Dirty, Rotten Bastard

Billie Joe sprung up from his place on the carpeted floor, the cold sweat down his back telling him he’d been having a nightmare. He couldn’t recall much of it, though remembered a particular face occurring throughout it. Adrienne was in most of his dreams, even his nightmares.

“You startled me!” Bridget shrieked from a few metres away, curled up in his duvet and nothing else. Oh God… Billie scanned his mind for memories of last night, finding a blur and inducing a headache but not getting much farther than that. “Were you having a nightmare?”

He didn’t want to seem rude, but found himself wondering exactly how else to say to the woman it appeared he’d slept with last night: ”Who the hell are you?” He was trying to come up with something else when he remembered he’d gone for a swim last night and finished off the rest of the beer in the bar fridge. He must have met her when he was out. He did recall that he’d gone out, but the details of where, when, and why were still a little sketchy.

“What was your name again?” he finally let out as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The look that flashed across Bridget’s face told him that his thought-out question hadn’t been any better than the rude one. She began to dress herself without saying a word, and that’s when Billie Joe began to panic. He had a pissed off woman in his house. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have two.

“I’m sorry, I just had a lot to drink last night,” he admitted, but she’d already known this. She’d had a bit to drink too, simply because turning down the offer of free alcohol was rarely an option for her. Alcohol was expensive stuff, and she usually didn’t have the money for that kind of mind-numbing luxury.

“I know. You could hardly get it up.” With those words, Billie assumed they were once again even as he swallowed his pride and let her keep them. He swallowed the lump that was slowly forming at the back of his throat and got up to dress, himself, checking the time as he did so. 11:43am. He might be lucky. She might already be out.

“Let me give you a lift home, love,” Billie offered, and Bridget nodded in acceptance. She felt cheap, but wasn’t going to let it show. It wasn’t very often that she slept with total strangers and even on the odd occasion that she did, it was with much younger men. Billie Joe must have been at least in his mid-thirties, and he still reeked of alcohol. This was not the highlight of Bridget’s life.

Bridget almost screamed as Billie’s hand shot out and stopped her walking through his house for no apparent reason. They waited in the corridor for a moment in silence before they proceeded through the back door and out the back gate she’d gone in last night. He let out a sigh of relief as they got to his car with no unwanted interruptions and he drove off down the street, asking for Bridget’s address as they went.

“It’s Bridget, by the way.” He remembered as she told him, along with a few other details. He remembered the hickey he’d left beside her breast, and the one she left just above his hip. He cursed himself as he noticed his face was flushed in the rear-view mirror and tried to calm himself down. He’d been drunk. Technically, he hadn’t even really wanted to sleep with her in the first place. It’d all been the alcohol. He was pretty much innocent.

He pulled into Bridget’s driveway and turned to say goodbye, but was greeted with her hand across his face instead. She’d been looking about in the front of his car for things to do as he drove. It wasn’t until he’d turned into her drive that the gleam from the afternoon sun had hit the ring on his wedding finger in just the right place, and she felt disgusted. How had she not seen that before? Had he taken it off last night and only just put it back on as he dressed in the morning? What was wrong with this man!?

“You’re a… a dirty, rotten bastard!” she yelled at him, before she slapped him across the face again and got out of the car to go inside. “You’re an asshole!” she screamed at him, banging on the screen door to be let in. She realised then that she probably should have waited until she was let inside before she went right off at him, because he could be any kind of person. She wished Brett would let her have her own key to the house. He kept the only copy they received when they moved in over 2 years ago, back before things went sour. He said he couldn’t trust her not to lose it if she had a copy, and he was probably right. Her lips widened into a tiny ‘o’ shape as she realised at that moment she’d left her bag laying on the floor of Billie Joe’s car, and turning around let her know he’d got out to give it back to her. Brett opened the door as Billie Joe was about to open his mouth, and gave him a look. Bridget knew that now would be a good time for Billie to leave, but she didn’t care much for what happened to him. He was filth. Who cheated on their wife? They’d probably been married for longer than she’d been alive. Suddenly, that dirty feeling came flooding back to her.

“Who the fuck is this you’ve brought home?” Brett asked, finally opening the door to get a better look. A bruise was forming on Billie Joe’s jawline, and his eyes were red and sore from the sunlight he was being exposed to.

“He’s nobody. He was giving me a lift,” Bridget explained, but that wasn’t nearly a good enough answer for Brett. Bridget snatched her bag back, which Brett then snatched from her and threw inside the house. He was in one of his moods, she knew, and hated when other people got involved. This was between him and her, and this pathetic excuse for a man still staring at her from two feet away had no business knowing this about her. Truth be told, she was terrified of Brett, but showing that would only give him more power over her. Instead, she sucked it up when he called her horrible things, and shook it off on the odd occasion that he touched her. He was just lonely, she told herself. She was just lonely, too.

“Get inside,” Brett said, and waited for Bridget to leave before he spoke again. “Stay the fuck away from her, you got it?” Billie said nothing as he turned around to leave, seriously confused now at the names she’d been throwing at him. He was an asshole for cheating on his wife, but she’d done the same thing to her boyfriend. Billie hated hypocrites, and halfway home it took his everything not to turn back around to call her out on it.