Mr. Michael - a lover
“I love him, the way his forehead wrinkles up in confusion after my ever long sentences, how his left brow always looks questioning and suspicious of people's words. I loved the way he'd send me texts between the long days, asking me what I was up to and how I was holding up, telling me heissed me, wanted me, loved me. I loved the he said it, his eyes would lower to meet mine, his lips wide with a smile and voice down an octave ‘Amelia, I love you’. He'd say it like a devotion, like I should know he prayed those exact words before he slept at night. I loved how he was always there for me, bringing in every solution he knew the moment I cried for help, he'd run to me, hold me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear, I loved it. I loved every bit of the time we spent together, loving each other and holding each other through hard times, I loved his humour, he made me laugh so much, my stomach had tumbled a hundred. He was my comedian and comforter. His eyes sparkled whenever we were together. He loved me!” Amelia screamed at the top of her voice, echoing across the conference room.
The faces of everyone were predictable, there was shock written all over Jonathan's face, unable to believe that this beautiful thin woman, with red hair that flowed down her round buttocks and lips plush as a sofa spoke of his shriveled little brother like he was god.
Kensington, Jonathan's estranged wife — who liked drama more than time away from her abusive husband also wore a face of disbelief. She had once coverted Michael, who was taller than Jonathan and had broad shoulders and spoke like a true gentleman. Who always showered his family with love and praise and made everyone else vomit with jealousy. That Michael was being accused of an affair.
Fairly looked angry, she was Michael's secretary and up until now she had done a good job of keeping her boss’s tryst a secret, taking on his wife's snide remarks like she was the mistress only to have been met with total chaos and worst of all, at the will meeting she had organized.
Chase and Jace, Michael's twin boys were also stunned and that was a feat on its own because there was barely anything to hold the attention of those troublemakers. They were both staring at each other, as twins do. Telepathically expressing their inability to believe daddy was a rake, a romantic one at that.
Aunty Joan, Grandpa Mark and Sister Augustina — because the whole family were pretentious Catholics all held their mouths ajar. Unable to maintain any sort of decorum. Aunty Joan had attended the will reading only to get the gossip firsthand, she had no idea the trainwreck she'd be attending and Grandpa Mark who used to beat Michael and Jonathan and their late mother only attended because old people forget, they forget all the evils they had done and expect to be family no matter what. Whereas Sister Augustina, who only entertained the rich attendees of mass, was hoping for a little cut in the empire Michael had painstruckingly built in his very hard youth, of course it would be named a ‘church donation’, we all knew where it went.
Everyone was in some sort of bewilderment, everyone except Missy, Michael's daughter and only pride and her Mother – Michael's wife who had a bored look on her face.
Two things had always been clear to Brittany in this marriage. The first one was the unnecessary amount of lies she would get from Michael, who grew up lying to save himself a beating and the second one was the amount of money she'd be getting out of this marriage, everything else came after that.
Michael had always been easy to read, Brittany had met him on a rainy Friday night, at a rundown bar in front of the college her ex-boyfriend attended. He was trying to win a bet between his friends and a really loud guy, she would later discover to be his brother. The first thing Michael had said to her was a lie and she knew that because his brother was trying his hardest not to laugh. But Brittany had spent nights with an alcoholic father and prostitute mother and lying was not a new thing to her. In fact, in the process of Michael trying to gather up his confidence for that lie, Brittany had picked up on the fact that he was more well to do than the rest of them, maybe it was because of his watch, or the fact that he didn't wear chains like they did or the limited edition shoes he was strutting or it could be that fact that he was wearing a fucking suit in a bar… one of those things had tipped her off and that was the last time Ed? Eddy? Whatever his name was, her ex-boyfriend heard from her.
She had known about Amelia for over a year now, and had seen their naked pictures together. Had slept in the hotel room next door to them as Amelia tried so hard to fake her orgasm, she would know, it almost made drop him after the first night. But then Michael stopped crawling into her bed, and stopped pestering her with his weak attempts at love making and she had come to like Amelia, who had taken Michael off her hands and given her time to focus on her retirement plan.
“Are you done?” Brittany asked the crazed Amelia, who had walked into the room angry for not being invited to a very important part of her lover's life. “You may go on” Brittany turned to the lawyer, who had gone through so much like this that he could barely be surprised by such events anymore, it was in fact expected.
The lawyer, an old wrinkly man, probably in his 70’s who had outlived the owner of this will, began the thing he had come here for.
As expected, gasping here and there as he read out the contents, everything in Michael's will had gone to his family — his immediate family. The twins, despite that incompetence had at least gotten accounts full of money, on the condition of their mother being the only signatory. Missy, who had spent years, working beside her father, as all first daughters do, was to inherit the company and all that came with it and to his lovely wife – every real estate was hers on one condition, the apartment that he had spent so many nights lying to Amelia in, would belong to her.
Brittany expected as much and she had nothing against the young girl but Jonathan, who had found it impossible to ever measure up to his measly younger brother, sprung up in anger.
“There's no way!! Where's my share??!!!” He barked, like those ugly dogs that were always held with chains but the lawyer paid him no mind, he and his father resembled each other in that manner, barking when things didn't go their way.
Sister Augustina, disappointed as she was, still wore a smile on her face, her hopes lit up when she imagined pestering the widow for donations, her mouth watered at the thought.
Aunty Joan had wished Amelia had gotten nothing so there would be more drama but Michael, who lied at every given opportunity, was very much a romantic at heart and that is what had killed him.
“I and Michael have spent years building this company and our family and as always not all marriages are perfect but I loved my husband” Brittany announced as she took to her foot “He was severely a romantic, always looking for the beauty in life, I hope he finds it now. I hold no grudge to you – Amelia, you deserve the apartment, I would burn it down anyway. I'll be leaving now, thank you”
Missy always loved her mother's reaction in such high stakes scenarios, a total picture of calm and peace, unshaken by her husband's infidelity and this reaction was what was saving Amelia the beating of a lifetime.