Chapter 6

I followed her back to her place and when she pulled into the driveway, there was another car there. I wondered whether it was a second car she kept, as I parked next to the curb, but someone got out of the car to meet her. I got out and wondered what was going on when I saw the look on her face.

“What are you doing here, Martin?” she asked angrily, slamming her car door. Ah. The ex-husband.

“I came to talk to you,” he said, looking back and forth between the two of us as I approached. “Can we talk, Cecilia? Please?”

“You want to talk? NOW?!!?” she snapped. “All through the divorce, you didn’t want anything to do with me, but all of a sudden, you want to talk, today, of all days?” She fumed, looking at him like she was looking for where to place the first stab wound. “Who told you?”

“What?!” he blurted, recoiling from the question. “What do you mean? Told me what?”

“You’re saying that it’s pure coincidence that you’re here, the very next day after I started seeing someone?” She pressed him.

For his part, Martin looked like Hastings had right after the Superman punch and the head-kick. He was stunned and reeling. “Cecilia,” I said softly. “He didn’t know.”

She looked at me and then back at Martin and her glare softened a little.

“You’re ... you’re seeing...” he trailed off and looked at me, a dozen different emotions playing over his face.

“Yes,” she snapped, drawing his eyes back to her before his emotional spectrum could settle on anger. “John has been very good to me. He’s going through something similar to what I went through in the divorce. We’ve been leaning on each other.”

He nodded, glancing back at me with a slightly less conflicted expression on his face. “So Sissy told you what happened?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “She said you left her for someone much younger,” I said passively. “She didn’t go into a lot of details.”

He nodded in understanding. “Well, that’s what I came to talk to you about, Sissy,” he said. “I realize what a terrible mistake I made to leave you. Is there any way that we can talk about it? Maybe find a way to undo the damage I did?”

I waited. This was Cecilia’s show, not mine. The three of us stood there for what seemed like eternity, but time stood still, so it was hard to judge. I was all but forgotten as the two of them stared at each other. Yup. I knew when I was on the losing side of the fence. Still, I waited it out.

Cecilia turned toward me in slow motion, her conflicted emotions written all over her face. She liked me and she sensed that we were very compatible, but he still had a string tied to her heart.

I looked at Martin. “Give us a minute?” I requested.

He didn’t like that. “So you can plead your case?!” he scoffed.

“You showed up in the middle of our first fucking date and asked her to dump me and take you back. You can show enough fucking respect to give us a minute to talk without listening in!” I growled at him irritably.

That got his attention and he swallowed whatever retort was on the tip of his tongue, nodding and moving away so we could say goodbye.

“John,” she began, but couldn’t get any farther.

“It’s okay,” I lied with a heavy heart, feeling another woman I cared about slipping away. “He has a lot of your heart still in his possession. I know you’re still hurt and conflicted about the divorce. You said that you wracked your brain to figure out what you could have done to save your marriage. Maybe this is that one more thing.”

“You’re not disappointed?” she asked sheepishly.

“I didn’t say that. When we left the restaurant, I thought that...” I frowned. “I was entertaining thoughts of divorcing Barb for you at some point down the road. Dinner made me certain that you and I have more in common than I ever had with her. If he’d returned in a month, you might have laughed in his face, but he’s here now and I haven’t captured near enough of your heart to make you turn him away.”

She looked terribly conflicted, but she nodded. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be,” I told her. “Just promise me two things. First, demand a prenup and word it so it ties his hands tight. Now that you know you can get slammed in a divorce, protect yourself.”

She nodded and smiled at me a little. “I think I can handle that. And the second?”

“Make me your first phone call if he screws up his second chance,” I told her with a sad smile.

She laughed and hugged me, her eyes tearing up a little. “I wish I could help you with Barb,” she whispered to me.

“You still can,” I told her. “If there’s anything that you think I should know, text me.”

“I will. I promise. I promise about the other stuff too,” she assured me.

“I’d kiss you like I was about to die, but I don’t think he’d like that and I don’t want to jinx it on you,” I told her and gave her another tight hug. “Good luck! I mean that.”

She nodded and then I let her go and walked back to my car. I got in and watched the two of them go inside before I started the car and drove home.

So, it turned out that I was going to spend the evening moping around the house, feeling sorry for myself after all. Fuck my life.

Barb came home at 2AM. I know because I was laying in bed, trying to get to sleep when she crept in. She thought I was passed out and sighed in obvious relief. She stripped out of her clothes and crawled into bed. The stink of stale sex was exactly what I needed at the end of the day.

I got out of bed. “You could at least have showered before coming to bed,” I told her as I left the room. She didn’t answer and I slept on the couch.

The next three weeks were torture. I didn’t hear from Cecilia, so I assumed that everything was going well with Martin. I barely spoke to Barb, but she started coming home late a lot more. I got the contract from UFC and after reviewing it with the office’s legal team, I signed it and returned it. They scheduled a press conference and they sent me some company swag now that I was a member of the family.

The close date came and went and no one bothered to tell me. I assumed that Barb had handled it and just hadn’t told me because I was childish and uncivilized. Okay, that thought was childish, but I was feeling down.

About a week after the close, I called Cecilia, rather than ask Barb about it. “Hi, John,” she said, sounding surprised that I was calling her. “What’s up?”

“Hi, Cecilia,” I said with a smile. We weren’t fucking, but I’d become attached to her in our brief time together and I missed her. “It’s good to hear your voice,” I told her. “I was just calling to find out about the close on the house. I figured that I’d have gotten a call to sign papers or something by now.”

“Thanks, John,” she said, sounding touched. “It’s good to hear your voice too. The close was a week ago. I handed over the keys, we registered the new deed and it’s done.”

“I see,” I said woodenly. “Whose name went on the deed?”

“She asked that it be in her name for tax purposes,” she told me. “I figured she’d talked to you about this already.”

“No,” I said, starting to get upset. “Barb and I really haven’t spoken since the night you and I went to dinner,” I told her. “It’s also news that she put the house in her name. Isn’t that funny?” My tone made it clear that I didn’t find it funny at all.

“Shit! You think she’s gonna screw you on the house?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“She could be furnishing it so that it’s ready when she wants to unveil it,” I said skeptically. “Or Brad could be helping her safety-test each piece of furniture before she hands over the keys.”

“What are you gonna do?” she asked.

“Nothing I CAN do, really,” I said. “The house is in her name. It’s not mine to touch.”

“You really think she’d be low enough to take Brad to the place she wanted you to make your own?” she asked.

“That night we went to dinner, she came home and got into bed still reeking of sex with him,” I confessed. “She’s already pushed me to spend about half my nights on the sofa.” I sighed. “None of that is your problem though. How are things going for you and Martin?” I asked.

“Surprisingly, things are going okay. We’re talking a lot. He got a far more detailed explanation of who you were and he’s been telling me about how life with his little finger-puppet was. She dumped him for someone her own age. That’s when he realized he had a good thing going at home and screwed it up.”

“I hope he makes the best of his second chance,” I said sincerely. “Did you tell him that if he screws up, I was waiting for you to call me?”

“I MAY have mentioned that you’d talked about how much you cared,” she admitted with a chuckle.

We chatted about that for a few more minutes since it was a happy subject and then said goodbye.

That’s how life continued for me through the summer and into the fall. I was training as much as I could. I had my opponent and I watched every second of footage UFC had sent me on his fights and read every scrap I could find. I’d picked my debut fight to make a splash, fighting well outside my weight bracket. I was looking forward to it. I’d go down in flames or rise like a legend.

I figured out that Barb and Brad were using the house that was supposed to be mine pretty quick after I talked to Cecilia. I drove over there one night that she wasn’t on time and saw her car and what I assumed to be his parked there. At that point, I waited and took a nice video of them with my cellphone as they came out of the house and kissed in a way that left no doubt that they were lovers.

In fact, I did that several times. They didn’t make it hard to put together a pattern of behavior. The close had been a month old and Barb still hadn’t brought it up, but she was freshly showered every time she came home now, so she must have stopped off at Target for some bath towels when she was setting up the house.

I now had $140,000 put away in the safe-deposit box for when I wanted to dip into my rainy day fund. That was over two years worth of my salary from working as an architect and it all came from my fighting career.

Thanksgiving came and went. We had a mostly silent dinner in the middle of a mostly silent weekend. I marked the date of my fight on the calendar in the kitchen and marked my departure and return dates.

“Will Cecilia be going with you?” she asked, looking at the dates the next evening.

“Cecilia and her husband are trying to work things out,” I told her. “I haven’t talked to her in months. Thought you knew.” That was the longest conversation that we’d had in forever.

“Oh,” she said. “Are you seeing anyone new?”

“What would be the point?” I asked. “I don’t have anywhere to take them.”

“You have the house, John,” she said testily.

“I assumed the sale fell through,” I said. “That was months ago. You’ve had the keys this whole time?” I rolled my eyes dramatically for her benefit. “So the two of you like the place too much to let it be wasted on me, huh? Perfect. Well, those are the dates for the fight. You’ll have to take out the garbage next week.”

I left the house and drove to the gym. By this point, I was supposed to have a home gym with a hot tub and a pool to help keep me in shape for fights. Instead, I was stuffing my shit in a locker that smelled of fermented towels and venting my anger on the equipment here. I kept it up until they were ready to close and then drove past the place that was supposed to be my retreat. I parked in front of the house and looked at it for a few minutes. Would I set foot in that house now that they’d been fucking in there for months? I couldn’t say. I think I’d call in a professional cleaning crew to scrub every trace of them out of the house if I did.

After I left there, I went to a diner that I knew was open late and ordered a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. I had my phone with me, but I turned it off whenever I was at the gym. I turned it on now and let it boot up. As soon as it connected to the network, it chirped happily to let me know I had voicemail. I went to my voicemail and found four messages there from Barb, trying to get me to call her.

I finished my pie slowly, sipping at my coffee while I thought. I wasn’t in love with Barb. I didn’t even like her anymore. I’d been really counting on that house to give me enough freedom to stay in the marriage in the short term without hating her. Now I was rapidly on the road to a visceral hate that made me wonder if I’d see Brad’s face when I got in the Octagon, or hers.

I drummed my fingers on the table as I slowly turned my coffee cup with the other hand. My phone rang again and I looked at it. It was Barb. Who else would it be?

I answered the call and tried to be civil. “Hello,” I said quietly, trying to master the urge to scream that she was a whore and then hang up.

“John, when are you coming home?” she asked, sounding worried.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It hasn’t felt much like home lately. You’re never there. You’re out breaking in the place that was supposed to be my gym. When you are there, we fight or ignore each other.”

“I should have turned the keys over to you right away,” she admitted. “I wanted to surprise you by getting everything set up so it would be perfect when you moved in, then I wanted to get the deck, hot tub and pool finished and then it just never seemed like the right time.”

“Plenty of time to show him around the property though, wasn’t there?” I prompted her.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re too much. The house was supposed to be your apology to me for fucking him behind my back for a year and what do you do? You take him there to fuck! What’s next? Are you gonna buy me a new car for Christmas and fuck him in that?” Okay, I admit that was harsh, but it was so true and so satisfying to say.

“Okay!” she said sheepishly. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. It’s still your house. I was never trying to hide it.”

“For the record, I actually knew that the house closed. I knew because I called Cecilia about a week after the close date to find out why I hadn’t been called in to sign anything and she told me that the sale had gone off without a hitch. She also told me that my name’s not even ON the fucking deed. It’s registered as 100% your property. Tell me again that it’s my house. She said you told her that was for tax purposes, whatever that’s supposed to mean. It sounds more and more like you were planning on keeping the place for you and Plan B, whose identity is still carefully protected even though I told you I wouldn’t go after him. Every time I give you a chance to show me the slightest amount of respect, you shit on me and then find a way to make it even worse.”