The Lazy Lemon Sun Ch. 03

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Rehnquist
Rehnquist
3,884 Followers

Whitney was there with her male friend from the last time, and they held hands and had eyes mostly for each other. He was a decent looking guy maybe seven or eight years older than her with some gray streaking his close cut hair and eyes that were everywhere when they weren't on Whitney. He didn't miss much, that was obvious, and I pegged him for a cop.

Rebecca sat with them and occasionally danced with one of the dozens of offers. They were lighthearted dances, though, full of fun and laughter and plenty of playful spins and twirls.

Teddy brought his wife with, and they'd been joined a bit later by Nick Harlan and his wife. When I met Nick at during the break, he just said he wanted to see who'd been scratching up his guitar while he was gone and was going to be taking his Sunday afternoons away for the foreseeable future.

I started the second set--at Whitney's request--with "You've Got a Friend." Apparently, it was her and her new beau's song.

Seeing as slow numbers are usually best played in twos or threes, I popped my capo off and was about to begin "Change the World" when I saw her to my right. It was sudden, like one minute it was a group of patrons, the next minute it was just her in that bright yellow blouse and tan slacks with a nervous smile and eyes filled with hope and apologies. I popped the capo back on, this time at the fifth fret, and started my song, looking at her the whole time.

"I wish you love/and happiness/I guess I wish/you all the best. I wish you don't/do like I do/and ever fall in love with/someone like you. 'Cause if you felt/just like I did/you'd prob'ly walk around the block/like a little kid. But kids don't know/they can only guess/how hard it is/to wish you happiness."

I sang the whole song staring at her. Her eyes were welled with tears by the time I reached the second verse, and she was trembling slightly by the time it was done. As the last note died out, she turned and disappeared into the crowd, and I didn't see her again for the rest of the night.

It was hard to concentrate, but somehow I managed.

I played again right up to last call, then dawdled around on stage tearing down until most everyone was gone.

"What's wrong?" Rebecca finally said.

"Sandy was here," I replied.

Her eyes narrowed and a wicked grin spread over her face. "Show time."

My God, I thought, I don't ever want to see her on the other side of any case of mine, that's for damned sure.

* * * * *

The next day, Nick Harlan made short shrift of honing the final kinks out of "Sweet Marlene," my first shot at fame and fortune. He also suggested an up tempo, then proceeded to play and sing it about twice as fast as I'd envisioned.

"That's it," Teddy agreed. "The tempo. I just didn't really see it that way."

I nodded, agreeing but not caring.

It was all I could do to concentrate on the next song we worked on, a hurtin' song definitely written correctly at a slower tempo. They were both more than a bit taken aback when I suddenly started disagreeing with their proposed lyrical changes, though, and instead made the lyrics more painful and biting.

They both agreed with the end produce, though. The song had way more punch that way.

Then they looked at me with a knowing stare, particularly Nick.

"Sucks, don't it."

"Yeah," I said.

"Just make damned sure you never have to go through it again."

I only looked at him, amazed he'd so quickly discerned what was happening in my life. But his hard, level stare told me he'd been there before, too, and knew what he was talking about.

Without another word, I settled down and got more into the collaboration and paying attention to their suggestions and how they got to them.

For some reason, it felt good just knowing I was with someone who'd been there, too.

* * * * *

As I got off shift Monday night, I was subjected to a replay of Saturday night. One minute she wasn't there, then in a blink she was.

"What're you doing here, Sandy," I said.

She froze, afraid to answer.

"I said-- "

"Looking for you, Mark."

I gave a derisive snort. "Why? Am I screwing with Daddy's big plans to be President?"

She looked at the ground for a few seconds, then back to me.

"Yeah Mark," she said, trying to hold my stare but failing, "you're ruining Daddy's plans. But that's not why I'm here."

"Then why are you here?"

"To apologize."

"Apology accepted. You can go now."

"And to win you back," she said.

I tried to hide my contempt but, judging by her flinch, failed. "Really. Win me back."

She nodded, then her lips started moving as if trying to form words.

"You have every right to hate me, Mark. I know you-- "

"Daddy must be real worried about how this is all gonna look, isn't he?"

She slumped in frustration. "I know what you think, Mark, but you don't know the whole story."

"That's where you're wrong, Sandy. I do know the whole story. Sure, they didn't fill me in on their little plan before we got married. No, I didn't find out until a couple months ago when I heard your folks--and mine--talking about it when I got up to take a leak. That weekend we spent at the Governor's Mansion. Remember that?"

She nodded.

I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind and heard Ferlin say, "Why don't you two go take a seat in the dining room. I've already put her salad there, and that way you can hash this all out in private."

"Sure, Ferlin," I said, still glaring at Sandra. I spun and stalked to a table in the far corner of the dim dining room, away from the few other tables occupied with diners.

From behind me, I heard Sandra say, "Sorry about all of this."

"Doesn't sound like I'm the one you need to convince you're sorry," Ferlin said. "Get back there and convince Mark that you're sorry."

She followed me to the corner of the dining room, then hesitated before she sat down. I'm pretty sure she hadn't envisioned my anger at the whole situation, but I wasn't really happy to have to deal with it totally out of the blue, either. My fingers were drumming on the table, my right knee bouncing up and down, and my head stayed locked to the right, looking outside at the half empty parking lot beyond.

Sandy finally sat and reached across to take my hand. When her fingers touched my skin, though, I jerked back like I'd been bit by a snake.

"Just eat your salad, Sandy."

She dropped her eyes. "I know you don't believe me. Hell, I wouldn't believe me. But I'm telling the truth. I want another chance. Not for Daddy and his campaign, but for me. For us. That's all I want."

I glared at her, the scorn dripping from my words. "Yeah. You've got such a great goddamned track record. You really just want to come back and now really be married to me. No more pretend married, but really married this time. Does that mean you won't go fucking around on me again until at least after we have our first baby, or you gonna just hope the baby's mine?"

She fought to hold back tears. No one had ever talked to her like this, and she was fighting to hold herself together under my barrage. She tried to set her jaw in determination a few times, but failed. Instead, she dropped her eyes to the salad and picked at the lettuce with her fingertips.

"I thought you knew," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"Knew what?"

"That we were just getting married to help out our parents. That it wasn't supposed to be real. I thought they told you."

"Well they didn't, okay?"

"I know that now. My mother only saw fit to share that little tidbit with me a few weeks ago."

I leaned across the table, my eyes on fire and voice urgent. "You couldn't tell? You thought I was just playing along with this little fucking charade?"

She bit her lip, her lips moving again to form words and respond so as not to escalate my anger. Then, with a deep sigh, she seemed to decide that truth was her only option. Not a good plan, though.

"We used to tease you--me and my friends--behind your back we'd tease you," she said, her voice barely audible. "You were always so sweet and loving and doting, we said you were like a little puppy dog. I just thought--we all just thought--that you were trying to win me over for real. Trying to . . . I don't know, trying to make me really love you and really be married to you."

It was immediate; I felt my face turn to a mask of fury and fought to keep my voice low so the other diners wouldn't be able to listen in on this little fiasco. "You fucking laughed at me? For trying to be the best husband I could, you fucking laughed at me? Because I tried to make you love me? Jesus, Sandy, I thought you already did love me. That's why I did that. I thought I was the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth. And you all fucking laughed at me? You thought I was just some pathetic little shit?"

She couldn't hold back the tears any longer. "I know that now. Don't you see? Now I know that's what you were doing. And I feel just fucking horrible. I feel-- "

"Fuck how you feel. You treated me like a roommate for six years, probably going off and screwing whomever you wanted whenever you wanted. You and your girlfriends laughed at me and put me down and God knows what else. Now you think I should just say, 'Wow, you're right. It was an honest mistake. I'm over it now. Let's be married for real, because I can sure as hell trust you now that I know all of this.' You think that's how this is gonna be?"

Sandra dabbed at her eyes with her napkin, trying to choke back her sobs as I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms in front of my chest. The anger was ebbing, replaced by astonishment. Her next words took me aback, though.

"After about a year and a half, maybe two years, I sat back and thought about it. Not just on this one occasion, Mark, but over a couple of months. I watched you and noticed how you treated me and how happy you were. And you know what I noticed?"

"That I really was a couple sandwiches shy of a picnic basket?"

She shook her head. "No. I noticed that I was happy, too. That I really liked being with you. That I couldn't wait to get home at night and just cuddle up and watch television or listen to you strum that old guitar on the patio. I thought you had done it all to make it for real, but I didn't care anymore. You'd made it real, Mark. I realized I had fallen in love with you. That I was happier than I'd ever been with anyone in my whole damned life. And when they made their catty comments after that, I told them to go to hell. That you were incredible and we were really married and really in love."

"Why'd it take so long?" I said, leaning over the table toward her.

"I just-- "

"And why'd you go out and cheat on me?"

"You don't-- "

"While I was busting my ass trying to get everything done at work and home while trying to get an innocent man out of prison, why'd you take up with someone else."

"Let me explain," she said, her voice rising in frustration.

A few of the diners gave embarrassed looks our way, but I could only give a weak smile in return.

"Okay," I said, my voice lowering. "Explain away."

"You have to remember, Mark," she said, her tears drying and determination finally setting into her eyes and jawline, her voice urgently pleading with me to understand. "I thought you were in on it all as much as I was. That they'd pretty much said the same thing to you. 'Go along with this and if, after a couple of years--after the election--if you want to move on and find a real marriage, then go ahead. We'll explain it away somehow, but that's all we need.' That's what I thought they'd told you."

"But I never did anything to make you believe I was leaving, Sandy. Never."

"Wrong, Mark. Everything that happened at that time made me think you were leaving. Made me think you'd found someone else."

"Bullshit."

"Put yourself in my shoes, Mark. You're me, and suddenly, after three years at the same law firm, you start coming home at ten every night. You start working weekends, ten hours a day. You quit spending time with me and-- "

"But you knew what was going on," I shot back. "I told you repeatedly."

"No, I only knew what you told me. I didn't know it was true. But it was more than that. You withdrew into yourself. You'd had big cases before, but you barely discussed this one with me. Just said you were working to right a wrong, to get an innocent man exonerated. But nothing else. Not how your day was going, nothing."

"But I'm a lawyer," I protested. "That's all confidential, you know that."

"Never stopped you from at least talking in generalities before, though, did it?"

I thought about it, thought back to that time. She was right, I realized. I'd been so goddamned scared I'd fuck it all up and Nap Bonaroo would die in prison because I wasn't good enough that I'd internalized it all.

"And our love life all but disappeared, too, Mark. What would you think if suddenly, out of the goddamned blue, we went from what we had before--from five or six times a week--to barely once a week because I wasn't interested. And on the occasional time I was interested, it was more of a wham bam thank you ma'am? Huh? Think about all of this? In my shoes, you wouldn't think I was fucking around on you? And if you'd known about the arrangement--about how our marriage started--you wouldn't think I had maybe found someone else and was getting ready to leave you?"

"But I told you," I argued. "I even tried cutting back. That Sunday I said I'd be home, but you-- "

"You said you'd be home by one or two, Mark. I waited until five after two, got tired of being strung along, and left. And I went out for dinner and drinks with a guy I work with who'd been after me from day one. And yes, it got sexual. In the last month, when you were still shut down and not talking to me, I finally resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to find someone else now, too. We did it maybe five or six times. And while that's bad enough, it never happened again. Before or after. Not once."

"But you never talked to me about it," I said, suddenly feeling the inertia of her words dragging me downstream. "You never just came out and asked me."

The tears were streaming down her face now, but the urgency was still in her voice. She needed me to understand, and she redoubled her efforts.

"You're still seeing it all through your prism, Mark. You need to see it through my prism, the way I viewed it. I'm in an arranged marriage that was supposed to already be dead. You knew about it. I mean, hell, I used to joke about it all the time."

"I didn't understand the jokes then," I said. "I do now."

"Yeah, but you played along with them like you understood them. And now I see you pulling away. Not just a little, but totally. You're not spending time with me anymore; you're not talking to me; you're not sharing with me; every time we're together, you're off in your own little world barely acknowledging my knowledge; sex all but disappears; hell, intimacy of any kind is out the window for months on end. What would you think?"

I thought about it and still kept coming back to the same thing. I said, "But if you were really happy, why didn't you say anything? If you really thought I was moving on, why didn't you confront me?"

"Because I knew the deal from day one, and I thought you did, too. I figured you'd just throw that in my face and tell me to grow up."

I closed my eyes, trying to picture the whole thing.

Sandy's soft voice interrupted my concentration, and shattered my whole plan. "When I finally saw that news conference, I knew you weren't pulling away from me, that you weren't setting up your new life. I knew it when his mama hugged you and you seemed so sad and so relieved at the same time. I saw it in your face. It was like the weight of the world was off your shoulders, but from what you'd said earlier, you had problems with us that you were still worried about. And that's when I knew I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, and I vowed to make it up to you, to make sure you'd stick to the marriage regardless of what we'd originally agreed to."

I looked at her, trying to think of what to say. Sandy wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hands, smearing what little mascara she had on. She must have seen the confusion in my face, and she gave a tiny smile. It wasn't a happy smile, though. Instead, it was tinged with sadness and embarrassment, her eyes giving just a twinkle of nostalgia.

"The three years after that were the happiest three years we were together, weren't they?"

I hesitated, thinking it over, then said, "Yeah. It was all good, but those were really good."

"Because I made a promise to myself that I'd turn the tables on you. I was goddamned bound and determined to do what I thought you'd done to me. I was going to be the puppy dog and make you love me so much you'd never leave."

"Well," I started, but she interrupted with a new flurry of tears and sniffles.

"And then, just when I was convinced we'd be together forever--right when you finally asked if we could have a baby together and I knew you'd never leave me--you left me, Mark. You just disappeared."

At that, she broke down and started sobbing uncontrollably. I tried to comfort her as I felt every eye in the place on us, but I couldn't. Then, with a final sob, she pushed back her chair and rushed out.

I was too stunned to move or react until I felt heavy footsteps approaching the table.

"That didn't seem to go so well," Ferlin said, his voice sounding as sad as I felt.

He didn't sound nearly so confused, though.

Rehnquist
Rehnquist
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Odess83Odess837 days ago

Надеюсь автор не собирается простить ее измену? Это же бред! Если она считала, что они оба знают о договоре, то могла открыто поговорить с ним и сказать, что нашла себе парня. С человеком который знает о договоре не скрывают измену, да это тогда и не является изменой! А если она сомневается в его осведомленности, то это уже измена!

AnonymousAnonymous10 days ago

I liked this part. I don't think Mark was expecting her to fight back, but here she was fighting back, and wanting to save her marriage. Now she just needed to convince Mark that she still wanted to stay married.

AnonymousAnonymous2 months ago

Great story and superb stry telling. 5 stars all the way. Sorry need to go to the next chapter.

AnonymousAnonymous3 months ago

Well that set everything up to be epic. but also made it clear that someone or more are going to get hurt whatever happens.

AnonymousAnonymous3 months ago

I don’t know if you were trying for a little redemption arc for Whitney from the Damp Gray Gone but her little bit in this one makes her seem more reprehensible than the original story. The cop is her hero? The one that openly admits that if her husband hadn’t put his ass on the line, he never would have found her and she’d be dead? Gross.

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