Betrayed 2(31)

“I don’t know how you can be that close to him and not feel something. You must have ice water running through your veins.” Julia had made the table dinner conversation become more of a bashing of my character. “Can you honestly sit there and say that you wouldn’t want to sleep with him? That if you get the chance that you wouldn’t give him the benefit of your company in his bed.” I wasn’t sure how to respond so I decided to give her a political answer.

“I’m attracted to him, but this wouldn’t work unless there was something between us. I’m going to do everything and anything to get him to fall for me. I’m already on the right track and having him wait for me by the phone was a good test.” I told her something and nothing. It appeased her without her realizing that I had tap-danced around the subject.

The meal was fantastic and I knew that there was no way that I was going to have room for the cheesecake that I had brought along. Lillian must’ve had a high metabolism and she could really put away the food and not show it on her figure.

After dinner, Lillian and Tina were doing the dishes and Julia managed to corner me. “You have put my mind at ease, but I still don’t think this is right. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to break down and call him and tell him everything. The only thing that you have accomplished is to give you a little bit more time. You may not think that a month is that long, but it feels like forever in my opinion.” I could see the reason why she was affected more than the other two.

Lillian and Tina had their lives turned upside down by this man. Lillian had a husband and Tina had a committed boyfriend. They were using that lifeline to pull them back from the abyss before they found themselves crawling on hands and knees for another go around with Marshall. That was the one thing that Julia didn’t have. Her lifeline came from her two new friends and me. I was taking care of business and I didn’t need the hassle of some lovelorn bitch standing in my way.

I left them as they converged in the living room to watch old movies on the television. I was going to have to push my timetable up. Tonight, was the night that I was going to break him down. I would rebuild his self-esteem only to tear it down again in front of the world.



The wind was amazingly strong and the plane had only the pilot and both Marshall and I strapped into parachutes. I’d never done anything quite like this and my adrenaline was pumping like never before.

“I have to say that your expression was priceless when you arrived at the airfield and realized that we were going nighttime skydiving. You will not believe the feeling that you will have or the sights that you will see. The first time that I did this over the city was something that I can never forget.” I was sitting there on the bench trying to bolster the courage to step into the unknown.

He was wearing a black diving suit and I was wearing a blue diving suit. I had my hand on the cord of the parachute. I wanted to reestablish my control with gravity. Once I stepped out into the night, there was really no telling if I was going to freeze up and become like a deer in the headlights.

I finally took a deep breath, stood up and went to where he was standing at the open door. “I know that I said that I was up for anything, but this was not what I was expecting. I’ve never been very good with heights. There’s no time like the present to face my fear.” If I wasn’t careful, I was going to need a paper bag to breathe into.

He got behind me and I could feel his lips touching my ear upon contact. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. I won’t let anything happen to you. You have become more important to me than you can ever know. Put yourself in my hands and I promise that you won’t regret it.” He gave me a nudge. I needed him to push me through this and that was exactly what he was doing.

The rush of air and the feeling of weightlessness terrified me, but then something amazing happened. There was this sense of freedom and the lights that he spoke of really had to be experienced to know what he was talking about. I was floored and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was not the first and last time that I was going to do this.

I saw him coming up from beside me and then we were holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. The goggles did nothing to prevent me from seeing that he really did care for me. He could’ve easily left me and made me face this on my own, but he didn’t do that.

Over the sound of the air displacement around me and the blood pumping between my ears, he managed to keep me calm and not feel overwhelmed to the point of panicking or being paralyzed.

“I’m so damn proud of you. I’ve never seen anybody be so open with their body that they were willing to throw it outside of an airplane. Add to that fact that you are terrified of heights and I think that I am beginning to understand who you are. We’re practically at the altitude that we are going to have to deploy our chutes.” He pulled the cord and was pulled back into the sky with me following not more than a few seconds later.