Charlie's Angel

29

Aaron

"Yo, Aaron can you check out my knee when you get off break?" Kyle asked as I was eating my lunch. I looked up from scrolling through my phone and nodded at him, wiping my mouth with my napkin. "Thanks."

Kyle was a careless show-off that only cared about his image. He never took training seriously and because of that, he had already injured himself three times this season. Everything was a joke to him, and he was the joke of the team. All the guys joked around with him, but none of them liked him in the slightest; he was immature and constantly made sexual jokes about the cheerleaders. He had a bright future and was very talented, if only he could get his head out of his ass and focused on that–his talent. He was a wide-receiver and won us a few games–and it went to his head.

I rolled my eyes and watched him walk off, turning back to my Caesar salad from Zaxby's. I was on a healthy kick now that Keisha warned me about my weight. When we were eating breakfast a couple of weeks ago, she said I had gained a few pounds and that I should watch what I eat. Then she went further to say that I was stressing too much about Charlie, a woman who, as she put it, "Didn't fucking want me." I waved her off at the time for the sake of not arguing in front of our son, but she badgered me for a good seven minutes before I finally just walked outside.

Of course I was stressing about Charlie. That was my wife who controlled our future with a stack of paperwork. I was anxious for the day that I was served with the divorce papers. But I tried to assure myself that she wouldn't do it if she knew I was serious about fighting for custody of Paris. Baby girl would be mine, no matter the costs.

But how do you take care of a three year old? I still didn't know.

As I munched on my salad and scrolled through my phone, I heard whistles and hoots from the hallway. I looked up from my salad as I heard heels clicking across the hallway floor and I heard a female sigh at the stupid attempts to be flirted with. She came into view, and my jaw dropped. She was a Puerto Rican with her hair in a bun, wearing a gray business suit and carrying a briefcase. She walked with a quickness, like she was on a mission to find someone–either that, or she wanted to get out of this sweaty, hallway. I didn't blame her on that.

She approached me and set her briefcase down on the table with sass. "Are you Mr. Carter?"

I finished chewing and swallowed, setting my phone down and smirked at her. "Yeah, how can I help you, baby girl?"

She rolled her eyes at me, popping open the gold clasps and holding out a manila folder out for me. "This is for you." I looked back and forth between her and the folder. Sighing, she set the folder on the table and closed her briefcase, "You have been served." She disappeared out the door, leaving a few of the guys to stare at me from where I sat.

I swallowed hard and pushed my food out of the way to take the folder between my fingers. There was a bulge near the bottom and I didn't know what it was, but I had a bad feeling in my gut. Opening the flap, I eased a stack of paperwork out of the folder and set it aside before reaching in and grabbing something cold and metal.

My gut dropped ten feet below me. The inside of my mouth dried up as I opened my palm to look at what it was.

The wedding ring.

Charlie's wedding ring stared back at me from my palm. There was a moment of pure shock and my eyebrows raised in surprise as I inspected it carefully. When the shock disappeared, I was smacked with a choking feeling that I didn't like. It started to cripple my thoughts as I tried to dismiss the thought that this was real. That it was finally over. But there was no escaping this. There was this choking feeling in the back of my throat as my eyes glazed over, seemingly frozen in my place.