“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.
Fan-freakin-tastic.
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 and give you peace for a moment, and I dream. I dream about my world, about how it was, about Chris coming into it, how he changed things and then Cal comes 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 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 simply.
“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 Venitan, a shitty little suburb in Michigan” he says dryly.
“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 to 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 behind him. I stop half way and wonder if I should just take off in the car and speed off to the Scotts’. That would be the logical thing to do, but then again, logic and I don’t work—we’re a toxic combination. 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 worn but inside, it’s completely different. It’s decorated in cool grays and shades of blue. It’s impressive, looking 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 probably worth more than the actual house! 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 in 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 coat 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.
“It’s Jenna,” he says, looking over at me. “You want to get it? What do you think Chris would say to her? Since he’s your new soulmate and all,” he says sarcastically. I can’t believe he’s really jealous. When I make no move to answer the phone, he swipes it from the counter and answers with a curt, “What’s up, Jenna?”
“No, it’s not Chris. It’s Cal. I was going to be calling you soon anyway. Just thought you should know Chris fucked Lauren last night,” he says matter-of-factly.