the house beside ours and its open garage filled with people.
"Whoa. Those are the neighbors?" she asked.
Turning off the car, I followed where her finger was pointing, and damn. Clearly, my daughter had inherited my taste in men, because the four guys lounging around a collection of weights inside the garage were physical perfection. That none of them had on shirts, and they all wore loose-fitting pants or shorts - the kind that hung a little too low - only made it more obvious.
"Close your mouth, honey," I said, trying to act like I didn't care about their ripped bodies. "Those men are a little old for you."
"And too young for you," she shot back. "But maybe that's why you decided to screw up my whole life, huh? You left Dad to sleep around, didn't you?"
"Gabriella," I snapped. "That is not why your father and I split up, and you know it!"
She huffed in the way that only teen girls could. "Well, he said that's what happened. And you did. You left him, Mom." Then she shoved open the door and surged out of the car to glare at me with her arms crossed.
I paused to drag a hand down my face. I completely understood her anger. Hell, I was angry at myself for not being able to fix things with Gerardo, but for him to say that to her? It was going too far. Even if it was what he thought - and he was wrong - he should've known better!
But that was how Gerardo worked. He'd mastered the ability to shift things so he looked like the victim, never the villain. Not that my soon-to-be ex-husband was a bad man, he just wasn't a great father. Or husband. Or, well, great anything except an employee. His true love was the pride he got from his success at work, and I'd been more than willing to take a step down in life to find a little of my own happiness again.
While I'd left because I was just sick and tired of being lonely, I did not leave him for another man. I was simply tired of being treated like a maid and a roommate. No one should accept being taken for granted, and no matter how hard I tried to find a middle ground with my husband, it just hadn't happened. We'd clearly grown in two different directions. While he'd been off chasing promotions and awards, I'd gotten tired of waiting to be noticed. And somewhere in there, I'd managed to forget who I was.
I'd become his wife and Gabby's mom. I was the chaperone or the hostess, sometimes even the maid. All of that was fine, right up until I wanted to be something that helped no one else but me: the painter, or maybe the ballroom dancer. As soon as my goals inconvenienced my husband in the slightest, they were deemed selfish and unworthy. That was why I'd left, because I deserved to actually live, not just make sure that everyone else could.
Although leaving meant moving, which Gabby had tolerated better than I’d expected. Even worse, it also came with a new school, just days before her high school debut - and so my daughter blamed me for ruining her life. She wasn't exactly wrong.
We'd gone from middle-class suburbia to a fancy house and a careful budget thanks to the debts of moving and my upcoming divorce. My checking account was basically empty until I got my first paycheck in a couple of weeks. Naturally, her father had no interest in helping, so Gabby was more than willing to blame me for having her fun budget spent on paying the people to move us to a house she didn't want to live in anyway.
Because we now lived on the complete opposite side of town, which meant she'd left all of her friends behind, and we were living in a place where we would probably be the only brown people around. The stability of her life had just been destroyed, and all so I could find some in mine. Plus, there was the fact that she was a little too good at playing on my guilt.
"Staring is still rude," I told her through the car door, deciding that was the easiest way to handle this. "Go pick out your room. The movers should be here in a minute with our stuff, and they'll need to know where to put it."