SIX YEARS LATER

SIX YEARS LATER

Karen knew exactly how it would turn out. This time it would not be another shit show. She knew what she was doing, and she was doing it right. Her plan was perfection. The detail meticulous. Failures of the past, all those unmet expectations? She shook her head. Nope, none of the above.

She'd once had someone lecture her on the difference between hope and expectation, how the first was life-affirming and the other only a dreary path to disappointment and resentments. It didn't stick. She still got all hyped about coming events. Believed people would come through for her. Do what they said they were going to do. Be who she wanted them to be. So many shit shows.

Cal Burney being the latest of them.

She shook off the worry birds. This time would be different. This time she held all the cards, or to be more accurate, the numbers. Her evidential, unassailable numbers were about to take Cal down. And no one deserved it more.

She loaded her leather laptop bag with her final figures, setting aside two neatly summarized printed pages. One was for Theodore Denk, the suspicious, greedy owner of this toiler’s paradise, AKA Luxe Bathrooms, and the other for Cal. Lastly, she tossed in her Surface, and zipped the bag closed. Might as well get this over with.

And when it was, when everything that needed to be done was done, she’d have a drink. She’d sit alone at the end of the bar and have a G and T. The first one in five years. A celebration.

She glanced at her watch. Denk was at a meeting, but he’d be back any minute. His desk was her first stop. It was as always organized and uncluttered. Placing one recap sheet dead center on his desk, she paused and pulled in a couple of deep breaths. The deed was done. A fact that didn’t stop her heart from drumming and shuddering in her chest.

Pull yourself together. One and done. Two and it’s a wrap. Easy peasy. Let the revenge be sweet. 

Having exhausted her store of motivational cliches, she closed Denk’s office door behind her.

The hallway leading to Mr. Super Salesman Cal’s corner extravaganza suite wasn’t wide, and in the fifty feet she strode to get there, not one iota of her rage and pain drained away, swirling hard, hot, and thick in the blood thudding its way to her heart. She thought for a moment she might explode and doom spray the glass panels on both sides of her. It would be fitting, she thought, because when this . . . confrontation with Cal was done, this place would most definitely qualify as a crime scene.

She reached his office, took a breath, smoothed her trendy skirt over her hips, and knuckled his door. Hard.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Come on in,” he said, his voice, as usual, all smooth and inviting.

She pushed the door open. “Got a second?”

The barest register of shock in his dark blue eyes, before his easy rally. “For you, Kary, anytime.” He stood, waved his fingers in a come-hither movement. “Come in, girl.”

I am not a girl. I’m thirty-five years old and don’t ya know, you self-centered dick, only another woman gets to call a girl, a girl?

But goddamn, as dicks go, you’re a damned fine one.

Her blood stopped its uneven yammering and gave way to a slow soul song. Her breathing halted. Looking at him was like a dozen stab wounds to the heart.

Get a grip, Karen, you’re not here to moon like a needy puppy. That’s long over. Ended when he and his ex-wife did a rebond. You might have slept with the man, loved the man, but that didn’t make him any less of an asshole.

At that moment his cell rang. He picked it up, glanced at the incoming number, and gave her a head tilt and a palm-out apology. Gesturing her toward a chair, he took the call.

The last thing Karen wanted to do was sit. The sheet of numbers in her hand wore on her like a soaked leather coat and a spiked collar.

She paced.

Cal, his back to her, spoke on the phone for a good three minutes. She didn’t hear a word of it. Or if she did, it didn’t register.

He clicked off and looked at her. Was that a smirk wafting across his lips or a preview for one of his brilliant, chiclet-bedecked smiles. Oh, his smile . . . “Well, my love,” he said. “What brings you to my door? When you threw me out last night, I didn’t expect us to cross paths until after the next ice age.”

“Funny,” she said. Not surprised, he felt that way. She had to admit her exit was epic, even for her. Word missiles every which way, all nuclear. When Karen blew, Karen blew. Big time.

“And true,” he said. “You didn’t exactly hold back, did you?”

Not a smile. Not a smirk. Just his usual direct gaze.

She swallowed any comeback she might have come up with. God, I wish I had half his confidence, his sureness about himself and what he wanted. That’s what she’d fallen for, what made her think him special. No, more than special. Rare. Rare among men. One she would love forever.

When she didn’t speak, he cocked his head and added, “So, do you miss me already?”

"You wish.”

“A guy can hope.” He paused, his easy smile dissipating, his voice lowering. “Kary, I—” 

“Don’t. Just don’t.” She waved a hand and shook her head, then tossed the paper with its neat rows of numbers on his desk. The simple spreadsheet that would obliterate his life, leaving her to live hers without more hurt or painful betrayals. “I brought you some reading. I thought you and Denk would enjoy going over these together. I already delivered his copy.”

She walked out.

Six years later

Karen sat at her customary seat at the far end of the bar. She wore torn jeans and an outsized bilious pink Tee. Barely past noon, she was nursing her second G and T. The last one, she told herself. Like she always did.

She heard the door open behind her, and a slice of afternoon sunlight flowed over the damaged, none too clean, wood plank floor. It pooled at the base of her stool. She lifted her eyes from the warm beam. She didn’t want light. Too much like truth.

A long shadow followed the sun’s rays into the dimly lit bar. She felt its coolness on her back.

“Hello, Kary.”

That voice. Her stomach clenched and imploded. She kept her eyes on the row of glasses on the shelf behind the bar. Thank God there was no mirror to reflect the man behind her.

After a hard swallow, she took a beat, then spun on her stool. Propping her elbows on the bar behind her, she met his cool gaze. She always knew this day would come. Wanted it to come. “Hello, Cal.”

He stared at her a moment. Assessed her. “You’re looking good.”

“Yeah, right.” Her lip curled as if on autopilot. “It’s been a while.”

“That it has.” He took the stool next to hers. The barkeep was on him before his butt centered. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

Karen took a breath before spinning herself back to face the bar. Cal’s drink was already in front of him. “How was it?” she asked, not sure she cared. She didn’t much care about anything these days.

“Not so bad. Eighteen months was doable.” He drank, placed the glass on the bar between his hands. “You? I’m guessing you weren’t too keen on the Marietta Zoo.” He smiled. Sort of.

The Marietta Zoo was the name given the women’s prison sixty miles north of here. She’d spent close to a year there.

She ignored the pain the memory evoked. “It wasn’t so bad.” She parroted his reply, fiddled with her drink napkin. “Like you said, doable.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t expect to go down with me, huh?”

“True. But it seemed Denk didn’t like that I waited six months before coming forward about your skimming.” Plus, my urge—primal goddamn need—to punish you defied all logic. Logic overpowered by an instinct for revenge.

“Did you honestly think Denk would miss that? Me taking my bit off the top while you moved numbers from the negative to the positive to save my ass.” He shook his head. “The guy was a freak for detail, Kary. You must have seen that every day you worked for him. One of the many things that made him such a huge pain in the ass.” 

“Also, true.” Maybe it was the galaxy of stars in my eyes at the time. All for you, Cal. All for you. Or maybe my blindness, that age old sister to jealousy.

A silence fell between them as some errant sunlight from a grimy window crept across the bar.

“Still. That ten months you got must have been harsh.” He didn’t look at her, traced the border of the light with his index finger.

She futzed with the napkin at the base of her drink. “You’re surprisingly sanguine about everything.”

He shrugged. She turned her head to peek up at him, careful not to meet his eyes. His shoulders were still broad, and he looked lean and healthy. Unlike her. She’d gained at least fifteen pounds and hadn’t had a decent haircut in the last year.

She took a breath, left him with her silence. It still chafed—her being so damned dumb. She’d protected him, until he cheated on her with his exe, then she’d black-stamped both their futures. As usual, life ignored her careful plans and expectations to follow its usual chaotic path.

Still, she had to know . . .

She gave him a sideways glance. “Did your wife hang in there?”

The wife. His exe, a woman Karen believed to be deep in his past. Until she wasn’t. How she’d hated her. Hated even more that Cal lied about her. And she’d punished him for it, only to be caught in the web of her own making.

“Nope.” He half-laughed. “She married her boss. They have a kid, a house, and a dog. Moved to Portland.” He took a swig of his drink. “Yours? Husband, I mean. Was he waiting outside with a handful of flowers?”

“Didn’t even attend my trial.”

“Must have been hard for you, hauled up on charges after you’d plotted so carefully.”

She shrugged. “I underestimated Denk. Fair to say, I got what I deserved. Revenge, it turns out, has unpredictable outcomes.”

“Hm-m.” He nodded, scratched his chin.

Probably to detract from the smile he couldn’t hold back.

They both took a drink, let silence rule.

Karen cracked first. “Look, I’m not going to ask how you found me. But I do want to know why you made the effort. If you’ve got a gun in your pocket, or worse, a switchblade, I’d like to hit the Ladies Room first. I understand murder gets messy.”

He didn’t look at her. “Not to worry. I’m not big on violence, and while I said prison was doable, that didn’t mean I liked it. No desire to go back. What I want is—” He shook his head. “Hell, I don’t know what I want. Maybe some truth. Whatever the hell that is.”

“Truth?” What did that even mean?

She barely heard him when he spoke again. He directed his words to the scarred bar in front of him, played his finger in the growing pool of sunlight, avoided her eyes. “You know we were a pair of total fuckups, right? Unfaithful. Dishonest. Selfish. You name the failing, the sin, whatever you want to call it, we both got a gold star.” He set those blue eyes she loved so much on her own, his gaze intense and questioning. “Am I wrong?”

Her throat closed, and she shut her eyes tight against the building tears. Knowing if they ever broke through, they’d never stop. “Not wrong. You were a lying, deceitful ass, and I was a mean, vindictive bitch.”

“As summaries go, you nailed it.” He took a hefty swig from his glass.

Lowering her head, because to see the look in his eyes made her heart hurt, she added, “And I’m . . . sorry, Cal. Sorry for you. Sorry for me. Just . . . sorry about the whole damn thing.” Dear God, her words were weak. So small, ineffectual! Like a pencil used as a battering ram against a stone fortress. But she’d said them because they were all she had. A few paltry words to wash away years of regret. She said them again. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Me, too, Kary. Me too.” He lowered his chin, closed his eyes, and expelled a rush of breath.

She brushed at her cheeks with the back of her hand. This conversation was pointless. As pointless as her too-little-too-late apology. She wanted to run, to hide, to never see Cal Burney again. “What do you want, Cal? Why are you here?”

He hesitated, then rubbed his forehead, “I don’t honestly know.” A pause. “I’ve been watching you come in here for the last couple of months.” He jerked his head toward the bar’s door. “I work in that hardware store across the street.”

“Then you know I’m a creature of habit.” Bad habits. She lifted her drink, then downed it. Thought longingly about the weed stashed in her dresser drawer.

“At first the sight of you just made me so damn . . . angry. Crazy really.” He shook his head, looked away as if to steady himself, looked back. “So many times, I thought about marching over and giving you—”

“—a left hook to the jaw?”

“No. Never that. To be honest, I didn’t know what I’d do. So, I waited. Why today? You do remember, don’t you? This was the exact date, six years ago.”

She swallowed, nodded. As anniversaries went, this wasn’t one easily forgotten. It’s what brought her to the bar in the first place.

“Turns out I just wanted to see you again.” He almost smiled. “One fuck-up to another, you know.” He took a deep swallow, downed the last of his drink, stood, and tossed some bills on the bar. “Turns out I got something I didn’t know I came for. Something I didn’t expect. A smart guy would take some time to think about it.”

She looked up at him, standing tall beside her stool. “And that was?”

“Apologies. One for me. One for you.”

“Is that enough?” She didn’t know enough for what, but she spun on her stool, stood, and faced him.

“I don’t know.” He bent his head and kissed her forehead. “You and I are really, really bad for each other, Kary. You know that don’t you?”

“I do.”

“The logical thing—the smart thing—is for us never to see each other again.”

He was totally right. There was nothing to be salvaged from the wreckage of their two lives. She ignored the crumbling in her chest.

He looked away from her then back again. The smallest of smiles crossed his lips. “So, from one gigantic fuck-up to another, shall we say tomorrow at five?”

His words didn’t register. Then they did. When she could drag a breath from her imploding lungs, she nodded.

Enough time for a haircut.