Page 25 of Wreckage of My Life
I want to tell her that it was so worth it, but I decide to just wink at her and smile. She gasps in complete shock and looks the other day.
I get to the rental car and make it to the airport in record time. My flight is on time, but I have time to run into a duty-free shop to grab a nice scarf, which I wrap around my neck to hide my sex induced bruises, and a Texas baseball cap for my brother. I also grab a cute t-shirt for Emily to thank her for picking me up from the airport.
After a very uneventful flight, I finally step foot again in Billings, Montana. I feel like I’ve been gone for a month, and not just the one week. Too much happened to me in this past week.
“Emily,” I give her a quick hug before throwing my bag in the trunk of her car, then jumping in the passenger seat.
“Hey, stranger,” she teases. She did text me while I was gone, but I was too busy with Dylan, so my responses were few and far between. “How was the trip?”
“It was good,” I avoid her eyes as I put my seatbelt on. “Good,” I repeat.
“How was the newly found family?”
“Eh,” the sound escapes me without thinking. “It was… different,” I settle on.
“That bad, huh?” Emily chuckles but doesn’t pry further. She is so good about things like that, and that’s one of the reasons I love her as a friend.
“How were things here?” I ask once she’s safely out of the airport and onto the highway that takes us home.
“Same,” she mumbles, her focus solely on the traffic in front of us. “I broke up with Steve,” she adds very casually. So casually that I almost don’t catch it.
“You what?” My head is about to spin from how hard I turn it to look at her. “What happened?”
“Eh,” she makes the sound I did a bit ago, making me laugh. “He was sleeping with his receptionist while also being in a relationship with me.”
“Em,” I gasp, “I am so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Surprisingly, yes,” she nods and switches lanes. “We’d been together for two years. I thought we’d get married, you know?”
“Yeah,” I go along with it, wondering what she’s trying to say.
“Then I walked in on him banging the lovely Lonnie on his desk at the office…”
“Her name’s Lonnie?” My eyebrows go up in surprise. It sounds like a very exotic name. If you’re in your seventies.
“Yes,” Emily confirms. “It’s short for London.”
“Ah, interesting.” Still weird.
“Anyway, I walked in on them while they were doing it,” she brings us back on track. “I was shocked.”
“Of course,” I reach out and rub her shoulder in sympathy. “What an asshole.”
“I wasn’t heartbroken though,” she adds with sadness.
“What?”
“Shouldn’t I have been heartbroken? Cry, scream? Want to beat her up? Beathimup? Something?” She’s talking so fast now, I can barely keep up.
“Yeah.” I am tentative in my response. I’m not sure what the right answer is in this situation.
“I wasn’t any of that, Becca,” she tells me in a sad tone. “Which makes me think,” she sounds a bit more upbeat now, “that I wasn’t in love with the bastard. So, I wasted two of my best years on an asshole who didn’t give a shit. I’m just mad. I want my two years back,” she adds, punctuating each word with a hard slap of her hand on the steering wheel. “I feel like I should be able to sue him for that.”
“Em,” I think it’s safe for me to laugh now. “You’re too funny. And I agree. I think there should be a law that allows you to sue him for your wasted time.”
We laugh a bit about that, then she brings the focus on me.
“Did you meet any cowboys while on your trip?”
