Heartstrings Novel – Angela hung up her robe and slid under the covers, glad she had thought to tuck her new silk nightgown into her bag. Joel, she knew, would enjoy removing it. She leaned closer and stroked the back of his neck where his hair, still slightly damp, curled behind his ears. A dark area, what looked like a bruise high on his shoulder, caught her attention. She sat up and adjusted the lamp to see it more clearly. Her heart skidded into her throat. She moved her hand along his back. Her fingers detected a quartet of welts that moved crosswise from his left shoulder down toward his waist.
There was no mistaking what they were. She caught her breath as tears welled in her eyes. There had to be some explanation. He had never been unfaithful before. Or had he? She had patients who had confided in her about husbands who had strayed. She’d always counted herself among the lucky women whose mates would never do so. She peered at his back again, her pulse climbing, her stomach a tight ball pressed against her lungs, preventing her from taking a deep breath. She climbed out of the bed and pulled the covers over his shoulders to hide the telltale marks that she knew she would never forget.
After several minutes of agitated pacing, during which she debated what to do, she pulled down extra pillows and blankets and shakily arranged them on the sitting room couch. Whether she could close her eyes or not, she wasn’t going near him. She debated waking Joel up and demanding to know who he’d been with, then decided against it. Tomorrow was soon enough to learn what she didn’t want to know: that he was having an affair. The next morning Joel opened his eyes to find Angela staring at him. From the telltale redness and puffiness around her eyes, he could tell she had been crying, but no tears slid down her face now.
Her mouth was a thin line as she studied him, her stare reminding him of a scientist examining a bug, one she wanted to squash or take apart, one wing, one segment, at a time. When she finally spoke, her voice dripped icicles. “Who is she, Joel? What is she?” He sat up, confused. Then he remembered. God! He must have fallen asleep last night before she had come to bed—without his pajama top. His pulse began to quicken. “I asked you a question.” He looked around the room and saw her suitcase, so recently emptied. It now sat next to the door, as if ready for the bellman’s arrival. “I—I don’t—what are—? You just got here. Why are you…?” He gulped. “You look like you’re leaving. What—” “Do you want me to spell it out?” He made no effort to talk as he struggled to sit up straighter in the bed. She knows. What do I tell her? “Okay.”
She stood up and began a slow, measured pace ominous in each deliberate step she took between the desk and the bed. “Since you won’t talk, let me,” she began. “Someone bit your shoulder. Mind telling me who and why, or do I have to guess? And don’t tell me you were playing with a chimpanzee. I know a human bite mark when I see it.” He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of a thing to say that she would accept, and closed it again. “Since you can’t or won’t answer that question, let me continue.” She resumed her pacing, now between the window and the door to the bathroom, her fingers opening and then closing into fists. Her demeanor reminded him of a prosecuting attorney going in for the kill. “You have some interesting welts on your back, too, like whomever you screwed scratched you good. That must have been some passionate action you enjoyed. Was it the same person who bit you, or someone else?” Her voice caught and then rose.
“Exactly how many women have you been with since you got here?” He reached up to feel the bite mark, still tender to the touch. She turned to face him and the flat of her hand caught the left side of his face with a resounding slap that stung them both. “You prick! Since when do you visit a hooker when you leave home?” His heart was in his throat. “I—uh—she wasn’t—I—” “Oh, no? Was she was a colleague then, or an extern, maybe even a younger student? And if so, you should be ashamed of yourself if you took advantage of one. Was that it, a student whose admiration of your professional work now extends to how well you fu-ck? I won’t dignify what you did by calling it making love.” Her voice rose in intensity and volume as her other hand came up. Surprised that she had already struck him when she had never done so before, he didn’t duck fast enough.
“Ow! Angie!” He rubbed his right cheek. “No, it wasn’t a hooker and it wasn’t a student. You know me better than that.” His head rung. She shook her hand, as if it, too, was burning from the force with which she’d hit him. “I thought I did. I guess I was wrong.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, darkening her blouse as the moisture melted into the silk fabric. He took a deep breath. “I made a mistake. A big one.” Then, his voice barely above a whisper. “One I never intended to make.” Her eyes welled with tears and her chin began to tremble. Before she could say anything else, he said, “I—Roxy is here.” Her eyes widened. “Roxy?” She stood up. “Roxy who?” She stared at him, her eyes becoming slits of blue before widening again.
“Not Roxy from vet school? Roxy from when I went to Seattle?” He nodded. “I didn’t know she was registered. I never looked for her. She saw me at my first session, and at the dinner that followed for the speakers. She was in the hotel bar with the other alums.” “And?” Her eyes were now steely, as cold as her voice, as they stared daggers at his heart. “She was drunk, so I offered to help her to her room—and—well—I don’t know how it happened.” God, that sounds lame—oh no. Angela looked at him and started to laugh. Before long the chuckle had erupted into a volcano of harsh laughter she couldn’t seem to stop. But when he started to smile—in relief—she raised one hand again. “For God’s sake, Angela! No!” He dropped the soggy washcloth and grabbed her hands before she reconsidered and tried to hit him again, his eyes still watering from the most recent slap, his nose starting to gush anew. “What do you mean, you don’t know how it happened?” Her chin quivered.
“It just happened so fast, before I could think … I was drunk, too.” “That’s the best you can do? You got it up, didn’t you? You had the presence of mind to … bang her.” “Honestly, Angie, I was just being polite—helping her back to her room.” He swiped at the blood dripping down his face. “I never planned to—to have intercourse with her. She flung herself at me, like she did at school, and the next thing I knew, I—I—” Her words were encased in ice even as she handed him a tissue. “Let me guess. You were unable to stop yourself and somehow or other, against your better judgment, she straddled you and you couldn’t get away. How much do you outweigh her by—fifty, seventy-five pounds?” Her tears slid down her cheeks as she spat the words out. “I don’t want to know what she did. I can see what she did.” She pointed to his back. “She’s the one who marked you with her claws, her teeth?”