CALLA
Containing my laughter is easy.
“That poor man,” Greer says and stabs at her salad.
I do the same, devouring my late lunch and setting my phone down. Sabotage sure makes a girl hungry.
“He’s fine. Trust me.”
She looks out my passenger window and shakes her head. “I can’t lie and say watching him tiptoe into the house just now and peek around as if he was about to be caught doing something bad wasn’t entertaining. You must be doing something right. Do you really think he’s about to cave?”
“Oh, he has to be,” I say around a mouthful of lettuce, thinking of his scowl this morning when he came to the kitchen with blue hair. He had no comment, which I think said volumes. “He can’t go on like this forever.”
“Yeah, but he cooks for you, buys you flowers, he watches your favorite movies with you, and he—”
“He can only do that for so long, Greer. He’s about to show his true colors. I can feel it.”
I’m not so sure who I’m trying to convince at this point. Beck is a nice guy. Too nice. He’s so laid-back and easy to be around that yes, I do feel bad about the choices I’ve been making. But at the end of each day, my goal hasn’t changed. I need him to ask me for a divorce.
“If he didn’t freak out about dying his hair blue or about the fact you spent two thousand dollars on his credit card,” she pins me with a hard glare and looks in my back seat, “I’m not so sure you’re right.”
“Hey, I told you, I kept the receipts and went to a store that had a ninety-day return policy. He’ll get his money back as soon as he files for divorce.”
Still, Greer keeps shaking her head. “I don’t know. I think he likes you.”
“He’s attracted to me. There is a big difference. As far aslikelike, he doesn’t—trust me. He’s just being stubborn.”
“Oh, right,he’sbeing stubborn.”
“Yes,heis.”
I know she thinks I’m the one who is being unreasonable here, but to be fair, I’m not alone. We are equally trying to get the other to cave. Okay, so Beck isn’t actively doing anything. But, and this is a giant but, I find it hard to believe that he actually likes the way I moved the living room around, the pillows and blankets I added, the way I rearranged all his pictures on the walls, or that he truly believes the way I reorganized the house does, in fact, have a better flow. I swear he used that exact wording just to annoy me.
Which, to me, is his way of getting under my skin.
I hate to admit it, but it’s working.
“I need to up my game.”
“Wasn’t that the point of moving things around, shopping, and coloring his hair?”
“Yes, but I need more.”
“I think you need to focus on getting a real job.”
I nod. “True, but this is a top priority also.”
“What if,” Greer says slowly, “you just started to ignore him? Go back to avoiding him, and maybe when he sees life without you around goes on, he’ll be like ‘Oh yeah, I never see her. We may as well part ways.’”
I tap my chin with the end of my fork.
“Interesting view.”
I’m not lying when I say it, but a small part of me panics at the thought of not seeing him.
Of not waking up to him on his computer in the kitchen only to find him later in the living room and in his office at night. I want to ask him so badly why he moves around, but that would imply that I care.
“Or you could go the complete opposite route and drive him nuts with your body till he caves. Show him the goods without actually being naked and maybe tell him he can have it if he files.”
