The Other Side

“I hear you.” Mark paused as they stopped at a red light. His mouth twitched in a wry smile. “Stephen tells me I need that balance between professional and personal or I’m going to crash from the overload. When my dad died of skin cancer, it was just me, my sister Kelly and my mom. Kelly now lives in Seattle as a music producer and Mom is still in Atlanta. She works as a sheriff’s deputy.” The light changed and Mark put the car into gear, moving them smoothly forward. “Stephen makes a point of creating an immovable block of free time regularly throughout the year where I go home to see family and wind down.”

“Does it work?”

“It certainly does.” Mark smiled. “My mom and sister are two of the most down-to-earth people I know. They keep me sane when I’ve had a tough period.”

Charli could relate to that. Her mother lived in Montgomery and her brother was stationed in South Korea with the air force. They were close and had stuck together since Charli’s dad went to jail for murder. She hadn’t seen him since she was six. It had just been the three of them.

What Mark did was a good thing. It kept his feet firmly on the ground and his head out of the clouds.

“I wish Andy would do that.” She said sadly. “But his parents don’t see him and he doesn’t talk to his brothers anymore. Last I heard, they all seem to think I’m the one responsible for him not contacting them anymore.”

“How could they think that?”

“Kim.” Charli spat out the name. “She’s a manipulative bi*ch. She’s the one who’s been pouring things into Andy’s ear, saying that I’ve been cheating on him and he should get rid of me.” She snorted. “How he hasn’t got rid of me yet when we seem to fight all the time is nothing short of amazing.”

Kimberly was playing them off against each other. And she loved it. Charli could see that. And it made her sick that Kimberly could easily do that.

She hated her.

“I’m sorry you have to put up with it.” Mark said quietly. He glanced at her. “I don’t like Andy and he hates my guts but you don’t deserve that.”

Charli managed a smile. She didn’t believe what Andy and Kimberly said about Mark, that he was a nasty piece of work and needed to be taken down to where he belonged. He was a nice guy, no doubt about that.

“Thanks.”

*****

Charli purposefully avoided Andy’s calls for the rest of the week. He called her persistently but she switched her phone off, using email and her landline if she needed to get a hold of someone. He also tried to email her, some of his messages sweet and endearing, begging them to talk, others abusive and telling her that she was a bi*ch, accusing her of cheating yet again.

There were more abusive messages than sweet ones.

Charli knew what she had to do. After talking with Mark and hearing about him and his family and how close they were, Charli knew she needed to break things with Andy. His parents and two brothers blamed her for Andy cutting off contact with them, his eldest brother even making up a social media group called KCK for Kill Charli Klan. Charli had reported the page and it had been taken down but it had still shaken her up.

Adding that to Kimberly virtually running Andy’s life and realizing she was isolating herself from her own friends because of him, Charli knew she needed to cut away now before she completely lost everything.

So on Saturday night, Charli drove herself to Andy’s apartment. In the ten years they had been together, they had never lived together. Even when they were in dorms they had different roommates. Andy had claimed that it was so they didn’t stifle each other and they had plenty of time once they graduated. Now Charli wondered if Andy was cheating on her back then.

She knew now that Andy made sure it was a bachelor pad so he could have girls at his place. The amount of times she had found underwear that wasn’t hers or a used condom under the bed was too many to count. Charli wondered how she had turned into such a hypocrite; she always told her friends to leave cheating partners but she hadn’t done it herself.

That needed to change now. Starting with giving back her keys to his apartment and taking her spare key back.

Charli silently let herself in. There didn’t seem to be a sign of Andy anywhere. Normally he would be in the lounge playing on his Xbox but the lounge was deserted.

He left all of his keys in a bowl in the kitchen by the toaster. The key to her apartment was in there. Charli picked it up and put it in her purse, replacing it with her set of keys. She then looked around for a notepad and pen, deciding to leave a note. While she wanted to end things face to face, it felt better to take the coward’s way out. With Andy’s unpredictable behavior she didn’t want to take a chance that she would catch the angry mood.

As she moved into the lounge to look for a notepad she knew Andy left there for emergencies, Charli noticed that Andy’s clothes were strewn across the floor. His jeans were by the coffee table, his boxers piled with them. His t-shirt was on the end of the couch, along with a lacy red bra and matching thong. Skinny jeans and a black blouse were crushed on the cushions. The jeans looked like they were stained with something that looked suspiciously like…

Charli’s heart sank. Andy was cheating. Again.

Then she heard the long, low moan. Another moan joined it and she heard Andy whisper something.

A very long time.