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I get out of the voicemail application but save the message. I don’t really want to save it. I don’t really want to hang onto it, knowing that it confirms at least partially, something I’ve been afraid of. That something being that Dennis is seeing someone else. Someone more local than me, even though we agreed to stay with each other despite the distance.
I slip the phone into my pants pocket and wander back inside. I close the door behind me and lock it, deciding that I’ve definitely earned some wine and chocolate now. Between the mess Tommy found himself in today, my part in trying to clean up the mess, and now this — the clandestine message left on my answering machine, with hints of possible friends of Dennis’s with benefits — I’m feeling incredibly stressed and overwhelmed.
While I know, it’s hypocritical of me to be feeling worried or scared or betrayed by this possible “other woman” since I’ve been fantasizing about Tommy, an associate-turned-assistant-lawyer, but it’s unavoidable. I pour myself a glass of wine (a ridiculously full one) and go and get the biggest bar of chocolate I own and start in on my dinner.
I’ve always felt insecure around Dennis. Not just because he’s had a flashier, fancier career than me, but because his looks and his personality attract all kinds of women to him. Being a model makes him irresistible to nearly everyone who meets him. Which is fine. Initially. Until you start hearing those other women whisper behind you back and say things like, “What does Dennis see in her? What’s she got that so special? She’s not even that accomplished. Not compared to the rest of us.” When you start hearing things like that, you really start to wonder yourself. You really start to fear that maybe he will go and find someone else.
And it’s not until right now, when I’m sitting on my couch, drinking wine and eating my weight in chocolate, that I realize how worried I’ve been about this. Not just recently. Not just since he started being less regular about calling me, but the entire time. Even when he was back in New York, I worried about it.
Except now, I’ve got a reason to worry even more. Whoever he was talking to, that woman seems to have caught his interest. And possibly in a more-than-professional way.
Well, if he forgets to call me on Friday like we originally planned, I won’t be surprised. At least I’ll have some idea of what — or who’s — been distracting them. I take a big, sour gulp of my wine. And at least now I have some idea why he sounds so disinterested in me. I swallow the wine, letting the bitterness coat my throat. There’s an odd sweet aftertaste that follows, but I just cover it up with more wine. Even if he wasn’t expecting to tell me so clearly. Or at all.
Chapter Twenty
Tommy
I’m not usually happy to be home. My dad and I (yes, unfortunately, I still live with the bastard), live in a not-so-nice part of New York. While a good portion of the city is being developed into a trendy, vacationers and young-professionals paradise, filled with all kinds of restaurants, nightclubs, bars and lounges, malls, and boutiques, that doesn’t define the place where I live.
The part of New York City I live in is a little more run down. It’s a little less developed and cultured than a few blocks down. That’s where they have these new townhomes being built. Where my house is, it’s an old development. It was initially supposed to be a great neighborhood for families. They built a lot of houses along with ours, but that never came to fruition. Families did move in, but they were very troubled, like my own. Often they were made up of single parents, or blended families, most of these families didn’t really follow the good-neighbor, small-town-America vibe that this whole neighborhood was originally going for.
So, when I drive up to my house, with grass mostly dead in the yard, weeds overgrowing in places, and the trees barely hanging on to some kind of life, I’m not ashamed anymore. I used to be when I would go and come from college at the nearby University, but not anymore. I’ve accepted the fact that my childhood home looks like this, and will always look like this. How could it not? It matches the man I have to live with: old, over-grown in a lot of areas, and doesn’t give a shit about how he looks, what people think, or whether or not he’s being a “good dad.”
I say I’m not usually happy to be home. But I am today. And that’s because Dad’s not home.
When Dad’s not home, that means I can actually get a break emotionally, spiritually, physically, and mentally. I can actually take some time to myself. Do what I want, eat what I want, wear what I want, without him starting shit with me. Which he’s never passed on a chance to do when I’m within spitting or yelling range of him.
