CHAPTER 1 – NEXT EX
Fiction
“Where is he?” Sia puffed as she checked the freshly applied makeup on her almond shaped eyes. Her date was late. And if there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was someone wasting her time. “Damn, doesn’t he know how much time I take to be this hot? He could at least be on time. Strike one,” she said aloud. Dating seemed like all Sia did these days. To be honest it seems like all she had ever done. That was until she meet Rus a couple years ago. But now that was a not-so-distant painful memory.
After calling off her wedding last year to Rus everything had been a whirlwind. Most of the time she dated to avoid the pain of what happened. What a fool she was; she thought. For girls like Sia fairy tales really didn’t happen her mom had said. “Besides when was the last time you saw a foster child with a dysfunctional family and a kid end up happy?” Her mom continued with a laugh. Sia agreed. She knew that those ending weren’t meant for her and she would never make that mistake again. As she sat on the couch in her townhouse clicking her four inch stiletto on her area rug she thought back six months ago to the call that changed everything.
At the office Sia wasn’t allowed to have her phone on her so she keep it in the drawer of her desk. Normally the only people that really called her were Rus and Javier. Rus was her finance and she just never got enough of him. From the first day they meet he became her safe place. There was no one else in the world that she loved more than Rus other than God and her son Stephen. Javier however was another story. He was her son Steven’s dad. For him just keeping a job was a daily challenge. So they only talked as needed. Which was more than she liked most days.
However, today she heard the repeated buzz from her top drawer. Between patients she glanced at her phone quickly and recognized the 314 area code as St. Louis, Mo, her home state, but the number didn’t register. Sia had moved to Indianapolis a year ago after breaking up with Rus. They had been dating for two years before she moved and he still wasn’t ready to settle down. And though she loved him she had to do what was best for her son. A son needs his father she had come to realize. So she moved to Indianapolis where Javier and his very large family lived. To Sia family didn’t mean much anymore. Her family hated her and didn’t care if she lived or died. But she wanted so much more for Stephen. So she took a leap of faith and moved. To her surprise shortly afterwards Rus declared that he couldn’t live without her and popped the question. They decided that In the meantime he would stay in St. Louis for a year and then relocate to Indy with Sia and Stephan. Everything was finally coming together or though she thought.
When Sia went to lunch she checked her phone. Five voicemail messages. Strange, she thought. Maybe Rus was calling from a different number. Sia hit the voicemail icon on her Galaxy 5 and listened. “Sia, this is Tara. Rus’s baby’s mother. I need you to call me back ASAP!. You won’t believe this!”. “Damn”, Sia said exhaustively. A call from Tara was never good. She looked down at her ring. A two carat princess cut diamond stared back. Lord knows she had earned it dealing with Tara. Normally Sia didn’t like to talk bad about other mothers but Tara was as crazy as they got. It baffled her how Rus ended up with someone like her. She never worked and lived off of child support and the state. And the going rate for having four children by Rus was affording Tara a pretty nice life. There was really no reason to put it off. Without listening to the other four messages she decided to call back. Sia knew that she would need to see what was up with Tara before she really started acting nuts. Tara was a terror to say the least. She hit the call button and held her breath.
Sia was jolted back to reality with a hard knock at her door. “About time”, she said loudly and yanked the door open.