“You have no idea.” He looks above my head as if remembering something, before shaking himself clear, grabbing my hand, and leading me into hell.
We drove one sedan and one crossover. Liam suggested I try the larger SUV, but I declined. For one, it’s enormous. Two, it’s pricey. Three, I mentioned it’s massive, right? Like family of eight huge. They drive nicely. All have far more bells and whistles than my car did. I’m glad I’ve never been car shopping so I didn’t know what I was missing.
The soreness from Monday’s accident has set in. My bones feel rattled and the muscles around them loose and squishy. The worst is my neck, and not from whiplash or anything, but I must’ve clenched my teeth, because those muscles, the ones that go from my ears to my chest, are tighter than I’ve ever experienced.
But my head is absolutely stuck on how the man I married, who met me mere weeks ago, thinks he knows more about my ex than I do when I’ve said nothing to him about any of it.
We’re back in the car on the way home when my curiosity gets the best of me. “I don’t want to talk about him.” There’s due emphasis on the word. There was somethingoff about the man, and things didn’t end well. “But how do you know more than I do about Troy?” Quietly I add, “Or our time together.”
“Let’s just say he and I have a couple of mutual acquaintances. Smith made a mess of some things I was digging around in. It was just after you two ended.”
“He’s not… right.”
“He’s more than not right. You know he’s MIA?”
“What?” I spin in the passenger seat, putting my back to the door, and gape at him. “When? How? Why?”
“Slow down.” When he looks at me, his eyebrows pinch together, and he scrutinizes me. “Do you really care?”
I shrug. “Not really. But I did date him. Briefly. It wasn’t deep. We weren’t really… compatible.”
Liam turns back to the road but visibly stiffens. A notch under his jaw protrudes as he clenches and unclenches his teeth.
“What?”
“I don’t want to know about yourcompatibilities,” he spits.
“Not like that. We never slept together.” The last two words come out on a mumbled whisper. I stare out the windshield at the foothills in front of us, sitting proudly in their verdant greens. “We just didn’t have much in common.”
His jaw releases and the tension visibly eases from his body. Odd, but okay.
“Will you tell me?”
He looks at me as we sit at a signal on our way home. “He’s in the wind. Or he thinks he is. He’s not very smart.”
I nod. That was one of our places of incompatibility. He didn’t seem to have much desire to learn or grow. He was happy hanging out with childhood friends and getting up to no good.
“I have eyes on him. At least digitally.” The light turns green and Liam waits a beat as people speed across, well after the light turned red on their side. “He won’t hurt you.”
“I was never really concerned about that.”
He starts to say something but stops, pulling into a parking lot. “I don’t have any leftovers. Do you have stuff in your freezer? Or should I run in?”
“You cook?” It’s practically an accusation.
“You’ve eaten my cooking.”
“Yeah, but that was outside.”
Liam
I give up fighting my smile.
She’s funny as shit.
“Yeah, Wifey. Outside food counts as cooking.”
“But...” She doesn’t seem to have a place she’s going with that line of thinking.
