The wedding spell had broken quickly once Louise and I were back in England, and I suspected by now that we’d both long since recognised the error of our ways. Louise’s agenda had been clear once we got home, and after doing the rounds of trophy husband I’d soon been discarded. Show over, she was off again, with another big corporate event to co-ordinate. More places to go, more people to see. She’d barely even waved goodbye to either Aimee or I, and I’d wondered whether, deep down, she’d ever really given a shit about anyone but herself.
She’d admitted when we met, after sinking too many sangrias, that she’d never set out to be a mother at all. An accident, by all accounts, just like our impulse marriage was turning out to be. Now her two accidents were holed up under the same roof, locking horns at every opportunity.
I should have walked out of that shit, packed a bag and returned to my old apartment. The place was still technically on the market, since buyer negotiations were still going through. I should have been out of there, stopping at the nearest divorce lawyer enroute, but something held me tight.
I suspected, despite my constant irritation, that that something was Aimee.
It was gone 1 a.m. when her key sounded in the lock. I’d already decimated the beers in the fridge and switched over to Channel XXX, stroking my cock to a horny little threesome with three young blondes. I stuffed my dick out of sight before Aimee saw me, flicking through the channels to something innocuous. The girl was trashed. She smacked her shoulder on the doorway as the teetered her way in, pirouetting gracelessly on the rebound and landing in a heap at my side on the sofa. I caught a glimpse of white lace panties under her skirt, and if she’d been sober she’d have seen how my hungry eyes lingered, my palm brushing the hard-on under my suit trousers.
It was only when she pushed the curls back from her face that I saw what a train wreck her makeup was. An unmistakable trail of ruined mascara smeared from her eyes, and her cheeks were blotched pink. Her lip quivered, despite her efforts to keep her composure.
“What’s up, pussycat? Mikey not the big, hot stud you thought he was?” I tried to be cocky in my questioning, but it trailed off into nothing. Her dishevelled condition knocked me hard, right in the pit of my drunken stomach. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to fuck her, hold her, or go after that Mikey sonofabitch and find out what the fuck he’d done to her.
“Like you care,” she snapped.
“Did he hurt you?”
She rolled her eyes, swatting away a tear in the process. “No, Mikey didn’t hurt me. I hardly even saw him all night. Turns out Mikey has a girlfriend, the perfect Imogen Delaney no less. He works for her dad, and apparently that’s the only reason he’s with her – that’s what he said. Like I give a fuck about him anyway.”
“So why the tears?”
Her lip trembled again. “Do you actually give a shit? Do you?”
I turned in her direction, pulling up a knee to hide the remnants of my hard-on. “Yes. I give a shit. Tell me what the fuck’s going on.”
She edged closer, her knee coming to rest dangerously close to mine. “I thought they were my friends, but they hate me. Why do they hate me?”
“What happened?”
“The usual. They called me a slut, said I’m a piece of trashy shit, that guys only want me coz I’m an easy lay. Beth went all psycho on me, said I was eyeing up her boyfriend, but I wasn’t. He’s a loser and she already told me he can’t keep it up. Why would I want to get on a useless sack of shit like that?”
“You’re drunk, they were drunk. It’ll blow over in the morning and you’ll be laughing it off over messenger by lunch.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. I pondered her question, and found that no, I didn’t get it at all. “Everyone hates me!”
“That’s bullshit. Of course your friends don’t hate you.”
“They do!” she cried. “This always happens to me. Even my own mother hates me. And you, you hate me too, don’t pretend you don’t.”
I turned off the TV, and her ragged breath sounded so much louder, so much closer. I’d never seen her like this. Drunk, sure, drunk and cocky, sure; but never like this, not once in the six months I’d known her.
“Your mother doesn’t hate you, she loves you.”
She laughed a bitter laugh. “You’re so full of shit, you know that? You know it as much as I do.”
“Your mother is busy with work, and she gets preoccupied, that’s all.”
“And you?” she asked. “You hate me, don’t you? Admit it. You can’t stand me. I know you can’t. Sometimes I don’t even blame you, since I hate myself.”