And please! Like I’d ever want that asshole to be a father figure to the twins. Yeah, I didn’t think so!
“Mommy, what’s a hemrod?”
I looked over at Callie where she and Cameron sat, drawing pictures at the coffee table. “Huh?”
“You was jus talk’ to yowself,” she told me. “What’s a hemrod?”
“Uh…” Since the twins were old enough to start picking things up, I’d worked my ass off to make sure I watched my mouth, but sometimes things just slipped out. “It’s an adult word, baby.”
“Is asshole an adult word, too?” Cameron asked.
Son of a bitch! Note to self: make sure not to think aloud around impressionable young children who hear every-freaking-thing.
“Yes, honey. Mommy said some bad words that she shouldn’t have. I don’t want to hear either of you repeating those words, got it?”
Luckily, my four-year-olds have the attention span of a flea and they both simply shrugged and went back to coloring. With that bullet dodged, I went back to making dinner.
Later that night, after getting the kids off to bed, I collapsed on the couch, queued up an episode of So You Think You Can Dance and got comfortable. I was in the middle of watching one of the boring ballroom numbers when my cell went off.
“Hello?”
“Hey, babe. How’s the headache?” Lizzy’s cheerful voice rang through the line.
I stretched my legs out and laid my head on one of my throw pillows.
“It’s better, thanks. Sorry for bailing early on you.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m just glad you’re feeling better. That headache wouldn’t have had anything to do with the fact you came home Friday night looking like you’d had your brains banged out and got into it with a certain hottie contractor this morning, would it?”
A deep sigh escaped my lips. “Really not in the mood to go there right now, Liz.”
“Oh, come on! You can’t hold out on something juicy like that!”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I lied. “Nothing is happening or ever going to happen between me and Brett.”
“Sure as hell looked like something was happening to me.”
I felt that annoying twitching in my eyelid again, accompanied by a dull throb behind my eyes. I couldn’t stand that stupid little eye tick. I’d had it ever since I was a teenager. Whenever I felt extreme stress, my eyelid would start twitching uncontrollably. I used to get so much grief about it, first from my father, then from Lance. They loved to make fun of my issue. Miraculously, after leaving Lance and moving to Cloverleaf, the twitch had diminished, only really occurring when the twins were on a rampage. But ever since I met Brett, the damn thing seemed to have come back full force.
I couldn’t hold in my groan as I asked, “Can we please talk about something else?”
I heard a faint giggle through the phone, “Your eye’s doing that twitchy thing again, isn’t it?”
Damn that bitch for already knowing me so well.
“If I say yes, will you drop it?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll let it go, but let me just say this; if you’re face is getting all ticky just from talking about Brett, how do you think you’re going to handle seeing him around town all the time? You can’t hide away forever, honey. Not in this town.”
She was right. And at that moment, I kind of hated her for it.
Past
Walking into the house, I felt that sense of dread that accompanied me every time I came through the front door of my home. I headed straight for the stairs on quiet feet, prepared to sit in my room for the remainder of the night and do my homework.
That was what I did every night.
Get home from school, close myself in my room, study, read, and then eat my dinner once my father had gone to bed, or he’d left to sit at some bar for the remainder of the night. Childhood in my house consisted of being neither seen nor heard. On the rare occasion my parents and I spoke, it was mainly so my father could berate me and my mother could blame me for what he had become.
Since I was old enough to understand, I’d been told I was the reason my parents’ relationship had gone south. When they’d gotten together, it had been a whirlwind courtship, intensely romantic, the stuff of fairytales to hear my mother describe it. They had been sweet and loving with each other. They had the perfect marriage. That was until shortly after I was born. The older I got, the more disconnected my father became. He and my mother’s relationship stopped being about passion as my father became more and more uninterested. He began drinking, leaving the house and staying gone all night. I’d hear them fighting about his affairs. He’d yell at her that she’d turned into a fat, lazy slob who couldn’t keep his interests so he’d had to find it somewhere else, and she’d spend days crying over his harsh words.