She felt out of place in Audrey’s swank quarters. Kenna barely afforded her half of the rent and utilities each month in her shared apartment riddled with threadbare furniture scavenged from yard sales.
“You have a lovely home.”
Audrey gestured for her to sit on the couch. “Thanks. My boyfriend and I bought it last year.”
She joined Kenna on the couch but left a cushion of space between them. A small sense of peace crept over her. It was comforting to know that she had moved on and an even greater comfort that she appeared to lead a normal life. A working professional, a homeowner, in a relationship; but Kenna had spoken to enough of Dayton’s ex-lovers to know not to take Audrey Dresden’s life at face value.
Something was fractured within Audrey. A missing piece. It was a commonality among them all, a hollowed-out part of their soul fated to eternal vacancy.
Audrey rummaged around beneath the lid of a square piece of furniture. It was quilted and studded with buttons and seemed to serve as a shared ottoman for the couches, though it occupied the usual space of a coffee table. Finally, she retrieved an album, setting it in Kenna’s lap.
“Josh hates that I keep this around.” She shrugged, her face a portrait of solemnity. “I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.”
Kenna shot her a wary glance. She ran her fingers over the plain, baby pink vinyl before cracking it open. The images on the first page twisted her insides and the sensation intensified as she flipped through, each page filled with Polaroids of Audrey and Dayton. Shock and jealousy competed for her attention as she slowed her pace and studied the old memories. Her jealousy turned to resentment upon noting the absence of shots where Audrey was half-clothed and asleep.
No, she was awake in every image, smiling and smitten because, for a moment, she had belonged to him.
Their love had been in the light.
Kenna and Dayton’s was all scandal and shadows.
She quashed her envy long enough to form a sentence. “I know these are just pictures, but it looks like you two were really in love.”
“I loved Dayton.” It was the first time she’d heard her say his name. “For a long time, he had me convinced he loved me too.”
“Audrey.” She employed the gentle tone she’d always used to comfort her sisters. “What happened?”
Her focus fell to the rug. “I told you. He cheated.”
“But how did it happen? How did you find out?”
Painstakingly slowly, Audrey turned her head and she stared into her eyes for what seemed like hours but was surely seconds and, as they beheld one another, Kenna grew frightful that the woman beside her had changed her mind. That she had gotten on the Greyhound, something she never thought she’d do again, all in vain.
Soon, the rhythm of Audrey’s voice filled the room and something greater than relief washed over her.
“A little after we got engaged, one of my sorority sisters took me aside and admitted she’d slept with Dayton while he and I were together. She was apologetic, tears in her eyes, but I wasn’t upset with her because I knew he had this tremendous power to convince a woman she wanted something when in fact she wanted no part of it.” Grimness furled her lips. “When Dayton proposed, I looked at the ring in its little cushioned box and I thought, this is moving too fast. I’ve met his family but he hasn’t met mine. I want to stay in the area after college. What if he wants to go out of state after med school? After residency? I looked at that diamond and I knew if I accepted it, I ran the risk of minimizing my career, but I looked into his eyes and it was his face, so open and earnest, that coaxed out my ‘yes’ because I was afraid of losing his love far more than having my professional life take a backseat to his.”
A frightening intensity backlit Audrey’s gaze and Kenna redirected her attention to the album, though the endless shots of Dayton’s cheerful face didn’t provide much relief. She thought of the man she knew and how seldom that same smile surfaced, but didn’t allow herself to feel the ensuing pity. Not while she was in the company of another casualty of his love. She recalled what Carmen had said in reference to her brother’s habitual cheating. More than once. Multiple women.
But was Audrey privy to the scope of his disloyalty?
“So, he transgressed once with—what did you say her name was?” Her voice sounded detached even to her own ears. A lawyer doing whatever necessary to ensure her client got off.
“Sara. I didn’t confront him right away. I don’t know why. I guess I was in a post-engagement bubble, thought the universe owed me that moment of ephemeral bliss before reality turned up to remind me that things aren’t always so perfect. After Sara came forward, our den mother called a house meeting. She said a couple of girls had come to her, distressed. Those two girls came forward at the meeting and admitted to me, in front of everyone—” Tears glassed in Audrey’s eyes. A stiffness settled over her jaw. “That they’d slept with him too.”
“It happened with three girls?”
“I wish. They stood up and came clean,” she spat the word and made it dirty, “and then my friend Desiree locked eyes with me from across the room andshestood up. I was so sick to my stomach. After that, it was like the room exploded. Once our den mother got everyone settled, we went about the admissions in a more cordial manner, like some fucked up trial. I listened to women I thought were close friends admit to sleeping with Dayton. Newer pledges, too, girls I hardly knew. There were 11.”
Kenna remembered how numb she had felt glimpsing the Polaroids on his bedroom floor, not necessarily shocked at the discovery of more women but the weight of it.
To understand, without question, that many others had come before her. That she stood among the used.
“You must’ve confronted him after a scene like that.”
“It was ugly. Heartbreaking, to say the least. You’ve probably figured out by now he’s not the kind of guy who takes no for an answer.”
A heavy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”