Rock Wedding(4)

She’d almost felt loved.

Tonight he shrugged in a way that made it clear he saw her as a scheming liar. “The point is I don’t love you. I don’t want to share things with you.” Hard, staccato words. “Your job is to keep looking like a hot piece of ass and to hang on my arm when I need you to. Otherwise, stay the fuck out of my life.”

Fighting tears, Sarah tried to remember this was grief and rage talking. “You don’t mean that.”

“Jesus, Sarah.” He stalked toward her, grabbed her upper arms, almost lifted her off the floor. “How much clearer can I make it? You’re a groupie like countless others I’ve fucked. You just lucked out that I was stupid enough to fuck you without a condom.”

She’d felt so needed that night when Abe had first taken her to his bed, so wanted. Afterward, as he’d slept in her arms, the lines of pain erased from his face, she’d felt useful for the first time in her life. “It was more than that.” She refused to let him destroy her memories. “We stayed together all night.” Limbs entwined, hearts beating in time. “We began a relationship.”

Abe put his face an inch from hers. “I was high and you were available.”

Sarah flinched, feeling cheap and trashy and… like nothing.

Abe continued before she could respond. “So if you want to keep this nice life you’ve managed to con out of me, stay the fuck out of my sight unless I want you there.” He released her. “You just have to spread your legs when I ask and smile for the cameras when necessary. That’s our relationship.”

Sarah shattered inside, spiderweb cracks spreading out from her heart to create jagged shards in every corner of her. Trembling and with her tears starting to fall despite her attempts to hold them back, she looked into Abe’s eyes and couldn’t tell if he was sober or not. “You’ve been drinking.” The words came out shaky, a plea.

“Do I sound drunk?”

No, he didn’t. But his body was so used to the alcohol and the drugs that it was often hard to judge his sobriety. He could well be under the influence. Sarah tried to hold onto that… and couldn’t. Not in the face of the ugly things he’d said to her.

Never had he spoken to her that way.

And she knew.

Abe didn’t just not love her. He didn’t even like her.

He definitely didn’t need her.

She was worthless.

Again.

Turning on her heel, she ran from the music room. Her tears threatened to blind her, but she managed to make it up to their bedroom and pull out a small suitcase. It was a fancy Louis Vuitton one. She didn’t really like the colors or the design. Left to her own tastes, she would’ve bought the much cheaper one that looked as if it had travel stickers all over it. But this was the kind Abe’s mother used, and Sarah had copied her because then she could be sure of not making a mistake and embarrassing Abe.

Wiping the backs of her hands over her cheeks as her tears continued to fall hot and wet, she threw clothes into the bag. She wasn’t quite sure what she was packing, but it didn’t matter. Shoes, she needed shoes. Going to the large walk-in closet she’d spent hours organizing and reorganizing because she couldn’t believe it was hers, she found her cheapest, oldest pair of tennis shoes and thrust her feet into them.

She wiped her forearm across her face as she went to the cubby that held folded sweaters for when Abe wanted her to go somewhere cold. Mostly he never took her with him on tour, but a couple of times she’d attended music events in colder places; events where he’d needed his wife to “hang on his arm.”

Almost bending over from the pain, she gritted her teeth. Once it had passed and though her tears refused to stop, she took out the sweaters and put them neatly in another cubby. Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to treat the beautiful cashmeres and silks with anything but care. Right at the back, hidden in a small box, was her stash of emergency money.

Abe had given her credit cards that had no limit, didn’t care what she bought, but Sarah had never been able to fully trust the cards. So she’d withdrawn money on them. If Abe or his accountants noticed, they didn’t say anything. She’d never withdrawn much. A hundred here, a couple of hundred there. Enough that she had a fund just in case.

She didn’t know what she’d been preparing for. Maybe this.

A woman who knew she wasn’t loved could never quite settle in.

Taking out the two thousand dollars she’d accumulated in the time since their marriage, she put some in her bra, some in her shoe, some in the suitcase, and just a little in her purse. If she got mugged, they wouldn’t get all of it. She took the cards too. A woman who had no family, no one to whom to turn, couldn’t afford pride.