Slashing Tires

*A part of this prompt also made it into one of my stories; All That You Can't Leave Behind*
Starting Line: Six months? Six months in jail for slashing my ex-husband's tires? Have they gone mad? Didn't they know he had it coming to him?


Six months? Six months in jail for slashing my ex-husband's tires? Have they gone mad? Didn't they know he had it coming?

To think that I'd spent the last year of my life getting over our divorce and wondering why he couldn't love me back all for it to come down to that night. I'd finally moved on. I had finally found a man that I loved and he loved me back. He didn't treat me like some trophy on his arm.

"Want to tell me what happened?" My attorney asked. He had a slight grin on his face as if he could only imagine the sordid details. Or maybe he was working for Tyler. Maybe his incompetance was just the icing on the cake Tyler had served me.

I went through the details feeling defeated and unhinged from the situation around me.

Brad and I were planning a trip back to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. It was one of the few nights he'd spent at my place since we started dating five months earlier. Adam was in bed, fast asleep. Brad and I were in the kitchen putting dinner dishes away, joking about the things my brothers would say and do when they met him for the first time over our extended holiday vacation.

The doorbell rang. It was close midnight. My first thought was that it was Trevor and his latest breakup with the cute Starbucks barista I would have sworn was straight. But when Brad opened the door it was Tyler---drunk and staggering in the doorway as if he were going to collapse at any second.

"Where's September?" He mumbled incoherently.

I was prepared to throw him out on his ear but the look on his face had stopped me. There was something important he had to say. Not the important that Tyler usually thought was worth interrupting my evening but truly heavy.

He stumbled towards me and Brad gave me a look as if asking if I wanted him to get rid of Tyler for the night. I shook my head and let him stagger his way into the kitchen. Brad must have busied himself in the downstairs office because when I turned to find him he was gone.

"I have something to tell you September." Tyler mumbled. His face was streaked with tears. Eyes red and swollen. His mouth hung open after his words as if it were too much energy to pull it back up.

"We've been divorced now for six months and you still feel the need to cause trouble for me and Brad?" I asked, keeping my distance from him on the other side of the counter.

"That's not what this is about. This is about my baby." He paused and I felt the first stab of fear clenching my throat. "Remember how you wouldn't even let me touch you after we lost the second baby? I wanted to make things right but you wouldn't let me near you."

I expected venom to accompany his words but it sounded more like regret.

"Rember the last night we were together?" He asked.

I remembered it very clearly. I was in our bedroom reading a book, trying not to think about the life that had been growing inside of me only a few weeks earlier. He was so loving and understanding for about three seconds before he threw his clothes on and left the house. He didn't come back for two days.

"I met Stacey. She was a waitress. I had way too much to drink and I ended up crashing at her place." He sounded disgusted with himself and I could barely contain the rage that erupted inside of me.

"Two months later I get a voicemail from her that says she's pregnant." He let this thought settle in.

"She just had the baby. She's only a few days old. And Stacey doesn't want her but the little girl deserves a family, doesn't she? I was thinking tonight that you and me could be her family. I could be her father and you could be her mother. It's the perfect solution. You couldn't give me another child and now I have one. It's what we both wanted but didn't think we could have." He gave a weary grin.

But I was still in shock. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? That I had failed at giving him more children so this was supposed to be the patch that put us back together? He had an affair and a child! All those months I blamed myself for our divorce but really it was his own guilt that pushed us apart.

"If you don't want to be her mother, I'm not being her father. I can't take care of an infant by myself." He started to sob, really break down and sob.

So I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed. Every string of pain that had ever been attached to our marriage came hauling out of me in that moment. I felt my face flush red, my body go tense, the sound coming from the very pit of my stomach. And I picked up the closet object to me, a half empty bottle of wine, and lobbed it at him.

Shards of glass exploded off the fridge door. If I hadn't been crying and screaming my aim wouldn't have been so off. I just screamed louder for the fact that I'd missed him, that he'd had an affair, that he had a child, a child that I'd wanted to give him, and because we were no longer a family he was going to walk away from her, leave her to strangers to be raised.

Even as I sat there telling the attorney what happened, tears were brimming again. I promised myself I wouldn't cry over that low-life ever again, but the past few days I'd cried myself to sleep.

"So Brad made him leave. I went to bed. The next morning I woke up and he was still in the driveway. So I pulled a kitchen knife out of the drawer and attacked the tires on his truck. The law should be thankful that I controlled my temper or they'd have a murder case on their hands." I folded my arms across my chest and sat back in the chair, those harsh florescent lights glaring down at me.

"Well, he certainly had something coming." My attorney gruffed. He looked just as angry as I was hurt. He closed his briefcase and stood, knocking on the door for the officer to let him out. "I'll have bail posted in a minute. Don't worry. We'll get this taken care of. I have a feeling Mr. Grayson doesn't want this to get out."

As he walked away I couldn't help but think about Brad. The words he'd said to me after he'd gotten Tyler back in the truck and came to the kitchen to clean up the broken glass shards.

"You still love him. A part of you still loves him. That's why this hurts so much. I just hope there's a part of you that loves me more." I'd never heard him sounding so disheveled before.

Maybe he was right about Tyler and that just made me even more angry. How could I love someone who'd hurt me so much throughout the years?