Little Secrets(23)
She’s right in front of Marin now, holding the coffee pot with an expectant smile. Marin feels about as bland and invisible as she’s ever felt. And when their eyes meet yet again, it’s confirmed. She really has no idea who Marin is.
“I, uh, ordered a latte.” Marin feels her cheeks turning red, but if the other woman notices she’s blushing, she doesn’t act like it. Marin averts her eyes, looking down at her extra-large paper cup, now empty. Only crumbs remain from the cookie. She doesn’t remember finishing either, but apparently, she stress-consumed both while obsessing over McKenzie’s Instagram account.
“That’s okay. Anyone who sits here gets free drip if they want it.” McKenzie holds the pot up a little higher. “Just brewed. It’s our house blend, medium roast. Pretty much everybody likes it.”
Marin pushes her cup forward. Her hands are already shaking. She doesn’t need more caffeine, but she’s not planning to drink it. “Maybe just a little.”
The younger woman seems blissfully unaware of Marin’s discomfort as she pours, and her cheerfulness is both absurd and aggravating. Because Marin knows why she’s in such a good mood. She knows what the other woman’s plans are for later tonight. She knows McKenzie’s thinking about Derek.
Marin wants to jump up, grab the coffee pot, and throw it at her. She wants to hear the other woman scream in pain as the scalding liquid sears her pretty skin. She wants to claw at her hot, dripping face with her fingernails, scratching her eyes, tearing out her hair, so she can make her husband’s mistress as ugly on the outside as she is on the inside. Marin wants to ruin her life the way she is ruining Marin’s life, the way she is ruining Marin.
I hate you. I hate you so much.
Of course, she does none of this. She stays seated, patient, quiet.
“Beautiful ring.” McKenzie smiles at Marin’s hand. “If I ever get married, I’d want something just like that.”
It’s almost too much. Marin feels her rage growing. It takes every ounce of willpower she possesses not to punch the younger woman in her happy, smiling face.
You homewrecking whore stay away from my husband you slut you cunt you bitch I will murder you I will take the goddamned coffee pot out of your hands and smash it and peel your face off with the shards of glass …
But the thoughts are just thoughts, and by the time they pass, McKenzie is gone, her narrow hips sashaying away with the coffee pot. To hurt her, Marin would have to run after her, and she knows she would never do that. It isn’t who she is, because she’s too proper, too well-behaved, and her husband’s mistress’s public embarrassment would be a public embarrassment for herself.
Humiliations galore.
The Shadow app pings again. McKenzie just texted Derek a photo. The thumbnail is small and hard to see, but it’s clearly of a person. Marin’s breath catches, wondering if somehow McKenzie has sent Derek a photo of his wife, the same way Marin almost sent him a photo of his lover.
But it’s not a picture of Marin. It’s a selfie, and in it, McKenzie is nude. Totally and completely naked, exposed from head to knees.
McKenzie: Snapped this before I left this morning. A little preview of what’s to come …
Marin clicks on the thumbnail and zooms in.
McKenzie is fresh out of the shower. The mirror is fogged up, the glass wiped just clean enough so that only her flat stomach and innie belly button are clear in the reflection. Still, her pale pink nipples are obvious, as is the flower tattoo that runs down the side of her body from breast to hip. Marin didn’t realize she had a tattoo—either she wasn’t looking closely enough, or the other woman doesn’t show it in her Instagram pics. And other than her head, she’s totally hairless.
They’re both waiting to see if Derek will respond. McKenzie is hovering by the cappuccino machine, phone in hand, until a customer approaches and she’s forced to put her phone away.
Nude selfies? Really? Does she stockpile them in her phone and send them out at opportune moments?
#ihateyou.
The Shadow app pings. McKenzie is still busy with her customer and can’t check her phone, so Marin gets to read her husband’s reply to his mistress before she does.
Derek: I am going to lick every inch of you.
Marin is going to kill her.
Chapter 8
“I know a guy,” Sal says to her a few hours later. “He’s a fixer, expensive as fuck, but there’ll be no trace of the bodies left when he’s done. Want his contact info?”
Sal Palermo isn’t even certain whether Marin is joking, but already he’s on her side. He gets her. On the surface, it seems like they have nothing in common. He’s an ex-convict, a casual drug dealer (he’s always got Oxy and Vicodin and can procure three different kinds of marijuana on short notice), and a shady bar owner. Once upon a time, they dated pretty seriously, for a year, in college. More than two decades later, they’re still best friends. He’s the man she’s always loved but was never in love with, whose heart she never meant to break when they were only twenty-one.
“I’m kidding,” she says.
“I’m not,” he says, and for the first time in what feels like forever, she laughs.
She pushes her empty glass toward him. It used to have an amaretto sour in it, and she wants a refill. It’s the same cocktail she drank when she and Sal used to date. The only time she drinks it now is when Sal makes it for her, here, in his bar. Otherwise she sticks to red wine.