The Hook-up

Chapter 217

Bruno went to bed in the middle of the night, after drinking every single bottle of alcohol in the house. He ignored phone calls and texts from his side of the family asking him how Christmas was and what he was going to do for the new year. He threw his phone on the ground after yelling at it several times. He felt something wet on his face early in the morning. "Laur...get him off meeeee...." he whined hoping to feel the dog pulled away from her, instead feeling it all get more slobbery. "Get the hell of, Geronimo..." he moaned looking at the floor seeing the bottles had thrown around on the floor and several empty spaces in the closet. "Oh fuckkk...what did we argue about this time?" he asked himself walking around the house picking things up one by one walking toward the trash. He found his phone near the kitchen after he finished cleaning up the bottles. He saw all the text messages trying to put together the events of that evening. It's the day after Christmas. Did we really get in the back of a fight? He thought to himself as he scrolled through the unanswered messages landing on Damaris's last message reading Thank you. Call me after you talk to her. "What did I do?" he asked himself scrolling through the messages seeing that he had told Damaris that he didn't love his wife anymore. "Oh no..." he started to dial the phone not sure if he was calling Damaris or Lauren.

"Oh, Bruno. How did she take it?" he heard Damaris's voice on the other end.

"Not well." he said glancing at the table seeing her wedding ring on the counter. Shit. Not good.

"What did she say?" Damaris asked him not realizing how drunk he was.

"She left, D. She left the house. With the babies and everything. She..." he paused choking up a little bit grabbing her ring reading the inscription of Always on the ring. "She gave me her ring back."

"Isn't that what you wanted?" she asked him.

"I didn't say anything. I don't know what I want..." he answered still playing with the ring.

"You said you wanted to be with me. You said you didn't want to her hurt her. So you told her." Damaris tried to rationalize for him.

"But I don't know..." he said moving to his hand to head feeling it start to spin.

"You know what I want to do with you right now?" Damaris asked him. "I want to help you make up your mind...." she said with a seductive inflection.

"Next week, Damaris. I need to try to at least bearable for her...." he told Damaris. There was a few seconds of silence before he spoke again. "I may not be in love with her, Damaris, but I love her. "

"What the hell are you talking about?" Damaris asked getting frustrated with him.

"Damaris!" he shouted into the phone. "We have two kids! I love them more than anything in the world. And she's their mother. No matter how hard you try...." he said calming down a bit. "You will never get rid of her. She will always be part of me. We will exchange kids and go to games and see each other at schools and birthdays. She will be there. Will you be able to handle that without killing all five of us?"

"I don't know." she sighed. "She was the one that beat you up, not me."

"You better." he said to her firmly. "If you want any of this to work."

**

"Do you want to go get your things?" Rose asked Lauren the next morning.

"Not yet." she told her mother. "He's leaving tomorrow for a week. We can figure it out then. I have enough stuff for all of us right now. And then I'll put it all in storage until I can find somewhere better for us."

"Lauren...is that the best?" Rose asked.

"He's not here anyway. If anyone asks I just say the house it too big when he's gone. It bothers me anyway, that it's so big and it's me, the dogs and the babies. It's too big."

"And where are you going to go?" Rose asked. "You don't have the money..."

"Mom!" Lauren asked shocked. "Ihave money. I am working. I have a great job. I make well more than enough for me and the babies."

"I thought you shared all the money.." Rose told her.

"We do. I mean, his. But I have a separate bank account for all my work money. I have like $200,000 saved."

"Wow. You save your money like your father." Rose said proud of her daughter. "So where are you going to go?" she asked.

"Back to where all this started." she answered her mother returning to her children to feed them breakfast.