by Elie Hutcheson

Created on: November 20, 2011

When I saw her pull into the parking lot my heart sank. Why was she driving? Where was he? My first suspicion was that she had convinced him to stay home so that we couldn't be together. I'm sure that he had told her that my friend would be there the whole time. This was our plan. The only way she would trust him with me. But she hadn't trusted him with me after all. She had insisted on coming with him when he dropped me off here. Now here I was half tipsy, longing for him and he was nowhere to be seen. I probably should have stayed there but I was afraid I wouldn't find another ride home. Besides, what would he say if he learned that I had refused a ride from her? What would my friend say?

We climbed in the car.

My friend sat in back with their year old daughter.

I asked her where he was. She told me that they had gone to the city and he had been arrested. I didn't believe her at first. I pressed her for details. She provided little.

We drove in silence for a while but then she asked. It was the question that I had been longing to answer. Perhaps if she knew the answer to this question she would finally leave him and he would be all mine.

"Has he ever come to you since Kalie was born?" she asked.

I longed to say a thousand things. I wanted to tell her all the nasty details so that she would be so sick that she would vomit. God I hated her. Then I thought about it. What was she capable of? I decided to tell her yes but see if I could make it seem like it was all his fault.

"Yes." I told her. "He comes to my door late at night when he's been drinking. I have to let him in or he'll be out driving like that. I don't know why he comes to me." I could have stopped there. I saw her hands grip the steering wheel and felt the car slowly pick up speed. I couldn't help myself, I was enjoying making her suffer. I decided to put the icing on the cake.

"I guess you just don't satisfy him."

The car brakes began to screech as she whipped the car onto the shoulder and applied them hard and fast. We were in the middle of nowhere. I was afraid.

"Get out." She said. "You can walk from here, just get the hell out of my car and my life."

My plan had backfired. I was going to end up walking home. I begged her not to do this. I didn't want to walk fifteen miles along the highway in the middle of the night. It might get me killed. My friend began pounding on the back of my seat.

"Let me out!" she wailed. I didn't step out and lean the seat forward. I knew what I was doing.

"I won't say another word." I promised. "Just please take me home."

Surprisingly she relented. Perhaps she didn't want to force me out of the car. Perhaps she began thinking of her daughter who had begun screaming from the back seat or my friend who would be standing along the side of the road with me. We drove to my home and she dropped us off.

I hoped that this would be the end for them. She would finally leave him and he would come back to me. It was me he had wanted all along, after all. She was a mistake, someone he had stayed with for the sake of their child. If she left him then he would come back to me, I knew he would.

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