Best Served Warm

"Room 207. Noon."

"Love, S."

Ashley couldn't contain the flush in her face, or the smile broadening her lips, after reading the message on the thin cardstock.

She tucked the card back into its envelope, which accompanied the box of chocolates from one of the country's fanciest chocolatiers, Phillips Chocolates, and delicately unbound the lavender ribbon from the golden box and opened it. After searching, she found the one she'd been looking for--Maple Bourbon Glaze--and took a slow bite.

Relishing the taste of the chocolate, Ashley also relished the coming lunch break from her role as executive assistant at Bergman Capital, the financial firm she'd been with since 2018.

"Another pricey gift, I see," said Ashley's boss as he walked by her desk in the outer atrium of the Bergman offices on the 10th floor. A tall, solid sort with paisley-blue eyes and a healthy, tanned face, framed by short brown hair seeing its first flecks of salt and pepper, her boss clucked to himself and continued. "You must have conned some poor sap into falling hopelessly in love. You're landing some fancy bauble every week from this guy and making every other woman here purple with jealously."

"I consider myself very lucky," Ashley replied with a coy grin, "and if he happens to also be hopelessly in love with me, I'm quite OK with that."

"I certainly hope you would be," he chuckled. He'd made similar comments every Wednesday when a gift would arrive for Ashley. "It's not every day someone like that comes along."

"No, it most certainly isn't," Ashley responded, her emerald eyes gleaming.

2.

Her lunch break over, before exiting Room 207 at the Marriott, Ashley had to take one last look in the bathroom mirror.

She couldn't go back into work looking as she had just been in a catfight, especially after what started as an hour lunch break and turned into two hours away from the desk. It could lead to unwanted attention.

No, the only attention she wanted was from S., and she wanted it for the rest of her life. She only hoped that he wanted it. He had said he did, at least.

Ashley tamed her tousled auburn hair with a brush, straightened her red, low-cut blouse, smoothed out her rumpled black pencil skirt, and did a quick once-over of her hose, ensuring no runs. Slipping on her black suit jacket, she left the room, hooking the "Cleaning needed" placard over the doorknob.

She tucked the room key into her purse, to return it as always the next morning at the hotel's service desk before going to the office, and strode into the elevator located in the middle of the hall.

Once in the lobby, she scurried out through the revolving glass doors and into the afternoon sunshine, her face flush with pleasure once again, this time not from chocolate but from her glorious lunch break. Ashley then began the one-block walk back to Bergman, already anticipating lunch next Wednesday.

3.

This routine had consumed Ashley's life for the past six months. Once a week, with a delightful gift from S.--whether chocolates, bouquets of roses, camellias and primrose, or the occasional 18-karat gold pendant and diamond-chipped earrings--and the tantalizing card inevitably accompanying it, she was able to taste what her future would be like with him.

It was a future she thought about it at night while curled up on her box sofa, in her apartment located in the latest gentrified neighborhood of Memphis, despite vain attempts to focus her attention on the latest best-selling novel in her lap.

It was a future she dreamt about during the day, while behind her desk at work.

Wednesdays, though, made the wait, and the dreaming, all worthwhile for Ashley, regardless of the sliver of time with S. she was tantalized with. Dreams became full-colored reality, one she had a thirst for unlike anything else.

"I love you madly," Ashley had told S. at the end of their last lunch excursion in the Marriott, half-uncovered in the king bed. "I want to be yours, forever."

"You will be," S. had replied, while tucking his dress shirt into his charcoal slacks. "I'm almost finished laying the groundwork for the divorce. My attorney plans to file within the next month, then I'd say another three to four months to sort and finalize everything."

"Then, my beautiful primrose, it will be you, me and the world to conquer," he concluded, knotting his tie before leaning over Ashley and offering a peck to her forehead. Then, he was out of the room, leaving her to again tidy up the impact of their weekly lunch together.

It was worded differently but was a party line similar to what Ashley had heard for the past two months, or since she had become more insistent that some forward progress be made in their relationship. "I will not be someone's side dish," she scolded him one afternoon, after a vigorous lunch session. "I will only be the main course."

"You will be, my darling," S. had replied, while caressing her cheek. "Patience is a virtue."

Indeed, patience was a virtue. It was a proverb Ashley had found herself employing several times throughout their six-month relationship. But, she thought as she laid in bed, time was running out on that patience.

Their future together was barreling down on them and would be upon them in a short seven months.

4.

Ashley was terrified of telling him about the pregnancy, as most women in affairs with a married man are. Her dreams of him at night, and their future together, were now intermittently dispersed with nightmares of him swearing her off forever, or demanding she terminate the pregnancy.

She was a cauldron of anxiety, which centered around raising a child--when she, at 25, was still trying to put the finishing touches on herself--along with the thought of S. exiting her life, forever.

That was the crushing fear she had been enduring, one he added to during their last lunch together, when he brusquely avoided the conversation she had begun which--had it played out as she imagined in her mind--would have ended with his hugs of adoration and love, and marveling of the child they would have together.

"We've got more time to spare," Ashley softly pleaded with him as he sat at the edge of the bed, putting his shoes on. "We need to have a serious talk."

"I know what the talk will be about," S. shot back, cutting her off. "We've already talked about it. I've told you my plans on it, and that is how it is going to go until it is completely done, Ashley."

"If you continue to pester me about this, when we've already discussed it, then the next discussion we have might be about the need to revisit this relationship and our future," he continued with a tone of finality. "Now, I've got to get back."

"He called me Ashley," she thought, a paralyzing bolt of grief flashing through her psyche, as the hotel room door shut behind him. "He's never just called me 'Ashley.'"

After dressing and straightening herself, Ashley slowly found her way out of Room 207 and began her trudge back to the office.

Unlike other Wednesday lunch breaks, where the color of her face relayed vitality and happiness on her walk back, this one was different.

Drained of its color, Ashley's face could have passed for that of a corpse.

5.

Ashley's fear became utter horror that afternoon. All because she walked by her boss's office--the wrong place at the wrong time.

She was heading over to Mary's desk, to give her some documents for a client's stock portfolio, and passed his office.

Looking up quickly, she saw those paisley-blue eyes set in the healthy, tanned face, framed by the brown hair sprinkled with salt and pepper. Ashley flushed, full of love, not knowing in 30 seconds it would become seething hate.

"Yes, your best chocolate cake. Price is no concern. Is it for anyone who orders from Phillips Chocolates?" he was saying on the phone. "I'd like the card to read, 'Happy Anniversary to the love of my life, Claire. Love eternally, Sam."

"Are you sure you can deliver it by 5 p.m.?" he continued. "I'll be home about 4:45 and want to see the look on her face when she receives it and share some with her."

Ashley had taken psychology when at the University of Memphis. She had read about how the mental rubber band inside a person's mind is often able to bounce back to form after undergoing stress or trauma, but how on some occasions, it will--unfortunately--snap.

It was this moment--2:07 p.m.--Ashley's rubber band snapped.

"I think I'm going to go home a little early," she said, poking her head inside Sam's office door.

"Everything OK?" he asked. "Are you ill?"

"Well, I have been recently," Ashley thought to herself. "Not that you'd give a damn at this point."

"Oh, no. I just thought I take some PTO time and see my parents out in Olive Branch. I've got some hours to burn," she replied. "I'm all caught up for today, so it's a perfect time."

"Not a problem," Sam replied, without a hint they had spent the past six months, every Wednesday, in each other's arms. "See you tomorrow morning?"

"Sure thing," Ashley replied coldly.

Sam didn't even notice her tone.

6.

It took a quick phone call to Phillips Chocolates, and Ashley telling them she was Claire Bergman and to cancel the cake order--$207, total--to take care of that part.

A stop at the grocery, and purchasing two pre-made chocolate cakes, a gift box and a block of rat poison—via self-checkout--took care of step two.

At her apartment, Ashley used the food processor to grind the rat poison into a fine powder. She scraped the icing off one cake and added her own icing, consisting of some fudge chocolate from her cupboard and enough rat poison to kill a hundred rats.

That's what Sam, and Claire--what an old, boring, lame name for a woman--were. They were rats needing extermination.

Ashley knew Sam’s address, being his executive assistant, so she set off for the toney suburb of Germantown, his wife’s precious chocolate cake, in its gift box, in tow.

Finding the Bergman’s home, she pulled her Acura into the half-circle driveway. She had changed out of her work clothes, put on her best imitation of what a delivery person would wear, thrown on a plain ballcap, put on white latex gloves and tied her hair back.

Ever purposeful, Ashley strode to the door and rang the doorbell. It was 4:35 p.m. Sam would be home in about 10 minutes.

After about 30 seconds, a thin, middle-aged woman with brittle brown hair answered the door, wearing dirty jeans, a checkered shirt and boat shoes.

“Pardon my appearance,” Claire told Ashley. “I’ve been in the back gardening. What can I help you with?”

“Just making a delivery, ma’am,” Ashley replied. “A chocolate cake from Phillips Chocolates, for a Claire Bergman?”

“Oh, my goodness, he did remember!” Claire exclaimed. “Thank you so much!”

“You’re very welcome, ma’am,” Ashley smiled. “Enjoy.”

She strolled back to her Acura, having never felt calmer. Pulling out of the driveway back onto the street, she spotted Sam’s SUV coming the opposite direction. Ashley turned out and left the neighborhood. Sam didn’t know what she drove anyway. They’d never been together in a vehicle.

“Enjoy your anniversary,” Ashley thought as she sped off, “you bastard.”

7.

The microwave beeped, signaling her slice of chocolate cake was warm. Ashley grabbed the plate, plopped onto her sofa and sunk her fork in. She was eating for two now, and chocolate had always been a guilty pleasure of hers.

The cake was utterly delicious.