Chapter 30
compatibilities
Lorien
“Where do you want to start?” Liam asks, turning left out of the office parking lot.
“What are we talking about?”
“Car shopping. Or would you rather head home?”
The dreaded car shopping is option A. Being trapped in what was my sanctuary with the man who didn’t blink at his tee or my sexiest nighty is option B. So, hell or hades. Yay me.
“I don’t have a starting point.”
He turns left again and heads east. I never understood people who would give directions according to a compass until I moved to Denver.
It makes total sense. I’d love to see Liam try to navigate St. Louis.
I don’t think a single road goes in a cardinal direction there.
On second thought, I don’t need to picture him outside of Colorado.
He’ll be real enough here. I don’t need thoughts of him beyond this place when this is all over.
I don’t know how long I spin in my own thoughts, because we’re squarely in Denver when he pulls up at a car dealership.
Viewing the Audi sign, I remind him, “My budget is the non-mortgage note kind, remember?”
“We’re not buying. We’re driving. And Audi makes some of the best all-wheel-drive vehicles out there.”
“What if I don’t like it?” I ask as he exits the vehicle.
The door slamming in my face jars me. But before I can get angry, he’s at my side, opening mine.
“Then don’t buy one.” His answer is casual. “Consider it like dating. You get to take it for a ride before”—he lifts my ring towards the sunlight—“committing.”
“I bet you took a lot of them for a ride.” The comment is dry and for my ears only. Or so I thought.
He turns his massive body to me, standing closer than I’m used to, and tips my chin up. “I wasn’t married.” He holds his ring up between us. “And everyone knew the score. I won’t apologize for them. Do you want to talk about Troy Smith?”
Everything in me goes cold. “How do you know about him?”
His voice drops to a steely whisper. “I know more than you do about that man and about your relationship with him.”
“That’s not possible.” But even I’ve lost the conviction in my own words.
“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 something off 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 your compatibilities,” 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.
“Alfredo lasagna or Korean curry?”
Her eyes dart side to side. “Both?”
“Let’s go.” I exit the SUV and round the hood, seeing her step out of the car. “I won’t growl, because I won’t give you the satisfaction. Current count is four to zero and all, but in the future—” I stare at the door and let it hang.
“I’m to what? Be the damsel in distress who can’t open my own car door?” She halts her steps and turns on me. Her chin juts out in defiance.
“You’re to remember how you deserve to be treated.”
She blinks. “Oh.”
“This side please.” I usher her to my right.
“You have a side?”
I sigh and don’t respond. She’ll get it. She’s insanely smart, after all. I’ll wait and see how long before it sinks in.
Walking into the grocery store as a couple is weird as fuck. Most of the time, I order online and either have them shove it in the trunk or have it delivered. I’m not a walk-the-aisles kind of guy. My wife, though, seems to be of the belief that every aisle and lane requires time for perusal.
I want to be impatient, but watching her mind work is like watching her bake…
It’s fascinating. She talks to herself, has a specific place in the cart where things should be placed, and bobs her head as if thinking out loud as she weighs the merits of certain ingredients, pronouncing their chemical components as if they have nutritional bearing.
I needed fewer than a dozen items and a full hour later, we haven’t even made it through the whole store.
I decide we’re done when I eye an employee checking her out as he restocks the dried beans.
I stride his way, grabbing a bag of split peas I do not need and ones I will never use.
Where only he can hear, I say to the bag as I flip it around my palm, “The last man who looked at my wife that way lost an eye. And I wasn’t even as fond of her as I am now. I suggest you avert your gaze.”
The fact that Lorien doesn’t hear the knocking of his knees or the chattering of his teeth in fear is testament to how oblivious the woman is to his perusal. For once, I’m grateful, she’s busy with her cart organization.
For future reference, I won’t be changing my methods to in-store purchases when she’s in tow. One, because of time and two, because of store clerks who think to leer at her. We leave with more groceries than we have room to store.
Walking to the car, I ask, “Now, should I cook tonight or do you want takeout? We managed to spend ninety minutes on ingredients, but we still don’t have a meal.”
The grumble from her belly is answer enough.
“Chinese or burgers?”
“Burgers.” Her eyes light up as she says it, and she walks a little faster toward the car.
“Burgers it is.” I repeat to myself, enjoying her excitement.
When she gets to her side, she reaches for the handle, but I clear my throat. “Uh hmm.”
Confusion is written all over her face when she turns to me. That is, before a scowl hits her face. Holding my eyes with an overly-long stare, she pulls the door open and climbs inside.
Oh, Wifey, when will you learn?
Thirty minutes later. That’s the answer.
She learns a half an hour later when I park the SUV so tightly to the garage wall that she can’t open her door on that side.
I’ll be lucky not to scrape the shit out of it in the morning driving her to work, but the look on her face is worth the trouble I created for tomorrow-me.
I slide out of the driver’s seat and extend a hand.
“Chivalrous you are not,” she huffs.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I give her butt a light slap after she’s on the concrete. “I held the door open for you and got to have you wait for me. Seems I’m the definition of chivalrous.” I hand her our burgers and drinks.
She’s through the door to the yard and nearly out the gate when I clear my throat again.
I should turn her over my knee, but that would be crossing too many lines.
More than I’ve already crossed. Hell, I haven’t crossed them, I’ve skated them, origamied them, and practically pretended they don’t exist.
It’s the clicking of her heels on her pavers next door that reminds me I’ve missed the thread.
I have every bag but the one with laundry detergent over my arms and have to turn sideways through my gate and hers. I might as well be carrying bulky kettle bells. And did the woman leave the door open for me?
That would be no.
“Wifey,” I shout in a sing-song while kicking the door with the toe of my boot. “Oh, Wifey. Open up.”
She whips the door open. “Oh my gosh. The neighbors will hear you.”
“Things to know, Lorien. I give zero fucks about the neighbors hearing… anything.”