The curvy girl looks even more beautiful than I remember. Of course, I’ve seen Margot from a distance every now and then, but I haven’t been within a ten foot vicinity of her for months now. She’s even more ravishing than before. Those pink cheeks are flushed and her rosebud lips part in a startled “O.” Her curly hair is wild, and … is that glitter on her cheeks? Somehow, she seems to have gotten some sparkly stuff on her face. But no matter because I’m here to hash out what’s happened.
“Can we talk?” I ask in a low voice. “I need to catch you up.”
Margot shakes her head.
“No, I’m working Dane. This isn’t a good time.”
Suddenly, a sassy redhead from the back calls out.
“I can take your next client, Marg. Why don’t you step out for a coffee? Or feel free to use the back room here, if you want.”
Margot turns and shoots daggers at the redhead.
“Thanks Trish, but Dane was just leaving. Weren’t you?” she asks me meaningfully.
But I’m an asshole when I want to be, and right now, the urge to claim this woman is frighteningly strong. I have to tell her what’s happened, and I grab her elbow, dragging her to the back.
“Thanks so much,” I tell the redhead. “We’ll just be a few minutes.”
The woman called Trish nods and smiles knowingly.
“No problem. Take all the time you want, Mister.”
Finally, I manage to wrangle Margot into a small office that they have at the back of the nail salon before slamming the door shut and locking it. The space is nothing to speak of. It’s small and cramped with a metal desk from the 1970’s as well as metal shelves filled with folders, some of them yellow and aged.
“Wow, who knew that a nail salon had so many files,” I remark casually. “I thought there’d be a lot of chemicals and linens, but I guess a business is a business. Everyone has to file paperwork.”
Margot spins on me, her expression angry.
“For your information, we do not belong here. You do not belong here. This is the manager’s office, and should only be used in times of duress.”
I nod amiably.
“Well, this is definitely a time of duress, sweetheart.”
“You can’t just storm in here and tell me what to do!” Margot says, her voice growing louder and stronger by the minute. “You don’t own me –”
But here, her words are cut off because I lean in to kiss that peachy pink pout. It’s lush and tastes like strawberries, exactly as I remember. She freezes beneath my lips but then melts into me, her arms twining about my neck.
“Margot, sweetheart, I’ve missed you so much,” I breathe against her slim neck. “Have you missed me?”
But then she pulls away, and this time, I see that the girl is literally shaking. There are tears in her eyes, and they begin to pool and spill over as I watch.
“You can’t do this to me, Dane. Please don’t do this to me,” she begs. “It hurts too much.”
Immediately, I gather her into my arms.
“It won’t hurt after I tell you what’s happened, baby girl. Let me start from the beginning.”
She pulls away again, her eyes dull this time.
“You’re having a baby with another woman, Dane,” she says in a slow voice, her syllables over-enunciated. “A baby. There’s no room for me.”
That’s where she’s gone wrong.
“No,” I say forcefully. “There’s no baby, and there never was.”
Margot blinks and then her head jerks up.
“What? What do you mean? I was there when Amelia told you she was pregnant.”
I nod.
“Yes, but she made it all up. There was never a baby. There was never a pregnancy, even. She made it all up as a ruse to get back together.”
Margot looks utterly confused.
“But why? Why would anyone go to such lengths to try to rekindle a relationship? It seems absolutely crazy, not to mention desperate.”
This is the ugly part of the story.
“Margot, listen to me. I think Amelia has lost her mind, not to mention her grasp of reality. You know that when we divorced, I suspected that she was having an affair with someone in her department, right?”
Margot nods.
“Yes, but that must have stopped when she found out she was pregnant. Or that she wasn’t pregnant,” she says with some confusion.
I shake my head again.
“Amelia was never pregnant, either by me or this other professor. Professor Gerry is his name. Evidently, Gerry is a philanderer who has the attention span of a gnat. He loves luring women from their marraiges, and then turning on them. Once he gets them out, he loses all interest and drops them like a hot potato.”
Margot gasps.
“But why?”
I shrug.
“Who knows? Clearly, these are all people who have their wires crossed. Evidently, Professor Gerry is sixty-five and has done it to at least three women in the past.”
Margot scrunches her brow in confusion.
“Why don’t they fire him? The university must know.”
I shrug.
“He’s a tenured professor, and has been for thirty years. They can’t fire him over something like this because he’s done nothing criminal. It’s unethical, but it also has nothing to do with his field of study, which is Comparative Literature.”
Margot shakes her head.
“Oh my god,” she says in a small voice. “It’s totally crazy.”
I take a deep breath.
“I know because it is totally crazy. Anyways, after Professor Gerry dropped Amelia, all her insecurities came rushing back. She felt like no one wanted her, and that she was getting to be an old maid. She felt that she’d lost her source of stability and support, and went seeking for the last stable thing she had: me.”
“But you’re divorced,” Margot says, like she can’t believe it. “The papers are signed and all.”
I nod.
“They sure are, but you can’t reason with a crazy woman. Anyhow, Amelia wanted to get back with me and she devised this crazy scheme. She told me that she was pregnant with my child so that I would take her back. Her plan was to make me fall in love with her and then to fake a miscarriage, when in fact, the pregnancy never happened.”
Margot gasps.
“That’s completely bonkers, and really diabolical, come to think of it. How did you figure out her plan?”
I shake my head with exhaustion.
“Well, pregnant women need to see the ob-gyn often. They need to see the doctor all the time, actually, and Amelia was often disappearing for these so-called doctor’s visits. I was never invited to go, and I started to get suspicious. I looked at her phone one day, and realized that there were no doctor’s appointments scheduled. She was just driving to the next town over and getting a coffee while enjoying herself. You can’t drink much coffee when you’re pregnant either, and I guess she was trying to do it where I couldn’t see.”
Amelia stares at me.
“So she made up the whole thing.”
I nod.
“She did, and when I confronted her about it, she tried to deny it at first. But she had no proof of the baby. There were no ultrasounds, no blood tests, and honestly, there was no bump either. She’s always been a thin woman, but you can’t be that thin and six months pregnant.”
Margot shakes her head with disbelief, unable to form words in her shock. So I continue.
“When she finally admitted it, Amelia was crying, screaming, and creating a commotion. Not only that, but she still couldn’t see the evil that lay behind her plan. She kept saying that there was no baby, but that we could conceive one going forward.”
Margot gasps, her face pale.
“And you said?”
“I said absolutely not,” I bark. “And I threw her out of my house. Her stuff too. I called the movers and had them ship her things to a storage unit.”
“Oh my god,” gasps Margot. “Where is she now?”
I sigh, feeling weary.
“That, I don’t know. It’s the beauty of being divorced, baby girl. Amelia is not my responsibility, she’s not my significant other, and she’s not someone I care about anymore. She’s gone, and I haven’t seen her ever since she left my property.”
Margot puts both hands to her cheeks. Her eyes are as round as saucers.
“Oh my goodness,” she mumbles. “This is incredible.”
I nod grimly before taking her hands in my own.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I say in a soft voice. “I had to tell you all this, and ask you to forgive me because without you, Margot, my life has been pure hell. I haven’t gotten a single wink of sleep because I think of you all the time. I’ve been living in misery, and the moment I could, I came to find you.”
Tears swell in her eyes.
“I still can’t believe it was all a hoax, Dane,” she says in a soft voice. “We were parted for what I thought was forever because of what your ex did.”
I nod grimly.
“Yes, but I’m never going to let that happen again because I love you, Margot Morgan. You mean the world to me, and sure, we’ve encountered a bumpy ride together, but never again. Do you love me, baby girl?”
The curvy brunette smiles through the tears in her eyes and bends forward to place her lips against mine.
“I do, Dane Jones, and I want to be yours.”
With that, a surge of possession overwhelms me and I drag her into my arms once more because this woman and I belong together. We were separated by the evil deeds of a woman who’s clearly insane, but through good luck and some dogged detective work, I’ve unraveled the misdeeds that threatened to keep up separated. Now, I’ll never let her go again.
“I love you,” I say possessively again for good measure.
She looks at me, a graceful whisper on her lips.
“I love you too.”
And with that, our lips touch and we’re swept away into a heavenly future.