I nod slowly.
“That piece of shit.” He cracks his right knuckles. Jay looks furious, and part of me is scared that he might walk up to Nate and punch him right in the face. And part of me wants him to do it. “That is unbelievable.”
“I know.” I shut my eyes, but when I do, the image of the two of them kissing doesn’t go away. I doubt it ever will. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Maybe you should kill him.”
I look up at Jay’s face, and he’s not smiling. But he doesn’t mean that. Although right now, the idea is tempting. “Really. What do you think I should do? Should I go to the principal?”
He shakes his head. “If you go to the principal, everybody in the world is going to know about this. Is that what you want?”
Speaking with the principal is the proper protocol here, but he’s right. There’s no way this will be dealt with discreetly, as much as they might try. The situation with Art Tuttle is testimony to that, even though he never did anything wrong. “That’s not what I want.”
“So then,” he says, “you have to lay out an ultimatum for him. You have to do whatever you can to make sure this stops immediately and never happens again. And also…” He reaches for my hand. “You have to get out of this marriage.”
He’s right about that part. I’ve got to leave Nate. That is not negotiable. I lift my head, looking into Jay’s eyes, wondering for the first time if there’s any chance at all of a future with the two of us. I know there isn’t, but there are moments when I like to fantasize that it’s possible.
But it doesn’t matter. Whether I can be with Jay or not, I can’t be with Nate anymore.
“You can do this.” He squeezes my hand. “Don’t be afraid of him. You’ve got this.”
He has confidence in me, but the problem is, he doesn’t know my husband the way I do.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Fifty
EVE
BY THE TIME Nate gets home, I am more than a bit drunk.
He doesn’t arrive until nearly three hours after school ended, which begs the question of what he has been doing all that time. I don’t know if he has been with her or doing actual school-related duties. If he’s not an idiot, he knows he should be staying away from Addie Severson in the wake of her being found outside our house. Although he must not be thinking entirely clearly if he kissed her right inside his own classroom.
As for me, after Jay brought me back to the McDonald’s to retrieve my car, I drove around for a while but eventually ended up back home.
I tried to grade some papers, but that was an exercise in futility. Soon after that, I went for my bottle of wine. Unfortunately, all we had was about a quarter of a bottle left of cabernet. But I did find half a bottle of vodka.
When I hear the front door opening, I’ve been in the process of trying on all my shoes. Yes, all of them. I don’t know why, but there’s something comforting about a fashion show for my feet. Whenever I’m feeling bad about something, I go straight to my shoes. That’s something Nate could never understand, but Jay gets it.
Nate doesn’t call out my name when he walks inside. He never does. Maybe he’s hoping I’m not home so he can jerk off thinking about her. I don’t want to know what thoughts are going through his head. I just want him out of my life.
I toss all my shoes back in the closet, except for the Louis Vuitton pumps that I wore on my birthday. I slide them onto my feet, then I head downstairs.
Nate is in the living room, peeling off his black coat. He plucks the beanie off his hair and runs a hand through his thick locks quickly to smooth them down. As I descend the stairs, I can’t help but think back to the first time I laid eyes on my husband and how handsome I thought he was. It was love at first sight—or so I thought. I always believed we would be together forever.
I was so stupid.
“Hello.” It’s only after the word comes out that I realize my speech is slurring slightly. I should not have had that last shot of vodka. I need to be clearheaded for this. “You’re home.”
“Uh, yeah.” He hangs up his coat in the hall closet. “Did you get dinner started?”
“No.” I grab on to the banister to keep from swaying. “I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.” He loosens his tie around his neck and squints at me. “Have you been drinking?”
This is not exactly how I wanted the conversation to go, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not waiting one more minute to discuss this with him. It needs to end tonight. I step toward him, grabbing on to the sofa this time for balance. I don’t know how to begin this conversation, but I plow forward anyway.
“I know about you and Addie Severson,” I blurt out.
Nate’s hands freeze on the loop of his tie. “Excuse me?”
“I know,” I repeat. I have to focus to keep my words from slurring, but he needs to know how serious I am. “I know what you’re doing with her. I know that’s why she was outside our house the other night.”
“That’s…that’s crazy!” He laughs. “Come on, Eve. You really think I would do something like that? With Addie?” He shakes his head. “Where would you get such a silly idea? I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink. Do you want me to make you a cup of coffee?”
Oh, he is good. My husband is smooth. If it were simply a rumor I heard, I would probably be dismissing it right now. Then again, I always knew he was a liar.
“I saw you,” I spit at him. “I saw you kissing her. In your classroom during fifth period.”
“Oh.” The easy smile drops off his face. “I see.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
Nate tugs at his tie until it comes loose, then he drops it on the floor. He hangs his head. “I don’t know what I can say. I made a massive mistake. Addie had a crush on me, and I thought I could handle it, then today she kissed me. I let it go on a second too long—I know I did. It was stupid, and I’ll never let it happen again. I’ll make it very clear to her how inappropriate it was.”
I clench my fists—I want to pound them against his chest until he’s bruised and bleeding. “No, I saw it. You kissed her.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened.”
“I saw it!”
A vein pulses in my temple. It feels like there’s a very real possibility that it will burst and kill me before we complete this conversation. Before my husband admits to me that he did the thing I watched him do. Part of me wishes it would happen.
But another part of me wants him to suffer.
“Did you tell Higgins?” Nate finally says.
“Not yet.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No.” I did tell Jay, but I’m not going to mention that to my husband.
“I see.” He frowns, his entire forehead crumbling. “Will you?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I rest back against the arm of the sofa, because my legs feel wobbly. “I haven’t decided.”
“Is there…” He takes a step toward me, one arm partially outstretched. “Is there anything I can do to convince you not to?”
I look down at his arm like he’s offering me poison. “If you touch me ever again, I am going to scratch your eyes out.”
“Right, sorry.” He steps back again. “Okay, fine. So let’s talk about this. What do you want from me?”
“I want a divorce.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Done.”
Wow, that was a blow. As much as I want him gone and out of my life, somehow I thought or maybe even hoped he might fight for our marriage a little more.
“Also,” I say, “the house is mine.”
“But this house—”
“The house is mine.”
Nate grits his teeth. “Fine. Take the house.”
“Also,” I add, “you need to end your relationship with Addie immediately. Like, tonight or tomorrow. You need to let her down easy, but make it very clear that you will never see her again. It needs to happen now. Don’t wait for school on Monday.”
He had to see that one coming. “Fine,” he says. “Is that all?”