Page 16 of Homewrecker

“Blair.”

“Don’t.”

I stepped back when he moved toward me.

“I never wanted you to feel like I was playing with you.”

I laughed. “That’s crazy, because I feel pretty fucking played with right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go home and apologize to your wife.”

“Blair.”

I turned when I shouldn’t have.

“She and I aren’t—”

My face was full of rage and he went quiet. It was the opening sentence that would eventually change everything. The explanation I should’ve never stayed long enough to hear.

I tightened my fingers around my purse. “She and you aren’t what?”

Caleb stared at me. “My marriage isn’t what you think it is.”

I should’ve left. God, I should’ve left. But instead, I stood there and listened with my dumb ass.

3

Blair

My father cheated on my mother for twenty years, but not consecutively. There had to have been a Tuesday or two in there where he behaved himself. I’d say it was on Christmas or one of our birthdays.

I never really asked for the official statistics. What I knew was that some of my earliest memories involved women who weren’t my mother.

It never happened at our home because Daddy had standards. Apparently, adultery sometimes had etiquette. He didn’t bring women home. He took them to hotels, restaurants across town, weekend trips he disguised as work, and places he apparently believed existed outside the reach of Black women with cousins, coworkers, church members, and eyes.

My mother always found out. Sometimes somebody told her. Sometimes because Daddy got sloppy. Sometimes because God apparently got tired of watching and started dropping evidence in her lap.

Every single time, my mother did the same thing. She cried, cussed, stopped cooking for him, made him sleep in the guest room, called my aunties, threatened divorce, and she always threatened the woman.

Daddy came home and that was the part Mama took pride in. No matter where he went, who he entertained, what woman temporarily convinced herself she had something special with him— his ass always came home.

My mother had said those three words so many times during my childhood they should’ve been stitched onto a pillow.

He came home.

She said it like home was first prize. She acted like marriage wasn’t about someone refusing to leave in the first place.

I spent my entire childhood promising myself I’d never become my mother. Then I grew up and became one of the women she hated instead.

Life had a fucked-up sense of humor sometimes.

“You’re burning the muffins.”

My younger sister, Klair, sat at our parents’ kitchen island eating pepperonis directly from the bag.

I looked toward the oven. “Shit.”