Unsuitable Men by Nia Forrester

well after eight that evening before Tracy was able to leave the office. She checked her phone and there were five missed calls. Three were from Riley and two from her mother. She called Riley back as she was riding in the car service’s Lincoln, on her way home, hoping that she would be on the line long enough to make a call to her mother in Georgia impractical because of the lateness of the hour. Thankfully, her mother was still old-fashioned enough to believe that it was ill-mannered to call past nine p.m. unless it was an emergency.
    “You’re not in labor, are you?” she asked Riley when she picked up.
    “No, unfortunately not,” Riley said groaning. “And I’m losing my mind from boredom over here. I don’t know what’s going on at work, and Shawn watched me all weekend like a hawk. Come to think of it, where the hell have you been? You never called me back. I wanted to hear how the opening of the club was on Friday.”
    Oh. That’s right. She hadn’t told Riley about the weekend. But for some reason she didn’t want to subject it to examination just yet.
    “The opening was fine. They did a great job with the decorating of the space.  And of course, your husband left as soon as he could.”
    “Yeah, he got back early. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I wondered how it was with Brendan. Was Meghan there?”
    “She was. And I found other company.”
    “Oh.”
    Tracy let that hang there for a moment. Even if she didn’t feel ready to share everything, she wasn’t planning to lie to her best friend either. She just hoped like hell, Riley didn’t ask any pointed questions.
    “Well I’m still at the condo if you wanted to stop by this week,” Riley said after a few more moments of silence. “Shawn is in Philly with Brendan for a couple of days, so we can have some girl time.”
    Brendan was in Philly? He hadn’t mentioned that he was going away. But of course, why should he? If he did mention it to anyone, it would be to Meghan. Still, it felt unexpectedly hurtful that they’d spent all that time together and she’d mentioned dinner and he didn’t think to tell her he would be out of town. Tracy went through the rest of the conversation with Riley on auto-pilot and when they were done she called Brendan’s number, opted to go directly to voicemail and left him a very nasty message about his failure to communicate. Doing that made her feel tons better and once home, she was able to eat her dinner with gusto and after a shower, fall directly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
    The cacophony of a dog barking woke her up around two in the morning and Tracy sat upright in bed, wondering who was out in the street with their dog at this ungodly hour. It took her a moment to recall that the barking was the ringtone she’d set for Brendan’s number. Now he wanted to call her back? At two thirty-six a.m.?
    She grabbed the phone from the charger and hit the answer button.
    “What is it?” she hissed.
    “What is it?” he repeated, his voice calm. “You call and leave me that shitty message and then you want to know why I’m calling you back?”
    “I don’t think it was shitty,” Tracy said, trying to clear her mind and bring it to full wakefulness. “It was direct. I was letting you know how I felt about . . .”
    “About what Tracy? The fact that I didn’t share my travel itinerary with you?”
    She said nothing. Well, if he wanted to look at it that way.
    “You are so spoiled ,” he said. “I told you I had stuff this week and that I might be slammed, didn’t I?”
    Tracy said nothing. Oh, yes.
    “Didn’t I?” he insisted.
    “Yes,” she said meekly.
    “Then what is your fucking problem?”
    She normally might have objected to having him speak to her that way, but there was an undertone in his voice, an amused indulgence, like he was saying she was spoiled but didn’t actually mind spoiling her. And besides he was calling now; he hadn’t even wanted to wait until the morning, and