Marital Bitch (7 page)

(Colleen)

Who does that? Nobody. Except, Brad did.

JAMES AND DARLA
approach; James is grinning, their eldest child and only daughter, Lilly, hanging onto his back. Lilly is five, and a handful. She is the apple of Brad’s eye and he is her hero. Their middle son, Alex, is in James’s arms, half asleep. The child is a magician. He disappears and reappears it seems at will; but he’s my little monster no matter what. Darla is wearing a scowl and holding their baby, six month old boy, Fitz.

Lilly jumps off of
James’s back and into Brad’s arms. “Uncle Brad!” she shouts, half excited, half annoyed. She looks so much like her mother when she pouts. “You were s’posed to marry me, not Aunt Colleen!” He grins and gives her a big hug.

“Hold up now, kid,”
Brad says in a mock serious voice. “I heard you’ve been sharing your cookies with another guy. How am I s’posed to feel about that, huh?” Lilly blushes and looks away. I smile at the pair of them. Brad has always been so good with kids and he babysits James and Darla’s kids every chance he gets. He’s going to make an amazing dad one day. You know, to another woman’s children.

“Have not!” Lilly glares at him.

“Wanna bet, princess?” he challenges and she folds her arms over her chest. “You know I’m friends with your teacher, Miss Kate? She says you’ve been making googly eyes at a Jeffrey Spaniel. ‘Said you even shared your cookies with the guy.”

“How’d you find out?” she asks giving
Brad the stink eye.

“I’m a detective
, sweetheart. You don’t think I’m gonna know when my favorite girl is off sharing her cookies with some strange kid?”

“Well, you married Aunt
Colleen!” Lilly retorts but Brad isn’t letting it go. The man takes his cookies seriously and at least in five year old Lilly he’s found someone to argue with.

“Well, you’re sharing your cookies with a kid who’s named after a dog!”
Brad smirks at Lilly as she opens and closes her mouth several times before responding.

“I want cookies,” she says and he agrees that he wants cookies, too. They walk off in search of the dessert
table. I know it’s around here somewhere. Grammy says she doesn’t show up unless there’s a dessert table. Darla shakes her head and laughs.

“He’s going to
be a great father,” Darla says. I nod my head and look for a distraction. I can’t wait to get my hands on my little buddy, even if he is sleeping away in James’s arms. James notices that I’m fixed on the sleeping boy and he hands him over to me which effectively ends his slumber. Alex’s blue eyes pop open and he squirms in my arms.

“Hey, Monkey,” I say, adjusting him to a more comfor
table position on my hip. For being just barely two, he sure is stocky. With James as his dad, it’s no wonder.

“Aunti
e,” he says, laying his head on my chest. I smile down at him and kiss him atop his head.

“So, how long do you think you can keep this up for?”
James asks. I shrug.

“I don’t have the heart to tell everyone it’s not real, especially Grammy,” I say, mindful of who might be near.

“Yeah, okay,” James says, “but what if she lives for another five or ten, hell—fifteen years? You just gonna pretend to be married to Brad? That’s pretty fucked up, sis.” My eyebrows knit together and I consider James’s point. The honest answer is that I just don’t know. I’m taking it day by day and minute by minute here. This whole thing spiraled out of control because my friends couldn’t leave well enough alone. They had to butt in and broadcast the one evening of my life that I’d rather keep quiet, all over the internet.

“Don’t even go there,
James,” I walk toward him and lean in. “You stood back and let them tell the world about this. Where was your opinion then?” James is speechless. He has no defense and he knows it. I glare at Darla next. She won’t even look me in the eye. Good.

“And you,” I whisper-shout while running my hand through
Alex’s hair. “You’re treating this like it’s a game. We’re adults, Darla. I have a career to worry about, not that you’d understand my position.” I snap and walk away.

It was a low blow using my career against her. Darla’s been a stay-at-home mom for years, and a stay-at-home wife before that. I don’t have the right to judge her anymore than she has the right to judge me. But deep in the back of my mind I’ve always judged her. I’ve always wondered why she didn’t want more for herself than to just be a cop’s wife. Even in high school while I talked about going to college, she talked about getting married after James graduated from the academy.

“Sissy!” Alex shouts, spotting Lilly and Brad across the room.

“Hey Monster, you want a cookie?” I ask.
Alex’s eyes grow wide and he grins up at me. I love Lilly and Fitz is such a cute baby, but Alex is my favorite. I know I shouldn’t be playing favorites, but I can’t help it. Since the day he started crawling, he’s been a terror. Alex will climb on anything and anyone he can get his little hands on. I didn’t think much of it when Darla told me she was pregnant with him; but then the day he was born, I got it. I understood that maternal tug. I had never and have never been as jealous of another human being as I was of Darla the day that Alex was born.

“C
ookie!” he chants, bouncing on my hip. Brad looks up and sees us approaching. He grins at us and chomps on a large cookie of his own.

”Husband,” I giggle when I say it and I’m not sure why. But it feels right.
He lights up.

“Wife,” he says with a nod and leans in kissing me on top of my head. I hand
Alex a chocolate chip cookie and take a good look at us. With Brad holding Lilly in his arms and Alex on my hip, we look like a real family. Brad wipes chocolate off of Lilly’s face and cleans his finger off on his pants without a second thought. He isn’t the slightest bit worried about walking around with chocolate on his clothes. I look down at Alex covered in chocolate and suddenly I don’t care about getting messy, either. Here with Brad, surrounded by our family and friends; I’m starting to think that I want this; that after everything, I might really want this.

THE PARTY WINDS
down and slowly but surely, our nearest and dearest trickle out. Our parents are the last ones to go. I should be a little disturbed and grossed out that my dad high-fives Brad, but I’m not. Any other guy and my dad would refuse to leave the house and stand guard the bedroom with a shot gun. But this is Brad and though he remains mostly silent on the subject, my dad couldn’t be happier. Emily and Louise are disgustingly giddy on their way out.

They each rub my stomach for good luck.
Brad slaps my butt and shuts the door behind them. When they’re far enough away, I turn to glare at him. The playful honeymooner’s thing is wearing on me. The butt slaps are starting to awake my hormones and it is better off I not go there. And all day, every time someone mentioned kids or I saw Brad with someone’s kid, my ovaries nearly exploded. I need to deal with my frustration in one way or another and kicking the Ball & Chain’s ass right now seems like a fairly effective means of letting off some steam.

“You better run,” I seethe. He throws his hands up in the air and backs away from me. I take a quick jump at him but I’m not watching where I’m going. My foot catches on our luggage, which has mysteriously found its way into the house, and I fall flat on my face.
Brad rushes over and peels me off the hardwood floor.

“Oh, pretty girl,” he says, standing, with me cradled to his chest. I will admit that I’m surprised that he is able to lift me so easily and how hard his body feels next to mine.
He always looked so plush to me. “What the hell are you trying to do, hurt yourself?”

I huff, un-amused. I was going for intimidating and instead I wound up with pathetic. “Okay,” he mutters, “I know this game. You’re embarrassed so you’re going to be silent. That’s fine. It’s late.” He walks up the stairs, me still in his arms, and takes me to his bedroom. If I weren’t so embarrassed and annoyed that he kn
ows me so well I would protest.

He’s taking me into his bedroom. Thankfully, I know him well enough to feel
comfortable in here. His spare room doesn’t have a bed, just a pool table.

“Thanks,” I say as he sits me on his bed. I look at his bedside alarm clock to find that it is indeed late. The clock reads
11 p.m. I yawn and kick my shoes off and crawl under the covers. Brad walks to his dresser and pulls out a t-shirt and a pair of sleep pants and tosses them to me.

“These will be more
comfortable,” he offers and walks out of the room, closing the door behind him. Immediately, I undress and slide into his clothes. They smell wonderful and I might even give them a little sniff; but I’ll never admit to it. I lie back down and groan at how uncomfortable my bra is. Against my better judgment I go ahead and remove it, tossing it to the floor with the rest of my clothes. The freedom feels wonderful and I slide against Brad’s flannel sheets. I haven’t been in here in almost a year, and even then it was only for a few moments. This is the first time I’ve been in his bed since everything went bad between us.

I snuggle into the blankets and turn on my side, with my back to the door. I begin to drift into a calm sleep. I’m slightly perturbed by the fact that
Brad didn’t even say goodnight, but I try not to dwell on that thought. Just when I’ve let it go and I’m about to succumb to a much needed rest, I hear the creaking of the hardwood and then the bedroom door opens. I’m just awake enough to know what’s going on around me, but too far under to react. I hear the blankets move and then the bed dips behind me.

“
Colleen?” Brad whispers. He gives my side a little poke and when I don’t respond, he places a hand on my right hip. I want to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. I want to swat his hand away. I want to remind him that I’m Just Colleen, but he thinks I’m asleep and that’s very nearly true. So I give myself this moment in time where I can pretend.

I may be very legally Mrs.
Bradley Patrick. Everyone who matters in our individual and joined worlds sees us as a very real married couple; and at times I think we get lost in the role play. But here, in his bed, I feel like Mrs. Patrick. Brad’s hand on my hip wanders and it wraps around my waist, pulling me to him. I settle my back into his chest, losing myself further to sleep.

Tomorrow we’ll fight and argue and maybe even throw things; because that’s what we do. Tomorrow
Heather will be brought up, because she is the proverbial elephant in the room every time we fight. And tomorrow we’ll have to talk and see if we can figure out where to go from here because of all the things said to me today, only one sticks with me.

You just gonna pretend to be married to
Brad? That’s pretty fucked up, sis.

And
James’s right. It is pretty fucked up, but I don’t know what the hell I can do about that now. I don’t know that there’s anything I want to do about it. I’m enjoying pretending way too much right now. Because at the end of the day, regardless of how fake this all is—it’s a hell of a lot more than I had before some stupid Irish cop asked some stupid girl from Southie to marry him just so that he could see her smile.

And in this moment, curled into
Brad as he snores like a freight train in my ear, I realize how lucky I am. Who asks their best friend to marry them simply because they were pouting? Nobody does that. No, I mean nobody does that. Except that, Brad did. Brad did do that. And he didn’t just do that. He did that for me.

(Colleen)

What the hell was I about to do with Brad?

HONK SHOE…

I feel hot breath on my neck and the faint scent of Brad’s soap. I wiggle, cuddled up against my husband. I withhold a small squeal at the thought.
My husband
. My Bradley. I was having the biggest drought known to womankind. At one point, I wasn’t sure if my vagina was still present or if it had taken up on holiday. But now? Now, I’m curled into my lifelong best friend and new husband, and I’m actually liking the feel of his arms around me.

Honk shoe…

In the stillness of the morning, I breathe in his scent and then it happens.

Burp!

Holy crap. The husband did not just burp in my ear. Oh, but he did. I groan and cover my nose to hide the smell. Despite the pungent aroma of his morning breath, I’m really not all that put out. There’s something about being in bed with a man, about having a man in my life that makes those nasty little smells not so awful.

Honk shoe…

I wiggle again and feel what Brad refers to as morning wood pressed up against my backside. My face flushes and I don’t know what to do. I crane my neck around to peek at Brad, finding him fast asleep—mouth hanging open, the roaring sound of his snoring trailing out of his mouth. I feel emboldened, being in his bed and wrapped in his arms. So I do something that I’ll deny until my dying day. I press my butt against his erection, feeling its slight twitch.

Honk shoe…

Brad’s breathing comes in short pants and his arms tighten around me, leaving no room between me and Mac. A moan involuntarily falls from my lips. It’s been a year since I’ve been with anyone. I had dated a guy very briefly before I realized it wouldn’t work out. Peter left me with the distinct impression that he felt women should be seen and not heard. Clearly, we were not meant to be. And if I’m being honest with myself, I didn’t quite fit in his world; square peg, round hole, and all that.

Last week I had some semblance of self-control; last week I was still single and not in a fake marriage with the appearance of being taken. Last week I was still Chief and Mrs.
Frasiers’ greatest disappointment. Last week I was still Colleen Frasier, Esquire. Now I guess I’m Colleen Frasier Patrick, Esquire? No. No, I’ll keep Frasier professionally; too much paperwork to change things around. I’ll stay Frasier for professional use and adopt Patrick for personal use.

I continue to think about the small details of being married. Do I need to inform my bank? What about my automobile insurance? Probably. Should I get a ring? Do I even want to wear a ring?
Well, I do like diamonds. I wonder if Brad will buy me a ring? Where will we live? Here, probably. I peek around the room, inspecting its size. This is a small house. I have a lot of shoes. Oh, where will my shoes go!

“
Damn,” Brad holds onto me for dear life and grinds Mac into my butt—all thoughts of my beloved shoe collection forgotten as Brad dry humps my ass. I’m frozen, unable to move, contemplating rubbing against him. I want to rub against him and feel the friction I so need, afraid of what that might lead to.

“Baby,”
Brad moans, leaning into my ear, “You feel so good.” His breath, hot on my skin, sends chills down my spine. I’m pretty sure he’s asleep. I hope he’s asleep. Wait… maybe I don’t want him to be asleep.

“Right there, baby,” he begins thrusting into my backside roughly. My breath catches. My heart speeds up. My body moves involuntarily, meeting his thrusts. The feeling is divine. This feels right and good and… so good. My brain is mush. I can’t bring myself to stop, even if I am encouraging my childhood best friend to sleep-hump me. Husband, he’s my
husband; I try to reason with myself.

We move together and I can feel
the dampening between my thighs. Brad’s hands wander and find purchase on my breasts. They’re covered by his large t-shirt, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His large, masculine hands knead my tender flesh through the cotton shirt causing my nipples to harden almost immediately. I moan louder than I should and rub against Mac, who is nearly pressing against the very place I want him. If I just shift up a little…

“Uh,”
Brad’s voice startles me. He sounds awake. I cringe and close my eyes in fear. I’m mortified. No matter my mental state, my body is still yearning for him. “Colleen?” His voice breaks off in a breathless squeak at the end. He’s panting. Wanting. Needy.

“Yeah?” I croak nervously. My eyes are shut as tightly as they can get. I can’t even. I can’t even. I don’t even know what I can’t even, but I damn sure can’t. Can’t focus. Can’t explain. Can’t excuse. Just can’t. All that I can comprehend is that I need him to squash this ache in the pit of my belly.

His hands are still on my breasts. I feel him shift behind me, though he doesn’t remove his hands and he doesn’t move away. It’s just that now… now Mac is exactly where I need him. I gasp. At least I think it’s a gasp. It felt like a moan. But I hope it’s a gasp. God I hope that was a gasp.

“What are we doing, pretty girl?”
Brad leans down and runs his nose over the shell of my ear. My breathing is strained.

“I don’t know,” I admit. But I need this. I need him to not stop. I need this to continue.

“Brad?” I press myself even harder against his erection and I feel it twitch. We moan together, sliding against one another in urgent need. “Please don’t stop.” The words fall from my mouth and I can barely believe I’ve said it. Brad thrusts up against me roughly.

“
Finally,” he mutters, turning me on my back and crawling over me. My legs part, on either side of his thighs, as he slides himself to right where I need him. Most of his weight is supported by his forearms, only his lower half presses against me, lined up against me.

Need takes over and I reached out and grab his neck, pulling him to me. I capture his lips with my own and we move together fluidly. Tongues meet and slide together. I’ve kissed
Brad before. Probably a lot, but then we’ve known one another since birth. Kissing Brad has always been nice—great even. But this feels like more. This is more than a couple of drunken friends. This is more than two teenagers fumbling through the motions after prom. This is more than a dare. This is plain, unfiltered need.

Our bodies bump and grind against one another, one of his hands dipping underneath the cotton shirt and traveling up my naked skin where he kneads my bare breast. I can barely contain myself. His hands, rough against my skin, are nothing like the hands of the men I am used to dating. They’re the hands of a man who works hard for what he has. They’re the hands of a man who takes pride in what he does. The rough, calloused skin flicks my nipple
causing me to buck against him.

Feeling emboldened, I reach down for his boxers to yank them off when
Brad’s house phone rings. We ignore it but our movements falter as we try to keep the rhythm going. The ringing is distracting but we do our best to block it out. The portable is across the room, sitting in its dock. It’s too far. I might combust if he moves to answer it. The ringing persists and the answering machine picks up. My mother’s voice stops us dead in our tracks.

“
Colleen, Bradley… kids… I’m so sorry to distract you,” she sounds sweet as she leaves the message.
Too sweet
. “Especially if you’re….” and she whispers, “Having marital relations,” and I swear I hear Emily giggle in the background. “But Colleen, darling, that Michael Nate from your work. He called your father and I. He said you were supposed to be in court this morning. He’s worried about you.” I don’t hear the rest of her message.

I push
Brad off me and fly out of the bed, damp with need, panting, and in search of the clock. I find it. On the nightstand on the other side of the bed, the alarm clock reads 11:57 A.M. I don’t remember having to be in court this morning, but I did have to be in the office. How in the hell did I sleep in? Why in the hell didn’t my Blackberry wake me up? What the hell is Thomas doing calling my parents? All these thoughts are combating with the one clouding my every thought. What the hell was I about to do with Brad?