Play It Safe

  In other words, they weren’t popular…still.

  Now I saw that I’d been right those years ago about what would befall the woman Bud Sharp took as wife.

  Cecily had had six years of marriage and two children with Buddy Sharp but she didn’t settle into life, marriage and motherhood with any kind of security and definitely no contentment. She was ten pounds underweight and looked gaunt. Her hair was styled in a fashion that was becoming but trendy and I knew with one look it took her at least a half an hour with a roller brush and a hairdryer to pull it off. She was made up and her clothing very nice (not, I was gleeful to see, as nice as mine). But it didn’t suit her simply because she wore it with a desperation that I didn’t think she knew anyone could see but was obvious to me.

  She worked out a lot, probably watched every morsel that passed her lips and likely never left her home without her fancy clothes, her hair done and her face put on.

  She was either terrified Buddy would cheat on her or knew he already did and she was terrified he’d find one he liked better than her. He’d scrape her off, leave her high and dry with two kids and she’d spend the rest of her days in Mustang running into Buddy and her younger, prettier replacement.

  I liked this. I knew liking it might make me a bitch but I also didn’t care.

  And knowing all this with one look at Cecily who had a bitchy look on her face like she was preparing to crush me and was looking forward to it, I was ready for Cecily.

  Then again, this was where being an ex-Vegas showgirl came in handy. Even if I didn’t know this about Cecily, I’d still be ready.

  “Heard you were back,” she stated, her, her girlfriend who was weirdly avoiding looking at me and her cart coming abreast of me.

  “Yup,” I stated the obvious.

  She did a head-to-toe with sneer on her face that she didn’t have it in her to commit to because she couldn’t quite bite back the envy.

  Then her eyes came back to me. “Nice shoes,” she drawled and I kicked back a foot and rounded an ankle.

  “Thanks, my ex-lover bought them for me. I love them,” I replied chirpily.

  “Gray’s not gonna be able to keep you stocked in eight hundred dollar shoes,” she remarked, still sneering.

  Yes. Envy. She knew exactly how much they cost and she didn’t have anything like them because Buddy might be a bank VP but he was no millionaire like Lash.

  I grinned. “That’s okay. I have, like, a hundred pairs. I think that’ll last me awhile.”

  Red started creeping up her cheeks and I glanced at her friend who was still strangely avoiding my eyes.

  Weird.

  My attention went back to Cecily when she crossed her arms on her chest.

  I’d scored two points and, still, she was settling in.

  Shit.

  “Sure no one has told you but you should know, Gray’s been busy while you’ve been gone. Very busy.”

  Bitch.

  I knew what she meant, it couldn’t be missed.

  Gray had had women after me.

  It sucked but I knew that Gray hadn’t remained blindly devoted to the memory of me even while thinking I’d never be back. Cecily was right no one had mentioned it, including Gray. And I was glad he didn’t because I didn’t want to go there. He was a man, all man and no way he would remain celibate, devoted to his hand like I was to my vibrator. I made the decision I made not to put myself out there again. Gray had needs, needs he’d see to and I didn’t know if in quenching them he’d attempted to open his heart and make a go with someone else.

  What I did know was that even if he did, he didn’t succeed so when I came back, he was available for me.

  And that was all I needed to know.

  “I find it fascinating that, twice, I’ve been in your company and, twice, you’ve felt it’s your duty to inform me about Gray and the women in his life. All this while, back then and still now, you’re with Buddy. I mean, obviously, since he’s giving it to me and I like it…a lot,” I leaned in on those last two words to add meaningful and deserved emphasis, “I know how good he is. But you, a married lady, all this attention to my man? My guess is, you liked it a lot too and you miss it. What? Does Buddy not do it for you? Have you been pining for over seven years for Grayson Cody?”

  More red drifted into her face and her friend shifted on her feet and there was my answer.

  Buddy Sharp didn’t do it for her and for over seven years she’d been pining for Grayson Cody.

  She didn’t speak so I did.

  Saccharine sweet, I commiserated, “Oh honey, you know, I understand your pain. You…”

  I trailed off as my eyes moved to the girlfriend who still wasn’t looking at me.

  And that was when I knew. It hit me like a rocket.

  I knew that Cecily had helped Buddy separate Gray and me, I didn’t know how but she either helped or he’d told her about it.

  And she’d told her girlfriend, a woman who lived in Mustang. A woman who knew that everyone was gleeful we were back together. A woman who was uncomfortable that her friend had a hand in tearing us apart. A woman who might even be wondering why she had a friend who would do something that despicable. And even though she was friends with Cecily, she was a decent enough person not to like it.

  My eyes went back to Cecily as everything I had went into stopping myself from launching a full on bitch smackdown in the chiller cabinet aisle of Plack’s.

  Instead, locking eyes with her, I finished on a whisper, “You know.”

  The girlfriend shifted again, this time differently. Her discomfort had ratcheted up and there was fear wafting off her.

  And the red was now draining with all the rest of the color in Cecily’s face.

  Yes, the bitch had a hand in it.

  I kept speaking and doing it quietly.

  “I don’t think you’re getting this but, even back then, when you strutted your ass right up to me happy to be a complete bitch, I wasn’t a pushover. And I’m even less of one now. So I advise you to learn from then, from this and from what I did to foil your troll of a husband’s plans to take down my man, we’re impossible to defeat. That happens when you’ve got good and right at your back and not greed and envy. So I suggest you share that with your husband and you two stop focusing your energies on Gray and me and instead convincing yourself that his money and your big house make up for not having the care and respect of your neighbors.”

  “You bitch,” she hissed.

  “You would know,” I replied and tossed the cheese into my cart before looking at her friend. “As for you, you should be careful the company you keep. Sometimes a stench shifts and it might be a kind that’s impossible to wash away.”

  She didn’t look at me as I spoke to her but she knew I was talking to her. I knew because she swallowed nervously.

  And with that, I was done. I put my hands to the handle of the cart and rolled it down the aisle toward the meat without offering my fond farewells. I needed to get the rest of what was on the list, get it in my car and get home before I blew a gasket.

  I did this and, wheeling our groceries packed in the canvass tote bags I bought at Hayes to my Lexus, I saw them moving to an SUV. I would do it anyway because that was me but then I did it for different reasons. I put the top down, slid my fabulous shades on my nose and buzzed my expensive, flashy convertible behind their SUV.

  Luckily, the uncontrollable urge didn’t strike to reverse it and slam my bumper into theirs. My car was new but it was paid for, I loved it and, if Gray’s truck was anything to go by, I’d need to keep it awhile.

  I drove home fuming and as I was coming up the lane, Gray, in a tight, wine colored tee, one of seven (yes seven, I’d investigated, all were equally battered like he inherited them from his father or something) of his tatty baseball caps on his head, leather workman gloves on his hands, came sauntering out of the stables as I did.

  This was something I was discovering that I loved about Gray. Not only the fact that he was
so hot he could look delicious wearing a ragged baseball cap but also when he knew I was going to the grocery store and I got back and he was around, he always stopped what he was doing to bring in the groceries for me. I might take in a couple of totes but I stayed in and put the groceries away while he went back and forth and lugged them in.

  So I drove around his truck (thus closer to the backdoor to the kitchen) and parked. Then I got out. Then I slammed my door and planted my hands on my hips.

  Gray stopped two feet away from the other side of the car and took me in.

  Then he muttered, “Oh shit.”

  “Oh shit is right!” I snapped. “Guess who I ran into at the grocery store?”

  “Osama bin Laden?”

  That was funny but I was not laughing.

  “No, Gray, he’s dead,” I told him something he already knew then leaned in and hissed, “Cecily.”

  His torso swayed back an inch as he crossed his arms on his chest. “You know she lives here, dollface, you knew it would happen eventually. What the fuck?”

  Something about Gray then and now, he was rational and logical to a fault and mostly very easygoing. Unless it was Buddy Sharp, my brother (back then) or his uncles (then and now), he didn’t get riled easily.

  Which sometimes sucked and I discovered that at that very moment when I was in rant mode and I wanted someone to understand exactly why and commiserate with me.

  So I explained why.

  “She had a hand in the play Buddy made to get me out of Mustang.”

  And there it was. I got someone to commiserate with my rant.

  The problem was, in my snit I had temporarily forgotten that when Gray wasn’t being rational, logical and easygoing and he got pissed, he got pissed.

  “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…fuckin’…bitch!” Gray clipped, this time loudly.

  “Gray,” I said softly, “it’s okay.”

  “Right, I know, Ivey, fuck, 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 fucking mean,” he leaned in, planted his hands on his hips 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 fuckin’ kitchen on my cell phone. That bitch threw that shit in your face while you were in fuckin’ Plack’s fuckin’ grocery shoppin’ and knowin’ she gleefully set about makin’ you feel that burn when you were not in a safe place or fuckin’ doin’ it ever pisses me right the fuck off.”

  “I can see that,” I said soothingly.

  Gray glared at me then bit out, “That fuckin’ bitch.”

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

  “That fuckin’ 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.

  “What?” I asked back, confused.

  “Cecily’s friend. What’d she look like?”

  “Uh, dark hair, a bit plump but it looked good on her. Shorter than me. She didn’t give me her eyes so I can’t say the color. Cecily’s age, I’d guess.”

  Gray’s face grew ominously darker when he stated, “Prisc.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Prisc. Priscilla. Tight with Cecily. Tight for a long time. All the way back to school. Her, Courtney and Cecily, cheerleaders, the mean girls. That said, you got Prisc away from Courtney and Cecily, she could be sweet. Those other two, born pure bitch.”

  “And?” I prompted when he didn’t explain why he was sharing this information.

  “And, Prisc and Courtney were the ones who told everyone they saw you takin’ off with Casey.”

  I closed my eyes and rested my hand in the counter.

  “Like I said,” Gray kept speaking and I opened my eyes, “remember everything about you including everything that happene
d after I lost you. Remember that shit. Remember giving time to chewin’ on those two bein’ the two who happened to see you stealin’ away in the dead of night. It was a long time ago but when you took off with Casey, can you remember if you saw anyone?”

  I shook my head. “It was a long time ago but I remember because he was freaked, saying he was being followed so I looked and I did it hard. I can feel eyes, see a tail. It had to be three, four in the morning. The square was deserted, the bar closed. No one saw us.”

  “So they made that shit up.”

  “Probably,” I replied

  “Definitely,” Gray returned. “You felt it, life taught you to read people, situations and, dollface, like everything, you’re good at it. What I know is, from what you told me, Prisc is a decent person who found herself with shitty friends and she’s weak. It’s gone on so long, she’d rather stick with what she has than dip her toe in the pond. She couldn’t look you in the eye, there was a reason and not just that she knows Buddy’s a dick ‘cause everyone knows Buddy’s a dick. She couldn’t look you in the eye because she was in on it.”

  “So she knows what they did,” I whispered.

  “Likely.” Gray didn’t whisper.

  “So we should go talk to her.” Now I wasn’t whispering.

  He shook his head.

  “No?” I asked.

  “No, darlin’. First, weak or not, that shit’s whacked. That isn’t about bein’ a mean girl. She fucked with people’s lives, their happiness. If she knew they were doin’ that to us, she shouldn’t have participated or sometime in the last seven years she shoulda opened her goddamned mouth and said something to me. I’ve known her since high school. She came clean, she knew I’d be pissed but, at least with her, I’d get over it. So, I talk to her, I might lose it and she’s not worth the emotion. Second, you talk to her, you might lose it and ditto the emotion. Third, we’ll find out what happened but that shit is not gonna get Buddy Sharp’s ass hanging out there. Nobody likes him already. They know he did that to us, they’ll just like him less and that’s no skin off his nose. Trespassing, breaking and entering, destroying property and poisoning horses will get his ass hanging out there. I doubt any of that will carry a huge jail sentence but it’s unlawful and that bank isn’t gonna keep a VP with a rap sheet in a corner office. That’s worth our energy, not Prisc.”