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To that, I heard his breath exhale hard, could see the shadow as his arms raised, as his hands scrubbed down his face in a familiar, frustrated gesture.
"You're not going to like it."
"I doubt I will dislike it anymore than I disliked being dumped via text and then being blocked."
"You weren't blocked."
"Ah, yes, I was."
"No, you weren't. I didn't have my phone anymore."
"What do you mean you didn't have it anymore?"
"I mean the guards at the jail took it from me along with everything else I walked in there with."
"Wait... what? What jail? Why were you in jail?"
"You know, I always wondered if maybe you suspected something."
"Suspected something about what? You're making no sense."
"I guess you never did," he concluded as if I hadn't spoken. "It was never strange to you how there were always different cars in and out of my shop?" he asked.
"Um, no. You repaired cars," I reminded him. That was what he did for a living. Oh, boy, and did that blue mechanic jumpsuit thing he wore do wonders for me back then. I'd once seduced him on the hood of one of those cars. Okay, several of those cars.
"I repaired a few cars. Here and there. To make shit look above-board, to keep the cops off my case."
"Wait a minute. What? What are you saying?"
"I chopped cars, June. That was what I did for a living. That was how I afforded the nice apartment, the nights out. I chopped cars."
"I... I don't... why didn't you ever tell me that?"
"Because you were a good girl, June. Came from a nice family. Didn't have a speck of dirt on you. I didn't want to rub mine on you. I didn't want you to be connected in any way. I wanted, if something went down, for you to be able to pass a lie detector if necessary, and walk free, hating my guts for lying to you all those years."
"I... I don't bel..." I started, trailing off when things started to fall into place. And then I had to. Believe. Because it was the only thing that made sense. All the men he had around, always looking over their shoulders, making sure they barely ever said a few words around me. All the cars they took apart. Cars that didn't seem to have anything wrong with them, now that I thought about it.
Of course he was chopping cars.
Maybe I misunderstood that old phrase about love being blind. Maybe what it actually meant was that love could make you blind to even the most obvious of things about your partner if they didn't fit the idealized version of them that you had created in your mind.
"That's why you broke up with me?" I asked, hearing a hint of tears in my voice. "Did you think I was going to tell on you or something if I found out?"
Even if I had known, even though I had always been a law-abiding person from a law-abiding family, I knew down to my bones that I never would have betrayed him.
Back then, he had been my entire world.
"No. God, no, Junie. I know better. No. I was actually getting close to having that uncomfortable conversation about it with you. I had a ring weighing down my pocket, and I knew I couldn't give it to you if I didn't come clean about my lifestyle."
Wait, what?
He had been ready to propose?
That couldn't have been true.
Only, of course it was.
What he'd said earlier was true. He'd treated me like gold, like something precious, like something he always wanted to hold onto.
And we'd been dating for years.
We'd been serious as serious could get.
Of course he was planning to propose at some point.
"Why then? Why did you break up with me instead?"
"Because I got word that the cops were closing in. As in, within the next five minutes. There was no way the crew and I could clear out the shop, and get gone in time. We were going down for it. I didn't even try to hide any of that shit. I took that time to send you a text."
"But why?"
"For a lot of reasons. Because I didn't want you to find out like that. Because I didn't want you to find out, and then stand by me when I went off to jail for a few years. That wasn't the future I wanted for you. I wanted to let you go, so you could find some happiness. Even if it was without me."
My mind felt like it had been thrown in a blender, like all my thoughts were swirling, too shaken up to make any sense.
He'd broken up with me so that when he went to jail, I wasn't the woman at home waiting on him, losing precious years to a man behind bars?
It sounded crazy until I let it sink in. And then it only sounded far too true. Watts was exactly that selfless. He'd rather I hated him until my dying breath than lose some of my life because of him.
