Pocket Full of Posies

Chapter Eight

Excited, I picked up my pace and ran up the remaining steps of the staircase. Isaac and I had spent way too long deciding what kind of cake to get—he preferred red velvet while I hated anything but chocolate—and I’d finally found a compromise. It was a simple solution, really, but I’d wanted to show him right away. I had pictures and everything of what it’d look like when it was done.

  Isaac had gotten his own apartment a few months after we graduated. Apartments in Lewisburg weren’t necessarily the nicest places around, and it was actually cheaper to get a small house. But that was the way he’d wanted, so I couldn’t argue that much about it; although I was kinda hoping he’d surprise me with a house or something. It didn’t have to be fancy or big at all. But a house of my very own….

  I knocked once before letting myself in—he never bothered to lock the door when he was home.

  “I’ve figured it out!” I called as a greeting, immediately passing through the small living room/kitchen and heading for his room. If he wasn’t watching TV, he was probably sleeping. “Okay, so first off, I just wanna say I’m sorry for being such an idiot and not realizing sooner that we could just….”

  My words caught in my throat the second I pushed the door open. The scene was something I knew I’d never be able to get out of my head for as long as I lived. Joanna, on her feet and rushing around the room wrapped in nothing but a sheet, gasped sharply at the sight of me. I stared back at her with complete and utter shock, trying to find some kind of explanation for this. Surely, it couldn’t be what I was seeing….I was just tired from running around getting the wedding in order or something….

  Isaac, on the other side of the small bedroom, stood nonchalantly putting his pants on over his inside-out boxers. It was his asininely calm demeanor that finally dragged me out of my stupor.

  An uncontrollable rage rushed through me inside and out. Not caring who heard me or what they thought was going on, I screamed, “What. The. Fuck?!” My mouth floundered open and shut, not sure what to throw at them next.

  “I’m sorry, Marley,” Isaac said coolly. His blue eyes, eyes that I’d always loved so much but wanted to do nothing more than gauge them out, stared back at me emphatically. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I shouted, glaring hatefully at the both of them. Joanna couldn’t even look at me. Her head was hung in shame and I think she might have been crying. Good. At least she had the decency to be ashamed!

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Marley,” Isaac chastised. “Please don’t act so surprised. You and I have been drifting apart for a long time now.”

  I couldn’t even answer that, I was so mad.

  Isaac continued with a careless shrug, “I love Joanna. And she loves me. We’ve been in love for a long time now, Marley. All I’ve ever wanted is to be with her.”

  My mouth fell open. For a second I debated not even dignifying that with a response. But then I growled, “Then why did you even bother being with me all these years? If y’all have loved eachother so fucking much, why the fuck am I two months from my fucking wedding and you’re….you’re both….” I drew in a breath, closing my eyes to slightly compose myself. “Why, Isaac?”