Message from a Mistress (17 page)

J
aime didn’t know when exactly she fell asleep or how long. As she stretched atop her bed, she did know for sure that listening to her mother drone on about her disappointment and rage had pushed her to mentally shut down. Even now, hours later, her words of contempt echoed.

Flopping over onto her back, she looked up at the shadows created on the ceiling from the street lamps as her mother’s words floated back to her, still heavy with her disappointment.

“Your father and I worked hard to instill values and a sense of propriety in you, Jaime Lee.”

And contempt.

“How dare you degrade this family, your husband, and yourself by being little more than a slut.”

And disgrace.

“I am ashamed of you.”

And threats.

“You better fix it, because your mess better not come back to embarrass this family in any way, Jaime. And I mean it.”

Still, she didn’t regret telling her mother the truth. She was sick of the lies. Sick of pretending. Sick of acting out her life to someone else’s script. No matter how sweetly she wrapped lies up in a pretty, perfect package, her years of being everything that everyone else wanted her to be and nothing at all of what she used to want to be was a bunch of bullshit. Perfectly covered in designer clothes, hair, and jewelry—but bullshit nonetheless.

Sighing, Jaime sat up on the side of the bed and reached to turn on the lamp sitting on the nightstand. It was then she saw the blood still staining her hands. The sight of it reminded her of the Shakespeare play
Macbeth
that she read first in high school and then again in college. How could she forget the scene of Lady Macbeth washing imaginary blood from her hands, manifesting the guilt she felt over horrible things she and her husband had done?

Her crime of having one illicit affair hardly reached the level of murder, but her guilt had manifested and eaten away at her all the same. Made her hate herself. Made her feel as if she deserved the humiliation and punishment her husband had put her through every day since the affair. Made her think and think and overthink every little detail of her life.

But even beyond the guilt, Jaime knew she had long ago lost herself until she doubted that she even knew what she really wanted or thought. Everything in her life had become about the “right” everything. Being the stereotypical “good girl” and the “perfect wife.”

Jaime made her way to the bathroom and washed her hands. She flipped her disarrayed weave back from her face as she studied her reflection. Her brows furrowed in concentration. “Who are you?” she asked her reflection.

She honestly didn’t know anymore.

Maybe it was time to find out.

Jaime brushed the tangles from her weave and then for the first time in years pulled it all up into a ponytail. She took a quick shower, making it a point to skip her designer bath gels, skipped her make-up, and changed into a velour sweatsuit and flip-flops.

She shook her head thinking how she never let Eric see her without make-up…or passed gas in his presence…or took a crap when he was in the house…and how she’d get up in the middle of the night to brush her teeth to cure morning breath.

He never asked her to do it. He never even hinted. It had been her choice to be a Stepford wife.

Enough was enough.

Jaime looked around their spacious and stylish bedroom suite. The memories that flooded her were more bad than good. How many nights and days had she spent crying, feeling degraded, feeling foolish? She’d lost count, and she refused to add any more.

Things were going to change. They had to.

Jaime walked out of the bedroom. She paused, looking over the banister of the balcony as the front door opened and Eric walked in. He looked up at her briefly before he reached back to close the front door and stroll into his bedroom.

It’s funny. Jaime had almost forgotten about the whole text message and worrying if her husband was coming home or not. It almost didn’t matter anymore. She had bigger fish to fry than who Eric was fucking.

Jogging down the stairs, Jaime felt a freedom like she had never felt before. She did hate the natural urge to knock on his door before she entered, but Jaime pushed that aside as she turned the knob and pushed the door wide open.

Eric was undressing and turned to look over his bare shoulder at her. “I didn’t call for you,” he said in that cold voice that was now a familiarity in their marriage.

“You know, Eric, after the day I had—no, after the last six or seven months I’ve had, I don’t really give a
shit
if you sent for me,” Jaime said, actually relishing the way the curse word flowed from her lips with ease.

Eric’s eyes widened a little bit as he stared at her. “Having one-night stands with strippers and cursing. What’s next, slut?” he said snidely.

“Nothing much, jackass,” she countered, reaching in the pocket of her ruffled velour jacket for her cell phone.

“That’s enough of your disrespect,” he said in a low voice still filled with chilling anger.

Jaime laughed as she sauntered farther into his room. “No, disrespect is receiving a text from your husband’s mistress,” she told him.

“My what?”

Jaime gave him a disparaging look. “‘Life has many forks in the road and today I’ve decided to travel down the path leading your husband straight to my waiting and open arms.’”

Jaime looked up as Eric frowned and walked over to her.

“‘I can’t lie and say I have regrets. I love him more than you and I need him more’” she continued to read, raising her voice as he neared her.

“Who sent you that?” he asked.

“Jessa, your whore, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.”

“
You’re
calling someone else a whore? Please.”

Jaime shook her head at him. “Are you defending your mistress to me?”

Eric stepped closer until his forehead nearly touched hers. “I don’t even need to address or defend anything to you. You lost your right to question me when you opened your legs to another man.”

Jaime didn’t back down from him like she normally would. In fact, she stepped even closer to him until their breaths mingled in the small inch between them. She raised her phone. “‘You saw him for the last time this morning. Tonight he comes home to me. He’s my man now,’” she read. “So I’m real surprised to see you.”

“Not that I care what you think, but those are lies. Hell, you’re probably making it up because of your own trash. Jessa wouldn’t lie on me like that.”

Jaime laughed bitterly. “Maybe the trick ain’t lying. Maybe you two have been messing around behind my back all this time.”

“After having to listen to my wife having sex over the phone, I really don’t care if I brought a woman home and screwed her in our—your bed.”

“Have you?” Jaime countered.

“Get the hell out of my room, and next time knock and wait for me to permit you to come in,” he said, walking over to hold the bedroom door open.

“Why are you with me?” she asked, her voice incredulous as she looked over at his boyishly handsome face, which was filled with the lines of coldness and bordering on dislike.

“Get out of my room, Jaime,” Eric said again. “And take your lies with you, slut.”

Jaime sauntered over to the door, feeling her empowerment rise. “You know, Eric, for an educated businessman, you do a lot of childish name calling.”

“Go to hell, Jaime.”

She stopped and stared up into the face of this man that she’d honestly married for better or for worse. His handsome face, which used to be filled with charm and smiles all the time, was constantly twisted with anger and dislike whenever they were alone. She was married to a stranger.

“I’ve been living in hell these last six months with your punishing my one mistake—”

He snorted in derision.

“I have apologized. I have punished myself and I have allowed you to punish me. But no more, Eric. No more,” she told him in a voice that was stern.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

Jaime just cocked a brow before she walked out of the room and continued up the stairs. She felt liberated. She felt free. Free of the shame and guilt she lived with all these months. Free of the charade of being happy only in public. Free of the masks she lived with all her life.

She heard his feet on the steps but she was still surprised when his hand closed around her upper arm to precariously spin her on the step to face him.

“I asked you what you meant by that,” he said, his voice and face arctic.

Jaime snatched her arm away as she shook her head. “Since I was a little girl I worried about being perfect. I never got dirty. I always got good grades. I always did what was right. I wanted my parents’ approval so badly that it mattered more than my own happiness,” she told him, emotions tightening her throat as she pointed her finger at her chest. “I was a little girl worrying about my own parents not loving me or wanting me or even thinking they would send me away if I wasn’t perfect.”

“And?” he snapped sarcastically.

“And I continued that pattern of being afraid of not being liked all through high school and college and in
our marriage
, Eric.” Jaime released a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy, and I’m not blaming you. I’m blaming myself because I didn’t try to do things or say things or even think things that suited me and made me feel whole. I put everybody else first and it was strangling me, Eric.”

“So your affair was done for me too, right. Man, please.” Eric shook his head as he looked away from her.

Jaime swallowed back the irritation and annoyance she felt at him completely overlooking her words of explanation. “This isn’t about that, Eric, and our marriage shouldn’t have become all about it either,” she told him, sounding as emotionally weary as she felt.

“Then you shouldn’t have stooped so low and done it.”

“And you shouldn’t have stooped so low to degrade and belittle me every chance you got,” she yelled before she took a deep calming breath and looked upward as her heart pounded in her chest. “I was so worried about what people thought that I let you treat me like shit, worse than shit, these last six months. I didn’t want to admit that my marriage was—no, it is over.”

She looked down at him, and the look of surprise in his face gave her pleasure. She was ready to claim her life. Enough was enough.

“Jaime—”

“No, Eric,” she said, holding up her hand before her. “I’m done. Done talking. Done explaining. Done begging forgiveness. Done being treated like a whore in my own home. Done with this marriage and you. You and Jessa have a wonderful life together. I wish you both the
very
best.”

“I’m not having an affair with Jessa, so don’t push your guilt on me.”

Jaime sighed and shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter, Eric,” she told him before turning to continue up the stairs and into her bedroom. She grabbed her suitcases from the closet and dropped them onto the bed.

As Jaime pulled her perfectly folded clothes from the drawers and packed them she felt like imaginary wings were growing out of her back, giving her the ability to finally fly and thus flee the entire situation.

“You’re not going anywhere, Jaime.”

She glanced at him briefly as he filled her doorway before she walked in the closet and began removing hanging items. “I’m done, Eric. Why keep punishing ourselves? It’s not healthy.”

“So you think I cheated and you leave?” he asked sarcastically.

Jaime was sick of his judgments of her. She had to admit that she was surprised that he gave a damn. “And I cheated and you’ve treated me like your in-house slave.”

“I didn’t leave our marriage.”

Jaime paused in putting her shoes in the suitcase to look up at him. “No, you just made our marriage as horrible for me as you possibly could.”

“No, I treated you like the slut you acted like when you slept with some stripper you didn’t even know!” he shouted across the room.

“Well, this slut is tired, okay?” she told him sardonically.

Eric came across the room to grab her wrist.

Jaime snatched away as she looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry that I cheated and I know that I hurt you, but I’m also sorry that my issues run so deep that I allowed myself to live like this,” she told him before breezing past him to begin picking up her dozen or so perfume bottles from her dressing table.

“I don’t believe in divorce, Jaime, and you know that.”

“Neither did I until I saw just how miserable marriage could be.” Jaime zipped up her suitcases.

“What is your mother going to say?” he threw at her, clutching for straws.

Jaime laughed bitterly as she sat the suitcases on the floor and pulled up the handles to roll them. “Don’t worry. I told her about my affair and she concurs with you that I am an embarrassing slut,” she told him over her shoulder as she walked out of the bedroom, rolling her cases behind her.

Eric followed behind. “How are you going to take care of yourself? You need me. Did you think about that?”

Jaime noisily banged the suitcases against the stairs as she made her way down. “Well, let you and my mother tell it, I’m sitting on a gold mine, so maybe I’ll put it to work,” she snapped sarcastically.

Jaime yelped when Eric grabbed her neck and turned her to slam her against the front door. His eyes were filled with rage and his nostrils flared like a charging bull. “Let. Me. Go.”

His grip tightened and he lifted her by her neck until her feet floated above the floor.

“Successful businessman found guilty in the choking murder of his adulterous wife,” Jaime said. “I’m sure all of your colleagues will find this little news article amusing. Don’t you?”

Their eyes remained locked for a long time but Jaime felt his grip loosening. As soon as he dropped her to her feet, Jaime used both of her hands to push him away from her before massaging the tenderness of her neck.

“You know, I’m realizing that you are sick in the head. You get off on belittling me. For months you made me feel like you hated me. Whipped me. Made me do things to you that I didn’t want to do. Perverted things. And now that I’m leaving, you think I’m going to listen to you and stay, you sick bastard? I don’t know if it makes your dick hard to be a perverted son of a bitch, but you are.”