Flaccid Flanagan

To say that I was exhausted when I got back to my own room would be a rigid understatement.

And while I am truly exhausted from running through halls, got off on the wrong floor and had to take the emergency stairs to the floor below, all the while dressed in only a white bathing robe, is my embarrassment coating my face. I didn’t need to look myself in the mirror before I know I was currently beet red.

I had no time to collapse into the bed, but I had just enough time to put on the clothes I had discarded the night before, since I had absolutely no idea where the sexy black dress from the night before had disappeared to. It’s all going to be fine, I just need to…

My phone rings and I pick it up within a heartbeat.

“Hello?” It’s Daniel.

“Yes?”

“I am waiting for you outside, come down within five minutes or you’d have to make your way home by yourself.”

Its more than enough time.

I sigh heavily remembering that the jerk floors above had not promised to keep that secret, and that he almost spilled it on the phone to Daniel, in my own presence. Taunting or not, he’s a jerk.

As I turn to leave the room, my eyes land on the brown envelope he had pressed into my hands before leaving and I stuff it into the other polythene bag with me. I’ll check later but for now, I need to make peace with my husband.

It takes two minutes to get downstairs and an extra one and half to check out of the hotel, I hope to never return here again.

Daniel is already tapping his feet and checking his wristwatch over and over again as I walk out through the double doors. “Hey honey.” I try for a guiltless greeting but he plainly ignores me and just enters into the car, shutting the door loudly and starting the engine as I settle into the seat beside him in front.

“I’m going to work. My office is closer to the house than this place is so I just came to pick you up. You’d have to use an Uber to get home or something, I don’t know.”

What a gentleman, “Hm.” I mutter, resigning to my thoughts.

The drive seemed to have gone on for much longer than it definitely went because I could’ve sworn we spent a whole hour in the car but it was just a few minutes past midday when we arrive.

“I want you to see something before you leave.” Daniel finally talks to me again, leaving me behind while I trail after him like a homeless woman. We take the elevator together, the distance between us quite palpable but still, I don’t say anything.

We walk into the lobby of his office and his secretary stands up, watching us walk past into the office where I shut the door behind me.

He stalks over to his table and picks up a white document and flings it at my feet. Hesitantly, and slightly hurt, I bend down to pick it up and read it.

“What you’re reading is the debt I have incurred from losing that deal, and IT IS ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT!” He suddenly raises his voice at me and I flinch. “If you’re not so incapable as a person, and even worse, as a woman, what on earth can you possibly do right?”

“What…?” I manage to stutter, my brain in shambles, so many things I want to say and yet shock and surprise would not make the words easy to come out.

“Because of your incompetence at keeping a man busy for a night, I have lost the deal.”

“Why are you blaming your incapability on me? You could not land a deal without dirty and cheap tricks such as sending your wife as an escort for a night, and I am the one that’s at fault here?” I scoff, not able to believe everything I just heard.

Just then, the door to the office opens and his secretary walks in.

I frown. Isn’t it protocol that whenever a personal meeting is going on, a good secretary should stay out and keep others out, and obviously, she must have heard his raised voice from outside, so what gives her the audacity to cone in here while a husband and wife are having a spat?

“Look, Raees, you manage to spend all my money without any abandon and I let you, but one time I want you to help me earn the money we live off of, it’s a problem?”

I frown even deeper. “Look, this is between us Daniel, please tell your secretary to excuse us.”

“Excuse me ma’am, I am Cecelia, you can’t just tag my identity as a secretary as all I am.”

“What the…” I manage to stutter before realizing something.

Daniel does not chastise her or scold her, or in the least, tell her to excuse us.

“This is between myself and my husband, so please excuse us., Cecelia.” I repeat firmly, hoping my instincts are muttering quite wrongly.

They were not.

“She is my secretary and understands what I go through, trying to make enough for both us every single day, even better than you whose title is just wife.”

Just wife?!

“Daniel, you asked me to seduce your opponent and I did my best at it, its not my fault he still won it, it’s probably because he is more competent than you, and do you know something? He knew you sent me from when he saw me at the bar. I am not incompetent, I am a wife not an escort and even before that, I am fucking woman. And do you know what my woman instincts are telling me right now? That you and secretary here,” not Cecelia, “are fucking.”

She rolls her eyes, and it only confirms it.

“Wow, Daniel, I have been so damn stupid.” I mutter.

Daniel suddenly scoffs, no sign of remorse on his smug, ugly face. “She pleases me better than you do, work and bed wise.”

“How shameless you both are. One sleeps with her boss knowing he is married and the other is quite shameless enough to both be a loser and a cheater.”

“What did you just call me?”

“A loser and a shameless cheater.” I repeat it without thinking twice and the next sound in the room is that of a slap, on my cheeks.

Daniel Flanagan raised his flaccid arms and slapped me.

It did not hurt, not one bit.

I even chuckled as my hands resisted the urge to massage my cheeks. “We are over, Mr. Flanagan.” I say, and slam a piece of paper in front of him. “Sign it, and Cecelia can move in whenever she likes.”

Daniel frowns and looks down at the paper in my hands. “Divorce? You must be kidding me.”

“See, Cecelia? The one you though you snagged? He has no backbone, doesn’t even want to move in with you, are you sure you want to ruin your life with him?” I taunt both of them, hoping against all hope…

Cecelia whispers something to him and nudges his shoulder and still he looks unsure.

“Go ahead and sign it, I want nothing of your manageable assets, if you don’t sign now, ill take it court and if I do, I will take ninety percent of your assets and you know I’m not bluffing. Sign it now before Cecelia leaves you for being poor.”

The taunting works because Daniel leans down and signs the piece of paper, just below mine.

Who would have known that the document that Reid had said I’d need would be a divorce document? And I’d need it so soon?

“I know this is just an ordinary piece of paper.” He chuckles, trying and failing to save face.

“It was not nice knowing you, Mr. Flaccid up and down,” I look down at his groins, “Flanagan. I never got an orgasm for you once.”

That was just yesterday and now, back to the present, I am on my way back home, the proverbial prodigal daughter retracing her steps.