Must Love Cats - Tara Brown Page 0,1
money on these all-inclusive resorts you don’t like? Why does Rod always get to choose? You guys don’t even share money!” she snaps.
“I—like our vacations.” My tone isn’t as convincing as it needs to be.
“You do not! Don’t be such a baby. Tell Rod he can go to Cuba on his own this time,” she says my husband’s name with nearly as much disdain as he says hers. Their dislike of one another has been a constant sore spot for me, considering she’s basically family. Shawnee’s been my best friend since we were seven. A fact she loves to remind me of. She came first.
I’m about to defend our vacations as I slow for the line of traffic ahead, when I see the license plate in front of me and recognize it. “Hey, speaking of Rod and his Mercedes, I think I’m about to stop behind him at the light. He must have gotten through that last inspection earlier than he thought.”
“Flip him off for me,” she grumbles bitterly.
“Stop it. Though I might flip him off for stealing my window scraper again. My sister’s husband scrapes her windows for her and mine steals the scraper and leaves me to do my windows with a credit card.”
I lift my hand to press on the horn when I hear a click and a voice plays over the radio. It’s a lady with a bad connection, “I can't wait to go back to Mexico. There's something about afternoon sex with the smell of suntan lotion everywhere that really does it for me—” the woman’s voice cuts out as abruptly as it cut in.
“Girl—what?” Shawnee scoffs from my cell phone. “That’s a bit of an overshare. No offense but imagining Rod in his Speedo isn’t exactly my kind of good time. I don’t need to add him having sex to torment myself. Especially not with suntan lotion everywhere. Why can’t you just buy normal lube—?”
“What? That—that wasn’t me.” I stare at the car ahead, my husband’s car, which is pulling forward slowly, creating a gap between us. “It was over Bluetooth. That voice was—my Bluetooth picked up someone else’s phone.” The words leave my lips almost robotically. Who would Rod be talking to about sex and suntan lotion?
“Wait—you’re still parked behind Rod? That was his phone?”
The light turns and we all pull away, me following Rod but not getting too close. My mind whirls in circles as I play the moment over and over.
“Lil, his phone is still synced with your Bluetooth! It must have glitched and caught his call for a second.”
Oh God. Could it be her?
“Lil!”
“I don’t—I don’t know what that was,” I lie, though there’s no point. I can’t think straight.
Shawnee’s panicking now too. “Who was that woman? Fuck, was it what’s-her-name? You better bust his ass!”
I step on the gas, getting closer to him again until our cars are near enough that I’m uncomfortable because of the icy roads. The voice comes back and this time I recognize it, “I miss your cock, Roddy.” A horn honks and I have to glance about to see if it’s near us, but it isn’t. It’s her side of the phone line. She must be driving in traffic too. “You sure you can’t get away this week? I can tell Brent I need to go to the mall—”
“Oh my God!” Shawnee screams. “Lilly, what is going on? It is that bitch, isn’t it?”
My insides are on fire. “Elaine?” I whisper.
“Lilly?” Elaine, Rod’s best friend’s wife, whispers back. The horror in her voice is obvious, despite the phone cutting out.
My foot comes off the pedal. Rod drives away, through the light that I am inching up to. The Bluetooth cuts out once more.
The bells in the church yard next to me ring so loud they seem like they’re inside my head.
Ding!
What just happened?
Ding!
What do I do?
Ding!
The scene around me is spinning and yet I swear time stands still.
Ding!
“Lil?” Shawnee says my name somewhere in the distance and her voice is cutting out.
Ding!
On the fifth bell, five o’clock on Christmas Eve, unbeknownst to me, my world splits in two.
Two of me.
Two paths.
Chapter 2
December 24
“Lil?” Shawnee calls to me, her voice clearer now.
I coast in the car until I’m barely moving toward the green light.
The ringing of the church bells is gone.
I shudder as my brain makes a thousand habitual excuses for why and how and why Rod would be talking to Elaine. But there is one explanation. And this is not the first time I’ve