Then they were fighting. And you know when you just feel like people are talking about you? Yeah, that feeling. That's exactly what I felt because she kept glancing over at me. She had her stunningly beautiful face all twisted up in his, her perfectly French manicured finger poking him, and her Victoria’s Secret model body flaunting its assets dramatically. Her giant, brown doe eyes batting their mascara-laden lashes like she was the innocent victim of the drive-by-cheating.
Mr. Holt was enraged and from where I sat, it looked like he was starting to foam at the mouth. What the hell could they be fighting about? Did she sleep with someone he was engaged to? I sipped at my drink. Oh, who was I kidding; I downed it in one giant gulp and wiped the back of my hand over my lips, trying desperately not to cry. My stomach clenched tightly and the walls of the bar slowly began to spin around me, tilting and whirling. Great, not only would I be forever humiliated by my fiancé cheating on me, I was going to drunkenly fall all over the bar room floor and make a fool out of myself in front of all my colleagues. Yes, colleagues. Collllllleeeeeagues. Isn’t that a funny word? Did I mention we were all at a convention together for work? Uh huh. Oh, and the majority of these people were supposed to be guests at our wedding too.
Holy Hell! I was supposed to get married in twenty days to someone who had his thing in someone else the night before.
Yes, my life sucked. Five, six, ten, possibly twelve (stop counting, you're not my mother) measly apple martinis would not be fixing this problem. I should have fixed it with one of those strippers, but I've always been standoffish in that department. Hell, after five hundred, “I'm sorrys,” Trager told me it was one of the reasons he looked elsewhere.
His exact words: You're too insecure, not receptive sexually, and too self-conscious to enjoy yourself. Well, what woman isn't? Apparently, that answer would be Sophia.
After a loud smack of her hands across the tabletop, Sophia stood up and stormed out of the bar. I wondered if she’d go find Kevin. There was some sort of drunk tingly itch in the back of my brain that told me I should go after her, stop it from happening, but really? Why should I? I didn’t know if I could find it in my heart to forgive either of them.
My eyes followed her out. She was perfect, every single unfaithful, backstabbing, fiancé stealing inch of her. Me, not so much. I was just average old me. Turning my head back in Mr. Holt’s direction, I froze and met with his icy cold stare. He was definitely no giraffe.
You know that feeling you get when you experience looking at someone for the first time, someone way beyond gorgeous, and they're looking back at you? You get that whole body tingling feeling and your heart speeds up. That moment when your eyes lock and your fingers start to fidget, you can’t control your breathing, and your lungs actually begin to ache along with your lower regions. That's the idiotic feeling I was experiencing looking at my boss.
I stood immediately, mouth flooding with the burn of regurgitated apple martini, making my eyes sting with its acidic fire. My lips tightened and pinched, teeth clenched like a dam, and I was about to blow. Jutting my chin up to the best of my ability, I rushed through the middle of the bar and only stumbled when I was out of view in the hallway against the lovely antique planters that were stationed alongside the exit.
Where, slumped on my knees, I emptied my stomach and retched out my broken heart as my tears chased each other down my cheeks.
Reality slapped me hard in the face in the form of spiky, green plastic leaves dripping with my very own martini-scented filth. My Kevin had slept with someone I worked with, and now the person I truly thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, wasn’t someone I could spend the rest of my life with. My stomach heaved again as the outrageous conversation Kevin offered me played back in my mind.
"You're addicted to working; it's all you ever do. I have needs, Lexa, and you act like I'm not here. She was there when you weren't. It was only one damned time!" With squinted eyes, he tilted his head and stared up at the ceiling, exhaling a long, drawn out breath. He really did look like a giraffe— long, wide nose and strange ears that stuck straight out of his head. I must have been blind. Blind and stupid. I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from our mini bar, twisted it open, and downed it as he continued to list the reasons it had all been my fault, how I had forced him to be with someone else, justifying breaking my heart. I tried to wipe the memory from my mind, gagged back more vomit, and attempted to stand.
Gravity laughed at me with plans of its own.
The hallway, carpeted with its deep red and brown obnoxious patterns, spiraled and reeled wildly around me. The offensive designs seemed to attack my inebriated state and the vomit-filled planter somehow tackled me at the hips, sending me flying into the air until gravity had its way with me, landing me flat on my back.
So, that’s where I stayed, sprawled out on the suspiciously criminal carpet, looking up at the flat white painted ceiling, hoping that I’d somehow turned magically invisible within the last few seconds. I had never felt so utterly pathetic in all my life; I had never even known that could be an emotion.
A heavy weight crashed through my chest, bubbling and sobbing as it tore past my lips. It felt like something broke inside me; my heart maybe? Whatever it was just drained out of me, seeped into the rough surface of the rug beneath me, leaving me completely empty.
Somewhere above me were voices. Some sounded panicked, some may have been giggling, but I heard them like they were somewhere far above me, floating in the air. I couldn’t understand them; they were just sounds strung together with no real meaning. Because all I could hear were Kevin’s grunts and moans, his whispers and filthy words, and his slips, slides, and slaps against skin that was not mine. Yep, all I could still hear in my head, all I could still see in my mind, was Kevin, the man who was never going to love me the way he promised me he would since he’d brought Sophia Willington to a screaming orgasm like none that he’d ever given me.
3
Lexa
“I COULD continue being my nice self or I could be an a$$hole. What are you into?” @Kavon #WomenAlwaysChoosetheAHoles
The next morning at exactly 10:04 am, the conference room was thick with conversations—every one of them about me.
"So hold up a minute," Evan, one of the Ad Execs, said as he tossed his files on the conference table and collapsed into the seat next to Jameson Holt. "Sophia was screwing the mailroom guy?"
"Yep. Lexa Novak caught them." He leaned back against the leather conference seat and ran his hands down his face. How freaking humiliating; my boss knows! "You know her, right? I've only seen her a few times around the office."
"Yeah," Evan said, scratching at his chin. "Lexa, she's that brunette in fact checking, right?" His eye widened. "Oh, man. Did she catch them screwing in the office?"
Jameson looked at Evan and sighed. "No, Trager the Mailroom Guy is Novak's fiancé, or was her fiancé. I'm not sure anymore. They were getting married at the end of the month; we were all invited to the wedding. She walked in on them in Trager's apartment."