AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The door narrowly misses scraping over the said sidewalk, both when I open and close it.
“How do you expect me to get in if I can’t open the door? Don’t park so close to the curb next time. What should I do? Climb through the sunroof?”
Adam sighs. He leans forward and punches something into the giant, space-age flat screen in the car. Classical music starts blaring through the speakers. Not my jam, but I’m not going to complain. I’m really glad we get to peel out of here. Getting picked up by a low lime green pickle of a car isn’t exactly what I want my neighbors to see me doing.
But it’s all just part of the plan.
This horrible-no-good-probably-won’t-succeed plan from which I get five grand out of will go a long way toward fixing my roof.
Long story short, Adam’s ex-wife said some really nasty things to him when they were getting a divorce. This was before she even took a ton of money from him. She said things I wouldn’t even wish on my worst enemy. I probably only know a fraction of it. Well, okay, so I know the whole thing, but I only found out because I was going through some of the security footage for Adam’s house, seeing as there had been a whole crew of porch pirates going around the neighborhood. A few packages had been stolen from Adam’s doorstep. I ended up finding the big fight, and Adam has a really good security system, so I heard the whole thing.
Obviously, it stuck with him. I work with the guy, so I can just tell. Adam’s always been kind of gooey about his ex-wife. When she wasn’t his ex, he did anything for her. And I mean anything. He treated her and bought her all sorts of stuff. He never had a bad word to say about her. I always thought she was nice enough to everyone, myself included, so it was a bit of a shock to hear how she spoke to Adam in the surveillance footage. My guess is that it wasn’t the first time either.
So since the divorce, Adam’s been kind of weird. He wore his wedding ring for a year after the divorce was finalized. He just gave in and didn’t even really fight his ex-wife that hard when she wanted a freak ton of money from him. He still never said a bad word about her after all the hurtful shit she said, and even when he paid out the money.
He hasn’t dated anyone ever since then. Hasn’t shown any interest in it at all. Whenever anyone brings up his ex-wife, he gets this super strange look on his face. I know for a fact that he’s lonely, but it’s more than that.
I just have this gut feeling—and my gut feelings are generally both right and trustworthy—that he’s not over her.
So, I wasn’t all that surprised when he announced it, a couple of days ago, that we were getting coffee together, out of the office. That’s not entirely out of character. Whenever he wants to talk to me about something other people shouldn’t overhear, we go out and walk to get a coffee.
It turns out, for this one, it should have been whisky or something stronger.
Someone told Adam that his ex-wife was going camping with her new, chunky muscled, younger boyfriend. Camping. At an actual campground. Not somewhere fancy. It’s not rich camping. They’re doing regular camping like everyone else. And because this is Colorado, it involves the full deal. Like lakes, mountains, trees, hiking, and tents. Gulp. Did I mention we’re both total city slickers?
So, Adam’s mind worked hard at this, and he hatched a plan. A plan to prove to his ex-wife that all the shit she said about him at the end (and maybe during their marriage too) wasn’t actually correct. From the nature of the plan, I think he’s more concerned with trying to win her back. Yes, for real. It makes him sound like a bad guy, but really, he’s not. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I doubt it.
One more slightly creepy detail is that his ex-wife happens to be named Stephanie, just like me. For confusion's sake or lack of confusion, we both refer to her as Ex-Stephanie, at least in our minds. I know Adam does because it popped out once when he was talking to someone at work and trying to differentiate between her and me, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.
So, about said plan.
Adam wants to prove he’s good at something other than work. You know, to prove he rocks at life and has moved on in the healthiest of ways, that he has skills. Wilderness skills. Life skills. His ex-wife basically accused him of not being able to do a single thing that didn’t involve work. In other words, accusing him of being totally useless, and that’s putting it nicely. It means he wants to be manly with a tent, hiking boots, and an ax. He needed someone to make sure he didn’t cut his foot off, or if he did, that someone was there to call for an ambulance. Since I’m practically his life manager, or at least I take care of a lot in his life, it only made sense for me to come along. And then there was the incentive of having a new roof over my head.
But for him, it’s different. His idea is to pretend we’re dating and are blissfully happy about it. Even though it’s cliché AF for him to be with his assistant, he doesn’t seem to mind.
Anyway, here’s what I think is the secret plan. I think Adam actually wants to make his ex-wife jealous. Maybe. Although, if he wanted to do that, he probably wouldn’t be doing it with me. I’m not exactly one of those lusty, busty types. In fact, I’m the total opposite. I’m also not rich, highly educated, or exceptionally talented. I’m not famous, and I don’t dye my hair every other week or get fillers injected into my lips. I don’t wear designer clothes, and I hardly bother with makeup. So, I’m not entirely sure what it is about me that would make Ex-Stephanie jealous, if anything
Anyway, we peel out of my neighborhood, heading for the token stretch of open road that will take us to the mountains, where we will be wild and free and all that stuff you see written on t-shirts nowadays. I send up a silent plea for god to strike me down now.
Sadly, it doesn’t work.
“Remind me again why we didn’t just rent a cabin?” I whine just for the sake of saying something.
“Because she’s not. They’re tenting it, roughing it. She said, right before she asked for a divorce, that I’m spoiled and useless. That I can’t do anything for myself. That she was tired of being with a limp noodle instead of a real man. That I couldn’t even change a lightbulb,” he rants, obviously trying to let out some steam.
“That’s mean,” I reply. Adam doesn’t know I know everything that was said. He just thinks I know the bits he’s told me. I slide down in the seat to hide my face when I recognize Mrs. Johnson walking by with her two poodles. She lives a few houses down from me. Gosh, this pickle of a car wi
th the big black stripes down the middle screams mid-life crisis. I don’t want to be seen in it. “To be fair, the lights in your house are all very expensive and complicated. I can see why you wouldn’t want to fiddle around with them. They do require an electrician to get them working properly.”
Adam’s hands tighten on the wheel.
I have to admit that he’s pretty attractive. He works out, and I know this because I make sure he has the best nutritionist and personal trainers. Plural. Yes, he goes to a premium gym, but don’t ask me what’s so premium about it. It just says premium in the title. He also pays for an actual trained chef to come to his house three times a week to cook him meals and leave them in the fridge and freezer—all healthy meals. So everything adds up to him looking pretty dang good. I can say so because I have eyes. The guy’s fit and healthy. Plus, I’ve seen all of him that one time.
“I’m sorry,” I say more softly when I notice Adam’s hunched shoulders. “You know I just say whatever I’m thinking. That’s the reason we work well together. Because I’m the only one who’s not afraid to tell you the truth. Still, I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“Thank you, but it doesn’t exactly make it easier,” he grinds out, not even paying attention to me.
Okay, so this is about his pride getting stomped all over and the fact that he can’t get on with getting on with it. Basically, this is how it went down.
