"You used to love it, Tommy." They said. "If you want the old you back you have to get back into her habits." They whined.
And she gave in.
A year after a hard divorce, Tommy Roy finds herself agreeing to go clubbing with her best friends.
The nigh...
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In a large rectangular room, there stood a large oval-shaped oak table. It is the divider. The somewhat protector from the caged animosities within the people present in the room.
Across one another sit lawyers. One, a beautiful blond female, dressed to kickass, and the other, an ageing man with most of his head bold.
Next to the female lawyer is a man. The Asshole, as I call him. His green eyes pierce across the table, next to the male lawyer into my brown eyes.
His green eyes once looked like beautiful emeralds, sparkling with something beyond astounding. I was bullshitting myself. So much.
Now his eyes just look like algae. Algal that's covered a beautiful lake that's been blooming flowers from under the water. Denying and depriving the hopeful-potential filled-flowers of both sunlight and oxygen. And when the flowers couldn't survive anymore they die. And because the algae are so insufferable, the bacteria to decompose the dead flowers can't even survive. Because there is no oxygen.
I was once those flowers. Blooming from underwater. But the algae came, Fredrick Edwards, and he deprived me of many necessities. And I died from within. I couldn't even clean up my mess because the algae wouldn't give me even the littlest of oxygen to survive.
And as I look into Fredrick's algae eyes, only one thing passes through my mind.
Have you ever sat in a room, zoning out everything and everyone, and just thought, "Well I really done fucked myself over."?
Because I really fucked myself crippled. But I did it blindly. I was naive. I was idiotic. I was uneducated.
But I'm not anymore.
Not after the shit Fredrick has dragged me through.
"My client would rather he keep most of what's his but..." Ms Rebecca, Fredrick's lawyer starts. "The profit your client has made from her book should mostly go to him. Probably a 70/30 agreement," Rebecca finishes off her sentence.
I just sat back in my chair and never interrupted. I listened. I didn't interrupt any of Fredrick's absurd demands because, to be honest, he wasn't going to get shit. I have so much over him that these crazy demands didn't shake me, not even a little. Over the five years we'd been together I had learned to calm myself, to be more kept and controlled because I knew Fredrick hated it so much.
I slightly turn to my lawyer and whisper, "Tell him he isn't getting shit and I'm taking half of what's his but keeping all mine," Garry, my lawyer, nodded and turned towards Fredrick and Rebecca.
As Garry told them my demand I sit there and stare closely between Rebecca and Fredrick. Rebecca doesn't seem to have a ring on her finger, and by the looks of it, Fredrick's disgusting large hand is on her thigh but she doesn't seem to mind.
They're sleeping together. It's not something new to me when it comes to Fredrick. Five years of hell. Five years of disloyalty, yelling, arguments and not to forget, getting my ass kicked.
"I'm afraid my client and will not accept that," Rebecca answered. Garry opened his briefcase and took out a beige manila file. Fredrick and Rebecca furrowed their eyes at Garry as he opened the file that revealed all the beatings that I've taken from Fredrick. In that file is the bruises from most of the beatings Fredrick gave me.
"I think it's best that you and your client reconsider," Garry raised his eyebrows. "In this file is the pictures of not all but most of my client's bruises which were caused by Mr Fredrick. There are also hospital bills for when things went too far," he continued and that seemed to rile Fredrick up because he stood up and yelled, "She beat me too!"
I raised both eyebrows in shock. He was not serious at this point. He was definitely not playing the 'she beat me too' game because, in the records, it's self-defence. And it is.
"How do you get yourself out of a house alive when your husband is beating the living crap out of you, huh Fredrick?" My voice my low and calm but inside me, there was a massive hurricane causing turmoil.
"You punched me in the throat," he retorted. "You were strangling me. Any longer and I would've fallen unconscious," I raised an eyebrow with my comeback.
"You then came back and punched me in the nose, broke it in the process," he continued. At this point, we were honestly just replaying the last event we had that lead to this.
"You grabbed my arm and forced me towards your body," my voice was rising and so was I. I was rising from my chair because I was starting to lose control and I didn't like it. "You also threw a vase at me when I was making a beeline for the door. You also ran after me and tackled me to the hard ground. I broke two ribs!" By now I was not full-on yelling.
My face my probably red now from all the anger and frustration I was feeling.
"You kicked me in my manhood area!" He yelled back. "You deserved it because you tried to rape me. For the third time in our marriage!"
The room fell eerily quiet and Fredrick and I were in each other's faces at this point.
And in that second I took in a deep breath and let it out quietly. "We were never going to work," I sat back down in my chair and after a moment he did too.
The lawyers continued negotiating until I ended up winning. I would get all the cars and houses we owned and he would just get nothing because of the terrible person he was in our marriage.
Walking out of the room, I wasn't happy. There was nothing to be happy about except for the fact that I was free from Fredrick. Having so much too my name didn't make me happy but it did give me a sense of power, the power he shouldn't have ever had over me just because he was stronger. Because in the end, I survived.
