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Fawna had gone from the secure feeling of being back in the comfort of her own, home—soon to be making love to Stephen in her own bed after the limo ride to feeling like she was sitting atop Mt. Everest blowing in a cold, forceful wind. A tiny speck of nothing on the largest mountain on earth. One she knew she was in no way equipped to climb. She felt as if she was standing in a large, empty stadium—all alone.
Then the room she was in became small as her fears and insecurities loomed, like angry monsters, towering over her. She felt lost. She hadn’t even considered that Stephen was not interested in her because she is female. If anything, she thought he’d be with another woman—not ever did she even consider he’d been sleeping with a man. The shock went through her like a bolt of thunder. More was on the way.
As Stephen put on a woman’s blue robe over his lingerie, he spoke to her in one of the coldest tones she’d ever heard from him. It was as if he’d been performing a role as her husband. Something he’d done in a calculating manner. Just like the family image he played for his company. All a facade.
“Now, there’s not a bit of use of your flying off the handle, Fawna. You’re not an infant, or ingenue. You’re not even young and inexperienced, as a writer-type would put it. You’re a grown woman living in the Twenty-First Century. You’re nearing 30, and you have to have known something was up. I haven’t touched you in a while. I didn’t want you to go through the drama of finding out this way. If I had my way, I didn’t want you to find out at all. You — ”
She halted him, feeling absolute anger and betrayal. “Those are all flimsy arguments, Stephen. How could you? In our home? In our bed? Why the hell did you marry me if you knew you were gay?”
He snatched the size eleven red woman’s high heels he had on the side of the bed, walked over to the closet and tossed them in, then went back over to the bed and sat.
“I thought you married me because you loved me. I’m a person who has feelings—a woman.”
“I know, dearie, therein lies the problem,” he said glibly. “And anyway, everybody knows marriage is the death-knell of romance.”
She’d never wanted to strike anybody in her life, before this, but his ‘don’t blame me because I’m gay’ attitude was too much. She knew this was the day and age homosexuals were applauded for coming out of the closet, but walking all over her to do it was something she hadn’t signed up for.
Marrying her when he knew he couldn’t really love her, and then him and Jeffrey both being so disrespectful about what she’d just walked in on! As if she were the one in the wrong for catching him. He was cheating on her with another man. And somehow, it was no big deal? At last, she knows? That’s what Jeffery had said before walking away from her like she’d just committed some crime. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what was going down.
She walked toward the bed with one hand gripping the champagne bottle. Stephen reared back and protected his face with his hands, fearing what she was about to do next.
She plunked it down on his nightstand. “Seems like you guys need this more than I do since you’ve got a celebration going on.” Then she turned around, walked down the steps and out the door and got into the waiting limo and gave the chauffeur the address to her sister Nell’s house.
