As Marie listened to Eden’s plan, she knew that Jermaine would buy into the veil of deception. He’d never recover from what Eden had in store for him, and it was no one’s fault but his.

“Bring him into the Garden of Eden, baby girl,” Marie said proudly as she bit into her apple.

CHAPTER 7

The sound of the phone ringing under the empty beer cans threatened to make Jermaine’s head explode. The vibration of the phone against the cans seemed to make the entire house shake.

Any sound other than silence was just too much for his spinning head. The hangover he was nursing was not a fan of loud noises. He prayed that when his phone rang it’d be his wife, but he knew her, so he knew better.

“God, if you bring Eden back, I’ll never drink or cheat again,” Jermaine said as he felt around the cluttered table to find the ringing phone.

He tried to locate the phone by feeling around on the coffee table. Getting up, even opening his eyes, seemed impossible. Bright lights were as much his enemy as sound. For the past two weeks, drinking had been his only companion.

Trying to drink his depression away had taken a toll on him. While in college he could drink all day and night and be up for his 8am class with no problem. He was a kid then, now he was a mess of a man, and he knew it.

Jermaine hoped his companionship with Heineken, Hennessy, and Casamigos would help him forget his stupidity; it hadn’t. His choice of friends only highlighted why he was alone.

“Why did I fuck my life up like this?” Jermaine thought as he ignored his ringing phone and scratched the side of his face.

The sound and feel of coarse hair under his fingertips didn’t surprise him. Personal grooming had taken a backseat to his misery. His normally well-groomed face was covered with dry patchy facial hair. So many nights he prayed for a do-over or a lie he could use to save himself.

“When you tell one lie, you have to tell several others to keep up with the first lie. It’s best to just tell the truth,” His mother’s wise words rang in his ear.

He missed her, and addition to that, the excessive lying and manipulating reminded him of the one person he hated: his father Jerry Shelton. In his opinion, Jerry had been the worst type of man. As a child, Jermaine made a promise to himself to treat women, especially the woman he made his wife, with the utmost respect. The hell he was in was proof that he hadn’t lived up to the rules he set for himself.

“This was the worst thing I could’ve done.” Jermaine said to himself.