When the driver pulls in, Bronx’s car is in my driveway. I groan at the sight of it. I know Joey is friends with the Taylors, but I can only take so much of them. I don’t care if she hangs out with Rebekah, but Bronx is another story.
I slam the door in frustration and the driver pulls away. I didn’t even give him a chance to get out and open my door. After a long day of filming the last thing I want to do is deal with Bronx.
“Joey,” I holler, slamming the door for effect. I want her to know I’m pissed. She should’ve texted me to give me a heads up that they’re going to be here. I enter the living room, half expecting the windows to be open and to find them outside, but instead I’m met with Bronx sitting on my couch with a mess of something on the coffee table.
“Where’s Joey?”
“Nice to see you, too.” He doesn’t move from my couch. In fact, he crosses his leg over his other as if he’s welcome to stay.
“Where’s Joey?” I ask again.
He shakes his head and sighs, pissing me off even more. My day was utter shit and I just want to crawl into bed with my wife and forget everything.
“She left.”
“What do you mean she left?”
“I mean Joey decided to look at her wedding dress today and found it ripped to shreds, along with an assortment of fucking photos of you and Jules. And because that wasn’t enough torture, she decided to go snooping in your closet and found an article about you and Jules going to a doctor’s appointment so she fucking left you, Josh,” he says, standing.
“I warned her about you and Jules, but she wouldn’t listen. And when Jules said she was pregnant I told you both that it’s not yours, but you have the gall to tell Joey that Jules wouldn’t lie to you? Look at this mess, Josh. Do you think Joey tore up her own fucking dress? Do you think she took pictures of Jules lying on your bed? When did you think it would be okay for you and Jules to pose for pictures while you’re cuddled up on your couch? Newsflash, buddy, it’s never fucking okay. You should’ve let Joey go when the show ended.”
I’m trying to digest Bronx’s words, but they’re muted and mumbled. I can’t get past keywords of Joey being gone, her dress being ruined, and Jules. I can see the picture on the table, but my vision is blurred from a mixture of tears and anger. Why would Joey leave and not talk to me about this first?
Because she’s been down this path before, that’s why. And I promised to never do that to her.
“Where is she, Bronx?”
He shrugs. “I’m not fucking telling you.”
“She’s my wife,” I say with authority. “I have a right to know.”
“Your rights sailed when you stuck your dick back into Jules. Here’s what I don’t get, Josh. Joey fucking loves you. She worships the ground you walk on, why do this to her? Why fill her head with false promises?”
“I didn’t. I do love her. This shit with Jules …” I pick up a photo—it’s of her and me together, but I don’t remember taking it. “I didn’t take these and I haven’t been to any appointments with her.”
“There’s proof,” he says, picking up the heap on the table and dropping it back down. “How do you explain all of this? And her dress, Josh? Joey opened her fucking home to that witch and this is how she repays her?”
I sit down and rake my hands over my face, groaning out loud in frustration. “The dress was in Joey’s closet, which would mean Jules went in there on one of the nights she showed up here.” I pick up a tattered piece of her dress; it’s an off-white, almost beige color and reminds me of the champagne we shared after she agreed to marry me again. Tears prickle my eyes as I clutch the fabric to my chest.
“I didn’t cheat, nor did I lie to her,” I tell Bronx even though I don’t owe him anything. “I’m so in love with her, it hurts. I physically ache when she’s not near me, and knowing that I knocked up Jules kills me inside every single day. I know its destroying Joey, too. I would never do this to her, go to those appointments and not tell her.”
“Yeah, well, it sure looks like it.”
The photos are spread out all over the couch, mocking me. I pick up a few and feel the bile burning my throat. Jules spread out on our bed in nothing but a shirt with her bulging belly sticking up. She’s smiling, like this is some kind of game to her. But who took the photo? When was she in our house when we weren’t home?
“The baby isn’t yours, Josh.”
“Why do you keep saying that? Is it to give Joey hope that this nightmare goes away?”
He shakes his head and sits back down on the couch as if he’s welcome. He’s not. I want him to leave after he tells me where to find my wife.
“Because I was with her the night before I met Rebekah, which happens to be about a month before you went on the show. I made the mistake of bringing Jules back to my apartment. We had been drinking and shit started getting heavy. She’s a sure fucking thing, so I fucked her.”
“You son of a bitch! This whole time I’m sweating bullets, trying to reassure my wife that I’m devoted to her and you’re the fucking father?”
“No, I’m not. When I was with her she had an implant in her arm. I’m not a fucking doctor, but unless she took it out and you have miracle sperm I doubt she can be pregnant by you.”
It’s the same shit he’s been spewing to Joey for months, but I haven’t listened because I wanted to trust Jules. We had been together, but I can’t recall when the last time was. I know we had been and I hadn’t been using a condom. That thought alone makes my stomach roll.