" Yeah," Meredith said, with a humorless laugh. "See how unhappy I was?" I see," Stasya agreed."And the reason I was so unhappy was because the whole ...hing was just lurking over my head the whole time," Meredith said. "And... You know me, I can't deal with that. I hate stress, I hate conflict..."Stasya nodded."So, I just needed to... Get away," Meredith said."And there was Rick Downing," said Stasya."Yeah," said Meredith."What does he play, anyway," Stasya asked."Baseball," Jeff said."That's. He showed up late, with this girl in tow who was in full school uniform, and couldn't have been more than sixteen, although he did assure us later that she most assuredly was. She had red streaks in her hair, all done in ringlets. She had at least three piercings I could see, and the pleated skirt was pretty damn short.Solomon saw us at the table, steered her over to us, said hi, then slapped her on the ass and said, "Go babe. See that movie. I'll call you when I need picking up."She smiled. Something was wrong, i could feel it. There had been talk of two sales staff being paid off because of the recession, and this meeting had people worried. My husbands work had already been cut to 4 days a week, so times were bad enough as it was. We couldn't lose a full income. Now I really was worried. I caught my train as normal that afternoon getting to the hotel at 3pm. I tried to ring a work colleague, Jim, who was a similar level to me, and was also the guy i had been having an affair. I guess I started noticing a difference in how I felt about the time I went to celebrate my raise at my parents house. I only know this because I rarely leave my apartment once I get there in the evenings. After I’d spent some time with my parents, I came home to a strange smell in my apartment. I looked over my things and could see nothing missing or out of place, but still. My heightened since of smell left me thinking something was off. It almost smelled like male cologne, which I owned.