I shook my head. ‘Wait, what? Who?’
‘Sawyer, Enrique. Sawyer.’ She stood, fist on hip and held up her phone. ‘He texted me.’
‘So?’
‘He wants to see me.’
I threw out my arms. ‘We’re married!’
‘I know, but…’ Alissa shook her head, her light brunette hair swishing in the air.
‘I thought the guy was married?’ Sawyer had been my wife’s lover for a time the previous year. The guy had cheated on his wife over a period of a year to have an affair with my current wife. But that was before I married her a month ago.
‘He was. He got a divorce.’
‘So?’ I repeated.
‘He wants to see me. I have to go.’
I got close and pointed my finger at her. ‘You’re my wife.’ I couldn’t believe we were even having this conversation.
Her eyebrows drew down. ‘You don’t own me, Enrique. This isn’t Mexico, this is America and I’m not property.’
I threw out my hands again. ‘I thought you loved me. I thought we got married—’
Her hand touched my face and stroked the corner of my magnum mustache. Not many Mexicans could grow such a wonder and I was one of the few. I was proud of it.
But here was my newlywed wife telling me she had to go meet this loser. We had been married only a month. A month!
I exclaimed, ‘Why?’
Alissa was beautiful in a vulnerable way. Her mouth was almost always open and her look innocent. I had thought when she dumped this Sawyer-dude and warmed to me that her past was behind her. She said, ‘He was everything to me…’
‘I thought I was.’
‘You are, but now Sawyer is divorced and he wants to see me. I have to go, don’t you understand?’
‘Understand? Understand? Let’s understand this: you’re my wife. You don’t go see other men.’
‘This isn’t a decision for you, Enrique. It’s for me. I have to go.’
‘But why?’
‘I… I have to see where this goes.’ She leaned and pecked my lips. ‘I love you, husband. Let me do this. Let me see what I turned down.’
‘Wha—Where are you going?’ I demanded.
‘I’m meeting him for drinks. That’s all. You do understand, don’t you?’
I stood there dumbfounded.
What had happened to our love? The marriage?
She stood there at the door, her hand clutching the edge and the wedding ring I had bought her shining against the wood. ‘I’ll come home, don’t worry.’
Don’t worry? What? I snarled, ‘You’re my wife.’
She shut the door and I heard her footsteps walking away from the apartment.
I blinked and shook my head. What the fuck?
I turned and surveyed the empty two bedroom apartment – furnished, but empty. Without her here, it was just a hole in space and time.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Tequila.
What would my brothers say?
