully. “To be honest, I think her affair has put her on thin ice, so a lot of her leverage has been used to keep her from being called to account for it. I think she’d try to be your BFF if you decided to get involved. She’d also try to steer the ship, suggesting places to go or things to do. She’d always have friendly advice, but she’d always file it away for her to use down the road, I think.”

“Jesus! You make her sound like a stalker,” she said, looking more uncomfortable now.

I shrugged. “I think the term is ‘frienemy’,” I said. “Maybe I’m way off. I haven’t been able to make sense of her since she told me she was cheating on me. I’m just overly suspicious that she wants to stay involved with my life.”

“Okay,” she said, a little relaxed by that. “So was that the only thing that you thought would make things awkward?” she asked.

“No, but the other one really depends on what expectations she left you with,” I told her gently. “Care to share?”

She blushed a little. “She said she was looking to find you a girlfriend, mostly for the sex. She said she was cool with it, but it was casual only. She made it sound like it was a hook-up once in a while.”

“Well, she doesn’t get to decide whether it’s casual or not,” I said gently. “Okay, the other reason I thought you might be a little nervous is that you saw what condition she came to work in on Thursday. I thought that might be a little ... frightening.”

She laughed at that. “Are you kidding?!!?” she blurted. “Every girl’s walked the walk after a rough night. You must have done something amazing. She was still walking carefully yesterday. The guys might be a little afraid to let you near their wives, but girls talk. Barb wouldn’t say what you did, just that she only got about three hours of sleep.”

I nodded. “I could have gone further, but she begged me for mercy. The next day, her lover told her he didn’t want her sleeping with me anymore. When she delivered that piece of news, I decided to move out. If we DO hook up, Barb doesn’t get a say in what that means. If you want to tell her the details, that’s up to you, but she won’t hear a peep out of me.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” she said, looking at me with a slight smile.

“We’ll exchange numbers, but I have company through the holidays, so I don’t really have the place to myself,” I admitted.

She nodded. “Yeah, my brother is flying in next weekend, so I know what you mean. Promise you’ll call me?”

I nodded. “There’s no reason not to. It’s not like I have a marriage to think about, right?” I asked with a smirk.

“True. So what happens if we do this and it doesn’t work out?” she asked.

I thought about that for a moment. “We talk about it,” I answered finally. “We could hit it off and end up falling for each other, we could find that we’re good in bed, but really don’t have a lot in common other than that, we could hit the opposite problem and find out that we like all the same stuff, but we’re better friends or we could turn out to hate each other.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Those are the main possibilities. I guess if we hate each other, we’ll figure it out pretty quick and walk away. If we’re better friends, then that’ll end up handling itself. That leaves us with the possibility that we’re just in it for the sex or we take it to the next level. I’m cool with that. I’m single and you’re mostly single, but we don’t have to worry about a jealous wife.”

I nodded and was feeling a little more relaxed than I’d felt all night. The song changed and I led her off the dance floor. We exchanged numbers and she gave me a kiss on the cheek before she melted into the crowd. I saw Barb angling toward me and I made for the restrooms to avoid her. She was like a Goddamned vulture, circling over my carcass. I still didn’t have a message from Sissy and I cursed under my breath. “Two fucking hours late and I’m stuck here with Barb trying to run my sex life from her throne!” I hissed quietly and spent a few minutes just escaping from the inevitable.

I finally gave up and went to face the music. Barb was waiting for me when I returned to the party. “Well?” she asked.

“I told her I’d call her after the holidays and we’d see how it worked out,” I told her.

“Why wait?” she pushed.

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got Jane staying with me for the holidays. Not only does she deserve my attention, I actually don’t have a strong desire to disappear from the party until I dance with the people that I promised to.”

“Alright, well why don’t you dance with me and we’ll talk about it?” she suggested.

I shrugged and let her lead me to the dance floor. I wasn’t starting the conversation, so I paid attention to the music and let my thoughts drift a little, trying to remember when the last time we’d danced together was. I gave up and looked at her. She had an unreadable look on her face or maybe I’d disconnected from her so completely that I couldn’t read her expressions anymore.