Coach Love(47)
Antony grinned and climbed off the car. “Yeah, it’s a real hazard. Now spill it, Ginger, or I’m gonna give you a titty twister to go with the bitch gouges.”
Chapter Seventeen
Cara sat at the long trestle table staring down at the plate of freshly fried fish, her stomach in knots and her brain reeling. Her fiancé sat to her left, running his mouth, but she couldn’t even manage to acknowledge who sat to her right much less engage in mindless conversation. When Kent draped his arm over her shoulder, she jumped, startled and embarrassed to be caught in her fugue state.
“What’s wrong, hon?”
She shook her head but couldn’t enunciate anything. She needed space, a nap, or something. The engagement tea at his mother’s club was finally in the rearview mirror, thank the good Lord, but it’d been a long, drawn-out trial. Her mother had appeared, stuffed into a dress that highlighted every curve of her obscenely lush frame. She’d drunk too many mimosas and given a long, rambling speech that left Cara fuming and the rest of the well-coiffed crowd of Vivian’s tennis buddies tittering into their expensively manicured fingers.
At one point during the horrible event, Cara had ducked into the ladies’ room for a break, only to be discovered by Kent’s sister-in-law Grace. “Oh buck up now, buttercup,” the woman had advised, reapplying her perfect lipstick and brushing non-existent crumbs off her dress. “Once y’all are married and you pop out a baby or two, Vivian won’t have a thing to say about anything. Trust me. I know. Well, about the married part. Robert and I can’t seem to agree on the parenthood timing.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“Oh, honey, sure you can.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
Grace had sat by her a while and patted her shoulder while she blubbered. But Cara hadn’t confided in her future sister-in-law. It would serve no good purpose.
So now she stumbled around like a drunk inside her own head, feeling clumsy in her skin, while her brain burned with images and recent revelations regarding her fiancé that she honestly believed would go to her grave with her. The grave she’d occupy after a long, dry, frustrating marriage to a man who may love her in his way, but whom she would never truly satisfy. That much she understood now, for certain.
The annual Labor Day weekend fish fry had been a Lucasville tradition her entire life. But the last ten years or so it had become way too overrun with people she didn’t know. Thanks to all the suburbanites slumming with their native Lucasville neighbors, the ranks of attendees had swelled to a near-unmanageable number, and the town square teemed with people.
The University hospital had glommed on since opening a suburban branch and had made it a fundraiser for their cancer center. That drew a bunch of socialite types who had been angling to throw a Fish Fry Eve Black Tie Event that got blasted down by the city fathers every year much to the relief of the natives.
Escaping the tent with minimal excuses, Cara ducked around a booth hawking T- shirts designed by the local Girl Scout troop and found a quiet spot near the Lucas River that flowed behind downtown. The cool water felt great to her aching feet. Propping on her elbows, holding her sandals in one hand, she let herself drift.
Relaxing had become a real trial in the past few days. The sensation of walking around on eggshells, snapping at anyone who spoke a word to her, wondering how in the hell she could possibly carry on with the charade Kent insisted on fulfilling all the way to the altar, never left her. Even his mother seemed halfhearted about the whole thing since the miscarriage.
She lay all the way down, willing time to run backwards to that moment when she’d decided in a fit of early-college foolishness that she no longer wanted Kieran Love in her life. Her thoughts drifted further, coalescing around what she’d seen a few nights ago on Kent’s smartphone screen. Words that had taken her a few minutes to process because they were so out of context danced across her consciousness now in red type, screaming at her.
The conversation with his lover had obviously been going on for a while. He’d hidden it deep in some innocuous app that he’d inadvertently left open on his phone. They used fake names. She’d sorted that out pretty quickly. Kent was Grant and the man on the other end claimed to be Paul.
Kent had gone out for his bachelor party and come home more shit-faced than she’d ever seen him, the night she’d figured it all out. His law partner had shoved him in the front door, waved at her then stumbled to the limo they’d rented. She’d managed to get him as far as the couch while he mumbled and groped at her, declaring his undying, everlasting love for her and their future progeny.