Desperately Seeking Epic(26)

“I guess I decided I needed a change.” I take a sip of coffee before I continue.



Two days later, on Monday morning, I was back at work, but only in the physical sense. My mind was elsewhere. I worked at a prominent orthodontics office in the Dallas area. I loved it there. It was special to watch someone come in with a smile they hated and get to see them the day they got their braces off. Especially the adults. Those were the people who spent their lives hiding their teeth, hand cupped over their mouth, afraid to smile genuinely, who now left the office feeling like brand-new people. Seeing the kids was great, but adults appreciate it so much more. They knew how much it meant. The work aside, I loved my coworkers. They were nuts and it made each day, even the bad ones, fly by.

“You look like you’re wearing clamdiggers, Vanessa,” Ally noted. Vanessa looked down at her pants where she stood in front of the microwave, heating her soup. Vanessa stood at 5’8, with her legs making up most of her height. She chortled at Ally’s statement, her big, bright, white smile beaming against her mocha skin.

“They shrunk in the dryer,” she argued.

“You sure you’re not wearing one of your kid’s pants?” Ally continued.

“Shut up, Ally,” Vanessa laughed. “They started as pants and now they’re capris. You’re just jealous I don’t have to get a stepladder to reach anything over four feet tall.”

“I’m not that short,” Ally pointed out, and chucked a potato chip at Vanessa as she sat down with her sandwich. The chip landed on Vanessa’s chest, her ample bosom preventing it from sliding off.

They both burst into hilarity before Vanessa took the chip and popped it in her mouth. “Thanks for the chip.”

Ally unwrapped her turkey sandwich. “I almost don’t want to eat,” she told us. “I had Benji Rickman as my last patient this morning.”

“That’s rough,” Vanessa noted as she gently blew on the spoonful of soup.

“I swear, I don’t think the kid ever brushes his teeth,” Ally said, her southern accent thick, especially when she was worked up about something. “I picked enough food out of his brackets to feed a third world country. And I’m pretty sure he ate SpaghettiOs for breakfast.”

Vanessa dropped her spoon in her bowl of soup, cutting Ally an annoyed look. “Do you have to talk about that while I’m eating? For real?”

Ally snorted around the chip she had just popped in her mouth, her blue eyes filled with mirth. “Sorry. I wanted you both to share in my pain.” She shrugged. “His gums were swollen over the brackets. Bled like a stuffed pig.”

Vanessa leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms under her ginormous breasts. Ally threw her head back, laughing her ass off. What I loved most about my coworkers was we could say anything to each other. There was no shame. “She’s about to make me lose my religion,” Vanessa said to me. I smirked a little to show her I heard her, but I really wasn’t listening. I felt like a zombie. The usual hysterics just weren’t cutting it today. All I could think about was how my life was rapidly disintegrating.

Silence fell between us and when I looked up, I saw Vanessa giving Ally a pointed look while Ally shook her head no.

“What?” I asked. They both looked at me then back to one another. “What? Spit it out,” I demanded.

“Tell her,” Vanessa insisted.

Ally dropped her head and rest it on the table for a moment. When she raised her head again, uncertainty was rich in her eyes. “Um . . . When you were gone last week . . .” She paused, inhaling and exhaling awkwardly. “Jeb and I went down to Ft. Worth. We stopped for lunch and sat at the bar while we waited for a table. Jeb saw them first.”

I cocked my head to the side as I stared at her through narrowed eyes. Jeb is Ally’s husband. They’re disgustingly in love and right now I hate them for it. Well, not really, but kind of. I refused to ask her who Jeb saw. Deep down, I already knew.

Ally gave Vanessa another awkward look. “They saw Kurt with a brunette,” Vanessa finally stated, earning a dramatic eye-roll from Ally.

“Damn, Nes.”

“What?” Vanessa asked, chewing the saltine in her mouth. “There’s no sugarcoating that.”

“I was trying to put it delicately.” Ally moves her attention back to me. “Jeb and I could be way off base, Clara, but they looked . . . cozy.”

Pushing my salad away, I sat up rigidly.

“You already knew, didn’t you?” Vanessa questioned, reaching across the table and squeezing my arm.

“Did you?” Ally asked, her eyes widening.

“He told me Friday night. Or, rather, I walked in on them and then he told me.”

“What a piece of shit,” Ally gasped. “He had her in your apartment?”

I nodded then made a pfff sound. “He swears they haven’t slept together.”

Ally’s mouth hung open. “Let me walk in on Jeb in our house with another woman. It’s gonna be some Lorena Bobbitt shit all over again.”

“That dude ended up in the porn business. You know, after it was reattached. Not sure that turned out like Lorena thought it would,” Vanessa argued.

“I’m pretty sure a man getting his dick cut off is punishment, no matter how much porn snatch he got in the end,” Ally pointed out.