“What?” Naomi blinked up at me like I was crazy.
“You don’t respect me. You don’t respect my marriage. I don’t want you anywhere near me. So you need to get the hell out of my house.”
Naomi gave me the mean girl snarl. “With pleasure. And joke’s on you because I didn’t book a car. I was going to drive you myself. Good luck figuring it out on your own. I’m out of here.”
She flounced toward the door but paused as she stood in the doorway. “And just so you know, it’s not your house—it’s Mal’shouse. I should know because I helped him pick it out. And unlike him, I see you for who you really are. You’ll be gone way before he fires me. Toodles, bitch.”
She fluttered her fingers at me, gave me her mean girl smirk, and then slammed the door shut.
I blinked a few times before breaking out in incredulous laughter. That was…something.
But that annoying voice in the back of my mind whispered maybe she was right about the length of my marriage.
Shaking off the insanity of the moment, I pulled out my phone and booked an Uber to pick me up.
Twenty minutes later, I was bouncing down the 405 to LAX and talking with my driver, Stella. “Did your daughter look at any other design colleges?”
Stella, I quickly found out, was a proud mama with a daughter who was going to FDIM.
“She toured PRISMA, but felt like FDIM had more of what she wanted.”
I nodded as I stared out the window at the passing traffic. “That’s good.”
“It’s not a little thing to change careers like you are. It takes guts.”
“So does marrying a stranger.” I laughed softly to myself.
“Wait, what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. Just something I heard once.”
“So you didn’t marry a stranger?” Stella asked with raised eyebrows as she changed lanes, narrowly missing a Tesla who blared their horn.
I clutched at my armrest and wished for a guardian angel to save me.
“Saylor? Did you marry a stranger?” Stella prompted from the front seat.
“I might’ve…” I gasped as Stella quickly merged into the next lane despite the blare of horns behind us.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Stella made a gesture to another driver before turning back to the rearview mirror and my reflection. “Gotta say if my daughter did that, I’d tan her hide. You should really know everything you can about your partner before you join your lives together legally. He could be a nutjob for all you know.”
“Right.” Speaking of nutjobs, I would’ve felt safer with Naomi driving me. “It’s working out so far…for the most part.”
“What does for the most part mean?” Stella asked before breaking harshly and honking at a car that cut her off.
“Uh, just that he’s going through a lot. His best friend died the night of our wedding, so we kinda came back to a lot of craziness.”
“Whoa. That’s heavy.”
“Yeah. Yeah it is.” I went back to staring out the window and sighed as I contemplated the insanity of my life lately.
And this car ride didn’t even make the top ten.
I really wished I knew how to reach Mal. But maybe he just needed some time. And clearly some space to sort through his feelings.
I just wanted him to lean on me a little—open up to me. What was the point of marriage if we were only there for each other during the easy bits?
And would he be there when I was going through something? Or would he retreat then too?
