She is beautiful. Powerful, driven and sexy. And I let her go.
When she asked for a divorce I said nothing. Not one word. I just stared at the kitchen table and after a few beats I nodded. Once. I knew it was coming, we hadn't spoken properly in weeks, maybe months. I couldn't even remember the last time I asked her how she was. I could feel myself losing her day by day, but I was too stubborn and wound up to fight for her. I let my own inner battle between pride and instinct take priority over my wife. So, she quietly packed her things and left.
The worst part was feeling the bile in my throat whenever I walked up the steps to work, listening intently whilst speed walking through corridors, just so I could prepare myself if I heard her voice coming round the corner. At the time, marrying someone I worked with seemed logical and not stupid at all. Fuck me was I wrong.
Looking back, I don't blame her. She got offered the detective job and I was jealous. I can admit it now, but when it happened I became bitter and distant. She took it, of course and to make a point I stayed, against the opinion of pretty much everyone ever. Another stupid decision on my part because if I'd just swallowed my pride and left, I wouldn't have dragged her in to this now catastrophic mess.
2 years later, still in the same job. I'm still an officer and she's still my boss. I got a new apartment, a few mind management books and I'm newly engaged. Her name is Lorna and we met online, she's eight years younger than me and worships the ground I walk on. The guys at work got in a few beers to the office when I announced it, of course my boss made a respectful appearance.
"Congratulations, Leo" She stepped towards me, arm outstretched grasping a crisp white card.
Whenever we share a moment alone, there is this tension where we shake hands and in that skin to skin contact I can remember her soft body pressed against mine. Can't help it.
"Thanks, Rosa." I took the card and replaced it with my hand. Like clockwork, I have a flashback.
I see her, naked and post-coital. Laying next to me, rosy cheeked and smiling.
"Let me draw on your back." She sits up and playfully flips me on my front.
"What, like with a pen?" I reply, with a mock apprehensive sleepy voice.
"No, you fucking idiot." she giggles, "I'm gonna draw on your back with my finger and I want you to guess what it is". She straddles my back, the bed covers draped around her bare shoulders.
She begins to draw, I sleepily oblige and try to decipher what her soft fingers are mapping. She stops.
"Well?" She asks after a short pause.
"I have no idea." I say.
She slaps me on the back. It's so hot when she's a bitch.
She leans in and whispers in my ear "Play the game". Sitting back, she resumes her art and I concentrate like she asks.
She stops.
"Is it a lion?" I turn to face her, her smile gives it away.
There's another slap on my back. This time it's my colleague Paul, I snap back to the party.
"Where's your drink, Leo?" He grabs me by the arm, "Can I steal him for a second, Sargeant?" He drunkenly asks, dragging me backwards regardless of the answer.
"Sure." She smiles back at him. She nods at me and heads back in to her office.
I get a beer shoved in to my hand and Paul yaps on to someone about some case or other we've been assigned to and I remember the card Rosa had given me. I contemplate opening it, it's the most personal thing she's given me since the divorce papers.
"Fuck it" I think to myself and slip to a quiet corner of the office. I rip open the envelope and I see the words 'Good Luck' on the front. Brave. I open the card and there, hand-drawn in black ink, was a lion. I realised that things weren't over between me and Rosa.
That night we had crazy insane sex in her office and I got to see that post-coital glow she wore so well again. I got to see it almost every day for 3 months wherever I could, in her office, in the bathroom, in the janitor's closet, anywhere. It felt so naughty and each time we said it was the last but the spark was reignited and we were going headfirst in to trouble. I just never imagined this kind of trouble.
"I'm pregnant" Lorna announced at the dinner table when I got home late from work one evening, claiming I was 'held up'.
I was shocked, lost for words. I didn't know what to say, the whole situation of having my cake and eating it to came to a thundering crash. All I could do was laugh. Of all the things that could have come out of my mouth, I fucking laughed. I don't know if it was shock or just because the whole situation suddenly seemed so ridiculous but I laughed. I'd just come back from fucking my boss who is my ex-wife on her desk to my 22 year old girlfriend telling me she's pregnant. Lorna took it as elation, I guess. Laughter through happiness. I was too much of a coward, so I let her believe it was.
I didn't tell Rosa. She felt guilty enough that Lorna and I were even engaged, let alone her being pregnant with my child. So I continued in my falsely perfect world for another month or so.
Then, on a normal Wednesday evening, a call came in.
Paul's ex-wife had been found dead in her home.
"Get here. Now." The officer on the scene sounded desperate and sharp.
Paul was on duty at the time, we advised him to go home and leave it to us but he insisted on going to the scene. Ever the professional. The ride there was completely silent, everyone's mind was racing thinking about what to expect and what to say to Paul. What does anyone say in that situation?
We arrive and pile out of the car and something immediately doesn't feel right, the house is buzzing with people: forensics, officers, obstacles for Paul to negotiate with to get to the body. Unusual amounts of activity for a homicide, there seems to be a vibrating sense of panic. Rosa stops him in his tracks.
"Paul, don't go in there, it's not a good idea, we still haven't..." She tries to placate him as best she can.
"Sarge let me see her, I'm ok, I'm ok", he tries his best to appear calm but he's a storm of curiosity and passion pacing along the incident tape.
"It's not good in there, Paul" She follows his eyes with a look of warning but he breaks past her and ducks underneath the tape, speeding towards the front door and in to the living room, where the beehive of activity is. I look at Rosa and she looks back at me with an expression I haven't seen for years: she's scared. I follow Paul in to the house. He pushes past people in white forensic suits, towards the flashing of cameras and then I watch him halt to a complete stop. I can almost see the hairs on the back of his neck raise. I carefully approach his side, adrenaline slowing down time and almost in slow motion, I see her.
Slumped on the floor, naked and dead is Paul's ex-wife Marla. She has a large slash through her neck, but no blood. It's horrific, but I can't stop staring. It's nothing like I've ever seen before. My eyes wander to her lifeless face, and then to the wall that she's propped up against. My eyes widen at the enormity of what I'm seeing. A message on the wall in what I assume to be Marla's blood reads:
'Out with the old, in with the new,
One by one, Pigs'
TBC...