Players, Bumps and Cocktail Sausages (Silence #3)(23)

“Here,” she said, “eat this and take these.” She put the plate of toast and coffee on the bedside table and handed me a packet of pills from her pocket.

“Thanks,” I replied, popping the tablets out of the pack as soon as they’d landed on my lap.

“Everleigh doesn’t know you’re here so Cole is taking her to his sister’s for a bit. Apparently Mia bought glitter play dough for the girls so Everleigh’s excited.”

I looked up, knowing what that meant. “So you want to talk.”

“I do, but only when you’re ready. You look like shit right now.”

“Thanks,” I replied. Just what I wanted to hear on top of everything else. Siblings really didn’t sugar coat it. “Abby is cheating.”

Her mouth fell open, and she sat down, making the bed bounce at how she dropped down onto it. “She what?”

“Yep, I was right. Isn’t that fucking fantastic.”

“I don’t…” She shook her head. “With who? How did you find out?”

“Walked in on her kissing that fucker Brett at school.”

“Oh my God. I can’t believe it.”

“Yeah, well, me too.”

“I’m so sorry, Jasper.” Her eyes filled with tears. I looked away from the pitying expression. “I can’t believe she did that to you.” She suddenly looked murderously angry. “Like you needed that after everything. You can stay here as long as you like. You know that, right?”

Like anyone needed that ever.

I looked back and saw her trying to control her emotions. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“What’re you going to do now?”

“You know a good divorce lawyer?” I asked, laughing with no humour.

She bit her lip. “Have you spoken to her since?”

“No, and I don’t want to. She’ll hear from me through our lawyers. She can have the house; I don’t want it. She’ll either have to buy me out, or we’ll sell and split what’s left.”

“Are you sure? That’s your home.”

“Not any more. It’s all hers. I want nothing to do with her. Has she called you today?”

Oakley shook her head, and I took a gulp of the boiling hot coffee.

“Good.”

“This is all happening so fast. Are you sure you don’t want to talk to her?”

I stopped mid-swallow. “You think I should forgive her again?”

“God no! I think you should talk it through though. You bottle everything up and move on without ever dealing with anything. Don’t you have questions for her?”

Oakley was now a deal-with-things-and-find-the-answer-by-talking-the-shit-out-of-it, and I was a deal-with-it-and-find-the-answer-in-the-bottom-of-a-bottle kind of guy.

“You’re supposed to be on my side, you know?”

“I am, Jasper. You have no idea what I want to do to her right now, but I just want you to be all right. I worry about how you deal with things.”

“Well, I will be fine, after the divorce.” I shrugged. “Having a wife was just holding me back anyway. I mean, come on, it wasn’t really me, was it?”

She looked away and tears pooled in her eyes. “Don’t. You know you don’t really think that. You love her, and you’re hurt but going back to your old sleep-with-anything-that-moves ways isn’t going to help. You’re better than that. Please don’t shut us out. Speak to Carol again. She can help you. I know she can”

“I don’t need to talk about it, I need to forget it and move on.”

She sighed sharply. “But forgetting it isn’t really moving on. I tried that for eleven years and look where that got me. Other people were hurt because I bottled it up–”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“Fact is if I would’ve spoken sooner things would have been… dealt with sooner.”

They would have been behind bars sooner. But that wasn’t strictly true. The only evidence proving what they’d done to her started when she was eight. If she’d have spoken up straight away they might’ve got off, a child’s word against an adults may have meant they walked free.

And it wasn’t her fault.

“You were just a child, Oakley.”

“We’re getting off topic. You know what I’m getting at. It was only when I spoke up that I was able to move on. Mum too. That just leaves you.”

“I’m fine. Men are hard and all that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that stereotypical man crap. Neither of us believes you don’t feel just as much because you have a penis.”

I laughed and want to hug her for being one of the only people that could make me laugh right now. “The word penis sounds wrong coming from you.”

“Well I’m glad I amused you. Now eat your breakfast and have a shower – you smell like a brewery – we’re going out.”

“What? Out where?”

She stood up and left, ignoring me. That was just great. I didn’t want to go anywhere today. If she thought that I was going to speak to my soon-to-be ex-wife, she was very, very wrong.

After finishing a slice of toast – as much as I could eat without wanting to hurl – I hopped in the shower. The night Abby and I showered together immediately sprang to my mind, kicking me in the gut. It hit me then that I was going to be solo in the shower – and everywhere else it really mattered – for, probably, the rest of my fucked up life.