Extracurricular Activities - By Maggie Barbieri Page 0,3
hour was, but it was time for Ray to leave.
Dejection was etched on his gorgeous face. “Do you think that things will ever be the same between us?” he asked.
I laughed out loud. “God, I hope not!” I blurted out. I immediately regretted being so caustic. To lessen the blow, I leaned across the table and gave him a quick hug. “Ray, the fact that we can be in the same room and I don’t feel like killing you is a huge step for us.”
He looked at me, not knowing whether to laugh or get mad. That was familiar territory for both of us; he never quite got me or my humor.
“I guess I have to take your word for it.” He moved back. “Besides everything,” he started, “we had some good times, right?”
“If by ‘everything’ you mean your four affairs, I guess we had a good day or two in between,” I said truthfully and without a trace of sarcasm.
He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “I think it was more than a day or two, but we don’t have to argue about that.”
I focused on a red wine stain on the tabletop so that I didn’t have to look at him. “Tell me something, Ray.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“Why did you marry me?” I asked, finally prepared to hear the answer that I hadn’t wanted to hear until now. “And don’t give me your ‘I’m in love with love’ bullshit or anything like that. I want the truth.” I looked up from the counter and held his gaze.
“You’ll never believe me,” he said, looking down.
“Try me.”
When he looked back up, he was smiling sadly. “Okay. The reason I married you is because I loved you. Part of me still does. I may not have shown it, but I was in love with you.”
I let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Oh, Ray. You can do much better than that.”
He drank the rest of his tea and got up from the table, turning to leave. “I told you that you’d never believe me.” He put his hand on the doorknob and, seeing that I had nothing else to say, quietly let himself out.
Chapter 2
Father Kevin McManus called me later that week to invite me to dinner and I jumped at the invitation. My social life had come to an abrupt halt after my divorce from Ray and then the hiatus of my more recent romance with the sexy, yet married, cop named Crawford. A night out with a friend was just what I needed, even if he was celibate and really into God. School was well under way and I was happy to be back into my old routine.
I hadn’t seen too much of my nymphomaniac best friend, Max; she was involved in her relationship with a police detective that took up most of her time and made good use of her nympho skills. And Kevin, well, I guess he was busy saving souls or turning water into wine, but I hadn’t seen him in weeks, either.
So I had thrown myself into preparing for a new year of school. I had minds to shape, theory to espouse, syllabi to collect from mummified nuns…heck, a paycheck to cash. Let’s face it, the minds I was shaping weren’t all that interested in theory I was espousing, but I always faced a new semester with high hopes.
I straightened up my office, waiting for Kevin to arrive. A knock at the door interrupted my weak attempt at filing, which consisted of a file that was called “miscellaneous” and housed everything from syllabi to standardized tests. I reached over from my position in front of the filing cabinet and opened the door.
Ray stuck his head in. “Hi. Can I come in?”
If you must, I thought. I looked at my watch and saw that I had fifteen minutes until Kevin arrived, plenty of time for Ray to ruin my good mood. I hoped we weren’t going to walk down memory lane again. “Sure.”
Ray took a seat across from my desk, folding his hands in his lap. “I called your friend Detective Crawford.”
“Good. Did he help you?”
“He asked me to come down to the station to make a formal statement but I haven’t had a chance.”
Ray had been in the precinct for questioning earlier in the year and I was sure he was in no rush to go back.