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“It means there were only two options for her next boyfriend. Someone who made more money than you or someone who made less. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she’d end up with someone with more. It doesn’t mean that money was a deciding factor.”
I could see her point. But of course, what she didn’t realize was that Greta didn’t just dump me for a guy with more money. She dumped me for theonlyguy with more money.
“Let me clarify,” I said. “He had alotmore money than I did.”
She grew silent again. And this time, she stayed silent. I wondered if she’d been engaged once, and if the guy had left her when she refused to sign a prenup. And maybe she had refused for the same reason Greta had pretended to refuse—because she was planning out their happily ever after while he was planning out the divorce.
“Listen,” I said, “it’s not like I think that the only thing women care about is money—”
“What if you were wrong?” she said.
If only she knew. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure you were.”
“How could you know that? You never met her.”
“I know because if all she cared about was money, she wouldn’t have wasted her time on you in the first place.”
Wow. I wasn’t even sure what she meant by that, but I was grievously insulted.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “I’ve seen where you live and clearly you do well financially. But this is New York. There are a lot of really, really rich men to be found. A genuine gold digger would have set her sights a lot higher.”
Wasted her time. Set her sights higher. It was rare that anyone said anything negative about me to my face. People told me what they thought I wanted to hear because they thought there was something to be gained by kissing the ass of Daniel Dunning’s son. The end result was that I hadn’t been the recipient of an honest opinion since I was thirteen years old. But now that I was with someone who had no reason to lavish me with empty flattery, I was discovering that honest opinions kind of sucked.
“That was a little hurtful,” I said. Fuck it. If she was going to be honest, so was I. “I take that back. It was really, really hurtful. I’d go so far as to say it was mean and unnecessary.”
“Really?” she said. “Because I was trying to be nice. I just meant that you’re a monumental dick for letting her go.”
“Using the word ‘nice’ a little loosely these days, aren’t we?” The only time women uttered the word “dick” in my presence was to tell me what a magnificent specimen mine was. It was the one form of empty praise that didn’t bother me. And I definitely liked the way Megan and Isla and Greta said it better. They made me feel like the Big Bad Wolf in bed.Why, Ian, what a monumental dick you have…
She hit the blinker and pulled off at the next exit.
“I have to pee again,” she said. “Sorry that we keep stopping.”
She pulled into a gas station and hopped out of the car, leaving me alone to steam. I was officially pissed. Even worse than being called a dick was being wrongfully accused. I was the one who had been madly in love. I was the one who was used and thrown away like a piece of trash. I was the one who had his heart broken. I was the victim, not Greta.
But to be fair to Clara, she didn’t know the whole story. And the reason she didn’t know the whole story was that I wasn’t giving it to her. What right did I have to stew? If I was wrongfully accused, it was because I was a bad witness. Clara was the jury, and she couldn’t be expected to hand down a fair verdict based on a half-truth, a missing truth, and everything but the whole truth.
But I had a feeling there was more to her guilty verdict than lack of evidence. Her own bias was playing into her assumption that I was the one in the wrong. She was a little too offended, a little too convinced that Greta was the one whose heart had been smashed to bits.
She returned to the car with two bottled waters and handed one to me.
“So,” I said as we pulled back onto the highway, “I take it someone’s asked you to sign a prenup?”
She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “What makes you think that?”
“You seemed really upset by my story,” I said. “I thought maybe you had some experience in the area.”
“I didn’t realize I was that obvious.”
“It was just a guess.”
“Well, it was a good guess,” she said. “Yeah, I was engaged. And yeah, he asked for a prenup.”
“And I assume you said no?”
“I didn’t say no,” she said. “But I did ask why.”
