Love.com (26 page)

~
~ ~

Emily looked around the
kitchen in pleasure. She unloaded the new dishwasher. The whole house was redone in the four months since she discovered her husband’s treasures in the garage and attic. She splurged on new furnishings. Not one room in the house resembled its former self. She made sure of it, wanting to purge those bad memories. She had a huge garden tub put in her new bathroom. Her new think tank was now a luxurious, modern haven. The bigger hot water tank ensured she had unlimited amounts of hot water. Life was good.

Jay
was back to work selling and trading baseball memorabilia online. He used his fee from the sale of her cards to fund a website. He was doing well. He sold all Eddie’s baseball cards for a whopping three hundred and seventy-thousand dollars.

Emily had a nest egg now. She didn’t worry about things a
nymore. Knowing she was secure financially was enough to erase the worry lines around her eyes. There were other things to worry about now, but money wasn’t one of them.

Her salary doubled since she
closed the account with Ambidor. With it came more responsibility, longer hours, and more hands-on meetings with clients. She was exhausted when she got home each evening, but satisfied with her life for once.

The ad campaign with Ambidor was
behind them; the commercials airing on TV three times a day. A huge billboard lined the freeway. Emily’s biggest regret was that she had to take artistic credit for Ian’s pictures. There was no choice. She begged him to relent the night they had dinner in his penthouse. He said there was no other way. They both knew who was really responsible for the incredible new face of Ambidor. It pleased her to fulfill at least one of Ian’s dreams of being a being a professional photographer, even if he didn’t get the recognition for it in the end.

Emily
thought of Ian often, wondering what he was doing at times like this. She hadn’t heard from him since his email the day of the meeting. She knew all she had to do was pick up the phone, but so could he. He didn’t, and so she didn’t.

Emily refused anything remotely one-sided in her life anymore. She was
n’t actively dating these days. She discontinued her membership with Love.com. Joan was right. You couldn’t order up love. It didn’t work that way. How it worked at all remained a mystery to Emily.

Evan promoted her to
Senior Account Manager, Stu’s former job, after his return from New York. The partnership for her was never discussed. She knew he would get around to it one day when he had to. Evan’s divorce never went through. Both parties put it on hold. Evan must have reconnected with his wife and daughters while in New York. He flew back there every weekend since to spend time with them. 

They never learned what became of Tabitha. Emily
could imagine she was still in Sacramento, though none heard from her since her eviction from her apartment. It didn’t worry Emily knowing Tabitha was out to get her. With five warrants for her arrest in Florida, she imagined the girl had more to lose by sticking around.

Stu got a job
as a junior ad rep with their competition. He never went forward with his lawsuit. He enjoyed slinging mud at Stone and Watterman through their clients every chance he got. Most agreed it was sour grapes and ignored his slurs.

The agency was buzzing with activity
these days. They were so busy they had to hire five more junior ad reps for the amount of new clients they had. Those interviews were left to Emily to conduct. Evan said he trusted her to hire the people she needed. It was the closest he’d ever come to showing her how much respect he had for her since his return from New York. It was enough.

Joan was expecting her third child
. She also went golfing with her husband three times a week. She claimed she wasn’t letting him out of her sight since learning about Eddie. Emily had her own gym membership now. She didn’t mind going alone. It gave her time to think. She almost always thought about Ian then.

Emily
knew she was far from over him. It was getting better every day; less hurtful as time passed. She allowed herself only one thought of him each day, weaning herself off him slowly. It seemed to be working. Who was she kidding? A guy like Ian came along once in a girl’s lifetime. Forgetting him was nearly next to impossible.

Evan
learned Ian was now head of corporate security for a major ammunitions supplier in Germany. She had to agree he was more suited for that than a mere consultant for a drug manufacturer. He exchanged emails with Evan regularly. Emily tried not to feel jealous, knowing the two men were good friends. A part of her hoped he remained in contact with Evan just to funnel information to her.

 
Just then, she saw Jenna Wilson pull up to Jay’s house through the kitchen window. She knew Jay wasn’t at home and decided to talk to her former neighbor. She walked outside just as Jenna came down Jay’s driveway.

Jenna looked good. She was petite and blonde, and looked years younger than
her thirty-five years. Judging by the way she was dressed, she was now acting the part of a much younger woman. The low-rise jeans and campy shirt screamed college co-ed. Emily wondered if Jenna’s classmates knew she was the mother of two small children as she approached.

Jenna looked uncomfortable to see her, her eyes avoiding
meeting Emily’s. “You seen Jay around, Em?”

“He was home earlier,” Emily told her as she smiled and waved at the two children strapped into the back
seat of the station wagon.

“Can you tell him I stopped by?”

“Do you have to rush off? I haven’t seen you in a long time. Do you want to come over for a glass of wine or cup of coffee? I’d like to catch up.”

Jenna smiled
stiffly at her words. “I really gotta go, Emily. I have class and my mom needs the car back.”

“What happened
to us, Jenna? We used to be good friends,” Emily said with a determined look. “I haven’t seen you in over a year and you can’t give me an hour of your time?”

Jenna sighed and opened the rear passenger door
. She unstrapped her seven-year-old son, Travis, before reaching further inside the vehicle to undo her four-year-old daughter, Madison. The pair was out of the car and chasing each other in the yard in a pair of seconds.

“I hope you got plenty of
that wine, Em. I could really use that drink.”

Emily smiled and nodded. “I do, and the backyard is fenced in now. Let’s get the kids settled and we can talk.”

Emily gave the kids cookies and milk and they happily played in her backyard as she and Jenna sat at her new kitchen table. Jenna looked around her house with wonder in her expression.

“You got this place looking good, Em. Geez, it doesn’t even look like the same house.”

“It was time. Eddie left so much undone when he died. I wanted a change,” Emily explained, wondering why Jenna looked so uncomfortable. She’d been to their house for weekend parties and barbeques for years. Now, she acted like a complete stranger.

“You seem to be doing alright after Eddie died,” the woman observed with a bitter smile she didn’t bother to hide
anymore. “Considering everything, that is.”

“Everything being what, Jenna? Is there something you want to say
to me?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know about Eddie and Jay, Emily,”
Jenna said with a look of contempt. “You might be alright with it, but I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?” Emily felt the air leave her lungs to think the man who
destroyed her marriage was her close friend who lived across the street.

“Yeah, figures you didn’t have a clue about any of that
. I should have known,” Jenna said and laughed and sipped her wine. “I found all the love letters your husband wrote to mine over the years. Jay denied he was gay to the end. I left him, damn faggot! Did Jay tell you all of this? He said he was going to.”

“He never said a word
about it,” Emily mumbled as she drank her wine, disturbed and upset to know Jay was the other man all along, recalling him wanting to talk to her these last months and her being too preoccupied with Ian to ever listen.

“Yeah, all these years them two were running around under our noses,” Jenna said and sighed in disgust. “You would think Jay would have the class to be honest. He lied his ass off
in court, all through the divorce, and even now. He said he isn’t gay and was never involved with Eddie like that, was just his friend. Do you believe that shit?”

Strangely, Emily did believe Jay’s explanation, but not why he kept the letters for his wife to find
years later, damning him in her eyes as the pretender he appeared to be. It made no sense to her. If he wasn’t her husband’s lover, why did he keep the letters all those years?

“I found a letter Jay must have wrote to Eddie after he was diagnosed, telling him not to leave me, that he didn’t feel the same way for him,” Emily disclosed sadly and shook her head. “He might have been telling the truth.”

“You might believe that because it makes you feel better, Emily, but I saw the signs something wasn’t right from the start,” Jenna said in disgust and rolled her eyes. “He spent more time with Eddie than he ever did me! He was always out with your husband!”

“It doesn’t mean he was
in love with him, Jenna.”

“He was screwing him! Whatever! You can’t tell me you
’re alright with this? I’ve spent the last year in counseling trying to figure out how my husband turned gay on me and you just accept it all, with no problem?”  

Emily could see Jenna was still upset, naturally. She had two children with a man she suspected was secretly gay, carrying on a five-year long love affair with
their neighbor across the street. It was enough to drive any woman bat-shit. Hadn’t it done that to her in the beginning? Hadn’t she felt like less than a woman after she read Jay’s letter?

“I can’t say I was
happy to find out my husband preferred men to me, no.”

“How do you think I felt?
All those nights I sat home with the kids, he was out with his boyfriend,” Jenna looked miserable, tears filling her blue eyes. “I thought we were happy. I never knew. It was all a lie! All of it! I still can’t believe it! Even now he won’t tell me the goddamn truth!”

“Eddie didn’t want to hide
what he was anymore. I know that much is true. He was coming out,” Emily confessed and sighed, refilling both their glasses. “He was planning to leave me before he got sick. Jay wrote to him to talk him out of it. He never appeared to return my husband’s feelings, said he had his own life and couldn’t take it on.”

Jenna gave a caustic laugh and downed her wine, her eyes filled with disgust. “Yeah, I got fucked over, and you got fucked over, but Eddie is the one who got fucked over the most, didn’t he?
I think it’s ironic, don’t you?”

“Why are you so
unwilling to believe that Jay was just being a good friend, and nothing more?”

“You can believe what
ever you want, Emily, if it makes you sleep better at night,” Jenna snapped and wiped at her eyes. “I’m done with that gay asshole. I got a new life now. I’m going to school. I’m dating a guy. I’d just like to forget about all this, if you don’t mind? I don’t need the whole neighborhood knowing my ex-husband is a freakin’ flamer.”

“Nobody knows anything
about this, but I think you might have to consider Jay didn’t return Eddie’s feelings, if it’s any consolation. He refused to leave his wife, he said in his letter. He told Eddie he had the wrong idea about them. It makes sense. I’m not saying something didn’t happen between them, but it was obviously one-sided where my husband was concerned.”

“That doesn’t make me feel
any better, Emily,” Jenna said with a scowl. “I was married to a goddamned faggot who played me for a fool all along! All these years he was just pretending to be normal. Can you even imagine how I feel?” Jenna laughed sarcastically then and rolled her eyes. “That was stupid of me. Of course you can relate. You know all about it, don’t you?”

“I’m not as bitter as you are,” Emily admitted and shrugged. “Eddie is gone
now. I can’t hold onto that anger anymore.”

Jenna glared at her, her blue eyes filled with
contempt. “I got kids with him, Emily! What do I tell them now? Do I tell them their dad is a fucking faggot? Do I?”

“You tell them nothing. It’s not their business,” Emily said and looked at her with
real compassion in her eyes. “His being gay doesn’t change the fact he’s still their father. You can’t keep them from him because you don’t agree with his sexual preference. You might not like it, but he is still the only dad their ever going to have. I’d leave the choice up to them if they want to see him. Don’t do what you’ve been doing by keeping them away from him.”

Jenna considered her words and sighed. “They
do miss him real bad. They ask for him all the time. I don’t know what to do, Emily.”

“I can’t tell you what to do
, Jenna. Regardless of what he is; he’s still their father, and a good one, gay or not. This isn’t about you and him anymore.”