front of them. Winnie felt sick. So far nothing had happened other than her pathetic, dumbass husband taking a much younger woman to lunch and staring at her ass. Winnie had ordered coffee, but she’d only held the mug to her lips, never taking a sip. She wanted to drink something stronger, but she didn’t know what to order. Their food arrived and Winnie’s heart began to slow. They were...eating. Like two colleagues. She felt ridiculous, stupid. Amber had probably seen them at lunch just as Winnie was now and had jumped to conclusions. Amber had been cheated on recently; it all made perfect sense to Winnie. God, she was embarrassed. She was about to pull out a ten to leave on the table for her coffee when it happened.
It was, in Winnie’s opinion, as intimate as a kiss. Dulce extended her fork toward Nigel, French toast held on the tip; from where she was sitting she could see the syrup swinging from the bread. He must have opened his mouth for the bite because she returned her fork to her plate, grinning. Winnie could see his ears move as he chewed, hear the laughter as he wiped syrup from his face.
She’d seen enough. Setting her coffee down on the table, she lifted her phone from her bag. She had several missed calls from Amber, and one from her friend Courtney. She scrolled past these until she found her husband’s name.
Hi, where are you?
She saw his head dip to look at his phone. For a minute Winnie thought he was going to ignore it but then the little bubbles appeared to say he was typing. With Nigel’s attention on his phone, Dulce’s expression was unguarded as she watched him text his wife.
Winnie felt something hard and primal unfold in her belly. Her immediate anger was directed at the woman and not the man. She recognized this as being off-brand with her feminism, but she didn’t care. What was feminism to a woman who was being betrayed? This bitch had cozied up to a married father, and all she could do was grin like the Cheshire cat. She wanted to hook each of her index fingers into the sides of Dulce’s mouth, and pull that grin wide enough to rip her face open. She’d never, in her life, had such a violent thought, and it made her whole body shake with satisfaction and disgust. Winnie stared down at the screen of her phone, her hurt burning like a fever. She read Nigel’s answer, panting slightly.
At lunch
He wasn’t lying. But omissions were the same as lies in Winnie’s opinion.
With who?
She finally took a sip of her coffee, but when the server came by, she ordered a glass of white wine. If she was going to drink something cold, it needed to make her feel better. White wine was the medicine of the basic bitch, wasn’t it? Winnie had never felt more basic in her life as she watched her husband pay the bill with cash. Dulce didn’t even offer, she noted.
When Nigel finally answered her text, they were standing up to leave and Winnie had drained her glass.
Some people from work...
What was that? Winnie thought—an omission or a straight-out lie? Things got murky in that department.
She watched as he shrugged on his jacket, a lingering smile on his lips from something Dulce said. He glanced down at his phone once more before pocketing it. It was then that, in tandem, Nigel and Dulce turned toward the door, flipping up the collars of their coats. Nigel was walking straight toward Winnie, who was looking at him squarely, willing him to see her. It was an awful few seconds as realization kicked in; she was getting ready to scream and rail and cry at him, but what if that was what he wanted: a reason to finally leave her? A second later, his eyes found Winnie, and she leaned forward eagerly to see what he would do. Maybe it was the white wine medicine that made her so brazenly thirsty for conflict. Nigel stopped abruptly, like someone had yanked him back by an invisible string. Dulce didn’t look back until she was at the door and Nigel wasn’t opening it for her. The smile dropped from her face as she looked from him to Winnie.
“I’ll catch up to you,” he said, waving her off. He didn’t have to tell her twice; she was out the door and hurrying past the window, her head bent