Hard and Fast(50)

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

"I don't need to retrain my brain, thank you very fucking much. I do  just fucking fine as it is. Do you know how much goddamn money I make?  Do you know how hard I work day in and day out for that money? Do you  know that if I wasn't a risk taker, I would never have had the balls to  leave home and hit the race circuit with nothing but a hundred bucks and  tenacity in my pocket?" Uh-oh. She hadn't anticipated this sort of  reaction. Trying to find words to calm him down, she opened her mouth.

But he wasn't finished.

"I am successful because of my brains and my guts, put together, and I  don't need some fancy-ass degree from a bunch of sweater-vest-wearing  pricks who haven't gotten laid since Bush Senior was president. So maybe  being a stock car driver isn't saving the world, but it's entertaining  millions of people. What impact does writing about whether dating  manuals work or not have on the world either?

You can read, you're brilliant, and you're wasting your time moldering  in some teaching position in an academic field no one gives a shit  about. Do you know who studies sociology? People who would rather  observe life than live it."

Imogen felt tears sting her eyes as his last words hit her like a  resounding slap. It was her worst fear verbalized. "Is that what you  really think of me?" she asked in a whisper. Then she regretted even  speaking. Shaking her head, she held up her hand, not wanting his  answer. She'd had enough honesty for the night. "Never mind. Never mind.  Just get out. Go home." Ty was already pulling on his jeans in angry  tugs. "I'm going."

"Fine."

"Is that the best you can do?" he asked, yanking his shirt on over his  head. "I have a better exit. ‘Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. ' "

Oh, no, he didn't. He had just compared her to a squawking parrot who  was trying to instruct those around her. Imogen picked up a pillow to  throw it at him.

Ty grabbed his shoes and bag off the floor and said, "That's Shakespeare  , by the way!" As if she didn't know. Imogen launched the pillow,  hitting him in the back of the head. Now, that was sickly satisfying.

He paused at impact, but didn't turn around.

Then he was out of her bedroom, out the front door. The angry slam made her jump in bed, her heart racing.







What the hell had just happened?





WHAT the fuck had just happened?

Ty threw his car into reverse and gunned it down the street way faster  than was appropriate for two in the morning in the suburbs, but he  didn't give a shit. He was furious and, well, hurt, damn it.

He had trusted Imogen with his problem, and somehow he felt like she had just totally insulted him.

Looking at him with pity while suggesting he take a class. Take a class.  Like that was the frickin' answer to everything. It was her answer.                       
       
           



       

Okay, so he had been a little insensitive with his assessment of her  career choice. But he thought it was true-she studied other people  because she had spent her life being an observer, not a doer. He thought  in that way, they were good for each other. He brought her new  experiences, coaxed her to step outside of her boundaries. In return,  she gave him logic and organization and a loyalty and love he had never  before experienced.

But somehow they had wound up screaming at each other and she'd nailed  him in the back of the head with a pillow. He hadn't seen that one  coming, literally.

Picking up his phone-coded with pictures, thank you very goddamn much-he found Ryder and clicked Send.

"Oh, my God, do you have any idea what time it is?" Ryder said in a  groggy voice after Ty dialed him three times in a row when Ryder didn't  pick up. "I'm going to kill you."

"I think Imogen and I just broke up." Ty got on the highway and shifted  gears, loving the speed of his car. It wasn't the track and he couldn't  break the law, but it still felt good.

"What? You just got engaged twelve hours ago!"

"Tell me about it. Can I stop by for a beer? I need to vent."

"Sure." There was some rustling. "I'm not alone, but that's okay. I can  leave her sleeping and we can hang out by my flat screen in the living  room."

Ryder was with a woman? He had just returned from Texas, too. The idea  of whining about his chick trouble while Ryder had a warm body in his  bed a dozen feet away held no appeal. "Never mind. I don't want to  interrupt."

"No, it's okay."

"No, I'll just catch you tomorrow. Thanks, man." Ty hung up the phone  and stared at the yellow lines in front of him. For half a second he  thought about calling his mother, but he knew what she would say-that he  had been a total dickhead to Imogen. Besides, he'd already gotten an  earful from her on the phone earlier when she had called to cuss him out  for not telling her he was going to pop the question to his girlfriend.

Lord only knew what she'd say when he told her he didn't think there was going to be a wedding after all.

That thought kicked him in the nuts, the gut, and the lungs all at once.

Holy shit.

He had lost Imogen.

He'd found the love of his life, and just like that, she was gone.





TY was gone, and Imogen cried herself to sleep.

The next morning, she woke up puffy-eyed and sick to her stomach,  running through their argument over and over again in her head. What had  she done wrong? How should she have handled it differently?

Those questions rolled around and around until she had lost all ability  to focus on anything other than her agonizing heartbreak.

When she ran a red light on the way to school, after noticing she was wearing two different shoes, she





gave it up and turned around and drove home, her hands shaking from anxiety.

Dialing Suzanne, she tried to get a grip on her emotions. How did she  feel? Was she upset because she had lost Ty or upset because perhaps  she'd never had him in the first place? Maybe their vision of a future  had been a fantasy right from the onset of their ill-fated relationship.

"Hello, Whores R Us," Suzanne said as a greeting.

"I hope you knew it was me," Imogen said, despite the fact that she was  devastated and emotionally drained. She just couldn't fathom answering  her phone that way.

"Of course I did. Welcome to the twenty-first century. You have your own  ringtone and your picture pops up. Like I'd say Whores R Us to just  anyone other than my special friends." Imogen winced as she made a right  turn. "Right." And her overreaction just proved Ty's theory-she was  uptight. She knew that, she'd always known. It was the one flaw that she  feared, the one thing she had known all along would drive him away.

"What's up? Are you spending the morning in engaged bliss? I kind of  thought you would need to sleep in. I figured you had a late night  celebrating, wink wink." Bursting into tears, Imogen pulled into the  parking lot of the doughnut shop. "We broke up!" she wailed with a drama  she hadn't shown since middle school and a poor choice involving her  hair and blond highlights.

"What? You're joking!"

"No. I'm not. We . . . we said terrible things to each other, he got out  of bed and left, and I hit him in the back of the head with a pillow."  For some reason, the pillow seemed pivotal. It was so unlike her to  resort to that kind of childish action, and she couldn't really explain  it.

"You hit him with a pillow? Wow, you must have been pissed. What did he do?"                       
       
           



       

"He kept something secret from me. Something important." Imogen wasn't  about to reveal what that secret was-Ty had trusted her to keep his  confidence.

"Oh. That sucks. Is it a major thing?"

"Yeah, pretty major. It affects who he is. But it's not really that he  kept it a secret, it was more the realization that we don't know  anything about each other. How can we get married?"

"Honey, nobody ever knows someone completely. You have to just enjoy what you do know and have faith in the rest."

"Do you really think so?" Imogen stared at the doughnut shop, wishing a  jelly-filled would walk itself out to her car and land in her mouth as  she swiped at her eyes. Maybe she had just panicked. Maybe she had  totally overreacted. "But he called me uptight and said I am an observer  in life, not a participant."

"Well, that's a rude thing to say, even if it might have some truth to  it." Great. Suzanne thought she was uptight, too. "Am I really that  annoying?" she asked in dismay.

"Oh, shit, come on now. I never said you were annoying, and I'm sure Ty doesn't feel that way either.

The man asked you to marry him! But you have to admit, you like to  people-watch, not dive into the fray yourself. It's not a flaw. It's not  like you're living in a bubble. It's just your personality. If he  doesn't like that, he can go fuck himself."