The Wrong Family(41)

360 was their place, locally sourced and a favorite for date night. He hadn’t told her that he came here during the day with other people. She waited five minutes before crossing the street and walking into the restaurant.

She didn’t really know what her plan was other than to confirm what she already knew. She didn’t feel crazy or unhinged as women were supposed to feel when they found out their husbands were cheating on them. Winnie felt suspiciously calm. The storm was coming, she knew, but for now there was the eerie stillness inside her.

They were seated in a cramped booth opposite each other; Winnie could only make out the tops of their heads when she walked in the door. When the hostess greeted her, she pointed to a table near the window where she could see them without them seeing her. As soon as Winnie was seated at her own table, Dulce got up to go to the bathroom, grinning at Nigel like they shared a secret joke. Winnie watched her walk away; Nigel also watched her walk away. He even leaned to the side a little when she was walking out of his line of sight so he could keep his eyes trained on her ass. She was wearing a pinstripe skirt—white with fine gray lines, so tight you could tell that she spent five nights a week in the gym.

She winced. So this was what Nigel liked? Twentysomething women with hard, round asses and shaggy, pullable hair. It was unsurprisingly predictable, and yet still painful.

Winnie’s own blond hair was smooth and flat, her ass much the same despite how often she lunged and squatted. She had always wanted larger breasts, but Nigel insisted that he liked her as she was. Clearly not. Clearly her short little gymnast husband was looking for something wild to ride. Winnie poured water into a glass from a carafe on the table. She drained the glass and poured another, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. A swatch of lipstick came away with the droplets of water. She must have smeared it all over her face, but Winnie didn’t care. Dulce returned to the table and there was more grinning. They conferred over the menu as the server waited, pen poised.

Someone came to take Winnie’s order, and by the time she was alone again, she saw that Nigel and Dulce each had a mimosa in front of them. Winnie felt sick. So far nothing had happened other than her pathetic, dumbass husband taking a much younger woman to lunch and staring at her ass. Winnie had ordered coffee, but she’d only held the mug to her lips, never taking a sip. She wanted to drink something stronger, but she didn’t know what to order. Their food arrived and Winnie’s heart began to slow. They were...eating. Like two colleagues. She felt ridiculous, stupid. Amber had probably seen them at lunch just as Winnie was now and had jumped to conclusions. Amber had been cheated on recently; it all made perfect sense to Winnie. God, she was embarrassed. She was about to pull out a ten to leave on the table for her coffee when it happened.

It was, in Winnie’s opinion, as intimate as a kiss. Dulce extended her fork toward Nigel, French toast held on the tip; from where she was sitting she could see the syrup swinging from the bread. He must have opened his mouth for the bite because she returned her fork to her plate, grinning. Winnie could see his ears move as he chewed, hear the laughter as he wiped syrup from his face.

She’d seen enough. Setting her coffee down on the table, she lifted her phone from her bag. She had several missed calls from Amber, and one from her friend Courtney. She scrolled past these until she found her husband’s name.

Hi, where are you?

She saw his head dip to look at his phone. For a minute Winnie thought he was going to ignore it but then the little bubbles appeared to say he was typing. With Nigel’s attention on his phone, Dulce’s expression was unguarded as she watched him text his wife.

Winnie felt something hard and primal unfold in her belly. Her immediate anger was directed at the woman and not the man. She recognized this as being off-brand with her feminism, but she didn’t care. What was feminism to a woman who was being betrayed? This bitch had cozied up to a married father, and all she could do was grin like the Cheshire cat. She wanted to hook each of her index fingers into the sides of Dulce’s mouth, and pull that grin wide enough to rip her face open. She’d never, in her life, had such a violent thought, and it made her whole body shake with satisfaction and disgust. Winnie stared down at the screen of her phone, her hurt burning like a fever. She read Nigel’s answer, panting slightly.

At lunch

He wasn’t lying. But omissions were the same as lies in Winnie’s opinion.

With who?

She finally took a sip of her coffee, but when the server came by, she ordered a glass of white wine. If she was going to drink something cold, it needed to make her feel better. White wine was the medicine of the basic bitch, wasn’t it? Winnie had never felt more basic in her life as she watched her husband pay the bill with cash. Dulce didn’t even offer, she noted.

When Nigel finally answered her text, they were standing up to leave and Winnie had drained her glass.

Some people from work...

What was that? Winnie thought—an omission or a straight-out lie? Things got murky in that department.

She watched as he shrugged on his jacket, a lingering smile on his lips from something Dulce said. He glanced down at his phone once more before pocketing it. It was then that, in tandem, Nigel and Dulce turned toward the door, flipping up the collars of their coats. Nigel was walking straight toward Winnie, who was looking at him squarely, willing him to see her. It was an awful few seconds as realization kicked in; she was getting ready to scream and rail and cry at him, but what if that was what he wanted: a reason to finally leave her? A second later, his eyes found Winnie, and she leaned forward eagerly to see what he would do. Maybe it was the white wine medicine that made her so brazenly thirsty for conflict. Nigel stopped abruptly, like someone had yanked him back by an invisible string. Dulce didn’t look back until she was at the door and Nigel wasn’t opening it for her. The smile dropped from her face as she looked from him to Winnie.