The Unwanted Wife: Revenge After Divorce

AMELIA

I stuffed a large piece of toast into my mouth and tried to swallow. It was hard to. I grabbed my cup of coffee and drank half the coffee so fast my eyes started to water. The toast eventually slid down my throat and I sighed in relief. I still ate quickly but a lot more carefully now. I wanted to finish eating breakfast before Damian woke up, not choke myself to death. Practically running away from the house so as not to confront Damain was a cowardly move, I knew that. But this morning, I could not bear to face Damian’s wrath. He was sure to be pissed about my date with Colin. Though I knew I had held my own during our argument last night, arguing with him wasn’t something I was looking forward to doing on a daily basis.

I accidentally scalded my tongue as I tried to gulp down the remaining coffee when I heard footsteps approaching. I visibly relaxed when I seconds later, I saw it was Molly, and not Damian as I had thought.

“Yes, Molly. What is it?” I asked.

Please, let it not be Damian asking about my whereabouts.

“You have a delivery, ma’am,” she said.

I stared at her in surprise. A delivery? I was pretty sure that I had not ordered anything at all and if anyone at the bakery had ordered something, it was sure to have been delivered at the bakery, not in my house. Perhaps the delivery was for Damian. If that were the case, it would be wise for me to exit the scene before Molly went to wake him up.

“Are you sure the delivery is for me?” I asked.

“Yes. The deliveryman called your name.”

“Okay. Show him into the living room. I will be right behind you.”

I quickly finished the rest of my breakfast in a few seconds. The delivery man, followed by Molly, came in with wrapped boxes of gifts and a large bouquet of flowers. When I saw the flowers were tulips, I immediately knew who they were from. Colin.

I was really surprised at this. Colin had certainly gone all out to impress me. Why though? I could not remember giving him my house address. So how had he gotten it then?

“Madam?”

I instantly focused my attention on the deliveryman who was valiantly trying to hold on to the gifts and flowers without dropping anyone. It was a battle he was fast loosing.

“Oh.” I pointed to the sofa behind him. “You can put the gift boxes there.”

He gratefully put the boxes down. I took the flowers from him. He held his clipboard out to me and showed me where to sign.

“Have a nice day,” he called on his way out the door.

I reflected that I would really have a nice day only if I managed to get all this stuff to my room without Damian seeing me. Had I thought he would be pissed that I had gone on the date with Colin? That was a laugh! Damian would be more than royally pissed if he found out I was receiving flowers from another man. Him seeing this would be like adding salt to an already festering wound. I scooped up the gift boxes and turned to execute my plan of hiding everything in my room.

Damian was standing right behind me. He was staring-no- glaring at me. How long had he even been standing there? I pushed the bouquet of flowers between both hands, unconsciously trying to make them as small as possible. It was useless. They were very visible. Damian’s eyes drifted from my face to the flowers. If looks could kill, I was sure the flowers would have wilted on the spot.

“Good morning,” I said.

He didn’t respond but I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I walked past him and went into my room. I half expected Damian to come storming after me, demanding that I explain myself. I was relieved when he didn’t do that. We didn’t speak to each other until I left for work and I felt I had gotten off easy. The moment I settled down in my office, I texted Colin. Ever since I received Colin’s gifts, and all through the drive to work, I kept racking my brains, trying to remember if I had told him my address.

Thanks for the gifts, I typed. The flowers were beautiful as usual. Quick question though. How did you get my address?

You told me your address during our date. Remember? Colin typed a few minutes later. And you are always welcome anytime.

I stared at the first line of Colin’s message again. Had I really told Colin where I lived? All I remembered telling him was the identity of the man I was married to. After some minutes of thinking, I shook my head to clear it. Colin was probably right. It’s not as if I remembered every detail of our dinner date anyway. I had been a little tipsy then.

Pushing thoughts of Colin, gifts and Damisny out of my mind with some effort, I pulled my computer towards me and turned it on. I found I had several important work emails from my staff at the mall. There was even a particular email which was time sensitive and which I had to reply within minutes. I glanced at my watch and was glad to see that I had time to type a reply. I replied that email first and then moved on to the others. After that, there were some details about the mall which I had to work on. I was still on this an hour later when Rose knocked and poked her head around the door. She was smiling widely and looked really pleased at something. Maybe we had gotten a really big order.

“A customer wants to see me?” I guessed.

“No, ma’am. There’s a delivery for you.”

My pen slipped from my fingers and rolled onto the floor. What on earth was going on? Wasn’t this too much? How could Colin send two packages within an interval of a few hours? Had he lost his mind? I had told him in clear terms that I was married. I wondered if this was his way of saying he didn’t care about that.

“Rose, please sign whatever it is the deliveryman wants me to sign. When you are done, bring the package here to me.”

“Ummm. I’m afraid I can’t do that because the package is from your husband.”

What? I could have sworn that I had not heard Rose properly except for the fact that she had been speaking clearly and distinctly. The big question was, what had Damian sent to me? I could have sworn that we were not even on talking terms, so where was this coming from?

I rushed out of my office to see if this was really true. I got to the showroom and at first, I could not see the deliveryman. Then I saw the flowers and I knew he was behind them. The deliveryman was short. Most of his upper body was almost completely obscured by the humongous bouquet of flowers he was carrying. The flowers were about three times larger than the ones Colin had sent this morning.

“What is the meaning of this?” I started to ask.

But then I fell silent when I looked around and saw that I had quite an audience. Several of my staff, mostly the ladies, had dreamy looks on their faces as they stared at the flowers. Several of them were standing in groups of two or three, smiling and whispering among themselves. It wasn’t hard to know what they were talking about.

It was definitely something along the lines of how sweet it was for a husband to deliver an oversize bouquet of flowers to his wife at her place of work. They found it romantic. I, on the other hand was concerned, very concerned. The flowers were undoubtedly a sweet gesture from Damian but why was he sending me flowers now? What had changed between us?

“They are beautiful,” one of the girls said to me as I passed her.

I grunted something in reply. I tried to look pleased as I signed for the delivery. I took the flowers into my office. The tulips Colin had given were still on my desk but Damian’s flowers were too large to fit on my desk. In fact, they were too large to fit anywhere. With a sigh, I went to the door and called for Rose.

“Do you like flowers?” I asked her when she came in.All content © N/.ôvel/Dr/ama.Org.

“Oh yes. I do.”

I gestured to the flowers occupying more than half the space on my desk. “That means you’ll like these.”

“Of course. They are beautiful.”

“You can have them then.”

Rose was effusive in her thanks as she happily took the flowers away.