You Left Me to Remain With All Your Excuses for Everything

Jackie was standing in front of her bathroom mirror checking her complexion when her cell phone started to ring. She sighed and reached for it and answered it without looking at the caller ID. She didn’t figure it was anybody important. “Hello,” she said as she continued to look in the mirror.

“Hey honey, how are you today?” asked a familiar voice.

“I’m fine,” she said with surprise. It had been a few days since she’d heard from him. “Missing you.”

“I miss you too baby, are you busy tonight?” he asked.

“No, I was just going to be here alone,” she sighed and pulled the clip out of her medium length dark brown curly hair. It fell out of place with little effort and framed around her face. She did miss him, and she was hoping he’d come and spend a little bit of time with her.

“Would you like to be busy tonight?” he asked.

“Busy doing what?” she said and turned away from the bathroom mirror.

“I was thinking I’d come spend the night with you. Maybe we could go out and get something to eat, have a little time together,” he said. She thought about it for a minute while looking down at her t-shirt and mini shorts. She’d spent most of the day cleaning the apartment she shared with her best friend. She did want to see him, but she had to come up with a reason for making him wait long enough for her to get her legs shaved and her hair fixed.

“About what time are you going to be here?” she asked softly.

“When do you want me to get there?”

“Give me a couple hours, say seven o’clock?” she asked.

“That’s perfect,” he said on the other end of the line.

“Alright Ty, I’ll see you then,” she said with a smile forming on her face. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he whispered. She sighed as she figured why he was whispering.

“Is she there?” she asked sadly.

“She walked through, don’t worry baby she’s busy tonight. I’m all yours tonight,” he said. She sighed and sniffed.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, give me time to get ready, honey. I’ll see you later Tyler.”

“Alright baby, I’ll be there at seven.”

“Okay,” she said and hung up the phone. She looked down at it for a few seconds before setting it on the bathroom counter and pulling off her over sized t-shirt and she examined her bare torso. She worked out a little bit, but she was far from muscular. Her breasts were decent in size and shape, not large but not small. She figured she was physically attractive. She took off her little shorts and panties and stepped into the shower. Once the hot water was pouring over her body she closed her eyes and let herself relax for a minute before she started washing herself and shaving her legs and under arms.

She stepped out of the shower and dried her hair with a towel and put on her deodorant and perfume. She dressed herself in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans before hurrying out of the apartment and to her car. She drove to the hair salon that her best friend and roommate, Madison, worked in. She walked into the salon and looked to see if Madison was tending to anybody. She wasn’t.

“Madison, can you do my hair?” she asked as she plopped down in the seat Madison worked at. Madison sighed and looked her friend over. She knew where this was going, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. She ran her hands through Jackie’s still damp hair and started pulling the knots out of it with a comb.

“Ty’s coming over tonight isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yea, he said that he was going to spend the night with me this time,” Jackie said and smiled into the mirror where Madison was looking at her. Madison tried really hard not to roll her eyes and she smiled weakly.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea Jackie, last time he stayed the night he phone didn’t stop ringing until he turned it off,” she said.

“He promised that we wouldn’t be interrupted tonight,” Jackie said and closed her eyes a little bit as Madison pulled another knot out.

“What do you want me to do with it? Just straighten it out or something?”

“Make it look pretty you know,” Jackie answered.

“Is he taking you out? You almost never come here unless he’s taking you out,” Madison said. “How about some extensions? Make it just a little longer and maybe then I can pull it back and do some things with it.”

“Yea, he’s taking me to dinner I think,” Jackie said. “Extensions sound good.”

“When did he call you?”

“About an hour ago. I was cleaning the apartment up when he called,” Jackie said and cringed a little bit as Madison started fastening the extensions into her hair.

“Oh stop it, it doesn’t hurt that bad,” Madison said and rolled her eyes.

“You’re pulling my hair!” Jackie whined.

“Do you want me to fix it up for you or not?”

“Fine,” Jackie pouted. Madison laughed and finished putting the extensions into Jackie’s hair. She fixed Jackie’s hair nicely and they talked for a little while, while she worked on getting her hair into a pretty up do that wasn’t too fancy for a little dinner date, but still looked pretty.

“There, what do you think?”

“It’s so pretty! Thank you, wife,” Jackie said and stood up. She put her arms around Madison and leaned down to hug her best friend. Madison knew everything about her, and she knew everything about Madison. They had been best friends since high school, and they’d never fallen away from each other. Jackie let go of Madison and stood up straight, as she was several inches taller than Madison. She was tall for a woman, standing at 5’11”. Madison was only 5’2”.

“You’re welcome, wife,” Madison said. Jackie laughed a little bit. They had called each other “wife” since high school. They were close enough to be married without the physical relationship. It was sort of an inside joke.

“I’ll see you later tonight, is Josh going to be with you?”

“I don’t know, I think he has a show in town tonight. He might come by after though,” Madison said. Jackie nodded and hugged Madison again before hurrying home to get dressed. It was six forty-five when she got home, and Tyler had a way of always being on time. She rushed into her bedroom and changed into a nice red lacy lingerie set before stepping into a loose fitting black skirt and a silky red top. As she applied her lipstick the door bell rang and she sighed as she quickly finished and rushed to the door with excitement.

As she opened it she threw her arms around him and kissed his lips harshly. She could feel him smiling against her lips as he put his hands on her hips and kissed her back. “It’s so nice to see you again,” he smiled and kissed her again while she was still standing on her toes. As tall as she was, he was taller, standing at 6’4”.

“I’ve missed you so much, Tyler,” she said and dropped back down off her toes.

“I’ve missed you too baby, come on I have a gift for you,” he said and took her hand.

“You didn’t have to bring me a gift, you being here is a gift enough,” she said as he pulled her out to his car. “My feet are bare,” she whined.

“It’s only going to take a second,” he said and opened the back seat of his car. He pulled out a somewhat large box and handed it to her.

“What in the world?” she asked as she opened the box. Inside were three very young kittens. Her heart seemed to melt at the sight of the baby cats. “Oh, they are so sweet,” she said with cheer. He laughed and kissed her quickly. She took the box of kittens into the apartment, and Tyler followed with a box, water and food dishes, litter, and food. Jackie laughed a little bit. “I can’t believe you bought me all of this stuff.”

“Well…I bought the kittens; they made me think of you. And I bought the dishes and littler box. But the food and litter I got from home, Christine always has extra bags of it around,” he said.

“Oh.” Jackie looked down at her box of kittens, as a bullet of pain and sadness shot through her chest, and set it on the floor before taking the things from him and setting everything up in her bathroom. The apartment had two bathrooms, and each bathroom was attached to a bedroom. It was a nice apartment, and Jackie and Madison managed to keep it paid for between Jackie’s job in a music store and Madison’s work in the hair salon.

Once the kittens’ food and litter was set up she closed her bathroom door and looked at Tyler with a weak smile. He looked at the ground. “What’s the matter, honey?” he asked gently.

“Nothing,” she said and again forced a smile.

“I shouldn’t have brought her up, I’m sorry,” he said and sighed. She didn’t look into his brown eyes, she knew better. She knew once she looked into his eyes she wouldn’t be able to care anymore.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” she said and looked at the floor again.

“Come one baby, let’s go get some dinner,” he said in an attempt to change her mood. She didn’t look at him again and it was starting to be very frustrating. He knew better than to bring Christine up.

They’d met while Jackie was working as a cocktail waitress in a local bar. She’d served him and his friends for a while and when her shift ended he asked her very nicely to sit with him for a while. She’d agreed, thinking it wouldn’t be that bad of an idea, she hadn’t spent much time with men lately. He’d offered to buy her a drink, and she never protested.

By the end of that night she had been climbing out of the back of his SUV, vomiting from so much alcohol and extremely rough sex. She’d given him her phone number, and the next morning he’d called to check on her to be sure she was alright. At first she didn’t want anything to do with him; she had never wanted to be the girl a man regretted in the morning. Then he started calling her frequently asking if he could see her again. She finally agreed after two weeks of him pursuing her.

She fell for him fast, and after only a month and a half of dating she agreed to sleep with him. He’d taken her to the finest hotel in the city of Los Angeles, and they’d spent a very lovely night there. Once she’d slept with him, she couldn’t imagine not having him in her life. She never wondered why she’d never seen his house when he’d seen her apartment a million times. She never cared, until they had been dating for 5 months.

After five months of being his girlfriend and his lover, he took her to a nice restaurant and she could tell something wasn’t quite right with him. She’d started to get nervous in the car that night, but never brought up the fact that something seemed awkward. It seemed like he was tense and uncomfortable. After dinner was when he started getting extremely quiet and nerves ran through her body. No matter what he was going to tell her, she knew it was big. She was praying it was a proposal rather than a break up. She’d been devastated when his new was neither of the things she’d anticipated. The big news, the big thing he’d had to tell her wasn’t anything she had ever hoped to hear in her entire life. He was married.

That had been the first night she’d ever noticed the silver ring on his left ring finger. She knew it had been there all along, and she questioned how she’d never managed to see it before. After a few minutes she’d asked him if he was telling her this as a way to say he wasn’t planning on seeing her again. It was then that he’d started promising he was going to leave Christine when the time was right. That he didn’t love his wife the way he had in the past, he just wasn’t sure yet how to tell her it was over, but that he loved her rather than his wife. Jackie reluctantly, and now she felt stupidly, agreed to stay with him and wait for him since he planned to leave Christine soon. That had been six months before.

“What if Christine sees us?” she asked with a little bit of sadness.

“She won’t, she is out with her friends. She won’t be anywhere around us for the entire night, I promise,” he said and kissed her forehead.

“Yea,” Jackie said.

“Come on baby, smile,” he said and looked deep into the blue of her eyes. She could feel herself melting in his hands and she forced herself to look away from him. He groaned a little bit. “You know I love you, Jackie.”

“Then why don’t you just leave her, Tyler? It isn’t fair for her to have to be treated that way, and it’s not fair to me. You keep promising me that you’ll leave her someday soon, and that you will be all mine. But someday soon, never seems to come,” she said.

He took her face in his hands then and kissed her lips harshly, slipping his tongue between her lips. She could feel herself melting just a little bit more. “I promise I’ll leave her soon honey, the time just isn’t right.”

“When will the time be right though? That’s what I don’t understand,” she cried with tears rolling down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs and kissed her a second time. He knew she’s be quiet soon enough if he could convince her that he loved her as much as he claimed too.

“I promise Jackie, some day I will be yours and only yours,” he said and smiled at her. She sniffed and looked at the ground one last time before nodding violently. He laughed and kissed her again, with more passion this time. “Alright, let’s go and get something to eat so we can get back and get you out of these clothes,” he grinned. She laughed to herself and left with him to a restaurant outside of town to be sure that Christine couldn’t catch up with them. Their time in the restaurant was mostly uneventful and basic. She couldn’t help but notice him look over his shoulder every so often just to be sure that no one that knew Christine was coming into the restaurant.

After dinner he took her back to the apartment. He didn’t like being in public with her, he didn’t need his wife to find him cheating on her publicly. As they walked in Jackie noticed Madison sitting on the sofa in her pajamas eating something she’d made for dinner for herself. It was apparent that Josh wouldn’t be around tonight.

“How was your date?” Madison asked as she avoided contact with Tyler. She always felt odd around him, like he gave off bad vibes. She felt like he was only using Jackie, and that pissed her off, because Jackie was her best friend.

“It was good,” Jackie smiled. “We are going to hang out in my bedroom. I’ll see you in the morning doll?”

“Alright, Jackie. Go and have fun,” Madison sighed as Jackie led Tyler to her bedroom. Once inside the bedroom he took hold of her shoulders and threw her onto the bed before landing on top of her and kissing her deeply and passionately. Soon enough they were both naked and thrusting together against her sheets.

When he finished she lay with her head on his chest, just enjoying the little bit of time she had with the man she loved. His cell phone started to ring and she sighed with frustration. There was no chance it wouldn’t keep ringing all night.

“She’s paging you,” Jackie sniffed. He picked the phone up off her night table and looked at the caller ID before turning the phone off and kissing her forehead.

“I promised you tonight I’d be all yours and I am,” he said gently and tightened his grip around her shoulders. She smiled a little bit to herself then and snuggled against him. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she smiled and looked up at him in the darkness. There was nothing like being with him. It was like a perfect place when she was wrapped in his arms, smelling his skin and looking into his perfect brown eyes. She’d never loved someone the way she loved him, and she wished more than anything for the day that he would finally be hers. All her life she promised herself she’d never be the “other woman” but with him she couldn’t tell him no. She’d fallen in love with him long before she’d ever even known he was married.

There was always a sense of guilt when she slept with him. She knew he was married, and she didn’t know his wife. She couldn’t imagine Christine had any reason to deserve being cheated on, and she hated that she was involved in hurting another person. But at the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to give up what little time she did get to have with him. He promised her constantly that Christine wasn’t going to find out, and when the time came he’d divorce her. Jackie hated to be the person that tore a marriage apart, but she was willing to do that if that was what she had to do to have him.

“I hate to go to sleep,” she sniffed.

“Why is that, baby?” he asked and ran his hand over her hair.

“Because, I never get full nights with you. I hate to waste them on sleep,” she said and looked into his eyes best she could in the dark room.

“I’ll be here in the morning, just rest honey. I won’t leave you alone,” he promised and soon enough she was asleep.