Musing With Imari

Midnight Showcase's Sweet Revenge Anthology

Excerpt from A Rose by Any Other Name

“What’s up babe?” Maceio asked her when he came home later that evening.  His clothes were a bit wrinkled, but he had sense enough to shower before he came home to her.  She had known him most of her life, but it wasn’t until that very moment that she saw him for what he really was…a lousy, scheming, two-timing asshole.  And there he was smiling in her face like she was supposed to be none the wiser as to what he had been up to earlier that evening.

“Nothing much,” she replied as she removed her glasses from her eyes, and pushed the novel she had been reading aside.  “What’s up with you?” she asked like she expected him to confess. 

“Nothing much.  What’s for dinner?”  He had asked that question countless times in the five years they had been living together, and for the first time she wanted to tell him, shit.  Her being a gourmet chef in her own restaurant kept his stomach full, and paid all the bills.  She guessed that was the problem.  She had just been too stupid to realize until now that Maceio was lazy and a whore-monger, and by her doing everything for him only enabled him to continue his lifestyle of being a louse.

“Gumbo,” she said as she watched him slide onto the sofa.

“Dish me up some,” he said as he reached for the remote control.  He turned the television on and shrugged out of his suit jacket and loosened his tie.

 She rose from the chair and looked down at him as she passed on the way to the kitchen.  This was it, the final straw.  She would feed his lazy ass this time, but no more.  She had had it with him.