“God damn you!” she screamed. She’d never screamed like this in her entire life—she was sure of it. Her insides felt molten, boiling, and she felt her throat scratch and tear as she railed “You fucking bastard! You son of a bitch!” she could almost taste blood.
“Nice language, very dulcet.” His tone was cool and mocking. Steely and unforgiving.
How could he be so fucking calm? She felt the walls of her perfect life coming down around her, crushing her. The humiliation. Her heart was shattered, her world spinning faster and faster out of control. It was all she could do to keep from throwing herself off the three-story sundeck.
Non-chalant, he stepped up and out of the swirling bubbles of the hot tub, not bothering to conceal his lingering erection. Not in any rush, he casually reached for a towel. “They teach you that at charm school?”
Her throat, sore from screaming, felt tight and constricted. Her French-manicured fingernails were digging sharply into her palms. “Shut the fuck up!”
“Oh, very nice-“
“No. No!” She cut him off, her expression murderous. “No. Don’t you say another fucking word, you Goddamned son-of-a-bitch!”
The hum and bubble of the electric hot tub was driving her out of her skull. She felt a thousand pinpricks, hot and cold, on the back of her neck and realized, vaguely, that the entire party three stories below had stopped dead. Everyone was watching. All their friends, all those people. She was making a spectacle.
She could hear her mother’s voice somewhere in her memory, it came rushing up now, unbidden and unwanted, to the surface of her consciousness: “Mark my words young lady, that man will bring you nothing but pain and heart-ache. He is a lothario. He’s a bastard. If your poor father were alive…” She pushed it back down, buried it forcefully. Swallowing hard again and again, she thought she might vomit.
“Anything else you’d like to announce to our guests—or are you quite through?” He smiled, a cold, twisted sort of self-satisfied smirk, and waited with eyebrows raised expectantly. When at length she made no reply he extended his hand lazily toward the hot tub. “Come—I’m terribly sorry about all the fuss.” He purred.
As the other woman’s hand reached to take his offered hand Velvet made a sound like an angry cat and lunged at the bastard. She was seventeen and he was nearly forty. She was a wisp of a thing and he was a professional athlete. She was furious and frenzied, and he was dripping wet.
Velvet clawed and scratched, she even spat and bit, and she screamed until she had no voice left. She was infuriated that he was implacable; he brushed off her assault like he might a stray animal. She wanted him to hit her back. She wanted to kill him or for him to kill her.
By this time some shocked guests had mobilized and people were pulling her off him, pulling her wildly flailing limbs to a distance where they could no longer make contact with his person.
During the scuffle the other woman made a scramble to get out of the hot-tub, but didn’t betray any embarrassment at her nudity. Instead she looked disdainful at the interruption, and when at last a spent and sobbing Velvet collapsed on the wet deck floor, tears streaming, breaths coming in painful heaving gasps, the woman looked down in mild disgust. Her upper lip curled in the same way it might at the sight of a squalling child or a mangy animal, and when she spoke it was in a voice as cool and dry as the vodka stingers she was well-known for favoring.
“Someone had better calm the wretched thing down before she has a miscarriage out here on the sundeck.” And with that she placed her sunglasses atop her head and strode—perfectly arrogant and completely nude—into the townhouse and out of view.
Someone was holding her, Velvet acknowledged numbly, but she didn’t know who. Someone was murmuring comfort, but she couldn’t place the voice. All she could focus on was the blood pounding in her ears, the snake-like whispers of gossips hissing all around her, and him. His snide, contemptuous voice flooded her consciousness like a noxious cloud.
She listened to their concerned party guests asking him if he was alright, should they get him some ice, would he like someone to call the police. He was like a god to them and she was the cast-off, the fool, the spectacle.
“No, no, no. That won’t be necessary.” He replied in his oh-so-brave and oh-so-suave baritone. “She’s just—emotional.” He made it sound like a mental illness. He painted her with his words as pitiable, irrational, ridiculous.
Emotional. This was their fucking wedding celebration, for Christ’s sake. Velvet had thought eloping had been wonderfully romantic and deliciously exhilarating, but always regretted missing out on having a reception. Today was supposed to be that social event in celebration of their marriage. And it was the social event of the season.
Velvet Calder, daughter of Mrs. Sebastian Calder and the late Sebastian Calder Esquire, and sole heiress to the Calder Appliance fortune, had been the most eligible bachelorette in the community. She had been pursued by nearly every available man and a fair few who were considerably less than available. With shining brunette hair swept over her flawless forehead and down to mid-back, and large heavy-lidded ethereal green eyes, men, women, young and old were naturally drawn to her.
All her life being beautiful, elegant, and generally soft-spoken had served as effective padding, shielding her from arduous tasks, unpleasant realities and mundane labors. She was a princess-like figure: wealthy, delicate, poised, and kind. Never did she venture into a boutique, a salon, or a park without kind words from acquaintances, without freely offered favors from folks she knew only by sight, and without doors held open by strangers who maybe let their eyes linger over-long upon her radiant visage.
Nothing had, nothing could have prepared her for a moment, for a day such as this one. Pampered, precious, preserved and petted, she had no mechanism with which she could cope, none of the weapons and armor most women had ready to deal with a situation of this sort.
“Pull yourself together, for Christ’s sake-“ He snarled, leaning in low so the guests wouldn’t hear, “the whole town is watching.” Then, straightening back up he murmured something to the concerned crowd about pregnancy hormones and what her doctor had said about “over-reactions” and “insecurities”. Then he left. He sauntered into the cool of the townhouse and most of the party followed him.
There on the elevated stage, her own personal Greek tragedy just having played out in front of a captive and cannibalistic audience of her peers, Velvet found the harsh glare of the spotlight unforgiving. But everyone, it seemed, was less interested in her personal drama than in the celebrity status of their dashing host. They trickled off the deck; Velvet could feel their retreating footsteps vibrating the hot boards under her thighs. The spot-light sun was bearing down on her, scolding, blinding.
The steady stream of softly lilting words of comfort in her ear and the gently insistent stroking of her hair and back started to come into focus. She could hear the sounds of the party picking up again below, the distant tinkling of glasses coming together in a toast somewhere inside, and the dull murmur of group laughter joined in revelry, but she couldn’t muster any feelings about it. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to feel anything but exhausted ever again.
Licking her parched lips she found them salty and hot. Every time she closed her eyes she saw only her husband. Her husband fucking that woman. His wet naked back, her jungle red fingernails digging into the tanned, taut flesh. His bare ass rising out of the water to thrust again, deeper. Her long, smooth legs spread apart and wrapped around him. Her husband. Her husband’s expression of inconvenienced annoyance when she’d discovered the two of them. Not shock, not embarrassment, and certainly not remorse, but rather a look that said he was clearly put-out that he hadn’t gotten to finish.
“C’mon, let’s get you out of here.”
These were the first words her addled brain managed to process from the steady stream of kindnesses being murmured to her in low tones. Finally she looked, feebly turning her head to see who was holding her.
She saw his eyes first—so brilliant. Where her husband’s eyes were closed off, mysterious and dark, these eyes were open, honest and bright with emotion. And they were exactly her favorite shade of violet. This thought made her smile wanly. What a strange color for eyes, and stranger still for a man, surely. She’d worn that color to her junior prom, in a lovely taffeta off-the-shoulder number. She realized he was smiling back. He looked relieved.
She swallowed hard. She swallowed again. Then she vomited all over his front.
His body jerked away instinctively, but in his unwillingness to let her go he remained directly in the line of fire and waited resignedly for the ordeal to cease. He brushed her hair back and held it away from her face. When she was through and thoroughly mortified, she tried to apologize but had only a whisper of a voice left and felt nearly too weak to keep her head up.
He smiled an ironic sort of smile then and said to her: “Hello. I’m Jonah—I’m not sure we’ve met.”
She fell in love with him immediately.
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