I Don’t Want To Be Handled
i don’t want to be handled
julian
I had been planning the logistics for days, discarding a dozen approaches before settling on this one.
A bow on the hood in a public parking garage was too performative, the kind of flashy display Alyssa would read as too much attention.
Telling her in advance also wouldn't work; she'd refuse it before she ever laid eyes on it, the way she refused everything that cost more than she could pay back.
So I took the refusing off the table. No decision to talk herself out of, nothing left for her to do but get in a safer car already sitting in her spot.
I'd routed around the only objection I saw coming.
But I was done waiting for the day her crumbling Honda Accord left her and Micah stranded on the side of a dark highway. It had already broken down twice since I’d known her. It wasn’t safe.
The first time her Honda broke down and I had it fixed, I'd told her that what I’d really wanted to do was get her a new car.
I didn’t, because we were friends and she’d made it clear she didn’t want that level of help from a friend.
She wasn't just my friend anymore. The way I saw it, that objection had expired with the title.
I snuck her car keys off her ring. I slipped down to the resident parking garage and I moved her Honda over to one of my assigned spaces on the penthouse level, parked it deep in the corner where the flatbed from the dealership could pick it up for the trade-in.
Then I backed the brand-new, deep-black Genesis GV90 Prestige smoothly into her designated spot.
I put the new key fob on her keyring on her kitchen counter. Then I sat down at her island, opened my tablet, and waited.
I heard her slippers on the stairs. I didn’t look up.
“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“Morning.”
She came around the island, leaned down to press a brief, warm kiss to the top of my head, and reached for her mug. Her hand froze mid-air. Her eyes locked onto the leather-bound Genesis fob.
I turned a page on my screen.
“Julian,” she said slowly, her voice losing its sleepiness. “Whose keys are these?”
“Yours. I replaced your Honda with a new car. It’s parked in your space.”
She didn't move for a long beat. I felt her standing behind me, the air in the kitchen instantly tightening. Then she set her un-sipped coffee down with a sharp, hollow clink against the quartz.
Silence. Total, suffocating silence. She crossed her arms flat against her chest. “Where is my car, Julian?”
“I had it moved. A flatbed is picking it up tomorrow. I bought you the Genesis. It's yours.”
“You had my car moved and arranged to have it what? Sold? Without asking me.”
“Your check engine light stays on, Alyssa. The transmission is slipping. It isn't a safe vehicle for you.”
“That doesn't mean you get to ambush me,” she snapped. “You don't just buy someone a car like that with no discussion, Julian.”
Ambush. An ambush was something you did to an enemy, and I'd put a safer car in her space while she slept.
I turned it over in my head looking for the place I'd done something to her, and I couldn't find it. I’d done it for her.
She was standing in her own kitchen telling me those were the same thing.
To me they weren't even in the same room.
“I do. And I did,” I said, my own irritation flaring at her immediate hostility. “I spent the last week researching the highest safety ratings on the market so you wouldn't have to stress about it. It’s a reliable car, Alyssa. Yours is a liability. I don’t understand why you are mad at that.”
“Because you didn't give me a choice!” she insisted.
She kept coming back to “choice” like it was a thing I'd stolen out of the kitchen. I stared at her and tried to make sense of what she was saying. I couldn’t, because the choice was the problem.
The choice was her white-knuckling a dead transmission down I-40, because some part of her would sooner risk the shoulder of a highway than let a person close a gap for her.
I'd taken the one thing standing between her and the side of the road, and she was acting like I'd taken something that mattered.
“You just decided you knew what was best for me, wiped out my own hard-earned property, and expected me to just accept it,” she continued. “I don't want to owe you, Julian. I don't want to look at a car every morning and feel like I'm being managed. Handled.”
Her eyes flashed with a sudden, defensive volatility. “I know you're used to women who want you for what you can get for them, but I am not one of them. I’m not. This feels transactional, and it makes me feel cheapened. Like I'm just a gold digger on your list.”
I stared at her with irritation rising up the back of my neck. I had done this out of care, and she was reducing it to a slick, rich-man power move.
“Cheapened?” I stood up from the barstool, the peaceful Saturday morning completely vaporized between us. “You think I'm trying to buy you? I saw a safety hazard threatening my woman and her son, and I used my resources to fix it. That doesn’t cheapen you!”
“It does!” she shot back.
I scoffed, and a harsh, low blow began rising up out of me before I could lock it down.
“Alyssa, you cheapened yourself by spending years having zero expectations from men who were beneath you.
Completely useless and worthless assholes.
Just because they taught you that a gift is a debt doesn't mean I am wrong for giving you one.”
She flinched as if I’d struck her.
“And let's be entirely clear about something,” I continued, my all-business tone taking over because I was too hurt to stop. “If you think I am going to be okay with having these kinds of means, watching the woman I’m with move around in a goddamn junk box, when I can easily get her something better? You’re smoking crack. I’m not doing it.”
She stared at me, her chest heaving, and her eyes narrowed into something venomous. “Oh. Oooh, I see. So you're embarrassed by me?”
“What?”
“Julian Wade can't have a woman on his arm who drives an old Honda?” she spat. “Is that what this is? It hurts your brand? Your image?”
“Are you out of your mind?” I shouted, any composure I had left shattering entirely. “You are completely twisting my words and you know it!”
“Am I? You just told me my car is an embarrassment to your lifestyle!”
“I said it was a goddamn safety hazard!” I roared. I took a sharp breath, looking down at her, entirely pushed past my limit. “For a woman who’s so damn smart, you really are acting incredibly foolish.”
The kitchen went dead silent.
Alyssa stepped back, pointing a steady, trembling finger toward the front door. “You’re not gonna keep insulting me, Julian! You know what? Leave. Just… go!”
“Gladly.”
I grabbed my phone off the counter, bypassed the Genesis keys completely, and didn't look at her as I walked past. I snatched my shoes from beside the door, jamming my feet into them.
I gripped the doorknob, pulling it open, but the raw, ungrateful sting of the last twenty minutes burned too hot inside. I stopped at the threshold, didn't turn around to face her, but I let my voice carry into the quiet condo.
“A simple 'thank you' would have been acceptable.” I scoffed again, stepped out into the hallway, and slammed the door behind me so hard the wall vibrated.
The next day, the Genesis was still sitting in her spot. I didn't text her. She didn't text me. The silence between my penthouse and her condo had taken on a heavy, physical mass.
I went to the office needing to think. I texted Tre and Zion.
Where y’all at?
ZION
Studio.
I’m coming through
TRE
Bring some food then. I’m starving.
Studio B was dark except for the glow of the soundboard. Zion was slumped low on the leather sofa; Tre leaned against the high-top, nursing a stout. I gave them the rundown, and Tre was mid-rant before I had my jacket off.
“I’m just saying.” He set his bottle down. “You buy the woman a flawless, top-tier vehicle and she blows up on you? That’s a six-figure statement of devotion. It’s ungrateful. Women are a complete trip when you try to do right by them.”
“It’s not about the car, Tre.” Zion didn’t move from the sofa. “Jules, you put your foot to the gas. Y’all become a couple and your first reflex is maximum scale. She probably needs to feel like she’s got a voice in her own life.”
“I didn’t know I needed to hold a committee meeting to give a damn gift.” The irritation came back up my spine. “This the part of a relationship nobody advertises? Irrational BS?”
“Exactly,” Tre said. “Straight bullshit. Zion want you all Zen and patient and shit. Everybody ain’t built for that, Z.”
Zion ignored him, which was the only way to handle Tre.
“I’m not saying she was right in how she came at you.
I don’t know her like that. But I know you.
” He sat forward. “Every woman before her wanted what you had. All of them. And you gave it, because it was easy and it didn’t cost you anything.
You handed over your wallet because your wallet was safe and easy. You were never the thing to offer.”
I didn’t answer that.
“Now you’ve got one who got past the part you give everybody and found the part you don’t give anybody, and that’s the part she wants. So when you tried to hand her your wallet and she threw it back, it feels like her not wanting you. But I’d put money on it having almost nothing to do with you.”
He was right, but I wasn’t going to say so. Zion dealt in feeling, though. He could tell me what the problem looked like from the outside. He couldn’t tell me what was underneath it. Only one person in the building could, and he’d married my sister.
“Raschad here?”
“Tracking vocals in B2, last I checked.” Zion’s brow went up. “Why—”