Play It Safe(103)

“Say again?” he whispered and he was across the car from me but I heard the menace in his whisper.

“She had a hand in the play Buddy made to get me out of Mustang,” I repeated a little less heatedly, studying him and wondering if I should have kept my mouth shut.

“She tell you that?”

I shook my head but said, “I know.”

“How do you know?”

“A girl knows.”

“Think, you say something as explosive as that, Ivey, you need more than ‘a girl knows’,” Gray replied and it was then I realized the hole I’d dug with my fit of temper.

Because I didn’t want to go there but now that I’d mentioned it, I had no other direction available to me.

I sucked in breath, walked to the car and put my hand on my door then said, “Remember when she came up to us at the VFW our first date?”

“Ivey, I think you know I remember everything about you, specifically everything about you when you were with me. Outside of our kiss and watchin’ you bendin’ over a pool table for an hour, that was the best part of the date.”

He wasn’t happily reminiscing, unfortunately. He was telling me to move it along.

Still, Gray impatient or not, I liked what he said.

I didn’t share that.

“Well, our, um…conversation in the chiller cabinet aisle at Plack’s was along the same vein.”

“Again…” Gray started, clearly seeking patience, “say again?”

Damn.

Here we go.

“She walked right up to me and told me, essentially, that while I was gone, you’d been with other women.”

At that point I learned something new about Gray and how to deal with him.

Because he had been pissed, alert and impatient.

Now he was enraged.

So I learned, belatedly, that I should tread cautiously even when I was justifiably in full rant.

“That bitch,” Gray whispered.

“Gray, honey, it’s not like I didn’t know.”

“That…f*ckin’…bitch!” Gray clipped, this time loudly.

“Gray,” I said softly, “it’s okay.”

“Right, I know, Ivey, f**k, I know,” he returned, uncrossing his arms and throwing one out. “You aren’t stupid and you know me, you knew about the girls before you. I know you know but that doesn’t f**king mean,” he leaned in, planted his hands on his h*ps and thundered, “she had to tell you!”

“Honey.” I was still whispering.

“I was not gonna go there with you. Not ever. I knew you knew and I didn’t need to make myself feel better and you feel like shit by goin’ over it with you. I knew what I felt when I called you in Vegas and Lash answered the phone at twenty past seven, knowin’ he was in bed with you, thinkin’ what I thought he was to you. It burned through me but I was in my own f**kin’ kitchen on my cell phone. That bitch threw that shit in your face while you were in f**kin’ Plack’s f**kin’ grocery shoppin’ and knowin’ she gleefully set about makin’ you feel that burn when you were not in a safe place or f**kin’ doin’ it ever pisses me right the f**k off.”

“I can see that,” I said soothingly.

Gray glared at me then bit out, “That f**kin’ bitch.”

“Gray, that isn’t the part you need to know. What I mean is –”

“That f**kin’ bitch.”

I fell silent.

Gray deep breathed.

I waited.

Gray kept glaring at me and deep breathing.

Then he asked, “Anything frozen in the car?”

“Ice cream,” I answered quietly.

“Right, toss me your key. Let’s get this shit in.”

I tossed him my keys; he nabbed them and bleeped the trunk open.

I headed to the kitchen. He brought in a load and I started putting it away. Then he brought in the second and last load, dumped it on the counter and I continued putting it away while he rested a hip to the counter, crossed his arms on his chest watched me and ordered, “Right, now, give it to me.”

I kept putting food away while I told him, “She has a thing for you.”

“No shit,” Gray replied.

Right. Gray wasn’t stupid.

Moving on.

“She doesn’t have a happy marriage with Buddy.”

“Again, no shit.”

I finished with all the stuff that needed fridge or freezer and turned to Gray.

“She was with a girlfriend who wouldn’t look at me. Cecily bore down on me just like the last time, without hesitation, wanting to get a dig at you and crush me. She’s Buddy’s wife, she was seeing him then and still, she went after both of us. The girlfriend knew, Gray, and being around me especially with Cecily made her uncomfortable. I alluded very vaguely to the fact she knew my pain at losing you and how she knew that and both of them reacted. She either knows what Buddy did, which, if he did it and now I feel certain he did, she would as his wife or she was involved. She wanted you then, she wants you now and she’s one of those women who won’t move on and if she feels pain. She lets it turn bitter, so much, she can’t help herself from spreading that around.”

“What’d this friend look like?” Gray asked immediately.