Better Than You: part 11

11.

 

How was this happening? “Mike, wait!” Delta called as he walked away from her. In the middle of a crowded department store decked with tinsel, a nametag pinned to her cream cardigan, she was back in high school. Only, she’d never cheated on anyone in high school…though that might have been less controversial than what had actually happened.

 

“Is that him?” Greg asked. He’d come into the store more wound-up than she’d ever seen him. He wasn’t even this out of breath during sex. “Is it?” he demanded, and made a grab for her wrist that she evaded.

 

“What if it is?” His visit and his intent to win her back weren’t welcome. His passion was too late, his indignation laughable. He didn’t love her and both of them knew it; his lawyer need for victory had brought him here, and not any true feelings for her. At least, that’s what Delta thought. The flush spreading up his neck from the collar of his shirt was tweaking at her guilt again. “Are you going to get in a fistfight with him?” she challenged.

 

His shoulders gave a sharp jerk as he straightened the halves of his jacket. “Maybe.”

 

“Oh, for the love of…” Delta put her back to him and stepped out from between the belt racks. She tripped over a bouquet of red roses and kept going. Mike was already at the main doors, a dark silhouette against the incoming autumn sunlight. She’d be damned if she was going to yell for him in front of God and the jewelry sales staff and everybody, but she lengthened her stride till she was all but jogging, heels rapping on the tile. Mike went through the doors, the sun flaring, and then she did jog. Greg was following but she didn’t care.

 

“Mike,” she called again when she hit the sidewalk out front. “Michael.”

 

He was crossing in front of a white Mercedes and spun around to face her; the driver threw up his hands at the delay. “I know you think I’m stupid,” Mike said as he came charging back to her. All the sharp angles of his face were almost sinister when he was angry, like he was now. When he stepped up onto the curb in front of her, she took a half-step back so she didn’t have to crack her head back on her neck to look up at him. “But I’m not so stupid I don’t know what’s going on here.”

 

“Actually, yes you are,” Delta said without any real malice. “Greg’s apparently still upset about the break up, he came by to -,”

 

“Delta!” he said behind her, and she heard his dress shoes coming across the concrete.

 

Oh no. Mike’s face was murderous and here she was between the two of them.

 

“Stop,” she turned so she had a view of the two of them, one on either side, and held up a hand to keep Greg at bay. “Go back to work,” she told him. “There’s no reason for you to be here.”

 

“Sure there is,” Mike said. “He bought the same buncha bullshit I did.”

 

“It wasn’t bullshit.” She swiveled her head between them, trying to decide who was more volatile. Greg was winning. “Greg, you know we weren’t going anywhere. So I went on a few dates with Mike. Let’s nobody act like I misled you, because I didn’t.”

 

“You slept with him!” Greg was almost shouting, his face redder by the second. “Forget misleading, Delta, that’s called being a slut!”

 

“Hey,” Mike’s arm came up – to do what she didn’t know – and Delta grabbed his hand between both of hers.

 

“Greg,” she snapped, “go away.” Because I can not hold him off, she added silently in her head.

 

But of course he stayed, and Mike shook her hands off like they were a child’s. “Oh, no, stay,” he said with a cutting false smile. “We can swap notes, right, bro? Hey, when you put your tongue -,”

 

“Shut up!” Delta shouted. “Both of you, shut up!” The panic that had seized her at Mike’s appearance was quickly morphing into a general, frustrated rage with the whole situation. “You are both grown adults,” she bit out, glancing between them. “You have jobs and imported cars and we are not going to pretend either of you have been wronged. I wasn’t engaged to either of you – stop acting like cavemen.”

 

Mike turned his wicked pretend smile on her. “Caveman? All of you stupid women -,” he shoved a finger in her face that she slapped away, which deepened the angry blush along his high cheekbones, “you always want us to sit in your laps like dogs, and then you chew our asses out when we fight for you.”

 

“You -,” she bowed up, but he cut her off.

 

“Don’t worry; I won’t do it again.” And he put his back and wide shoulders to her and stalked across the parking lot toward his silver Beemer.

 

Delta watched him go with an angry knot in her throat, shaking. She’d forgotten Greg was still there until he touched her arm and she jerked away from him. “Oh, what? Now you want to comfort me?” she asked with a glare.

 

“If that’s what you need, then yes,” he said, and the pompous ass was completely serious. “You had your fun, Delta – sowed your wild oats or whatever you want to call it.”

 

“Oats?” she asked, voice getting high and acid-tinged again. “That’s what you think? I’m some spineless dumb twit who needs to…to…have some crazy fling?”

 

“Delta -,”

 

“Go to hell,” she bit out, and started back to the door. “If you come back into the store, I’ll call security on you,” she tossed over her shoulder as she hit the airlock.

 

The sales clerks had abandoned their stations and were all peering over one another’s heads, trying to see if there was a brawl out on the sidewalk. They all leapt when Delta entered, their expressions guilty as their eyes fell to the floor.

 

“Did I authorize all of you to go on break at once?” she snapped, and heard all their shoes start across the tile en masse.

 

In reality, Delta knew she should have expected this: men weren’t objects to be juggled but she’d tried to do it anyway. Selfish, insecure maybe, she hadn’t wanted to turn away Greg in case Mike turned out to be too much of an embarrassing oaf. Which he was, really. He was totally uncouth and unashamed, he…

 

Her eyes landed on the red roses, their petals smashed and scattered across the tile, and she realized that the angry knot was really a big, choking, sad lump in her throat. She crouched and pick up the flowers by their tissue wrapped stems, the prick of thorns feeling like a deserved punishment against her palm. The loose petals were velvety as she collected them between her fingertips, and by the time she’d straightened and was walking toward her office, she wished like hell she’d been more insistent in her chase. Or that she’d let Mike deck Greg. Something. She just…wished, empty and achy inside for the first time in a long time.

 

She didn’t have the heart to trash the roses, and left them on her desk.

 

**

 

“You can’t actually be depressed about this,” Tam said from the neighboring stool. “You went out with the bitch, what, twice?”

 

“Watch your damn mouth,” Mike said into his beer, scowling.

 

“Sorry,” Tam snorted. “She was delightful.”

 

Double Down was almost empty, and Mike wished it was completely empty at the moment because his best friend was enjoying his embarrassment too much.

 

“Mikey,” Tam went on, “I’m ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t even like you. You came, you saw, you conquered – maybe not in that order – but you bagged the un-baggable. Be proud and move on.”

 

In any other situation, it was advice Mike would have given himself. But right now, he didn’t want to hear it. “You don’t know shit about women, you know that?” he asked.

 

Tam’s face went blank. He blinked, then threw back the rest of his beer and climbed off his stool.

 

Mike didn’t care. Did he have to tiptoe around the guy’s feelings all the time? What the hell did he even know anyway? He never dated anyone whose name wasn’t scrawled under the words call for a good time in Sharpie on a bathroom stall somewhere. Whatever hell Tam had lived through, he didn’t know jack shit about women.

 

**

 

Delta realized she’d read the same sentence five times before she gave up and closed her book. She set it on her nightstand and cast a forlorn look around her champagne and cream bedroom, the dark of almost-midnight beyond her window. The beat-up roses she’d brought home and set in a vase on her dresser.

 

Mike hadn’t called and she wasn’t sure why she’d even expected him to. But for some reason, she had – or maybe she’d just hoped – and the solitude of her bedroom was oppressive.

 

She stared at the opposite wall a long moment, chewing at a fingernail, and then in a sudden burst of stupidity, snatched her phone up off her nightstand and found his number. Her heart leapt against her ribs when she hit the call button and heard the other end start to ring…

 

But it kept ringing, and eventually Mike’s recorded voice came on and asked her to leave a message. She hung up instead and slipped down beneath her covers, staring at the ceiling. She would put him out of her mind, she told herself, pretend none of it had ever happened and enjoy a clean slate without Greg or Mike or anyone.

 

But a tiny voice in the back of her mind whispered, yeah right.