Not for the first time, Olivia questioned her own intelligence. How exactly did she get herself into these situations? It was cold. It was dark. She knew better.

 

That was the kicker, she knew better.

 

As she looked apprehensively around the gazebo her middle finger drummed an insistent beat against her leg. One, one-two, one, one-two. She drove herself crazy with that little tic. The trouble was it was so ingrained it usually took her a minute to even realise it had started. What was she even doing here? It was a bad idea. It was the latest in the overly lengthy series of bad ideas she’d been having lately. One of these days she was going to have to stop being such an idiot.

 

One, one-two, one, one-two. It was worse when she was nervous.

 

In an attempt to stop her hands she folded them tightly across her chest, drawing her sequinned jacket tighter around her body. It was really much too cold to be hanging around outside; she could faintly see her breath in the night air. She had to be the only one dumb enough to be out here away from the patio heaters, but then she supposed that seclusion was the motive behind the choice of venue. In the summer the gazebo was probably lovely, all bright and white amongst the blooming shrubs and blossom. It was a quiet corner of the garden far away from the noise of the clubhouse, a little world of your own where nobody could see you existed. She could barely even hear the party from it.

 

It wasn’t summer though was it? It was January and her party clothes really weren’t warm enough for this.

 

She was starting to freeze her ass off and yet again she asked herself why she was even present. What did she think was going to happen? What was it going to change? How was it going to be any different from all of the previous occasions (which she’d already acknowledged to herself as demonstrations of incredibly poor judgment)? This was assuming the other attendee of this little tête-à-tête even turned up. It was by no means a given.

 

Her finger was trying to tap again so she clutched a handful of her jacket instead. It was probably going to yank some of the black sequins out, but then she’d been shedding those pretty much all night anyway.  The cleaning staff at the club would probably find them in the carpet for weeks afterwards.

 

 

“Liv!”

 

 

It was all she could do to stop herself from leaping five feet to her immediate left. She had been staring at what she thought was the only approach to that spot, the one she herself had used. How had he managed to sneak up behind her? Was there some path back there she didn’t know about?

 

She whirled around to face him. Before she could speak he had grabbed her face in his hands and was crushing his mouth to hers.

 

 

“Mmph!” She tried to push him away but he was half a foot taller than her and he worked out. The upper hand was his. “Do you really…”

 

“Yes I really, I haven’t seen you for six damn weeks and I’ve been going out of my mind. Just come ‘ere.”

 

Treasonous limbs complied with the request, not heeding any of her logically impeccable and entirely valid mental protestations. Her fingers no longer wanted to tap because they were too busy sliding across his back. His in return grasped greedily at her waist, slipping towards her hips as their lips hungrily collided.

 

This display was exactly why agreeing to meet had been a poorly conceived plan. When he said things like that her intellect and her rationality and her sense of self-preservation all mutually decided to pack up and leave the building. That was why she had decided that it wasn’t a clever idea to be around him in the first place. So why did she keep ignoring her own advice? He was like her sexiest pair of stilettos – it all looked like a really fabulous idea until about an hour into the night when her feet felt crippled.

 

Yet somehow experience never seemed to teach her any better. Next time she was due to go out, there she was picking them out of the closet again.

 

 

“Justin…” She exhaled, her breathing a touch too heavy.

 

“No.” His mouth pressed against hers more insistently, his tongue trying to dart past her lips to meet hers. “Shut up. No talking right now.”

 

“This…”

 

It was hard to get words out. She kept trying to duck her head away from him but he persisted in trying to find her mouth again. As it was he kept hitting her jaw or her neck instead and that wasn’t much more helpful than the lips.

 

“This doesn’t change anything, I meant what I said.”

 

“It doesn’t seem like you meant what you said.”

 

He was only teasing but in fairness to the man, he had a point. Nothing she had done had actually backed up any of her words. It had all been fine for the first two or three weeks, but then she had started replying to texts. Then he’d invited her to the party. She had refused multiple times… but look where she was now. It had been a spectacularly silly decision to come, and an even worse one to agree to meet him by the gazebo ‘so we can talk.’ Now she was standing there saying she’d meant it while kissing him and allowing his hands to go pretty much wherever. Not a single part of her behaviour displayed much resolve to stick to the diktat - it was no good to lay down the law if you weren’t going to enforce it.

 

“Well I fucking well did. I am not that slut okay?”

 

Maybe she should have sworn earlier, because finally Justin raised his head from her neck and looked her in the eye.

 

“Of course you’re not a slut. Why would you even think that? That’s not what this is.”

 

“So you keep saying,” Olivia replied unhappily, staring at the open button of his collar like it could provide any succour. “Yet here we still are, sneaking off into a dark corner where your wife won’t see us.”

 

“Shit, this is really not what I asked you here for… I’m sorry Liv.” He pushed his forehead to hers, one hand skating upwards to tangle itself in her blonde curls. Idly he noticed that she’d put blue streaks through the tips and wondered when she’d done that. “I didn’t mean to get carried away; I’ve just been desperate to see you. I really have been going fuckin’ insane.”

 

She closed her eyes and the unhappy expression that seemed to be following her lately settled back on her face. It was probably giving her wrinkles.

 

“We can’t go on like this, Justin. It’s your birthday and Vanessa is in that swanky club over there throwing you this damn party while I’m out here making out with her husband. I told you that you either need to leave her or we need to end this and I mean it. I cannot keep being this other woman because a slut is exactly what it makes me feel like.”

 

Justin shook his head vehemently, hand brushing over her cheek.  Apart from anything else, the birthday party was being thrown more for his wife’s benefit than his. “You need to stop thinking like that. It’s not exactly ideal…”

 

Olivia scoffed loudly and looked pointedly at him, but he met it with a stern gaze of his own.

 

“But this isn’t some sleazy get some thing and you damn well know it, so stop talking like that.”

 

“So you keep saying, but I don’t see anything changing,” she said bluntly. “You are showing precisely zero sign of leaving the crazy wife that you can’t stand any more. I’ve seen other people do this dance before and what that usually means is that if the guy hasn’t left by a certain point then he isn’t really going to leave. Which is why I say enough, I am not sleeping with you or meeting you in any more dark corners until you’ve packed your bags and left.”

 

“It is going to happen, Liv.” Justin vowed. “You know that. Hell, even if you never spoke to me again I would still leave at this point, but you know full well how certifiable she is. I’m having to pussyfoot around first making sure her name is taken off my shit.”

 

“Why should I believe you, Justin?”

 

Finally she broke away from him, turning her back so that he couldn’t see her trembling chin. One, one-two, one, one-two.

 

“You have promised me so many times but you’ve done jack shit to actually suggest you’re going to follow through. Every time you reassure me that you’re going to, and then we wind up back here having the same conversation like it’s fucking Groundhog Day.”

 

She took a deep breath, but when Justin looked like he was about to interject she had to rush on with her little speech. She needed to get it all out.

 

“I have compromised enough of my principles here already, and pretty much the only way I’ve managed to sleep at night is thinking that this is real and not some affair. I can’t do that any more, this has been going on for way too long and I need to finally start being smart about this.”

 

 

The language she was using really worried him. Of course he knew that no matter how unhappy his marriage was this was still cheating and that technically made Olivia the other woman. Still she had never talked about their relationship in those terms. The talk had always been of a future together. She had always been uncomfortable with the situation but she never degraded herself the way she currently was and for what felt like the millionth time he wondered what had suddenly set all this off. It had certainly seemed sudden when she announced six weeks ago that she wouldn’t see him again until he had left Vanessa but maybe it had been stewing for a while?

 

He was silent for a moment, staring at her back, wondering what to say. Then he noticed what her fingers were doing and felt very guilty. He knew she only did that when she was stressed and he knew how much it bothered her.

 

“Sweetheart you’re twitching…” He moved to stand behind her and picked her fingers up in his, clasping them tightly and wrapping his arms around her waist again.

 

“Well this shit makes me twitchy. I shouldn’t even have come here tonight, the fact that I did shows what an enormous sucker I am.”

 

“Nah.” Justin pressed a kiss on the crown of her head. “Shows what a lucky bastard I am when I have no right to be.”

 

Again this was exactly why coming had been such a bad idea. She lacked the will to resist him and she knew it, so why did she put herself through the punishment?

 

“Look, I…”

 

 

Damn, he could even feel her fingers trying to twitch as he held them. He’d worked out that she tapped her middle fingers against her leg when she was anxious. She’d yet to tell him why or exactly what it signified; all he knew was that in times of angst the compulsion reared its head.  Before she’d cut him off he’d only seen her do it on one off occasions, enough to notice the pattern but not nearly enough to be concerned about it. As soon as she realised or it was pointed out to her she stopped – he’d never known her be unable to control it. How had she got this bad in the last six weeks?

 

Guilt struck him again. He knew that she was a sensitive creature; all of this really couldn’t be helping. Maybe he could have spared her if he’d got off his ass sooner but he’d been complacent.

 

You could only affect the present and not the past, however, so the best thing he could do to help now was to follow through. At this stage he was leaving no matter what; he was done worrying about what might become of him if he walked out. Maybe he could make it last with Olivia away from all the frisson of secrecy, or maybe it would fizzle out in the cold light of day when he no longer needed her as a tonic for his ills. He didn’t know but it didn’t matter. Whatever else happened his marriage needed to be over.  

 

 

“I’m sorry, baby.” His lips met her cheek again, hoping to soothe her ruffled nerves. “I know it’s rough on you and I know it’s not fair that I keep asking you to bear with me. I should have got my ass in gear earlier but I promise you, this is happening. I’m on the phone to the lawyers constantly and they’re nearly there. It’s just a little while longer and then you and I can actually be together like we talked about. And I’m sorry if I haven’t been helping by wanting to keep seeing you in the meantime but the times I get to be with you are pretty much the only thing keeping me together right now.”

 

Justin had to clutch her fingers a little tighter to quell the twitching.

 

“Say something.” He prompted her when the silence dragged on too long.

 

 

Olivia heaved a big sigh before turning in his arms and nestling her face in his chest. It had been a well-justified ultimatum and she knew she was killing its effect by offering all the resistance of butter to a knife, but she really was a fool for him. Moral qualms aside she had risked her reputation and her career. Things were starting to gain to momentum work wise and she could ill afford to have it go sour now. She was making a niche as an every girl - being caught having an affair with him would ruin her image. It could turn her into the villain in the eyes of the movie going public. Every way you looked at it being with him was ill-advised.

 

Oh well, at least he sounded like he was finally doing something. She hadn’t even been sure that would be the case. When she’d made the demand it hadn’t been her most mature moment (she’d yelled at him to ‘shit or get off the pot’ which was not exactly the best metaphor to refer to herself with) but she had felt every word.

 

Olivia had never wanted to be somebody’s mistress. That ship had sailed, but she still could and did refuse to be one of those women who continually made excuses for why her lover hadn’t left his wife yet. Though Justin was one of the few with a genuine reason for taking some time that pass had to expire eventually. Nothing good could come out of being blinded to reality.  They had long ago agreed that he would leave and they would try to be a legitimate couple, but he had stalled and then stalled some more. After having the same conversation multiple times with lots of excuses and no sign of follow up action she had snapped.

 

The decree was made; either his marriage or their affair had to end. She would have nothing further to do with him unless and until he left Vanessa. This had been a pretty risky strategy that she’d done a lot of panicking about. People who made ultimatums were often the ones left alone as a result and she really hadn’t been sure he would pick her. Still, what incentive did he have to actually make a move if she continually let it slide? The fear was that he still wasn’t ready to help himself and leave but for her own sake she’d had to take the gamble, put her foot down.

 

The increasingly frequent tapping of her fingers had told her she couldn’t keep up the status quo any longer.

 

 

“I just hate sneaking around.”

 

“Me too, Liv. But we won’t have to any more, which was why I wanted to see you tonight.” He leaned down to brush her lips with his. Though she didn’t reciprocate she didn’t resist either. “I wanted to tell you the news. There are only a couple more accounts I have to sign the forms for, and the lawyers said they should have them on Thursday with the divorce filings.”

 

Involuntarily her grip tightened. Thursday? Having a timeframe suddenly made her dare to hope. Thursday was less than a week away. It was a solid timescale, a fixed point on the calendar and not the same airy promise of ‘soon.’ He had mentioned actual legal proceedings.

 

“Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

Justin grinned at her and it was devastating. That was the handsome smile she’d been suckered in by, once she’d managed to coax one out of him. He really hadn’t smiled much when they first met.

 

“Appointment’s all set. I sign them Thursday morning, they file them Thursday afternoon, which means Thursday night I walk out the door. When you want to come have celebratory freedom sex on Friday you can find me at the Fairmont.”

 

 

Olivia ought to have been chastising him for that comment (which was entirely too cocky under the circumstances) but she was too happy and too busy throwing her arms around his neck. This time she kissed him properly and it wasn’t long before they were making out like teenagers. To hell with the self-imposed rules, he was actually serving the papers. It made her positively giddy. That one bit of news meant everything was okay – she wasn’t some cold comfort to pass the time. She no longer had to worry for his own sake that he might not find the strength to get out. He was leaving, it was over, and they had an actual shot at something.

 

Momentarily she was lifted off the floor in his embrace, and then he sat her down on the wooden railing. Both of them were becoming short of breath and hands were starting to wander dangerously. It was pretty rash of them to be doing this when anybody could come across them; previously they’d been painstakingly cautious. Justin hadn’t even used the big news to entice her back to him, knowing that if it went in a text or an e-mail it could conceivably be found. This hadn’t stopped him previously but this particular secret was too big and in his paranoia he had waited until he could tell her in person.

 

Yet now all caution was going to the wind due to the sheer relief of the end being in sight. Clutching onto each other, all the tension of the previous six weeks was starting to come to a boil. Her legs wrapped around his waist and his hands started to creep under the hem of her dress. It was all getting a bit out of hand, so when it was ruined by the insistent beeping of his phone it was probably for the best.

 

Justin withdrew with a frustrated grunt and dug in his pocket for his phone.

 

 

“It’s Joey,” he said. “They’re wondering where I am, apparently they want a group photo.”

 

“You just got cock blocked by your own defunct boy band.” She tousled the tips of his artificially straightened hair with her fingers. “Harsh.”

 

Justin chuckled evilly, giving her a smooch that was chaste this time. He always knew he’d got through to her and that she was feeling brighter when she said things like that. If they’d been at a poker game, regaining a sense of humour would have been her tell.

 

“You’ll be paying for that comment on Friday, woman. You go in first and I’ll follow in a couple minutes?”

 

“Okay.” She gave him one last peck and hopped down from the ledge. “I’m not going to stick around much longer though; think I’ll do the bare minimum to be polite then head out. Call me in the morning?”

 

“I will.”

 

He clung onto her hand as she started walking away, only letting go when she moved beyond arm’s length and even then reluctantly. He couldn’t stand seeing her leave when being around her was the only time he was anything approaching happy any more.

 

It was only a few more days. He had to remember that it was only a few more days.

Out of nowhere, a bottle of Budweiser appeared under his nose.

 

“Penny for ‘em?”

 

“Thanks man,” JC said as he accepted the bottle. He lifted it to his lips and took a swig without really paying attention. He was too busy scrutinising their host from across the room.

 

“Seriously, what you thinking in there?” Trace leaned back against the wall next to JC and took a sip of his own drink. “You’re looking weirdly pensive for the guy who just downed like a trillion shots. Shouldn’t you be too wasted to tell your head from your ass?”

 

His punishment for that swipe was a swift punch to the arm. He took it without comment

 

“Is it just me or is JT acting weird?”

 

“Weirder than usual?” His head tipped sideways, his face suddenly looking thoughtful. “Can’t say I’ve noticed.”

 

“He was moping around doing his usual bad job of pretending not to be miserable, that whole kicked puppy thing that makes him look twelve…” Trace gave a snort of a laugh, more because it was sadly true than because JC was at all funny. “And now suddenly he’s acting like he’s waiting for the cops to turn up and arrest him for some shit. Also, I kind of think he was staring at Livvy.”

 

“Livvy?”

 

“Olivia. You must know her - she’s Rob’s sister, been in a couple of movies?”

 

“I didn’t even know Rob had a sister. Or are we talking about the same Rob?”

 

“Never mind, doesn’t matter. Point is he was bordering on creepy.”

 

“Oh. Is ‘Livvy’ hot?”

 

“Not my thing, but objectively speaking.”

 

 

JC pointed her out and Trace’s eyes glanced over her, weighing her up. She was certainly Justin’s physical type. Tight black dress, sequinned jacket, blonde curls; he was nothing if not predictable. Still, it wasn’t as if she was sparkling with effervescence or anything like that. Though undeniably cute the woman looked a little aloof and not present. She was shifting from side to side and drumming her finger against her thigh in a way that suggested she’d prefer not to be there. Withdrawn and self-conscious was not the most attractive demeanour so it seemed odd that of the many good looking women in the room Justin would be fixing on her. Usually he went for the bubbly outgoing girls.

 

“Then he’s probably just staring and wishing he’d got laid any time in the last year.”

 

Once upon a time he would have been saying that purely to make fun of his best pal. Now he simply said it because he suspected it was true. Justin no longer talked very much about what was going on with him, hadn’t for a long time, but it was pretty obvious that Vanessa had little interest in her husband. He didn’t think he’d seen her within twenty feet of the birthday boy all night.

 

“You’re probably right. I just… fuck.”

 

“I know, man. Believe me I know.”

 

 

He didn’t need to voice it; he knew what JC was feeling. It was frustrating as all hell watching a friend slump around as a shadow of his former self without having any idea why. Trying to get him to open up about it was a total dead end. Bets were that it was something to do with the walking icicle he’d married, but Trace had long since learned not to attempt going there with Justin. He had a blind spot the size of China when it came to his wife and trying to offer any home truths on the subject only succeeded in pissing him off. Multiple people had learned that the hard way.

 

Multiple people who would have been at his birthday celebrations in the past were not here now.

 

It was the helplessness that grated. All you could do was watch him behaving strangely and looking lost, left to wonder what the hell was going on. Sadly he’d become almost inoculated against it, started to see it as Justin’s normal state of being. What stood out in stark relief to JC who only saw him every few weeks was now business as usual for him.

 

 

“Ahh, I’m probably over thinking it.” JC took another gulp of his beer. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Lance approaching and decided it was time to swiftly change the subject. “So how you doing anyway, how’s the rug rat?”

Justin pawed through the numerous bottles with a dissatisfied frown. Why did people leave the empty bottles there instead of putting them in the trash can? It was right there next to the table, they didn’t even have to walk anywhere. If it had been his own house instead of this stuffy and claustrophobic country club he would have been able to delve into his secret stash, the one he kept in his studio. All he wanted was a whiskey. Was it too much to ask on his own damn birthday?

 

The problem wasn’t really the availability of the drinks and he knew it, but he had to focus on issues he had a hope of immediately being able to remedy.

 

 

“Looking for something?”

 

“I could have sworn there was single malt around here somewhere.”

 

“I don’t know about here but if you want to sneak my present back out of the pile there’s one in there.”

 

“Kirkpatrick, you rock.”

 

“I know. Listen, you wanna grab the bottle and head outside? I could use a cigarette and it’s kinda warm in here.”

 

“That sounds like the best idea I heard today.”

 

In companionable silence the two of them executed that plan. Maybe it was because they’d spent so many years together every hour of the day, but when they were in each other’s company they frequently didn’t need to say very much.

 

Making sure Vanessa wasn’t there to get mad at them for disturbing the carefully laid out gifts, they retrieved the overly expensive bottle of aged Glenfiddich and headed out of the door. The night air was crisp and a welcome relief from the overheated clubhouse. Chris lit his cigarette and they meandered around the grounds, headed towards the golf course. Justin tried not to stare too hard at the gazebo as they passed by.

 

It was a long time before Chris finally ended the non-communication.

 

 

“Can I confess to an ulterior motive?”

 

“Here we go. I keep telling you, you got a better shot with Lance.”

 

“Ha freakin’ ha.” He snorted. They reached a bench which seemed a convenient enough stopping point, so he sat down and passed over one of the glass tumblers they’d stolen. Justin sat down beside him and opened the bottle.

 

“So what’s up?” Justin was liberal with his own measure before pouring Chris a glass.

 

“I don’t want to pry into your shit, man, but you got the guys kind of worried. Me too if I’m honest.”

 

“About what?” His words were slow and guarded.

 

“You just… you don’t seem yourself, these days. You’re too quiet, in your own head all the time. And tonight you’ve been the jumpiest motherfucker since OJ heard the cops were coming.” Chris did not fail to see the way in which Justin’s mouth twitched at that comment, only proving the point. “Is something going on?”

 

Something was going on, that was an understatement, but he wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to spill his guts. Apart from his fear of letting the cat out of the bag before the deed was done, his paranoia that his plan would get back to Vanessa… he was aware that he didn’t come off looking like the greatest guy in the world here. Was it weird that he couldn’t handle Chris thinking badly of him?

 

Then again, his attempts to be the perfect guy were what had got him into this crap in the first place.

 

It was a cliché for wayward husbands to claim their wife didn’t understand them and they were trapped in a loveless marriage. Justin had certainly never meant to find himself in that situation, but here he was. If he’d been smarter he would have realised it sooner, maybe even managed to prevent it getting so far as marriage, but at the time he’d been too busy labouring under the illusion that he could make her happy if only he did things better. As if her moods and her behaviour were all down to his various failures to act correctly.

 

“It…”

 

To hell with it, it was clearly going to come out anyway. Seeing Olivia earlier appeared to have punched a hole in his emotional dam.

 

“You might as well be the first to know. It’s Vanessa.”

 

“Oh.”

 

It wasn’t a question it was a statement, and Chris’s tone unintentionally said it all.

 

 

The fact that his friends didn’t like his wife was hardly news to Justin but this was the first time he was really registering the significance of it. He wasn’t used to seeing such hard set lines on this buddy’s face; Chris was so perennially jovial. That so many of his oldest friends had failed to warm to her probably should have been a hint, but he had been a man in love. Why would he question that? In the beginning she had been the perfect partner. The beginning had been a dreamy haze of sex and cute dates and being on the phone until the sun came up. So what if some of his pals weren’t keen?

 

As time went on he had fallen out with more than one friend who’d tried to point out the backhanded comments creeping in and the subtle ways she denigrated him. He hadn’t spotted it however, thinking that nobody and no relationship was perfect. She still displayed enough of her original guise to make him think it was only a blip. Now he could only wish he had listened, because after the big expensive wedding it was as if the switch had finally flicked all the way over.

 

The engagement had delayed the inevitable by injecting some excitement back into proceedings, but to no avail. After the wedding was done and all she had was living with him day to day Vanessa became increasingly dissatisfied with her lot. The further they got into the relationship the more controlling and openly domineering she became. She was nothing but mean to him twenty four seven and woe betide him if he displeased her, she became near psychotic. Justin couldn’t do right for doing wrong and he faced a daily barrage of complaints about what a waste of space he was.

 

Compared to the way she’d been when they first got together it was Jekyll and Hyde, but the change had been so gradual that he’d barely noticed it happening. It had been so easy to write off as typical marital gripes with the ‘ball and chain,’ nothing to worry about. All women were supposed to think their husbands were useless and couldn’t do anything without supervision, right?

 

They were two years into their marriage before the realisation struck that it wasn’t normal to be miserable and dread going home to your spouse every day.

 

 

Justin took a big gulp of the whiskey for some Dutch courage. The burn hit the back of his throat in a reassuring way.

 

“I met someone else. I’m leaving her.”

 

Chris’s jaw dropped just enough for his mouth to gape unattractively. His dumbstruck expression looked more than a little stupid. That was easily the last thing he had expected Justin to say; he’d been more ready for a pregnancy announcement.

 

“Uhh… what? Who? When?”

 

“You know Olivia? She’s at the party?”

 

“Olivia… Rob’s sister Olivia?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Dang.”

 

Now it was Chris’s turn to need some more alcohol. He knocked it back far too quickly for such expensive whiskey which deserved more savouring. Well, he supposed he could see the appeal. He was friendly with Rob and she’d tagged along on many an occasion, so they were reasonably well acquainted. Olivia was much more introverted than anyone he’d seen Justin with before but in her own way she was a pretty nice girl – maybe not the first person who’d grab your attention but difficult to dislike. If he’d tired of Vanessa he couldn’t get much further opposite.  

 

Chris cleared his throat. “I mean, I realised that… well, you know…”

 

“My wife is a heinous bitch?”

 

He near choked - JT was certainly pulling some surprises out of the bag this evening. That was something Chris had never thought he’d hear him say. None of them had ever liked her, she wasn’t a warm person, but Justin had been fiercely defensive to anybody who dared express such an opinion.

 

“I was going to say that you’d been unhappy, but now you mention it.”

 

“You don’t know the fucking half of it, Chris.” The words were bubbling up in his throat, desperate to be finally aired.

 

“Liv called it emotional abuse. Like, I didn’t even realise there were terms for all the shit Ness does but she was using words like gaslighting and every last thing she said it was just Vanessa. My wife spends all her waking moments grinding me under her damn heel and I have no idea how I let that happen. It’s been like living with a vampire, all she does is suck the shittin’ life out of me and I can’t fucking take it any more.”

 

Now he was confused on top of taken aback. What the hell was Justin talking about? He’d gone from cutting people out of his life because they breathed a less than flattering word to calling her an abusive vampire? Where had the big turn around come from and how did an affair fit into it? Was Olivia his therapist or something? He’d started an affair with the girl because she told him his wife was mean?

 

Chris didn’t disagree with the overall assessment - Justin certainly did behave like all his fight had drained away these days - but he was a little lost.

 

“Wait, slow down…” He clapped a hand on his shoulder.  “You threw me for a loop here man, I’m not following you. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

 

 

“I…” Justin threw his hands in the air, carelessly spilling some very fine aged whiskey. “It all started out okay. I mean, you know much I loved her, and to begin with things were totally fine. But as time went on she just started getting meaner and meaner to me. She’s always putting me down and telling me what a loser I am. Nothing I ever do is right and everything bad that happens to her or that she does is my fault. She just dragged me down until I wound up as this little robot whose only thought was how to make her happy so she wouldn’t trash me again. Except that everything I do pisses her off more, and then she starts doing this nasty shit to put me back in my place. Like, she’s even sabotaged career opportunities for me because they weren’t what she wanted or because I’d breathed wrong.”

 

He paused, took another gulp of whiskey for fortification and then kept on.

 

“But even when she behaves like a she-devil and I get mad at her, she somehow twists it so it was my fault that she did that or it was my fault for being oversensitive or some shit, like there was nothing wrong with any of the crap she’d just pulled and I was the unreasonable one. And the screwed up thing is I believed her. Fuck, to be honest I’m actually kind of afraid of her.”

 

“Umm… wow.” Chris didn’t know what to say.

 

“Yeah, I know.” Justin slumped back on the bench, staring wearily at the grass. “I just… she ground me down so slowly that I never realised. It’s like I forgot that marriage is supposed to be a partnership and your wife isn’t supposed to look at you like you’re the dog shit she trod in.”

 

“So if it’s been like that… why didn’t you tell us? Or leave? If it was that bad why the hell would you stick around?”

 

Chris was only trying to fathom it out in his own head; he had no idea what a nerve he’d struck. It was a painful question, one that made Justin feel like a moron. Indeed, why the hell wouldn’t he leave? It seemed so ridiculous that he would hang around for more punishment. Thankfully he’d had Olivia to reassure him that he wasn’t stupid and that it was how the whole screwed up cycle worked.

 

“Because I was used to it.” He shook his head. “I know how much of a fucking dipshit I sound saying that, like it’s normal for your wife to bully you around, but somehow she managed to make me believe all the crap she said about me. Like I was the one who was messed up and I was lucky she was putting up with me. I thought that things would be better if I could only work out how to not screw up all the time.”

 

His voice was getting higher and higher in pitch as it all spilled out.

 

“And I didn’t want to tell anybody because it sounded so petty and stupid. I feel weak even saying that, you know, I thought it was just me being a pussy. It’s taken me this long to realise that actually she’s just fucking vicious and she gets off on destroying me.” 

 

 

It was rare for Chris Kirkpatrick to struggle for words, but he did. There was no wisecrack or goofy joke he could make here to lighten the mood. He took in the glossy tears threatening to spill down Justin’s nose, and the way he was anxiously gripping his glass. The hand was rigid, fingers curved around so tight they’d gone white, and that shocked him more than anything Justin had said. The words by themselves were a jumbled mess that in a way did sound kind of hard to swallow. Looking at him while he said them, however? That was something else. That small gesture was breathing life into the picture and making him realise exactly how bad this really was. His friend certainly looked destroyed.

 

Silently he picked up the bottle again and poured more whiskey into both their glasses, practically filling them. Measures be damned.

 

“Fuck, Justin. I wish you’d said something.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“So… what changed, then?” Having poured himself that large drink he wasn’t compelled to consume it. He tapped his fingers against it instead, hearing the light click of nails on crystal.

 

“I met Liv, on set at the movie. She knows a lot about this stuff and she kind of helped me see how serious it was.”

 

 

There had been despair and then, right when he was at his lowest ebb, there had been Olivia. She’d played the minor part of his girlfriend’s best friend in a thriller movie which had done decently if not brilliantly at the box office. They’d often been in the make up chairs at the same time, so they had talked a lot. She was pretty. She was sweet and funny. She was a woman being nice to him and seeming to value his opinions; he’d forgotten what that was like. Justin had known he was playing with fire when he started asking her to hang out off set and he didn’t enjoy being dishonest, but still she’d felt like a God given solace.

 

It was why he’d found that little declaration of hers so difficult these past few weeks – to cope with the disdain in his own home he needed the comfort of being around Olivia, a woman who actually liked him. Plenty of people wouldn’t understand why he had remained in the marital cage for so long, why he felt he couldn’t simply leave, but she had. She seemed to understand what it was like to be so smashed up by another human being that you didn’t feel like there was any better world out there for you. Olivia had understood that he needed to be built back up again before he might be capable of saving himself.

 

“That… shit. That movie was what, a year ago?”

 

This was the part he had been dreading. He couldn’t bear to see the judgment that was inevitably going to flicker in Chris’s eyes, in everyone’s eyes when they heard. Worse was he knew they’d be right.

 

That he’d managed to marry such a nasty piece of work didn’t alter the fact that he had made those vows and proceeded to break them. He had loudly decried cheaters in the past yet was now a cheater. It made him a hypocrite and weakened his claim to any moral high ground. He didn’t forget it and didn’t underestimate how much it bothered his Liv. She’d branded herself a home wrecker, no matter how untrue that was. It was untrue because despite how it might seem he wasn’t really leaving his wife for her but for himself.

 

“Yep,” he mumbled. He was looking anywhere but at Chris.

 

“So you’ve been doing all this on the down low for a year, you’ve now come to the point of leaving your wife for her, and I’m the first person you’ve told?”

 

“Yep.”

 

This time he did take another shot. “I know I came out here to grill you about things but… holy shit. I… I don’t know what to say.”

 

“I know that it’s a shitty thing to do but…”

 

“After what you just told me?” He interrupted. “Nobody could blame you. I can’t wrap my head around how you held out as long as you did. Why now?”

 

“Olivia, again. She feels really bad about the whole thing and she said I either had to leave or stop seeing her. I don’t know. I guess I needed some time to work up to it, convince myself that it was okay to want to go be with somebody who doesn’t call me an asshole ten times before breakfast.”

 

Olivia had been remarkably supportive and understanding of his initial difficulty in facing up to his situation, but even her patience had its limits. She couldn’t be blamed for feeling pushed. Though in most circumstances he’d tell anybody giving him an ultimatum that they could ‘fuck right off with that’ Liv’s had been warranted.

 

As awful as his marriage had become it was familiar and he was used to it, so he continued to let himself be swept along with the tide. The upheaval of walking out seemed too daunting so he had been skating by, sustaining himself through their assignations. That wasn’t good for him and it wasn’t fair on her. Making the break was the only way to go but it had taken that push for him to finally locate his missing courage. Being trampled on for so long almost made you forget how to get back up.

 

“So… you’re really doing it? You’re not just telling me that, you’re actually making plans?”

 

“Yes. Breathing that answer out was a huge cathartic release. Even saying it made his shoulders feel about ten times lighter. “I’ve been getting things together and later this week I’m going to serve Vanessa the papers.”

 

“Where you going, you need somewhere to stay? You know my house is your house.”

 

“No I’m good, but thank you.” He gave Chris a brotherly clap on the arm, feebly trying to express the rush of gratitude he felt for the unhesitating support and lack of judgment.  Especially the lack of judgment. “Going to hide out in a hotel room where she won’t think to look for me for the first couple of days, then I think I’ll head to my mom’s for a while.”

 

“You’re not going to Olivia’s?”

 

“No.” He shook his head. “I mean, I do want it to work with her, but leaving is not about following my dick to new pastures. I’ve got to concentrate on getting out of this toxic bullshit, it’s going to be ugly for a while and trying to move straight in with Liv on top of that is too much. It would be really premature.”

 

 

You’d think knowing he’d be gone soon would make it easier but it made him more impatient. It was as if the closer he came to freedom the less he could stomach being around Mrs Timberlake. Without the brief respites in Olivia’s arms it was all the harder, but given how vindictive his wife had shown herself to be Justin didn’t dare make his move before getting all his legal ducks in a row. He couldn’t stop her from making the divorce settlement ugly but he could quietly remove any and all authority she’d been given in his accounts and business affairs before he told her, shut down any opportunity to use it against him. Thank God he’d had a pre-nup.

 

In hindsight Vanessa had been pretty unreasonable about that too, another warning sign he’d missed. She’d never been overly greedy or behaved like a gold digger, but she was that bit too insistent on things always going her way. No matter how small or irrelevant the issue was, no matter how little it should have mattered to her or how illogical (even self-contradictory) her stipulations were, she had to get the result she dictated. Sometimes he thought she was doing it more to check she could than because she truly wanted what she demanded. Maybe that was why he’d never cottoned on - if she’d been grasping for his money or for material things as predecessors had he might have noticed quicker.

 

No, Vanessa wasn’t motivated by money. It was pure principle: her way or the highway. That was why he had to tread so carefully, because this time she wasn’t going to be getting her way for once. That would enrage her. She would be as obstructive and difficult as possible not because she was heartbroken or wanted to keep him, not because she wanted money, but because she needed to ‘win.’

 

 

“So here’s what we’re gonna do.” Chris said decisively. He was doing what he always did after an emotionally heavy conversation – he was looking for something practical to do to fix it. “We are having dinner Tuesday night, my house.”

 

“But…”

 

“Don’t argue. Us and Trace, family only. You are going to tell them exactly what you just told me, and we’re gonna talk out the plan for the great JT Liberation. We need to make sure you get away as quick and painless as possible and somebody fends off that evil bitch while you get settled.”

 

He was trying to resist the urge to march back into the party and personally send her back to the Hell she was spawned from. Chris like most of Justin’s friends had never liked her, had always found her to be cold and unfriendly. Yet even though he’d called Vanessa a bitch before (not to Justin’s face) he’d never realised the full extent of it. None of them had, or they’d have hauled him out kicking and screaming. They’d never thought of her as anything except totally normal. Even having witnessed Justin get moody and withdrawn he’d never dreamed this was why. He’d thought it was your typical relationship drama and nothing to worry about. Nobody had ever suspected that she was ripping shreds out of their friend behind closed doors; they’d merely agreed that she was unpleasant and they didn’t understand what he saw in her.

 

Chris was going to be feeling very guilty about that blithe oversight for a long time to come. Quietly he clenched and unclenched his free hand into a fist, trying not to let his rage at Vanessa overtake him. Justin didn’t need him to go off on one right now.

 

“Thanks, Chris.” Justin self-consciously brushed his fingers across his cheek, blotting away the tears that were still wet and slightly tacky to the touch. “I know you weren’t exactly prepared for me to drop this all on you.”

 

“To hell if I’m ready - next time you’re in trouble you fucking tell me so I can help you, you little punk. You’re my brother, you know that.”

 

 

They were silent for a long while after, still sipping the birthday whiskey which was now more for commiseration than celebration.

A large hand closed itself around hers, tightening around her fingers and halting their rhythm.

 

“What’s up?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Why do you even bother? This is me. I know.”

 

“You think you know.”

 

“You and I both know what it means, so cut the crap. What’s wrong?”

 

“Oh shut your face.”

 

“I love you too. What’s wrong?”

 

Olivia’s face twisted into a weary grimace as she looked up at Rob. If he’d had a fairer complexion he could have been a male version of her. They had the same cheekbones, the same jaw line. He was darker haired and less pale but the only real difference was his nose, the one he kept threatening to have altered. It was the one major facial feature that was recognisable and Rob couldn’t stand seeing it in the mirror.

 

“This party just sucks and I wanna leave.”

 

“Okay. So you want to give me the actual reason while I walk you to your car?”

 

“Ahh!”

 

 

She snatched her purse from the table and started stomping off towards the door. Rob was utterly unfazed, too used to her snits to be at all bothered. Truth told he was equally prone to it himself. Neither of them could cope with crowds for too long and this little party of Timberlake’s was heaving with the rich and the beautiful. It was rare to make it all the way to the end of a big night out without one or both of them reaching the ‘off’ moment, that instant where they’d reached their individual limit and wanted to leave with all possible haste. The change in mood was immediate and palpable, grouchy and bratty, and the only thing for it was to go home at the first opportunity. There was no recovering the sociable spirit once the internal switch had flipped.

 

It often made him question his sister’s choice of career. As a finance guy it wasn’t much of a problem for him. Worst that could happen was he occasionally annoyed one of his buddies by cutting out early. How was she planning to deal with paparazzi or hordes of fans? Her roles were starting to get bigger and with that would come more attention. People would take far more notice if she had an anti-social turn.

 

Once they’d reached minimum safe distance from the party he started to pry again.

 

 

“This about him? I was surprised you even showed.”

 

“Don’t.”

 

“I’m your big brother. This is what I do.”

 

“For the last time three and a half minutes does not qualify you as my big brother.”

 

“You think I don’t see you deflecting, but I do. It really would be easier if you just told me.”

 

“Oh fine.”

 

She had been about to reach in her bag for her keys but instead she turned on her heel, leaning back against the side of her car. Her arms had to be tightly folded over her chest again because she knew he wouldn’t let it go if he saw more of the tic. Crossing her feet at the ankles, Olivia directed her stare to the crimson pedicure on her toes.

 

That had been the moment she knew she was going to come to this stupid party, when she found herself making far too many beauty preparations despite claiming she wouldn’t attend.

 

 

“I’m worried about him.”

 

“Liv, like I keep telling you. If he’s fool enough to stay with his wife then you can’t let that be your problem.”

 

“No, not because he’s staying. He’s actually doing it; he told me he’s filing papers on Thursday.”

 

Apparently he should have given the guy more credit. Rob had been fairly convinced it was never going to happen.

 

He’d certainly said as much to her when he’d found out a couple of months previously. Limiting himself to that instead of badgering her to break it off immediately had been impressively restrained, he thought. Normally he would have been actively trying to keep her away from any married man – and probably threatening the guy to stay away too. However he shared enough mutual friends with Justin (that was how he’d wound up with an invitation for tonight) to know a little something about him. Since Olivia was already in so deep by the time she’d admitted to the affair, a few quiet questions sufficed to reassure Rob that the guy wasn’t a player and it was unlikely she was being treated callously. He’d decided this was one of those things where he had to let her make her own mistake, contrary as it ran to his overprotective instincts. He interfered too much in her life as it was; sometimes he had to sit on his hands and stop himself.

 

Even so he’d been dubious about the prospects of it all panning out well for her. From what she’d said it sounded like Justin was too far under his wife’s thumb for that. Olivia had apparently agreed with him since not long afterwards she had delivered the ‘me or her’ ultimatum and ceased contact. Rob didn’t take credit for that, however, since he was fairly sure that he’d simply given voice to pre-existing doubts. His sister had a talent for picking unsuitable men but she wasn’t naïve.

 

“So this is good news, right? What you wanted? Then what’s the problem?”

 

“I’ve been kind of downplaying it so I didn’t scare him out of it, but I’m terrified of what she might do. I swear to God, Rob, all this while I’ve been listening to him talk about her it’s been like he was describing…”

 

Olivia bit her lip, shaking her head and gazing back into the distance at the clubhouse.

 

“Like he was describing Deborah. And you know how that bitch would have reacted to something like this.”

 

 

The hairs on his neck stood on end and his torso immediately tensed up. His fingers were curled into talons - that name always made it so. Olivia had briefly mentioned that Justin’s wife was a nasty piece of work, but he’d assumed it was the usual cheating husband’s excuse. If she’d said anything even approaching this before he’d have been much more worried himself. It was almost certain he’d have had to revise his ‘stay out of it’ policy. Anybody even half as bad as her was not someone to be trifled with.

 

Still, it wasn’t going to help his sister if he admitted any of that. She needed to be calmed down not wound up further. Possibly he should sugar coat things less to her than he did, but it was a long standing habit. The urge to shield her from the worst of the world was too entrenched.

 

“I do. But Justin is a wealthy, powerful guy. Maybe the bitch has made him forget that for a minute but once he’s out of there he has all manner of people who can shield him from it. Not everybody has that luxury.”

 

She was tapping again, but he couldn’t attempt to stop her. Seeing her frequently set him off, so he had enough work to do preventing himself following suit. All he could do was attempt to look breezy and like it would all be fine, no matter how sure he was that it wouldn’t be fine. If Vanessa was anything like Deborah, then any woman Justin dared step out with was going to be as big a target as he was. The cheating wouldn’t even have to be revealed; once it was known she was the latest Timberlake squeeze his twin would be in the crosshairs for that alone.

 

One, one two, one, one two. Damn it.

 

 

“Honestly, Livvy…” He rubbed her arms instead, trying to occupy his hands as well as comfort her. “It’ll be alright. He’s busting out of there and it’s because you helped him. That’s pretty huge.”

 

“I just… I know you thought I was an idiot to have got involved…”

 

“No.” He drawled it out slowly. In truth he might have, had he known what Vanessa was like before. Still that made it all the more remarkable that she’d succeeded in convincing him to get out.

 

“I only thought that setting yourself up for a married guy to dick you around might be too much to handle.”

 

“Not like I intended to fall in love with somebody just as freaking damaged as I am. Just kind of happened. I can’t bear the thought of what she might do and seeing him go through it. It’s like her all over again, I see what’s coming and I still can’t stop it.”

 

Rob reached out and drew her into a hug. Her head dropped into its customary spot on his shoulder and together they stood quietly for a moment.

 

“It’ll be alright. He’s getting divorced, all you have to do is give it some time to let the dust settle and then you might even be able to have a semi-normal relationship. You’ll have to let me know what that’s like.”

 

Wordlessly Olivia poked him in the ribs. They were both hypocrites – neither liked it when the other was self-critical but they were equally prone to putting themselves down. Their humour was bitingly self-deprecating, though he supposed they couldn’t be blamed all things considered.

 

 

“Hey… oh, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

 

Releasing Olivia, Rob turned around and eyed the interloper with mirth.  “Hi. Don’t think we’ve met before but I’m Rob, Olivia’s brother.”

 

The relief on his face was deeply amusing. All things considered, it was kind of funny that he was looking so worried at the sight of her with another guy. He was hardly one to talk.

 

“Justin. Nice to finally put a face to the name, the guys mention you a lot.” They shook hands.

 

“You too. Everything alright?”

 

“What? Oh, yeah.” Justin flushed, his cheeks blooming with embarrassment. If he hadn’t already known that Rob was aware of their situation the smirk on his face would have told him. It was awkward. “Saw you heading out in a hurry and just wanted to check you were okay?”

 

“I’m heading back in anyway so I’ll let you two say goodnight.” Rob kissed his sister’s forehead and then turned to shake Justin’s hand again. “We’ll have to get acquainted properly some time, but it was nice to meet you.”

 

“You too.”

 

 

One side of Olivia’s mouth curled upwards and she shook her head at her brother’s retreating back. “Sorry about him. He thinks he’s funny.”

 

“Eh, guess I’ll have to get used to it.” Justin tried to look like he was laughing it off and not like he was a fifteen year old boy faced with his date’s terrifying older brother.  As he’d approached they were only talking, but when he’d rounded the corner they were hugging and he didn’t quite know what he’d thought it was for a second there. It was pretty silly. “But yeah, are you okay?”

 

“Oh God yeah.” Olivia shook her head, the lie coming easily. “You know how I kind of reach my limit with these shindigs. Though as chivalrous as the concern for my welfare is, should you really have followed me?”

 

“She didn’t see me leave. Besides, I find myself giving fewer and fewer fucks what she sees with every passing minute. But you really are okay?”

 

She smiled. “Yes, really. Was just some twin stuff, I’m sworn to secrecy.”

 

Justin very much wanted to pick up where Rob had left off with the hug, but despite his previous comment he knew that was a risk too far. “Speaking of secrets… I told Chris. Everything, if you can believe it.”

 

“Wow.” Olivia immediately straightened up. That was huge. He had been so resolute about not telling anybody anything, convinced that they wouldn’t understand or that they’d think him pathetic. For him to have finally said something was significant. “That would make the better question are you okay?”

 

“Yeah. He was pretty fuckin’ awesome about it, actually.”

 

“That’s great.”

 

One thing Olivia had made sure to do when encouraging him to talk about it was to be honest about the reaction he’d get. She’d needed to prepare him. Some people would be great, some kind of useless and others actively terrible. He’d have to deal with the people who tried but didn’t really get it and those who couldn’t actually believe it was true and decided he had to be making it up. Still, she knew that she couldn’t truly arm him against the hurt. When you got that reaction from somebody you were counting on to understand it was a full body blow.

 

That was why she was so relieved on his behalf. It would have been a disaster for him emotionally had the first time he opened up gone badly.

 

“If you’re okay then I guess should probably get back, but uhh…” Justin paused briefly, not sure where he was going with that thought. “Man, I wish I could just kiss you goodnight like a normal relationship.”

 

It made her smile, thinking of what Rob had said. “Normal’s coming,” she replied as she finally unlocked her car door. “We only need to get through the next few days.”

 

“Can’t come quick enough. I…” Justin stubbed the toe of his sneaker into the gravel. “You’ve done so much and I haven’t exactly been able to treat you properly while we’ve been sneaking around like this. I’d really like to skip to normal already; you’re way past due to get something real from me.”

 

He seemed to have a natural talent for saying things to crush all her defences (and her common sense). Olivia took a quick glance towards the clubhouse before leaning forward to press her lips against his and squeeze his hand. It wasn’t smart and she only dared do it briefly.

 

“You saying that and being brave enough to do this are plenty real for me.”

 

That was why he needed her. Where Vanessa made him feel small she made him feel bigger, even if only for a few blessed moments before the self-doubt set back in.

 

“You should go.” She nudged him. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

 

His response was to open her car door for her and help her inside, shutting it after her. He watched her buckle up and start the car before turning back towards the party he was thoroughly fed up with.

 

**

 

“I just can’t believe the bastard’s stupid enough to think I don’t know.”

 

Vanessa glared at her own reflection in her compact mirror before fluffing up her backcombed hair and reaching for her lipstick. After all the trouble she’d been to set up this party in his honour her errant husband hadn’t even had the courtesy to stick around for more than five consecutive minutes. He’d been running in and out all night and she wouldn’t be surprised if at least one trip had been to see the whore. Unfortunately she’d been so busy playing hostess and socialising with all the people that he was rudely neglecting she’d never been around to notice when he was creeping out. The only time she’d seen him leave the room it was with Chris, not some woman.

 

“Well he’s half right.” Lucinda smirked, digging into her own bag for her phone.

 

“It’s only a matter of time, I’ll find out who she is.”

 

“And then what are you going to do?”

 

“Let him know precisely what I think about that.”

 

 

It was aggravating to say the least. Vanessa was not slow on the uptake and it hadn’t taken her long to read the late arrivals home and the weak ‘boys’ night out’ excuses for what they were. She knew he was seeing somebody, she just didn’t know who and there was no point confronting him until she’d removed any cause he had for denial.

 

Her eye glanced down at the large marquise cut diamond on her left hand, and she scowled. Sometimes it felt more like she had a wayward child than a husband. No matter how much she attempted to fix things right he always managed to screw up somehow. It felt like she constantly had to forgive him for something. Well, he was going to have to earn it this time. Infidelity was not something she could easily let slide.

 

The one thing she did have to give him credit for was caution. Justin may not have been very good at duplicity but he certainly knew how to avoid any kind of electronic or paper trail. There hadn’t been anything in his texts or e-mails, and there was nothing in his credit card statements that didn’t have a plausible explanation. There were no charges to Tiffany or hotel rooms on nights he’d claimed to be at Trace’s. There were a few big restaurant bills but then he frequently picked up the tab for his friends anyway (another thing she hated, she didn’t see why those freeloaders should continually be bankrolled by the Timberlake fund).

 

Lucinda had asked if the lack of evidence meant she was simply jumping to conclusions. It wasn’t an unreasonable comment but Vanessa knew in her gut that there was another woman. Maybe it was intuition. Maybe it was some signal she was picking up on and hadn’t consciously identified yet. Still she knew. She simply did. All she lacked was the smoking gun that would prevent any attempt to lie himself out of it.

 

 

“What, you’ll divorce him?”

 

“Of course not.”

 

Why on Earth would she do that? She wouldn’t be pushed out of her marriage over some two bit slut; she liked her life and she wanted to keep it. She hadn’t made her vows lightly and she was in this for the long haul. Justin only needed reminding who he had waiting at home.

 

“But he’ll have some grovelling to do. I’m not letting him think for one second this is okay.”

 

Lucinda merely shrugged. Maybe other people’s friends would have been urging divorce, but then it was hardly uncommon in their circle for affairs to be brushed under the rug. A lot of people outside the situation didn’t understand how casual they could be about it, but she considered it merely realistic. To expect a rich and powerful man to remain faithful for a lifetime when he had women throwing themselves at him twenty four seven seemed a little over-optimistic to her. Even the most decent man was only human and going to be tempted. Her own husband had strayed once but she remained confident that she was the one he valued and would always stick with. When weighing it up she’d decided she valued their life together and could live with that, much as it stung - but monogamy was more important to some people than others. Vanessa clearly wasn’t prepared to make the same trade off.

 

“Honestly, sweetie, I wouldn’t worry.” She tapped out a quick text message to her driver asking him to be there in forty minutes. She was getting bored. “The guy’s always been crazy about you; it’s not worth getting worked up over a temporary itch. It’ll fizzle out and you guys will work out your issues.”

 

“Maybe you’re happy for James to be led off the path from time to time but I don’t share my husband.”

 

 

Vanessa angrily slammed the lid back onto her lipstick and pursed her lips. It was especially aggravating because she’d always known exactly what Justin was doing and when. She hated secrets. To have him doing something as huge as this behind her back and not be able to uncover the details was infuriating. In the absence of information her mind was running riot, and she knew that reality was unlikely to be nearly as bad as what she was imagining. It would be easier if she knew exactly what the score was.

 

Who the hell was it? It wasn’t any of his ex girlfriends, and she didn’t know any other women who were around enough to suspect. Certainly it couldn’t be anyone they saw as a couple because she knew he’d be incapable of hiding his discomfort. His acting ability only seemed to kick in when he was in front of a camera; he was useless at masking his feelings behind closed doors.

 

“You need to relax, hon.” Lucinda tossed her phone back in her clutch and zipped it back up. “If he really is cheating then he will slip up sooner or later, they always do. They get away with it for so long, start to relax and then they get complacent.”

 

“You’re right, I know. It just pisses me off thinking of some little harlot getting her claws in my man.”

 

 

She couldn’t help noting that in all this ranting Vanessa used the words ‘my’ and ‘me’ an awful lot. It made her wonder if she even particularly cared about what Justin had done or if she was merely being dramatic – it sounded more like possessiveness than any true hurt. Perhaps she was merely reacting like this because that was how she thought she ought to be reacting? Lucinda could understand that, she’d been there (before she’d decided it wasn’t worth the heartache). Maybe Vanessa just needed to go through the process to come to that same conclusion.

 

“Let’s go get another cocktail, you need to relax.”

 

“I do. Spent all this effort on this damn party like the fucker even deserves it, might as well enjoy it.”

One, one two, one, one two.

 

Justin hadn’t even realised that he was mirroring the rhythm he’d watched Olivia tap out. As soon as he did he immediately folded his hands together to stop his fingers.

 

Repeatedly he wondered what the significance of it was. All he knew was that it was an anxiety triggered tic. Olivia hadn’t volunteered the information however and he was not going to try and dig it out of her if she didn’t feel like sharing.

 

 

His mind was very much full of Liv that morning. Foolishly he’d thought that giving her the good news the night before and getting back in her good graces would stop him obsessing but it was in fact worse. Now the whole thing was real. It was all very well to talk about grand plans and being a proper couple, but now he’d committed to following through. There would be no more hiding. Fears nagged at him, making him wonder how it might change things between them when they were no longer in the position of saviour and in-need-of-saving. What if everything he currently blamed on Vanessa’s malevolent influence actually turned out to simply be him? What if it turned out that he was no better a partner than he’d been in the midst of this mess?

 

Maybe that was why she hadn’t been able to tell him such things yet. Currently they had a very one-sided dynamic where he was always leaning on her. It wouldn’t be surprising if she’d avoided offloading on him.

 

He slumped back further on the couch, tipping his head towards the ceiling. He had his laptop open in front of him and was supposed to be fulfilling his management’s quota for social media posts. A very full e-mail inbox also demanded his attention. The concentration to do anything about either of those was eluding him. Yet one more thing he was spacing on… this constant feeling that he was letting people down and not his best self was really starting to wear on him.

 

Monday had crawled by even slower than usual because he was so anxious for Thursday to finally roll around. Tuesday was thus far doing the same. He wanted to be the good friend, the guy people laughed with and didn’t avoid because his miserable visage brought them down. It was only fair that his girlfriend should be able to rely on him as much as vice versa. He was desperate for Thursday to arrive and give him a chance to try to be that guy; he used to be that guy and he liked that guy way better.  

 

 

“Justin!”

 

He tried not to physically cringe at the shrill voice coming from the next room. She had said she was going to the gym, why was she still there? He’d invited Trace over and he did not want her here.

 

“Yeah?” He answered wearily.

 

“Did you book New York yet?”

 

“Uhh… sorry, slipped my mind.”

 

He hadn’t booked it because he had no intention of going. These things tended to be non-refundable.

 

“God, I ask you to do one freakin’ thing! I don’t know why I bother; shit never gets done around here unless I do it. It’s like you’re fucking oblivious.”

 

A lot of retorts were bubbling up on his tongue. There was a long list of thankless tasks with his name on them which she never acknowledged.

 

Thursday. Thursday was approaching. All he had to do was ride it out until then, there was no point taking up arms against her now.

 

“Sorry,” he lied.

 

“You should be frickin’ sorry. You space on like the one thing I ask you to do, you didn’t make any effort at that party last night… what exactly do I have to do to get you to step up?”

 

He had explicitly said he didn’t want a big party. Still, he supposed he should be grateful that she’d at least invited a decent number of his actual friends for once. On more than one occasion she’d organised festivities that were allegedly for him and yet barely even managed to include Trace. The year he’d expressed the desire for a big ‘family’ Christmas she hadn’t bothered to invite his parents.

 

The only thing to do was ignore her completely. “What time are you likely to be back from the gym? You said I needed to give you a ride somewhere after?”

 

“Oh, so he’s not a total amnesiac! Wonders never cease! I’ll be back at about three; I have to stop by the bank first.”

 

That was a lie. She was stopping by a private detective. To hell with waiting, she wanted to catch Justin out now. Vanessa was sure his current belligerence was related to this affair.

 

“Okay. I’ll make sure I’m here.”

 

If he personally dropped her off then he could be personally sure the coast was clear and he could go over to Chris’s. She didn’t like it when he went to group dinners, said he regressed and became immature around them. Now he wondered if that was code for her not liking the way being around the guys brought him back to his old self, the confident one who knew who he was and was less inclined to take her shit. Or maybe she was simply aware that none of them liked her.

 

“You better.”

 

 

He didn’t relax until he heard the front door finally slam.

 

Justin shook his head as if he could somehow clear the cobwebs from his foggy mind by doing so. Not for the first time he wondered how he could have been so oblivious to the constant stream of undermining comments she made about him. Before he was done registering one blow she’d landed another two or three. How had he sat there and not heard her? He’d managed to absorb and internalise it all without ever really registering what she was doing or the corrosive effect she had on his sense of self. How did that work? Now he could see it he resented it more than he’d ever resented anything in his life. He really did hate his wife with every cell of his body.

 

There was no point in sitting here dwelling on everything though, the best thing to do was keep busy. There was a to-do list, it would serve plenty well as a distraction, he was sure he could come up with some inane tweets. Anything was better than brooding over Vanessa all day.

 

He scrolled through his mentions, trying to come up with something witty to respond to a few of them. There were a lot of requests for re-tweets and birthday wishes which he mostly ignored on principle. He only bothered responding to the ones which were creative.

 

Then he made the mistake of checking what the people he followed were up to. Immediately he spotted Olivia’s name and was right back to obsessing. Since everybody in the cast had followed each other for promotion purposes having her on his list was no cause for his wife to suspect anything, but he had forced himself to resist all urges to send her messages. Instead he fixated like a stalker, paying far too much attention to what she appeared to be up to. It was stupid. He didn’t even normally like Twitter; it was purely a PR tool for him. It was also pointless because Olivia’s posts were usually inane stuff about where she was shopping or pictures of her next meal. For such a skinny woman she took a lot of pictures of food.

 

Currently she appeared to be in conversation with Casey, the actress who had played his girlfriend in the movie they’d done.

 

 

@LivvyLawson OMG I just heard our song! Miss our make up trailer duets #discodivas

 

Olivia’s response was bright and breezy. @the1andonlyCasey Haha, we out-Beyonce Beyonce! So tuneful! #missyoutoo #karaokereunionsoon?

 

@LivvyLawson Haha remember when @jtimberlake tried to bribe us to stop? Maybe we should invite him since he loves our singing so much

 

@LivvyLawson Especially if we did one of his #Sexyneverleft #Iwasherethewholetime

 

Justin tried not to have a conniption. It was ridiculous; in no way could Casey’s bad jokes be construed as any kind of hint that he and Olivia were especially close. It was guilt and paranoia working. As far as he could tell this would be the first time his name had been anywhere near hers publicly since the movie promotion had ended. Nobody would think much of it, and if anything it was exactly the kind of exchange that fans (and therefore the PR team) ate up. As if to prove it to himself he decided to respond.

 

@the1andonlyCasey @LivvyLawson Sorry but I’m washing my hair. Leave my poor songs alone, will ya #shatteredeardrums

 

There, that hadn’t been so hard. The sky hadn’t fallen, and Vanessa (who most certainly scrutinised his posts on social media, she’d told him off for various comments before) remained silent.

 

The response didn’t take long to arrive, with his iPhone and his computer both beeping the alert at him about five minutes later. Apparently Casey was bored.

 

@jtimberlake @LivvyLawson I have a Sonny and Cher duet with your name all over it #IGotUBabe #Trackersreunion @CooperTrooper you in too?

 

Now she wanted to drag poor innocent Cooper (their director) into it?

 

The sad thing was that his immediate instinct was to think Vanessa wouldn’t like him going out and he’d have to say no. He had to actively work to halt that thought, and then he became angry at its very existence. Why should he care any more? All he had to do was schedule it for some time after the end of the week when she wouldn’t get a say. Her issues with him having female friends were about to cease being his problem. He had to get out of the habit of mentally kowtowing to her before she’d even opened her mouth to bark the order. It was like he’d been brainwashed.

 

That realisation drove him to his second reply. Vanessa could go jump, he was going to do what he wanted to do for once.

 

@the1andonlyCasey @LivvyLawson @CooperTrooper If I’m coming (and I ain’t sayin’ I am) I am not singing

 

The palpitations threatened to return when the next response came from Olivia.

 

@jtimberlake @the1andonlyCasey @CooperTrooper That’s what they all say before the tequila

 

Immediately he decided that was quite enough tweeting for one day.

 

 

Far from taking his mind off of it, now he was dreaming up all manner of things which he would be able to do with impunity once he no longer had an unreasonable spouse kicking up a stink about them. Karaoke parties with his former co-stars were merely the tip of the iceberg. Hell, at the moment he couldn’t even change his hair without it being a massive drama. The problem with the dreaming was that Justin knew even after he’d left, such things would still be some time in the future. In the short term there was going to be a lot of legal wrangling and fighting and stressing out while he extricated himself.

 

It would be so much easier if he could just make Vanessa go away.

“Hey!” Olivia called out as she heard the front door closing.

 

“Hey!” The answer came back. She could hear the clinking and thumps of keys being tossed in the bowl and shoes being kicked off.

 

“You were a while, did you get everything?”

 

“Yep.” The rustle of plastic bags was discernible. “Though they didn’t have your prescription yet, are you going to be alright until Friday?”

 

“Yeah, I still got another week’s worth. Did you get the flour?”

 

“I said I got everything didn’t I? Jesus, woman.”

 

Rob had to pass through the living room to get to the kitchen, and he leaned over the couch to leave a kiss on her forehead as he did. They were still living in a relatively small condo even though Olivia had finally started making some decent money from her movie roles. They’d been so poor for so long after they’d left home (much too young and as high school drop outs) that they were still half in the ‘can’t afford to spend’ mindset.

 

“That’s what you said last time and where were my Oreos?”

 

“I swear to God, sometimes it’s more like having a nagging wife than a sibling.”

 

Olivia wasn’t touching that comment with a bargepole, given current events in her life. Folding her legs under her, she slouched back into the cushions and picked up the TV remote. Maybe a better sister would have got up and helped him unpack the groceries, but she never claimed to be a better sister. If he was going to be grumpy she’d ignore him. She turned on the news and then promptly neglected to pay any attention to that either.

 

“Seriously though, was it busy or something?”

 

“Yeah, guess I hit rush hour in the aisles or some shit. Listen, I need to go out again so don’t wait on me for dinner.”

 

“Sure, I might be going out with Casey anyway,” she said distractedly. Her phone was beeping with more tweets from the aforementioned friend suggesting a girls’ night out (thankfully these didn’t include Justin - those had made her overly nervous earlier). “Anything fun?”

 

“Work thing.”

 

“Lame.”

 

“Well not all of us get to swan around playing dress up for a living.”

 

“Screw you.”

 

“Love you too.”

 

 

Olivia shook her head, continuing to focus on the phone in front of her. There didn’t appear to be much going on in the world, her Twitter feed was abnormally quiet. Both Rob and Justin made fun of her for her obsession with it but she enjoyed it. In a silly and slightly sad way, it was a much easier method for her to connect to people. Being sociable and doing the whole face to face thing was somewhat of a challenge even after all this time. Though she was much improved at it she felt much safer being cute and funny and reaching out from behind a social media account. It was much harder to block the bad ones in real life than it was online.

 

Her ears apparently had some kind of radar for Justin’s name, however, as the second she heard it her attention was immediately caught. She looked up at the TV screen only to recoil in horror.

 

 

“Oh my God!”

 

“What?”

 

“The news!”

 

She couldn’t even articulate it. She could only stare at the screen dumbly and in disbelief. Rob re-entered the room and stood behind her, reaching over the back of the couch to pick up the remote and raise the volume.

 

“No witnesses to the crash have come forward but it appears that the vehicle came off the road and into the barrier at high speed. The family has now been informed and police are appealing for anyone who may have witnessed the event to contact them as soon as possible. No word yet as to the cause of the crash, but police are investigating and it’s likely we’ll get a statement later today.”

 

“Well. Guess that solves that problem for you,” he said caustically.

 

Olivia turned round to him in shock. “Rob!”

 

“Hey, you’re the one who said she was an evil bitch. Maybe karma works after all.”

 

She couldn’t believe he could be so callous about it. Sure she’d wanted the woman and her acidic influence well out of Justin’s life but she hadn’t wanted her dead.

 

“Look, I do need to head straight back out so I’ll see you later.”

 

“Thanks for the love and support,” she muttered to herself as he promptly left.

 

She muted the sound on the television and frantically grabbed her phone again. Well, she supposed she no longer had to be cautious about when or how many times she called. It was almost a surprise when he picked up, she’d thought he might be too busy with the police or family or something.

 

 

“Hello?”

 

“Justin?”

 

“Liv?” He croaked.

 

“I just heard about Vanessa, I… I don’t even know what the hell I called to say. Are you alright?”

 

“Sure. I’m not the one who died.”

 

For the love of Christ why had she asked such a stupid, stupid thing? “I’m sorry I said that, it’s a dumb question…”

 

“No, I’m sorry.” Justin wearily rubbed his hand over his eyes, breathing deeply. “I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, you didn’t say anything wrong. I’m kind of… I don’t even know. Trace and I were just hanging out, everything was normal. Then suddenly they showed up at the door an hour ago and the place has been swarming with cops since, phone’s been going off the hook…”

 

“Oh God, you must have so many people you need to talk to, I shouldn’t be tying up the line.”

 

“Please don’t go, the longer I talk to you the less other people can be calling. I know it’ll be her parents soon and I don’t think I can deal.”

 

Olivia didn’t need to ask why. She knew all about it.

 

“Can I do something?” She asked knowing full well she couldn’t. Nothing she could do or say would make it any easier.

 

“I don’t think so. I just… what do you say?” Justin scratched fretfully at the nape of his neck. “How do I sit there and say the right things to her mom and play the grieving husband when I know that I was about to walk out?”

 

“There is no right thing to say in these situations,” she replied helplessly. “You have to feel it as it comes.”

 

“I just… fuck, Liv.” She could hear sniffles coming down the line. It sounded very much like he was crying. “I feel like I kind of wished this on her or some shit and I feel like the most awful person. I didn’t want her to die.”

 

“I know, of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have known; it’s just a horrid accident.”

 

“They think there might have been a hit and run.”

 

That one felt like she’d been sucker punched. All the breath seemed to have flown from her lungs. “What?”

 

“They’re not saying it publicly yet, but there was some suspicious damage that looks like it had to have been another car. Something about impact angles and the turn and… I don’t even understand it right now. I didn’t really take it all in; I kind of went numb when they said she was gone.”

 

“Fucking hell. I don’t even know what to say, baby. That’s awful.”

 

 

“Would you…” Justin’s face screwed up for a moment, questioning the wisdom of the request he was about to make. “Would you mind coming over later? I don’t want to be by myself but I don’t think I could stand having somebody who doesn’t know talking about how much she loved me or some shit. It’s been bad enough with Trace, I was supposed to be telling him and the rest of the guys tonight but that’s out the window and in the meantime they all have no clue.”

 

Olivia breathed in deeply. She wasn’t much surer about answering than Justin had been about asking. It felt inappropriate for her to already be going over there before Vanessa was even cold. Now it was her turn to feel contradictory. She’d slept with the woman’s husband, conspired with him to file a divorce behind her back, and yet now she was dead she was concerned about boundaries?

 

 

“Sure, if that’s what you want.” No, if he needed someone she’d be there. She’d have to squash down her discomfort.

 

“Please. My mom is flying out but she won’t arrive until tomorrow and I just really do not want to be alone right now. I can’t bring myself to stay here tonight so it’ll probably be the Fairmont, but I can let you know once the cops finally leave.”

 

Not having to go to his house was a huge relief. Now she thought about it, it would probably be easier for her to get in and out without being seen too. If the paparazzi hadn’t already descended on Justin’s neighbourhood it was only a matter of time.

 

“Yeah, okay. Just call or text or something when the hordes have departed.”

 

He winced when the thought occurred to him that he could finally save her number in his contacts instead of having to keep it memorised.

 

“Okay. I got to go talk to the detective again but I’ll let you know. Thanks for calling, Liv, I really needed to hear your voice.”

 

“Don’t mention it. I’ll talk to you later.”

 

He put down the phone without their customary sweet goodbye, but under the circumstances that would have felt wrong anyway. She just couldn’t believe that Vanessa was dead and that somebody had apparently caused it and run off. How could they? Could she maybe have survived if they’d stayed to help? How on Earth was she supposed to comfort Justin in this situation?

 

One, one two, one, one two.

The bathroom door opened and the click of a light switch was audible. Olivia emerged, blonde curls newly scraped back into a messy bun on top of her head and face now cleansed of make up. Where strands of hair poked out you could see the blue tips. Justin was stretched out on the bed in his boxers, eyes following her as she padded back towards him and delicately sat back down on the mattress.

 

The twisted thing was that he had been imagining this scenario all week. It was almost like he’d scripted the entire thing out in his head. He’d choreographed every move and already mentally held all their conversations. With her hair up like that and wearing his shirt, tanned legs stretching out from beneath the hem, she even looked the way he’d imagined. It had all been planned out as their first cosy night away together when he was finally free.

 

A good deal of it did look exactly as he’d envisioned, but in his mental picture it had been Friday and they were happy – victorious, even. Instead his first legitimate night with Olivia was passing not in passionate celebration but morbid gloom. The moment of triumph that he had been anticipating so long would never come to pass; he would never get to reclaim that power. He had waited so long for his opportunity to fight back, to tell her where to go, to win against her for a change… and she’d taken it with her to the grave.

 

 

It was almost like Vanessa had found one last way to spite him.

 

 

Even as he had that thought he felt guilty for it. They had been married and she had died tragically, he shouldn’t be acting like it was a personal affront to him. It had been much the same since the detective had uttered those fateful words; conflicting thoughts and feelings were ricocheting through his brain, colliding at brutal speed. One moment he was feeling almost relieved that it had happened, the next sad, the next angry. Then he was wondering what grounds he had to feel any upset when he’d been thinking only that morning of how much he hated her. How could he feel so torn up about a woman he’d come to loathe?

 

Olivia’s arrival at the hotel had been full of more contradictions. The last impulse he’d expected to have when she got through the door was to make love, but in the moment the physical need to reach out and feel something had been overwhelming. It was probably the strangest experience he’d ever had with a woman – slow, needy and almost consoling in a way. Like solace was only to be found in holding somebody close and breathing them in, a reaffirmation that life was in fact going on and the world hadn’t stopped when he opened the door to those police officers. Then the second it had been over he’d felt like the world’s most heartless and insensitive shit for having sex with another woman so soon after his wife had died.

 

Curling her legs up under herself, she leaned back against the headboard and watched him in return. She didn’t say anything, as she hadn’t said much throughout the evening so far. Though he’d requested company Justin was oddly grateful for that. Everything in his head needed to find a voice but it was taking its sweet time. All those people – the police, her parents, his parents, Trace – had asked too many questions, had needed too much feedback from him before he was able to even think straight. Olivia was quiet and still, eye of the storm, and he had sorely needed the silence for a little while.

 

She reached out to tweak his chin affectionately, and he gave her a strained smile in return. It felt like time to start talking.

 

 

“I can’t believe she’s gone. And not even gone in the way I’d been working for… really gone. I was all geared up to have the fight of my life with her and now I’m never gonna so much as hear her voice again.”

 

Olivia said nothing, merely gazed steadily at him.

 

“You’d think I’d be happy, right?”

 

“No.” She frowned at him, shaking her head firmly. “Of course not. You could never be that hard.”

 

“If this had all gone as planned, we would have been here three nights from now and I’d have probably been singing Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead or some shit. I’d have been talking about how glad I was. Isn’t that hard? Cruel even?”

 

 

Olivia’s middle finger jerked. In a few short words he’d managed to take her back a decade and she was experiencing his feelings as if they were hers. They had been hers. They still occasionally were, though she never said so to anyone. Not even to Rob.

 

When Deborah had died they had been stuck with all the arrangements and costs and probate. Of course the harpy had lied through her teeth to her friends about the situation, so they’d had to deal with all manner of people expressing sympathy and talking about how wonderful she was. They weren’t to know, Olivia didn’t blame them. It was still hard to stand there comforting grieving people when what you wanted to do was scream out that you’d hated the deceased’s guts and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. You felt like a fraud.

 

And what was worse was that it was all tied up with an odd sense that you were in fact grieving yourself. You shouldn’t be, had no claim to or wish to, and yet there it was. One minute you felt shame and like you should care more that this person you were so unavoidably connected to was gone, the next you felt like a hypocrite for caring at all.

 

 

“It’s not wrong that you would have been glad to be away from something painful, and it doesn’t make you mean. It’s not like you wanted her to be hurt, Justin, you just didn’t want her to hurt you any more. You’re not a bad person for that and you weren’t asking for this. This just… happened.”

 

“It’s so screwed up, Liv.” He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, sighing. “I can’t process this. Part of me feels relieved, part of me feels sick, and then part of me kind of feels like I still had shit I needed to say. I can’t seem to keep my own story straight for more than thirty seconds, even to myself.”

 

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

 

“Really? I’m a cheating husband who was about to blindside his wife with a divorce and now she’s just conveniently let me off the hook by dying, the first thing I do is call my mistress over. Maybe I should be a little harder on me.”

 

“Stop it.” Olivia scooted over to him, moving to straddle his lap. She didn’t reach forward to hug him, simply sat back on his legs and picked up his hands. “It’s hard e-fucking-nough as it is without punishing yourself for shit that isn’t your fault.”

 

“You don’t understand, Liv.” His thumbs rubbed the backs of her hands.

 

“You’d be surprised.”

 

“Really? What do you know about it?” Justin hadn’t meant to sound quite so curt; it had been intended more as a straight question. He regretted his tone immediately when he saw the flinch pass over her face.

 

“I know what it’s like to hate someone and love them at the same time. Every messed up, conflicted feeling you’re having right now? She was your wife, you loved her, she treated you like shit and now suddenly she’s died and with her she took any chance you had of confronting her or getting closure. Hell, she even took any hope you had of making it up with her, which sounds crazy when you know full well that Hell would’ve frozen over before she decided to be a decent person or apologise but somehow the hope doesn’t die. Until she does and then you know she’s just always going to be that person who should have loved you and never did. You’re not wrong for any of it, babe, feeling fucked up is a pretty reasonable response here.”

 

 

There was that rhythm again, her slim fingers tapping out it against his hand where he held hers. One, one two, one, one two, it was becoming as familiar to him as the lines of her face or the curve of her body.

 

Olivia’s voice had become more strained with every word. Towards the end of her speech she was practically spitting them out. In the space of a heartbeat she became brittle, looking five years older with a simple shift of expression. A deep furrow was set between her eyes, which looked haunted. Justin was taken aback. As he looked her up and down she appeared smaller to him somehow, like her body had folded and shrunk in on itself. She didn’t normally hunch like that.

 

He recognised this demeanour - he’d seen it in the mirror enough times.

 

Now he saw it, it seemed ludicrous that it hadn’t struck him sooner. Heck, he had been the beneficiary of her encyclopaedic knowledge of emotional abuse – how could he not have seen the link? Too busy wallowing in his own mess, he surmised.

 

“Who was it, Liv?”

 

She was dangerously close to crying. Wordlessly she released his hands and removed herself from his lap, returning to sit back against the pillows. For a moment she didn’t look at him, merely stared down at her hands. Justin waited with baited breath, not wanting to push but somehow feeling that he couldn’t change the subject.

 

 

Eventually Olivia pulled her head up and slowly, hesitantly drew her left foot towards herself. She picked it up in her hands and turned it towards him. On its sole were a number of raised, roughly round-shaped scars where the skin was a little shinier and darker. Justin ran his finger across three of them which ran in an almost ruler straight line.

 

“What are those?”

 

“Cigarette burns.”

 

Justin felt a little bit like he wanted to be sick.

 

“I think she did it there because nobody would see it. She never did anything where people would see it. It hurt like freakin’ hell trying to walk on them, probably didn’t help that the shoes were two sizes too small anyway.”

 

“Who’s she?” He asked tentatively. It was tough to imagine what kind of individual put their cigarettes out on another human being.

 

The twitching began again in earnest as she set her foot back down. “Deborah. Our egg donor, as we like to call her.”

 

The bile was coming up in his throat again. “Your own mother did that to you?”

 

“Yep. We ruined her life, apparently, so I guess it was only quid pro quo that she returned the favour.”

 

Deborah was the woman who had given birth to them, given Rob the nose he couldn’t stand to look at – and she was a malignant witch if ever there was one. She never got referred to by any maternal terms. She hadn’t earned them. Most people would have been devastated to lose their mother at twenty; the two of them had felt like they’d been released from a life sentence.

 

“But…” He didn’t even know how to finish that sentence. It had genuinely never occurred to him before that the only family she talked about was her brother. “What about your dad? Didn’t he realise?”

 

 

Olivia’s lips curved in an ironic smile. It was amazing, the way people so innocently assumed that if somebody else had been around they would have done something about it. They couldn’t imagine seeing and doing nothing, and yet her grandparents certainly had.

 

“Fuck knows who our dad is. I guess we must look like him since we never resembled her much, but that’s about as much as we know. Rob and I used to pay this game where we’d imagine who he was and why he hadn’t come to get us yet. He was usually a pilot or a soldier or something, but we stopped that once we got old enough to realise he was probably just some drunk from the bar like the others she brought back.”

 

“So that’s how you knew about Nessa?” He asked. “She used to act the same to you?”

 

“Yeah. Same kind of shit, lots of insults and blaming us for everything and acting like if we breathed it was a terrible crime against her personally. Lots of evil little things she did just because she could, making us feel like we were worthless. One time, she left us alone in the house for three days and the only thing in the pantry was this box with all these homemade jams she’d been given. When she got back she got a switch and whipped us for eating them, Rob got beat on twice because he tried to stop her hitting me. He’s still got the scars on his back.”

 

“God…” He was clueless about what to say.

 

“She really hated when either of us did that for the other. She was forever trying to play us off against each other, she’d be nicer to one and then extra evil to the other to try and cause resentment. Never worked, so instead she just got mad. People either didn’t believe us or they just took it to mean we were awful kids who she was trying to discipline. She finally kicked us out when we were fifteen. We had to drop out of school; we couch surfed for a little while before we managed to get jobs and some dive apartment, but she’d still sometimes track us down and sabotage shit for us. Then she had a heart attack when we were twenty. So… yeah. That’s how I know what it’s like to be grieving for somebody you despise.”

 

Justin remained silent.

 

“I felt exactly the same as you do and to be honest I still do every time I think about it. I hated her, she was evil and sometimes I’m scared that I share DNA with her. When she died, it was like… I was her daughter, wasn’t I supposed to be upset instead of relieved? But then at the same time part of me was honestly grieving. Not for her, but for everything that she should have been. The mother I never got to have, all the love I wasted on her because whatever else I was a kid who wanted a mom to love me.”

 

Olivia was now holding her fingers rigid, trying with all her might to stop herself from tapping.

 

“And even though I know she was just a vile person and she never would have even realised how wrong she’d been let alone admitted it, I still had this dumb fantasy that one day she’d get treatment or whatever and come around looking to make it right. When she died, all of that went with her. Now all she can ever be is the nasty bitch who used to stub her cigarettes out on me just to watch me cry, and I’m relieved to know that I’m never going to answer the phone or open the door to her again. So if that’s how you feel about Vanessa right now, I get that completely.”

 

“Is that why you do that thing with your fingers?” He asked after a long pause.

 

“It…” She bit her lip. “Rob and I worked out that if we pinched ourselves when the switch hit, it kind of helped as a distraction. Guess we just picked up her rhythm.”

 

“Liv, I… Jesus fucking Christ.”

 

 

Olivia anxiously yanked her hair out of its bun, suddenly wanting something to hide behind. If she looked at him right now she was going to cry and she thoroughly disliked wasting any tears on Deborah. It was time for the moment she’d warned him about – that horrible moment where you laid it all out for somebody you desperately needed to understand. You were open and bare to them, and they had the power to stomp on you. It was doubly nerve wracking since when she told this story she was by default spilling Rob’s guts as well as her own. Here was that horrible moment of not being sure whether the person you’d told was about to devastate you.

 

Justin shifted over and pulled her body to his, wrapping his arms around her a touch too tightly. One cradled her head as if he was trying to retroactively protect her. Olivia exhaled the breath she’d been holding and buried herself into his embrace, hooking her leg over his and returning the hug with a tight grip.

 

It wasn’t as if he could somehow make any of that better by kissing her face and rubbing her back, but Justin did it anyway because there was little else he could do. This woman was starting to make Vanessa sound positively delightful. Somehow it felt worse hearing about this even than dealing with it himself – he’d been a grown ass adult who had up until that point enjoyed a very privileged life. Olivia and Rob had been children, neglected and physically abused as well as all the rest, tortured by the same sick individual who should have been caring for them.

 

It was funny. Somehow hearing her say those things actually made him breathe a little easier, his own wildly paradoxical feelings seeming less oppressive. As she spoke about the things she felt they made perfect sense to him. He completely understood how she could feel like that. He’d never say she was a bad person for any of it and would probably punch the lights out of anybody who expressed such sentiments. Yet what she was talking about shared some ground with his own situation. So if he could understand her then maybe he should cut himself some slack there too?

 

His next words surprised her.

 

 

“I’m sorry I never asked earlier.”

 

She was confused. “Huh? Why would you? How could you know?”

 

“I must have wondered about what you do with your hand a million times, I know you have stress issues, and you and I must have talked about the habits of abusive assholes enough to fill several consecutive days. If I hadn’t been caught up in all my own shit I could’ve connected those dots.”

 

“Babe, you’ve had enough on your plate without expecting yourself to be psychic.” She traced a finger over his collarbone.

 

“No, I…” Justin let out a frustrated grunt. It was one more reason that he needed to take a little more control and stop relying on her to save him all the time. “Like I didn’t already know that you were cut up over us sneaking around, this all must have been a real painful reminder for you. If I’d got my shit together earlier I could’ve spared you some of it. It’s like I said - I feel like you haven’t had enough from me, and noticing something this huge when it’s staring me in the face is exactly the kind of basic thing that should be happening. Focusing on you instead of it being all me all the time.”

 

The idea of reciprocal focus in her romantic relationships was sadly novel to her. There was a four letter word sitting on her tongue in that moment, tapping on the inside of her head asking to be let out. She couldn’t quite bring herself to it yet.

 

“Justin, you’ve been going through a marriage break up and now you have this death to deal with. You’re allowed to need to focus on yourself, you know. I get it.”

 

“Yeah, well sometimes I think you could do with being a little less understanding and a little more selfish.” A trio of kisses trailed across her hairline.

 

“I kicked your ass about leaving. I think that’s enough for now.” With that thought came a great sigh. “Though I suppose as it turns out that was redundant.”

 

 

Well, maybe that wasn’t especially true. If he hadn’t shown any signs of leaving and had then come to her after Vanessa had passed away, she’d probably have accused him of picking her as some kind of default or second choice. In that respect it was good that Justin had made his choices first; neither of them would have to wonder whether he’d ever have left if she hadn’t died. In some ways the death made things less tricky, since she was no longer around to be combative. In other ways it had made the whole thing immensely complicated. On balance maybe it was going to be just as hard in a whole new way, Olivia didn’t know.

 

Taking their relationship public relatively soon after news of the divorce hit probably wouldn’t have raised much discussion - it would have been clear that the marriage was likely in trouble for a while prior to the actual filing. So long as they hadn’t slipped up and been linked together too quickly then nobody would have suspected. But after a death when nobody had any idea that there had been as much as a bad word between Mr and Mrs Timberlake? That was different. For Justin to swan around with a new girlfriend looking untroubled by becoming a widower could cause comment.

 

All of that on top of her pre-existing worries about becoming a real couple was a recipe for overload. Though she’d been pushing for him to leave and commit to a future with her, she wasn’t naïve. Clandestine liaisons were one thing and a real relationship in the cold light of day was another. It made her nervous. The secrecy had been a big strain on both of them, he’d had to lean on her very heavily for support (she guessed he would have to again, with all this), and that was a lot of pressure. Adjusting to being together full-time might not be as easy as her romantic fantasies would have her believe and Vanessa’s death had only complicated the situation further.

 

 

He laid his cheek against the crown of her head and echoed her sigh. “Do you think it’s really possible somebody did that on purpose?”

 

Olivia frowned. “On purpose? You said it might be hit and run but are they really thinking that it could have been on purpose?”

 

“They said that they had to check for definite that there was another vehicle and then work out how the crash happened, where the cars would have been in relation to each other and stuff. Exact words were they’d ‘try and work out if it was accidental or not’ but they didn’t give a lot of specifics.”

 

“But when they say ‘accidental or not’… then ‘or not’ would have to mean intentional?” That took a moment to sink in. “Oh boy.”

 

“Irony being that you and I would immediately become top suspects, there.”

 

“Usually I’m all for gallows humour but… don’t.” Her lips pursed in a tight, worried pout.  “God. I can’t even wrap my head around it being a possibility. What type of person does that? Runs someone off the road and leaves them to die?”

 

“The guy was trying to be nice and all ‘we’ll find out who did this,’ but Trace was eavesdropping on some of them and it sounds like there’s not a lot to go on. There are no cameras in the area, and if they haven’t heard from a witness by now when it’s all over the news it probably means there wasn’t one.”

 

“So even if they decide there was another vehicle we’ll probably never know?”

 

“Sounds like it. You know, I still can’t even figure out what she would have been doing on that side of town. She said she was going to the gym.”

 

Justin tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling. It was actually playing on his mind even more than the idea that somebody had intentionally killed her, though you might have expected that to be the other way around. (Maybe that was because contemplating the prospect that she had been murdered was too much to cope with and better pushed to the back of his brain). Accident or not, how had she even wound up in the path of this mystery vehicle? Where was she going? He supposed it was one more on the list of questions he had for Vanessa that she would never be answering.

 

It didn’t seem like exaggeration to say that it would be bugging him for the rest of his life.

It was a big relief when she finally heard the sound of keys in the door; the afternoon had been painfully long. She had been curled up under a blanket on the couch with a book, a scenario she could usually get lost for hours in. This time however she hadn’t been able to concentrate. It had been a very long and anxiety filled day and trying to engage her brain with anything had been over-optimistic. Her official excuse was going to be the couch, however. She’d never liked his couch much; it wasn’t squishy enough for her liking. Still, she supposed when you were redecorating in such a ‘remove all signs of my deceased abusive wife’ hurry these things could get overlooked.

 

On the bright side, her finger hadn’t twitched yet despite the provocation. Clearly the cognitive behavioural stuff was working – she was loathe to admit it to him but Justin’s suggestion that she try therapy along with him had actually been quite helpful.

 

“Liv?”

 

“In here babe!”

 

She tossed the book on the table, wondering why she hadn’t done that several failed attempts to read it ago. Justin appeared in the door, tugging his tie away from his neck and unbuttoning his collar.

 

“Dare I ask?”

 

“Oh I have no doubt the world’s hashtagging it to you as we speak.”

 

The sourness in his tone made Olivia cringe. It had been his first live appearance since Vanessa’s death and they’d worried what he might be asked. “That bad?”

 

“It started that bad and only went on to surpass it. It’s almost like they were scoring it – fifty points if you can mention the divorce, twenty for his new girlfriend and bonus round if you can squeeze in the word ‘murder.’ I’m not sure what world these people live in where it’s within appropriateness to ask a guy trying to promote a movie who he thinks killed his wife, but it was a fucking nightmare.”

 

Justin felt incredibly restrained in simply standing up and walking out. He hadn’t stomped or yelled or otherwise expressed the rage he felt, he had simply looked stony-faced and left. The stream of expletives had miraculously never left his lips. The incident was gaining notoriety at an alarming rate if his cursory glance at his messages was anything to go by; Trace told him that social media was already producing a million gifs of his pissed off face. Since their romance had finally hit the news a few weeks ago he knew that a lot of people would be tweeting Olivia about it, as they did everything to do with him. He was almost alarmed at how fast the two of them had become so linked in the public mind (he particularly hated all the commentary about how it was supposedly ‘too soon’).

 

It had not made for a fun interview. Since the news had come right after the police announcing that they were closing the investigation into Vanessa’s death without any successful arrests, the media was having a field day. Everybody wanted to know about the women in his life, living and dead, and it was a bad time for him to be doing the promotional circuit. But this was when the movie was coming out so he didn’t have much choice.

 

“Could be worse I guess,” he said. “At least I’m no longer their number one suspect.”

 

That was the media’s number one suspect, not the police’s. Unfortunately there had been a leak and the news had emerged from his police interview very early on that he had been planning to file for divorce (he had decided it was best to be upfront so nobody could accuse him of hiding anything, but he hadn’t planned on it becoming public knowledge). Conspiracy theories had run wild. People had started scrutinising his every move and facial expression and asking all the same horrible questions that he’d been punishing himself with already. Was he a hypocrite for being upset, did he have any right to go to the funeral… it had not been fun. Of course as soon as it had become clear another vehicle was involved they jumped to the conclusion that he’d either been driving or had paid the driver.

 

Even the police’s quick and categorical elimination of him as a suspect hadn’t completely quelled them. There had still been dribs and drabs over the months. The whole thing had been excruciatingly painful to navigate and the mere mention of it was enough to make him morose. The whole thing still tortured him. The authorities were unable to tell whether there was any intent behind it or not but they had confirmed that there must have been another car. The best case scenario was that Vanessa had been the victim of a hit and run, the worst case was murder. All this time had elapsed and yet that notion was not getting any easier to process. He might have hated her by the end but he couldn’t stomach the thought of her dying that way. Whatever else she’d done, he had loved her once. The subsequent dead end the investigation had come to only made that worse; he needed to know yet likely never would.

 

The only saving grace had been that nobody had found out about Olivia until the two of them had decided that they would dispense with the secrecy. The need to keep being discreet had meant that they spent a lot less time together than he’d have liked, but privately he thought to himself that maybe the enforced distance had been good for them. It made them take it slow and steady whether they liked it or not. It was only in the last month or so that they started venturing out together, and even now there were still some people acting like she was stepping on a dead woman’s toes.

 

Nobody who actually knew them, but then what was a small matter like that to stop people judging?

 

“Wish somebody was their number one suspect,” Olivia grumbled. She really felt the whole thing would be much easier on all fronts – personally and in terms of media attention – if there was any prospect of finding out who did it. The speculation over whether it was accidental showed no sign of abating even after this long.

 

“Yeah, well that ship’s sailed I guess.” Justin dropped onto the couch next to her with a dramatic sigh. He was feeling a little self-pitying. “So that was my shitty day. How about you baby, how was yours?”

 

“Pretty dull,” she shrugged. “Found a couple of places online I think are worth viewing, you wanna come? I’m thinking day after tomorrow if I can get an appointment.”

 

“Is Rob going to be okay with that?”

 

“Rob’s not coming, he’ll be at work. And even if he was he’d just have to put on his grown up pants and deal.” She leaned over and gave him a peck on the lips.

 

Justin finally cracked a small smile. “I love it when you get sassy. Sure then, I’ll come with.”

 

Despite his best efforts, he had not managed to hit it off with her twin. Rob seemed to resent his presence and things got very awkward when they were together. It wasn’t in a sullen or childish way; it was more a matter of strained civility. Everything was always very stiff and over formal when they were both in a room and knowing how close Olivia was with her brother that bugged him. He didn’t expect to become best buds but friendly would have been nice. Privately he thought Rob was having a hard time dealing with not being the only significant man in her life any more (he gathered that none of her previous boyfriends had lasted all that long). Add to that the many legitimate reasons anybody who knew the full story might disapprove and it all spelled ‘uncomfortable.’

 

“I think he’s just a bit freaked out by the idea of us not living together any more after so long, even if he knows it’s a good idea to get our own space. He’ll come round.” She shrugged.

 

“Maybe he should talk to your therapist too.” Justin made it sound like a joke but actually he was fairly serious.

 

“I tried but he doesn’t wanna know,” Olivia replied, shaking her head. “I know I was just as sceptical as he was but it does help.”

 

“See how I’m always right?”

 

“I don’t know about always.”

 

“Always.” He leaned over and kissed her shoulder briefly. In an odd little way he was quite proud of it; he’d made a lot of effort since that night to try and reciprocate the help he received from her. It was nice to know he’d done anything at all useful.

 

“Hmm.” Affectionately she squeezed his knee. “Feel like dinner? Chris called and invited us out, maybe somewhere nice and a bottle of wine can erase asshole interviewers?”

 

“Ugh, after that interview it’ll be paps everywhere. Takeout and wine here might be a better plan.”

 

“Good point.”

 

“Again, always right.”

 

“Yeah yeah.” Her lips brushed his. “You tell yourself that. Want me to call him back and invite them here?” She did like Chris. They’d known each other casually before but since learning of the whole situation he had become almost a champion of sorts for her, always very supportive of their relationship. He was unfailingly willing to help them out when it came to dealing with the whole mess or when they’d have to keep things quiet. She thought maybe that was his way of compensating with Justin for not seeing through Vanessa previously.

 

“Sure.” He did enjoy the fact that she got on fine with most of his friends. That made a lovely change. “Let’s drink shit away.”

 

Paparazzi, dead end police investigations, awkward brother-of-girlfriend, at least alcohol always worked. God bless tequila.

 

 

 

**

 

“Yeah, I can see what you mean – it’s taken a good swipe there.”

 

“Yesterday was not my day. So what’s the damage?”

 

“It’ll need a new panel, and if you look under here…” He leaned down and pointed behind the tyre. “You can see the interior of the wheel arch has bowed. I can probably pound that back out but the panel’s beyond saving.”

 

Experience had over the years had taught Thomas to read his customers pretty well. You came to know what people who knew cars acted like and what people who didn’t acted like. The grimace on this guy told him that when he read the estimate it wouldn’t be anything unexpected. He had the look of somebody who knew what a whole new front panel was going to cost.

 

Indeed, when he handed over the bit of paper not a single bit of surprise registered on his face.

 

“Yeah, this is about what I figured. How long is it likely to take?”

 

“If I order it in standard, it’ll be four to five days. Expedited I can make it tomorrow or day after but that costs an extra hundred.”

 

“Nah, standard’s fine. It’s bike weather so I won’t miss it in the meantime.”

 

Thomas chuckled. “I hear ya, I’m waiting for new brake discs to arrive and it feels like a waste being in the truck. Honestly, they say four to five but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s here by Wednesday.”

 

“Sounds good.” He counted out and then handed over a wad of bills to Thomas. “I have your number, I’ll call and check then.”

 

“Sure, let me go grab you a receipt.”

 

“Thanks, appreciate it.”

 

After Thomas had disappeared, his customer’s shoulders finally started to relax a little. The mechanic hadn’t questioned the story or seen that the denting and scratches weren’t fresh. The temptation had been to rush out to get it fixed, make it go away, but he’d worried that the police might be checking repair places to see if any cars had turned up with that kind of damage. It had felt safer to hold off all this time until the coast was clear. All it had needed was one quiet lie about selling it; a pain to get a new car, but necessary. It had been able to sit in the lock up where only he would ever venture.

 

Finally the investigation was closed. Now he could do something about it without worrying about the cops coming knocking. Payment in cash for the repair now, no trails, and nobody would be any the wiser. Once it was fixed he could sell it for real. Maybe then he would finally breathe easier and stop being on edge all the time, especially around the happy couple. Maybe then this whole thing would finally be done. Still, as always, he would take whatever he had to so long as she was safer for it.

 

As he stood there, staring at the signs on the wall without really seeing them, the familiar rhythm tapped out against his thigh. One, one two. One, one two.