“What happened to you?” he asks, amused.
“I grew up. You should try it sometime.”
He grins. “I think there is more to it than that.”
“Don’t play psychiatrist with me if you don’t want me to play one with you,” I spit back at him.
He laughs at that, but he doesn’t retort. That is a first. His silence is unexpected and a little unnerving.
“Did you miss me?”
These words surprise me, he even sounds sincere. My eyes trail over to him and for a moment I want to call a truce but we both have our walls up for our own reasons. “Of course I did.”
“Did you miss me when you were with him?”
I wonder if it’s always going to be like this—a contest between the two of them. I want to comment on it but I decide against it and I tell him the truth. “Especially when I was with him.”
He looks over at me, a hint of disbelief lingering on his expression. Did my sleeping with Chris cause him to think that we have nothing, that my feelings for him are gone? There are so many questions I want to ask him but I know he won’t answer most of them, so I ask him the simplest while he’s in a talking mood.
“Did you miss me?”
There’s a long silence, and right when I think he’s not going to answer, he says, “Every day.” His tone is quiet and makes me smile but a sense of sadness washes over me. If he’s here, where is Chris now?
“It used to be us before anything. Now it seems like that’s changed,” he says solemnly.
“We have a daughter now. It can’t be like that anymore. Secrets almost destroyed us, Cal. We almost lost each other; I did lose you. I don’t want that to happen again.”
I wish this conversation wasn’t happening during a drive. Are my words affecting him? Or are they going in one ear and out the other? He has always put up a huge wall up around himself, one that I could never get behind. Has he changed, is this the same man that left me on the floor in tears and alone all those years ago? He’s quiet, which means he’s probably thinking. This is good. So I decide to push a little more.
“I want you to get better because I love you and for our daughter.” I see his jaw flinch, and I know I took it too far too fast.
“Better, meaning Chris?” he asks through clenched teeth.
“Better, meaning all of you,” I say defensively.
“Why didn’t you have this conversation with him?”
“I was going to, but he’s not here now—you are. But why does it even matter? This shouldn’t be you versus him. We’re in this together.”
“We are? Well, since we’re all in this together, tell me why he left?” he spits out and my patience is officially up.
“You tell me! Better yet, how about you tell me how this all works? Does he decide? Do you decide? Is there a fucking schedule that I can get a copy of? Because this is insane. I thought when you came back, I would have answers. That the big puzzle in my life would be solved, but of course, it’s not. That would be easy, and with you, nothing is ever easy.”
“There she is.”
“Who?”
“The real you,” he answers smugly. He’s such a smart ass.
Great, he wants me to be a screaming lunatic and Chris wants me to be a nun.
Fanfreakintastic.
Chapter 4
We survive the ride without killing each other and, eventually, I fall asleep. How do you fall asleep in the midst of a storm surrounded by a torrent of unanswered questions? I don’t know, but eventually your mind and body shut down giving you a respite, and I dream. I dream about my world, about how it was, about Chris coming into it, how he changed things and then Cal coming back, flipping things on their head. When I wake, I think about where my world is going. How do I parent in the midst of dysfunction? How do I avoid being pulled back to the place I used to be? I feel like I’m fighting a war, weaponless and against an opponent that knows my very weakness is him. I open my eyes to see that it’s dark out. The car has stopped and my door is open. I look up to see him leaning over me, his hands resting on the roof of the car. I sit up and look around.
“Where are we?” I ask, a yawn escaping my mouth. It doesn’t look like we’re in a part of Michigan or Chicago.
“Is that something you really need to know?” he quips. He’s such a smart ass.
“Yes I need to know where we are in relation to our daughter. You know, the one we were supposed to pick up from your parents.”
“Gwen knows we’re picking her up tomorrow,” he replies.
“You talked to your mom?” I ask, surprised.
“Gwen is one of the few people who doesn’t think I’m the anti-Christ,” he says sarcastically.
“And we’re in Ventian, a shitty little suburb in Michigan” he says.
“What are we doing?”
“You say you want to know the whole story…all my secrets. Well, this is where it starts,” he says, reaching his hand out to me. I look up at him skeptically.
“Is this a game or something?”
“Games are for kids. Welcome to our new fucked-up reality,” he says.
Riddles and games, all freakin’ puzzle pieces. It’d be too easy get straight answers. I let out a deep breath and watch him walk into the house.
I look around. It’s late evening and the street is quiet. It looks like a lower, lower middle-class neighborhood. I reluctantly follow him. I stop half way and wonder if I should just jump back in the car and speed off to the Scotts’. That would be the logical thing to do, then again, I’ve never been logical when it comes to me and Cal. If this is a game, though, there will be a winner and a loser. I don’t plan on losing.
I stop at the little mailbox in front of the house and look in it. I pull out three letters that all say Cal Scott on them. What the hell? He actually had this place—owns it, maybe? But, for how long and why?
“What? Are you Nancy Drew, now?” he chuckles before disappearing into the house. I begrudgingly make my way up the stairs and follow him into the little two-level home. By the time I’m in, he’s flicked on the lights and I’m actually shocked. The outside of the house looks old and more than a little run-down, but inside, it’s completely different. It’s decorated in cool grays and shades of blue. I’m impressed, it looks like a professionally decorated space. On one end of the living room is a pale gray sofa with dark-blue pillows. A glass, asymmetrically-shaped coffee table with metal legs fills the space between the sofa and two printed, similarly colored, armless chairs. It looks expensive, like our home, which would mean the furnishings in this house are more than the house is even worth. In the left corner of the room is a fireplace surrounded by black stone. The kitchen is modern, complete with stainless steel appliances and is painted the same grays and blues as the living area with just a touch of lime green in the backsplash mosaic and in the hand towels.
“So when did you get this? Why do you even have this?” I ask, confused.
“It was before us and the area interests me,” he says simply, taking off his jacket and putting it away in a closet. His phone vibrates on the counter top. He glances at it and a wide smile spreads across his face.