April 23, 2001 – DEI

By two that afternoon, Noelle was pissed. Junior had not come home that night before and had not called her at all. She had tried calling his cell phone, but he had it turned off. Storming out of her office, she went down to the shop and found Tony Sr. and Tony Jr. working on the next race’s car.

“Where is he?” Noelle yelled walking in. A few of the guy’s jumped when they saw her. “The fucker didn’t come home last night.”

“I haven’t seen him.” Tony Sr. wiped his hands on a shop rag. “He drove off in the direction of your house when we left here last night.”

“I’m gonna kick his ass.” Noelle walked back out of the shop letting the door slam shut. “He’d better hope he’s home when I get there or there’s gonna be hell to pay.”

After work, Noelle went straight home and Junior still wasn’t home. She called his friends and they hadn’t seen or heard from him either.

“Well….just let him know.” Noelle said to David on the phone. “No, never mind. Let him find out on his own.” She slammed the phone down and looked around the kitchen. “You don’t come home for two days…you don’t have a wife to come home to.” She went upstairs and packed up a suitcase of her clothes and left. Not bothering to look back.  If Junior was going to play this way, she could play to.

*****

Noelle pulled into the driveway of her old house and sat in the car, her hands shaking. Junior had bought the house from her so that he could fix it up and rent it out. However, he had never gotten around to doing anything to it. All her furniture was still inside as well and as far as she knew, the utilities were still on.

She climbed out of the car and grabbed her suitcase. She opened the door and flipped on the light. When the lights came on she looked around and started crying. She couldn’t believe that it had came down to her leaving Junior. She slammed the door shut and collapsed on the couch.

****

Junior walked into the house through the garage and flipped on the light in the hallway. He had noticed that Noelle’s car wasn’t there and he wondered if she was still at work.

“Noelle?” He yelled through the house. When she didn’t answer he shrugged and went into the kitchen to make himself something to eat. He didn’t particularly want to see her and that was one of the main reasons that he stayed at David’s last night. He had been there when she called earlier and David tried to give him the phone, but he pushed it away. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to her. Not after what had happened on Sunday.

Ten o’clock rolled around and Noelle still wasn’t home. Junior smirked and kept reading the news article he had found on the web. She’d be home eventually. He was sure that she’d want to fight it out some more.

When the phone rang he picked it up, expecting to hear her voice. Instead it was Hollie’s.

“Hey.” She said into the phone. “Where’s Noelle?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Junior said taking a drink from his glass of milk. For some reason, beer didn’t sound good tonight.

“You don’t know where your wife is?” Hollie asked shocked.

“Nope and don’t care.” Junior didn’t try to hide the irritation in his voice. “Listen, call her cell phone. She isn’t here.” He hung up on Hollie only to have the phone ring immediately. He ignored it and let the answering machine pick it up down stairs. “She’s not fucking here!” He yelled to no one in particular.

*****

Noelle laid in her old bed and hugged the pillow. Junior wasn’t answering the phone at home. She heard their voices laughing on the answering machine and she hung up, not able to bring herself to leave a message. He still had his cell phone shut off and she didn’t leave a message on that either. She couldn’t sleep. She wanted to be next to Junior, but he wasn’t calling her just as much as she wasn’t calling him. With a heavy sigh, she closed her eyes and willed the baby to stop kicking her and to also get herself to go to sleep.

Chapters: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25/26/27/28/29/30