Page 77 of Anywhere with You
All I could see was my past self, standing behind the register at work, while somewhere Bridget was off fucking Lorenzo, and Cara was at homeknowing.
Home…by herself, which meant that Bridget and Lorenzo had probably been at my house, in our bed, next to the picture of the two of us on our wedding day, me in my beautiful purple dress, Bridget beaming, radiant in blush and tulle.
I’d never thought to wonder before where, exactly, my wife was located when she was fucking someone else. I’d have brushed it off as a minor detail, maybe because it wouldn’t have occurred to me that she was getting dick in our bed.
Not the couch. No, that would be way too uncomfortable, and Bridget was all about the comfort. No floor or shower or dining room table sex for her. She needed a mattress with a memory foam topper.
Though, what did I know? Maybe if there were testicles in the equation, she’d be happy on the floor.
I shook my head at my own pettiness. Besides, testicles didn’t have the power to change someone’s nature.
Weirdly, I thought of Tamara and her blue Kool-Aid lips, how I’d adored her for so long, obsessed with her, and how she’d turned out to be someone completely different than the person I thought she was.
Could I even trust my own observations? Did I see people wrong? Or was everyone but me so good at hiding their true selves that they could pretend, for years, until one day it was just too exhausting to fake it?
I didn’t know if I believed any of that, or I wanted to believe it, even if it was true.
I thought of my parents, who were complex and sometimes contradictory, but who were always their true selves, even when I was a teenager and their true selves pissed me off daily.
And me? Was I always out there, for everyone, never pretending? I spent a lot of days working retail, so no, that wasn’t entirely the case. But with my friends, my family, people I cared about and respected? Yes. I didn’t pretend. I wasn’t even sure I knew how.
I kneeled and wiped the sweat and tears from my face with my T-shirt before covering my eyes with my hands and trying to breathe. I kept gasping, and it took effort to pull air all the way in and push it all the way out.
I did it a few more times, then stood and kept walking.
Okay.
My thoughts had derailed, and I let them. I was used to being mad at Bridget. This was just one more drop in the bucket.
I wasn’t used to being mad at Cara, and I was surprised by the sharpness of the pain and how deep it went.
I don’t know how long I walked or how far. I tried to tell myself that I was overreacting, and in the next moment, tried to convince myself that I was underreacting. I wanted a drink and sleep and my guitar, and most of all, I wanted to rewind to an hour ago and just be happy.
I’d been happy with Cara. This whole trip had been fun, but the last twenty-four hours had been more than that. We’d had one truly incredible day together.
But it had just been one day.
And now?
Now I wanted to be with my goddamned stupid dog.
Eventually, I realized my phone was in my pocket. I didn’t have a strong signal, but I had one. Just enough.
I held my finger over the call button for a full thirty seconds before I pressed it.
“Lane,” I said, as soon as they answered. “When is your boss going to Phoenix? I need a ride.”
Chapter Thirty
I was glad not to be in Cara’s car. It was bad enough to look over and see an empty seat where she should be.
Lane’s boss, Alyssa, had been more than happy to give me a ride, though her front passenger seat was stacked with boxes that had to have the AC, or her makeup samples would melt, so I sat in the sweltering back seat.
“It’s like I’m your Uber driver,” Alyssa joked.
As it turned out, though, she was more like a very bad stand-up comedian in a room in which I was trapped for three hours. She would give me every detail of extremely boring anecdotes, then laugh loudly as though what she’d said had been funny.
Without meaning to, I started imagining how I’d tell Cara about her, mimicking Alyssa’s story about buying a lawn mower, and how she’d tracked down a print copy of aConsumer Reportsabout lawn mowers and studied it thoroughly, only to find out it was ten years old and the mowers she read aboutweren’t even being sold anymore. Ha ha ha!
