December fifteenth had started out just like any other for . Her husband, Shane was on a press tour for his band’s latest single leaving her to manage the up keep of their home. He was due home that night to spend a rare day off with her the next day before leaving again for a few days until finally coming home for their Christmas plans on the twenty-third. Usually it would’ve bothered her to no end that he would only be home for one day but today was different. Her best friend, , was supposed to be arriving at her house in a couple of hours to help her prepare one of her specialty dishes. Cooking was one of her favourite stress relievers and stress was something that she had grown far too accustomed to over the past decade. The meal would serve as a congratulatory meal for all of his hard work in sticking to his promise of paying off his debts and, hopefully, would mark the beginning of an unexpected – but extremely welcome – change in their lives should she get the very phone call she had been waiting on before he arrived home.
Standing in line at the bank, though, had to be one of her least favourite things, well, apart from dusting. She crinkled her nose at the thought; dusting always made her feel dirty. The only upside to paying the bills was that after just over seven years of frustration thanks to Shane’s bankruptcy, things were finally starting to look up. During that period she had been particularly glad that most of their assets were in her name. He had always had issues with money, starting when he had first received his first paycheque from his weekend and after school job working in his parents’ café. It had begun with buying her a small, inexpensive handbag that she had taken a liking to on a day out and had snowballed from there. After all those years they suddenly had small pockets of money left over in their budget and they could finally begin to try to start a family. Although they couldn’t have children biologically – a devastating blow that at times they had thought they would never recover from – they had had their hearts set on adoption for quite some time now. Despite the initial shock over not being able to conceive due to having endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome – of which there is no cure for either -, adoption felt like the right approach for them. It was like they had finally found a piece of a puzzle they had started but could never seem to complete. They had even allowed themselves to daydream of their future; something they hadn’t felt at ease doing after the initial diagnosis. Quite spectacularly, though, their dream of a house filled to the brim with kids seemed to be coming to fruition a whole lot sooner than they could ever have anticipated thanks to some sort of holy miracle that had discovered through a conversation she had had earlier in the week. She was still awaiting confirmation but she was hopeful that that would come in the next few hours, preferably before dinner time. Sighing contentedly, she wondered how she would actually tell Shane if the confirmation were to come through. She was soon jostled out of her daydream by a small nudge to her back indicating that the line was moving.

Pulling up in front of her house a couple of hours later she noticed that ’s car was already in the two-car drive along with Shane’s which he had left behind before embarking on his press tour. She parked on the road, the slushy snow on the pavement and a small gate being the only thing to separate the outside world from their modest garden. They had had to downsize due to Shane’s debts and had managed to buy a more reasonably sized house in a quiet, gated off area where they weren’t disturbed by fans of his turning up at the door at all hours or in danger of being stalked by the media like they had at their other house. With the money from the sale of their first house they had been able to purchase this smaller one and the rest had gone to paying various loan companies. Assuming that her friend was already inside, she unloaded her car of the grocery bags, locked it and made her way to the door. Just as expected the door was unlocked. As she walked in she could’ve sworn that she had caught a whiff of Shane’s signature aftershave – something she hadn’t managed to get him to cut back his splurging on – floating towards her. She wrinkled her nose, the scent tickling her senses. That was weird. What was weirder was that there was no sign of at all. Continuing through to the kitchen she spied ’s keys on the sideboard as she passed it in the hallway. She was definitely here but a deep, nagging feeling put her off from calling out for her. Ignoring her gut, she figured that her friend had nipped to the bathroom to freshen up before attempting to help her organise and cook. Placing the bags of food on the small kitchen island, backtracked and headed for the stairs; she was eager to show the outfit she had put together out of the wardrobe she had limited herself to over the last seven years. As she neared the top of them she heard low voices and saw a smattering of clothing leading down the hallway ranging from her own clothing that had borrowed – probably never to return them – to men’s clothing that, had she not been annoyed at her friend’s complete disregard for respect for her or her home, she would have thought would’ve suited Shane to a tee. She furrowed her brow. Who had brought back with her this time? She groaned to herself. She should’ve realised that ’s keenness to help her out was only a thinly veiled, and an entirely unsuccessful, way of trying to make jealous of her single lifestyle. It was something she had been doing ever since and Shane had gotten together some seventeen years prior and her incessant gloating had gotten worse over the last eight years, apparently triggered off by the pair finally getting married. She could quite clearly hear two sets of moans coming from the direction of the room had claimed as her own next to theirs. She had been staying with them for a few months whilst she looked for a new place to live and, although it had been fine initially as could never let her friend go homeless, she had unwillingly become accustomed to bringing strangers home with her and she was getting sick of her friend taking advantage of their hospitality. The noises only grew louder the closer she got to the two bedroom doors and she had to stop herself from completely losing it when she discovered that they weren’t coming from ’s room but her own. Throwing the door open, fully expecting to scare off whatever company her friend was keeping, she felt the life being sucked out of her when she realised that it wasn’t a complete stranger she was with. It was Shane.
The heavy room door flew back, hitting the wall with a bang and bouncing back as if on a string causing the female occupant of the room to shriek, covering up her chest with the satin throw that had been a gift from Shane’s grandmother. had never really liked the thing, and with no chance of that happening now, she was all for setting it alight.
felt as though she was at a dizzying height, staring down into a black abyss of which she was afraid of falling into. Marching angrily towards the bed she grabbed ’s arm and pulled her off of her husband causing the satin to slink away from ’s grip. She hurried her down the stairs and towards the door – still without a stitch on – where the cold December air was waiting for her exposed body. opened up the door and pushed her out into the snow, locking the door behind her. She could hear banging on the door, cursing when she slipped on some compacted snow under her feet as she took the stairs two by two only to be met by Shane at the top who had apparently managed to find his boxers.

“-“

sent a glare his way, pushing past him and bending down to pick up the clothes that had been discarded at her feet. She could sense him wanting, almost yearning, to check on and, without turning around, spoke only five words to him;

“Do it and you’re dead.” That stopped him in his tracks.

Barging her way into ’s room, she threw most of ’s scattered belongings into her open holdalls at the foot of the bed not bothering to zip them up. When most of the useless clutter had been stuffed inside the bags, she picked them up and strode towards a third bedroom, the clothing from the landing in her other hand. Once inside, she dropped the bags, pulled the curtains as far back as they could go and flung open the window. She could see hopping from foot to foot in a bid to stay warm below her. Hearing the window open squinted upwards, her hands moving wildly trying to cover her dignity. Not that she had any, decided.

“Give me back my clothes!” A small crowd consisting of nosey neighbours had gathered across the road and they had begun gossiping, pointing at the naked woman who had her back turned to them and, through sheer luck, was covered by a waist-height hedge. Some had taken out their phones, snapping pictures and taking videos of the sight before them, no doubt to send to the tabloids as evidence of a beloved celebrity’s affair. could see tomorrow’s headlines forming in front of her eyes clear as day: “POPSTAR’S WIFE FINDS HIM IN BED WITH HOMELESS BEST FRIEND”.

Looking back down at , rolled her eyes, increasingly tempted to throw a bucket of ice-cold water over her.

She chose to engage with her instead, “Aside from the fact they are actually my clothes, much like with my husband you just helped yourself to them so they are all yours.” She threw down the thin items of clothing, the material landing in a pile of dirty, sludge-like snow that she was not at all sorry for. If she had kept them she would’ve been likely to incinerate them along with the throw. She shut the window with a deafening thud and spun on her heels only to come face-to-face with Shane.

She just stared at him, arms crossed over her heaving chest. She was beyond rage at this point.

He looked at her sheepishly and she just knew what he was thinking.

“Don’t you dare tell me that ‘this isn’t what it looks like’, Shane,” she cut him off before he had a chance to speak. She shot past him again, ’s bags in tow and rushed down the stairs to the door, unlocking it for a second time. She hurled the bags at her now ex-best friend, narrowly missing her head.

“You’ll find the rest of your things in the skip by Monday.”

Shane reached out to pull her inside, the commotion causing more neighbours to peer outside their windows, but she got the better of him and yanked him outside in all his boxer-clad glory for every last neighbour to see. With her adrenaline pumping furiously through her veins, she forcibly pushed him towards . The voices from across the way jumbled in her head, too overlapped for her to even comprehend what they were saying.

“Oh, and you can keep him!”

She stormed back inside, her heart hammering in her chest as though it were fit to give out at any given second. She slammed the door behind her, locking it for a final time – latch included – and succumbed to the fact that her legs were too weak to carry her any longer, sliding down onto the floor and bursting into messy, angry tears. A cloud of humiliation, resentment and fury washed over her as she broke down. She buried her face in her knees and bound her hands to her ears in a bid to block out the noises from outside. The murmurings of the crowd were drowned out within seconds as she went from a woman possessed to a blubbering wreck. Never in an eternity of thoughts would she have ever even begun to think that both her husband and her best friend would betray her, much less together and in her own bed of all places.

When she finally managed to stop – if just for a few moments – she made a promise to herself. could have Shane, that she was sure of, but if Shane wanted to play some cruel, twisted game then she was going to give back as good as she got. Just watch me.

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