The Weekend Pt. 06

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

This chapter is the final of this series, but it is long. I normally would have split this up into two more chapters to make each one quicker reads, but I sense that most of you would like a conclusion to this here and now. So, I stuffed it all into this chapter.

I want to thank all of you who were patient with me during this story. I also want to thank those of you who sent encouraging emails to me.

Synopsis of the last five chapters:

Chapter One: Regina went away on a vacation with a co-worker; Brian. She was trying to escape the despair that she felt in her marriage, which came as a result of Lee's earlier infidelity. Though she was conflicted about her choice, she had sex with Brian. Naturally, she returned home to a hurt and angry husband. After an argument, Lee stormed out.

Chapter Two: Regina had a talk with her sister in which she was forced to think about her insecurity surrounding not being able to have children. This was exacerbated by the fact that Lee mistakenly impregnated the woman he cheated with. This was the rage that pushed Regina to make the impetuous, ill-fated decision to run away in the first place. Being confronted with her rage made her rethink her marriage and wonder if it was worth it.

Meanwhile, Lee was dealing with his own issues surrounding the situation. He felt guilty for his own infidelity yet was angered by his wife's. His own was a bad choice made at a weak moment. His wife's was a calculated, planned out process. He too was on the cusp of the decision of determining if the marriage was worth salvaging.

Chapter Three: After her talk with her sister Trudy, Regina was finally ready to begin building a bridge across the gap of communication that had been severed. However, Lee was still dealing with his anger. He wasn't ready to talk.

The latter part of chapter one and the entirety of chapter two happened on the day Regina returned from her trip, so chapter three found the two trying to navigate their way around each other the next morning as they prepared for work. The communication barrier continued to grow.

As the two went their separate ways to work, they had different experiences. Lee found that he needed a day off to process things. His best friend, Daryl, offered him a place on his couch while he got his head on straight. When Lee went home to pack a bag, he found Regina's bag that she took on her weekend trip. The contents of that bag held evidence that made Lee feel like she was trying to replace him. It broke something inside of him, and he decided to make this temporary hiatus a little more permanent.

Meanwhile, Regina's work day was filled with her trying to come to terms with her conflicted feelings regarding Brian. He pursued her relentlessly. His confidence that he was better for her than her husband made his pursuit justified; at least in his mind.

She came home that evening to find that Lee had left her.

Chapter Four:

For the first time, the couple had face life without the other person.

Regina coped with Lee's absence with mixed feelings. She was relieved to have some breathing room away from him silently judging her on how she was dealing with her issues, yet she missed him immensely.

After repeated attempts to talk to him, she finally got him on the phone. The conversation was an honest one, but not one that put the couple in the best place to move forward together. After it ended, Lee stopped taking her call.

She also had to deal with her feelings about Brian. He was not letting her go and was making it very difficult for her to concentrate on fixing things with her husband. He felt entitled to her love; like he deserved it.

But that wasn't his choice to make.

Meanwhile, Lee was dealing with his past actions. His mistakes held grave consequences for his life, but it also brought the gift of a son. The realization that he was going to be a father started to dawn on him.

It was time for him to grow up. He made a vow to his unborn child to do everything in his power to give him the best life possible. Keeping that vow became the most important thing in his life.

Chapter Five

Fate gave Regina the opportunity to talk to Lee after months of his absence. She jumped at the chance, only to make the horrific discovery about where he was spending his free time. Nevertheless, she cornered him and began the process of starting a long overdue dialog.

Unfortunately, there were troubled waters ahead. In the process of starting anew, a chain of events started; events that would have lasting consequences. Fate brought Lee and Brian together, face to face, and gave them ample opportunity to air out their differences. The inevitable confrontation happened, and it left a battered Brian in the hospital and Lee in handcuffs.

Once Lee was released from jail on bail, Regina became even more determined to improve their communications and start bridge-building. One thing led to another, and the raw physical attraction between them manifested itself.

Simply put, they fucked.

Once the adrenaline and hormones died down, the two of them were left with the overwhelming task of trying to figure out how to proceed next.

_____________________________________________________________________

Brian groaned in pain when he lifted the eyepatch to see how his eye was doing. The harsh fluorescence of the bathroom light was too bright for it, even after two weeks of healing.

His retina was pushed in by one of that asshole's punches. The doctors weren't sure to what degree the eye was damaged. They said it could take anywhere from a week to a month to heal. Obviously, his healing curve was on the back end of that diagnosis.

His reflection sent a surge of anger through him. The swelling had gone down, but his face was still extremely discolored. He looked like he was recovering from face-lift surgery. On top of the horrific bruises, his jaw was re-injured. Coincidently, the first time it was fractured was also behind some bitch he was screwing.

How did he managed to have boots down in Kuwait during the gulf war and escape with no injury, yet require not one but TWO extended hospital stays behind fucking some guys' wives?

A better question was what kind of punk bitch throws a cheap shot and then keeps hitting a guy after he is unconscious?

Humiliation was now his bedfellow. Over and over, he relived that horrific beating that he took at the hands of that gorilla. Like game film, his mind re-watched the fight, analyzing his mistakes. How could he not see that punch coming? It was practically moving in slow motion. How did he let yet another jilted husband get the best of him?

The worst part was before he could even come to terms with his public disgrace, it became even more pubic. The internet is like ambrosia. It takes the finite life of a small, insignificant moment and transforms it into an immortal event. Anything embarrassing caught with a cellphone will never be laid down to rest. It will be shared, edited, and reshared until the entire world is laughing at you.

After it was all said and done, Brian's fifteen minutes of infamy haunted him from cyberspace. He was even a fucking meme. The most imaginative video clip started with him and Lee arguing. It showed Brian standing back with a cocky smirk as he asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

A dramatic voice excitedly cut in with, "Look out! It's John Cena!"

The clip then skipped to Brian getting body slammed by Lee. It was superimposed over a flashing screen, and it was set to John Cena's theme music. It even had fake crowd cheers.

It had over two hundred thousand views in a week. What's worse; it would have made him laugh hysterically if it wasn't about him.

That only amplified his anger.

A sudden knock at his front door made his head jerk as it swung in the general direction of the sound. The movement brought more pain to his eye and reminded him of his body's new limitations. With a growl of frustration, he walked over to his front door and peered out the little peep hole.

A woman stood outside of his door; a beautiful one in fact. He wasn't keen on inviting her in, however. Instead, he dropped his head and groaned with irritation. He had half a mind to pretend not to be home and leave her out there.

If any other woman with looks like her graced his hallway and asked for entry, he would have eagerly swung the door open. But in this time and space, there were two factors that made him wish she would disappear.

The first being the fact that he needed a break from ALL women. They were nothing but life-draining trouble.

His heart, whether he wanted to admit it or not, could not take another romantic interaction with females. He wasn't even sure he could get it up right now to bed one.

And even if he could gather the mental and physical energy to fuck, that brought him to the second reason why this woman's sudden appearance wasn't welcome. She was probably the only woman he would never sleep with under ANY circumstance.

When Brian didn't answer the door, the woman on the other side said, "I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing."

It still took him another few seconds to weigh his options before he unlocked the pad lock and the chain bolt. The door opened just wide enough for him to peek out.

"If you're here to try to save my soul, don't waste your time. Satan just dropped off the check. You probably passed him on the way up."

That got a chuckle from the woman in his hallway. "Dammit! I'm always late!" She said, dramatically snapping her fingers. "Well, I'm sure there's a loophole or two in the contract. The devil is in the details, you know."

"Clever." He said in a humorless, dead-panned voice. "What do you want, Naomi?"

Her face turned serious as she looked over his facial injuries. A sympathetic sigh escaped her as she said, "I just wanted to see how you're doing. I heard about...you know." When he didn't budge, her forehead furrowed as she shrugged and asked, "So, are you gonna invite me in, or are you gonna keep me in your hallway like some annoying Jehovah's Witness?"

"I'm still deciding." Brian half-joked yet opened the door wider and stepped to the side. Naomi squeezed past him.

Her hands were jammed into her jacket pockets as she strolled into the middle of his living room. She walked around in a small circle, with her eyes surveying everything.

His living room reeked of depression, self-loathing, and marijuana. It was decorated with empty boxes of fast food, a carpet that needed to be vacuumed in the worst way, and a couch that looked like it was slept on.

The coffee table that sat in front of the couch had a bag of weed that was half empty, an ash tray full of tobacco that had been ripped from blunt cigars, and a grinder used for chopping up the cannabis buds into finer bits.

Brian could feel the judgement emanating from her. He could take that; he was used to people judging him. What he wasn't going to deal with was the look of sadness and sympathy that she looked at him with. He wasn't a guy who needed that shit; nor wanted it.

"So, what happened?" she finally asked.

Brian huffed sardonically and said, "Some asshole got a lucky punch; that's all."

"That looks like a lot of luck." She said glibly, taking her hand from her pocket to point at his battered face.

Brian scowled as he cut his eyes dismissively. He didn't want to talk about this; especially with her. In a dismissive tone, he said, "Whatever. Is that all you came over here for?"

Naomi allowed her eyes to fall from him for the moment. She could see that having her inspect him was making him uncomfortable. So, she found a spot on his love seat and took it.

Her hair was constantly being in her face, so she pulled a scrunchie from her pocket and started to wrap it in a ponytail. While she did this, she said, "I finally start developing a relationship with the brother I never knew, and then he just drops off the planet. You weren't texting me back, and my calls went straight to voicemail. Then, I see those videos on YouTube. So yes, I was worried."

"Well, I'm fine. You can go now."

She didn't respond in anyway. She didn't budge, or even look away. With a softer voice, she simply repeated her initial question. "What happened, Brian?"

"SHE CHOSE HIM!" he yelled out. The anger that was welled up inside of him started to show what it really was; pain. "After EVERYTHING, she chose him. That's what happened."

"You mean the woman from your job that you were seeing? The married one?" Naomi asked, trying to keep any judgement from her voice. She failed though, because he cut hard eyes away from her with a smack of his lips. She could see him started to shut down, and she didn't want that. So, she quickly walked it back with, "Brian, I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry."

He shook his head with a grunt and waved her off, but he took a seat on the couch opposite of the love seat she was sitting on.

Naomi was fighting her brain for a way to get him talking without offending him. She didn't want to alienate him, but she also didn't want to use kid gloves and pander to his bruised ego. The dual nature of Brian's inner workings made it tough to get through to him, and near impossible to help.

On the one hand, there was this narcissistic obstinance that he had. Believe it or not, it added to his charm and made him more attractive to women. His confidence made him believe that he could do anything he wanted, when he wanted. Rejection didn't scare him like it did most people; it only emboldened him. This was how he could continue to pursue a woman and break down her defenses. Emphatic "no's" were turned into "you are so bad!" These were broken down further into "what if my husband found out?"

That was the last strand of defense; the fear of discovery. Once he convinced her that he was worth the risk, the rest was history.

Unfortunately, this character trait was the same thing that released him from culpability in any of the situations that he found himself in; at least in his mind. Nothing was his fault. For him, the blame associated with sleeping with married women fell onto the whorish, cheating hearts of the wives. It also fell on the men, whose limp dicks or willful ignorance kept them from holding on to their wives.

This smugness that churned inside of him was rolled up in a don't-give-a-fuck-what-you-think-about-me smirk.

At the same time, there was the Brian that Naomi had been getting to know over the past year; the Brian that she encouraged him to show to the woman who deserved it. It was the guy who was afraid of being like his dad yet saw a destitute destiny of fulfilling that very prophecy. This was the vulnerable Brian; the one who wanted love but was afraid of how exposed it made him feel.

Brian grabbed the bag of weed in front of him and began pouring some of it into the grinder. When he was satisfied, he pulled out a cigar from its packaging. With the careful precision of a surgeon, he used a box cutter to slice a line from the top of the blunt, all the way down to the bottom. The guts of tobacco were emptied into the ash tray, and were replaced with fine, green bits of marijuana.

Naomi watched all of this with morbid fascination. She'd smoked pot before in her younger years, but she was never the one who prepared it. For her, it was a social drug to be done at parties with friends. She just showed up and took what was offered to her.

But there was something sadder about watching Brian do it here, alone, in this depressing living room. It filled her with empathy for him.

Brian looked up and found sympathetic eyes looking back at him. He put the blunt to his lips and lit it. After taking a satisfying puff, he shook his head at her.

"Don't look at me like that." he said in a stifled voice as smoke escape his mouth.

"Like what?"

"Like you feel sorry for me. I hate that."

She nodded with understanding. Then she held out her fingers, asking for him to share. When he passed it to her, she took two puffs and let it fill her lungs. After she handed it back to him, she leaned back on the cushions.

The puff, puff, pass etiquette famous amongst weed smokers went on between the two of them for several cycles. Each pass found the duo a little more relaxed. After about 10 minutes, Brian's living room didn't seem so depressing anymore.

"So, why do you think she chose him?" Naomi finally asked as she looked up at the ceiling from her reclined position. God, she was high! It almost made her laugh out loud.

Brian snorted out a laugh and shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe she likes small dicks."

That broke the wall and made that stubborn laugh come from Naomi mouth. She wasn't laughing hysterically like what he said was funny; she was more amused by his "guyness".

"You men and your fascination with dick sizes." She said as another snicker came from her. She then sat up suddenly, like something just came over her. She leaned over with her elbows planted on her knees, looked at him with curiosity, and asked, "Why are men so obsessed with size? I mean, you guys compare everything by how big it is! Big dicks, big tits, big biceps, big trucks; why does everything come down to how big something is?"

Brian looked at her with a perplexed expression, then honestly said, "You know, I have no idea." He took another puff before saying, "I don't have a truck anyway. I have a Mustang. It's black."

"Yeah, well, I have a Beetle, sooo..." She said.

Her sentence trailed off into nothingness. The two of them stopped talking as their confused eyes looked at each other through the haze of smoke. For a second, nothing was else said. The hazy spell was broken by the hysterical laughing fits that burst from them.

What the hell were they even talking about?

The laughing fits calmed down eventually, and high duo just sat there in smoke filled silence. Both were leaned back on their perspective cushions. Finally, in a somber tone, Brian asked, "What did I do wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

He sat up and sighed. "With Gina. I've been trying to figure out where everything went wrong. I've never really had trouble getting a woman to fall for me; you know? Half of the time I'm barely trying. The one time I actually want the girl to love me, she chooses another guy! I mean, what the fuck!"

"Why do you think you did something wrong?"

"That's the point!" he exclaimed. "I don't think I did anything wrong. All the things that I pretended to do with all the other women, I ACTUALLY DID with her. I cared about her feelings. When she needed me, I was there for her. I even opened up about myself. I gave her everything I had to give; everything YOU told me women want from a guy. After all that, she still chose him."

A flash of guilt filled Naomi as a sigh escaped her. She was the one who convinced him to open his heart up and let someone in. She knew the healing power of having someone in your corner; a person who looks at all your flaws and still kisses you with loving lips. Having her husband and her son in her life made her more complete than any amount of money ever could.

In a lucid, truthful moment, wisdom burst from her lips.

"Because little brother, her heart already belonged to someone else. She couldn't give you what she didn't have to give." After a pause, Naomi's face turned contemplative as she said, "Maybe that's why you really fell for her. Unlike the other women you encountered, her heart wasn't up for grabs."

Brian wiped his face with his hands and leaned back into the cushions again, allowing a groaning sigh to escape him. In that vulnerable moment, Naomi saw the Brian that she wished all the women he encountered could see. There was a brokenness inside of him that she knew all too well. It showed itself in various ways; the most noticeable being how he held his heart with trembling hands. His fuck 'em and leave 'em attitude was a guard dog protecting a shivering little boy afraid of being hurt.