"Didn't See You There"

The squall of snow that halted traffic dissipated five minutes ago, saturated clouds now hanging low in the sky threatening another bout of inclement weather at any moment. But not at that moment. Not when my horn blared with the untethered rage of a woman just dumped from a five-year engagement with the excuse of “I’m just not feeling it” a week before Christmas.

My engine shuddered to a stop, and the hinges of my once pristine Honda Accord rattled as I slammed my car door shut. Having just left a shift at the hospital before meeting up with my now ex-fiancé, my Crocs, scrubs, gloveless hands, and worn fleece did not prepare me for the bitter elements of December. I should have known better by now, living in the same shitty apartment in the same shitty town with Rick since graduate school. But I wasn’t expecting snow. Or the casual consolation prize of being fuck buddies. Or a stranger ramrodding me in the ass for no apparent reason on the way home.

I yanked my license and registration from my wallet with chunky, numb fingers, the shivers ravaging my body from the cold strong competitors to those derived from exasperation. Having already called AAA before abandoning my neutralized vehicle, I wanted to hurry though this exchange as quickly as possible. Unlike the woman responsible.

She slid down from the driver’s seat of her banged up Jeep Grand Cherokee, landing in the slush with knee high boots, camel peacoat trimmed in faux fur, and lit cigarette dangling from her crimson lips. Pushing her bug-eyed sunglasses back into her jet-black shag, she slinked towards me with a poorly stifled laugh.

“Didn’t see you there.”

I nearly ripped my license in half. I opened my mouth, not knowing what I wanted to say but struggling to cork the expletives burning my tongue.

“It’s just a scratch,” she said, unblinking eyes boring into my own.

“A scratch?” I seethed, left hand curling into a fist at her flippancy, as my eyes flicked to the crumpled pile of scrap metal behind me.

“I meant on you,” she said, bringing up a gloved leather hand to my cheek. “And your ring finger.” She nudged her chin to my now bare hand, the skin raw from wearing Rick’s grandmother’s poorly fitted ring for half a decade. I shoved my hand into my pocket, looking anywhere but her inky eyes.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Um… can I get your number?”

“Well, that’s forward!” she winked, flashing a smile that flipped my stomach. “How about a name first?”

“Oh Christ, I- “

“I’m teasing, Ev, I’m teasing.” The woman patted me on the shoulder with the ease of old friends. I pulled back slightly, unsure as to how she knew my name, but she pointed to my driver’s license trembling in my hand. “Evelyn Hart. It’s on your license. I’m not a psychic. But you’re freezing.” She grabbed my left hand, pulling me to towards her car. “I have blankets in the back. And more cigarettes.”

I shuffled behind her, the weight of my newfound singleness, the need to pack up my apartment in a week, and likely thousands of dollars needed to repair my totaled car somehow more comprehensible than the unusual kindness of this stranger. I mean, she did fuck up my car. So perhaps offering a blanket and a cigarette was the least she could do.

After rooting through the boxes, trash bags, and piles of miscellaneous junk in her trunk, she wrenched out a knitted blanket. Handing it to me, the final corner tangled in a pair of silver truck nuts dangling from her trailer hitch.

“The anatomical accuracy on those is… surprising.” I mumbled.

“I figured you were a doctor or something with those scrubs.” She smiled broadly. “Very veiny, right? I like to remind men who really has their nuts in a vice.” She threw an arm around me, guiding me back to the scene of the accident as the wail of a cop car reverberated down the road. “Cops will be here in a sec.”

“Thank you,” I stuttered, the feeling slowly returning to my digits thanks to the smoke scented blanket. “I never got your name?”

“Geena,” she offered, “and it’s the least I can do after ruining your day.”

I grimaced, not wanting to rip the Band-Aid off the wounds inflicted over the past hour.

“Is your car drivable?”

“Mine?” She glanced over her shoulder, assessing the dents and dings splattered across the hood and bumper as the cops approached. “Honestly, I think it looks better now than it did before!”

We fell into the motions of MVA management, Geena weaving an elaborate story about hitting a patch of black ice and skidding into my scar, her eyes watery with guilt as she relayed the “incident” to the police, both of whom assured us both it was no one’s fault and that these sorts of things happen in winter weather.

“Miss Hart, as your car is undrivable, you will need transportation away from the scene,” the officer routed, his eyes trailing Geena’s every move as he spoke.

“I’ll give her a lift, sir, not a problem.”

“Geena, I couldn’t—”

“No use in you paying for an Uber when I have a perfectly functioning car, isn’t that right, officer?” He visibly straightened at her attention, clearing his throat before he spat out a response.

“Sounds like it’s settled. Be safe out there, girls.” He tipped his cap before bumbling away, Geena rolling her eyes as she ushered me towards her Jeep.

“Girls. We are thirty-year-old women, have some respect.”

I climbed into the passenger seat, kicking aside smashed McDonald’s boxes and empty bottles of Diet Coke, clutching my hospital bag on my lap. I had so much I wanted to say, wanted to ask, but I lost the capacity to speak next to Geena, somehow falling into her current as easily as I once fell in love with Rick. Blindly, trusting the impulse and letting nature take its course. The surging anger I felt after Rick, after the accident, wasn’t numbed, wasn’t desensitized, but evaporated, as though Geena was the key I had somehow missed all along.

The car rattled to a start, Geena pulling behind the tow truck and peeling to the left as it turned right. And as I watched my wrecked vehicle disappear in the distance, words heaved from my mouth.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do until Monday?”

“Won’t you get a rental?”

I groaned. “My insurance blows. I’ll be lucky if I get anything covered.”

Geena nodded, lips pinched together before she replied. “Nothing you can do about it right now. But what we can do right now is have a drink.”

“Geena, I just want to—”

“To go home? To sit and wallow about something you can’t do jack shit about?”

I took a measured breath, annoyed at how on the money she was about both situations.

“You know I’m right,” she sang, that quirked smile sprawling across her lips. “We’re getting a drink. I know a place.” It wasn’t a question. Geena set the plan, and I had to agree.

I promised myself I wouldn’t fall for a man anytime soon, not after Rick. But I never said a woman.

*****

A dive that served crumbled pretzels and soggy chips in a communal bowl and pitchers of room temperature Miller Lite painted Geena in a neon-lit and smoke tinted tableau akin to the Mona Lisa. I couldn’t get enough of her teasing smile, desperate to say something witty to make her laugh, hoping her hand would drift closer to mine. I didn’t know if I was falling for her or the idea of her. The nonchalance of someone able to float through life and enjoy it, unfettered by the demands or expectations of anyone. The epitome of the mindfulness my therapist failed to impart on me after hundreds of sessions.

Or maybe this infatuation blinded me from the reality of the shit show that was my life. And if that was the case, gouge out my eyes.

At midnight, we stumbled back to her car, Geena’s hand tucked around my waist, her tobacco laced breath mingling with my own. My head spun as I gazed passed the bleary holiday lights, staticky Christmas songs crackling in the background as we turned down my street.

“How did you know where I live?” I slurred, not remembering giving her the address.

“You told me before we got in, drunky,” Geena laughed. “That’s why I’m driving, you’re a light weight.”

“And you have a car and I don’t,” I giggled, the buzz floating me above concern. She pulled in front of the apartment complex, engine sputtering as she parked.

“Do… do you wanna come in?”

Geena reached across the center consol, her gloved hands sliding up my thigh. My breath caught in my throat, my skin burning beneath her touch.

“Ev, you’re a riot. And I loved every second of tonight. But,” her fingers grazed higher, tracing the crease of my hip, lingering. “I can see it in your eyes, you want more than a fling. You are looking for something with meaning.” Her fingers curled around my waist, her rouged lips, the stain unmarred from a night of drink, close enough to kiss. “And I am not your girl.” Geena pulled back, her eyes narrowed and beguiling, as though she had more to say but feared uttering another word.

I pulled away, unbuckling my seatbelt, fussing with the strap that somehow twisted with the straps of my bag. Her lips curled as I struggled, but she did not move.

“I’m sorry, that was, I meant—”

“That was Drevelyn speaking. Drunk Evelyn.” She rubbed my shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze before she released me. “Now get to bed young lady. I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”

I nodded, trusting every word from her lips. She waited until I pulled the front door open, waving a hand with a lit cigarette like a royal as she pulled way.

The technicolor bulbs beamed from the artificial tree as I fell into our – Rick’s – apartment. I stood alone in the living room, Rick staying at his parents for a few days as I collected my shit. I had no idea where I would go, but I had an idea of what I wanted next. Of what kind of relationship I needed, the kind that Rick never provided, even in our most romantic days. How easily I had fallen into the routine, expecting something from our mundane lives to change, as though the passing of another Christmas would somehow spark him into action.

It did nothing for him. But I began to see my opportunity.

Over that next week, I got my shit in gear. Found a one bedroom near the hospital, recruited a few friends to help me move my couch, my Peloton, my bed from the guest room, and the larger pieces of furniture to my new place. Perhaps me moving out would finally force Rick to realize that he owned about fifteen percent of the furniture in the place. That, and the baseball bat he left by the front door for “protection.” He’d figure it out eventually. He wasn’t my problem anymore.

And all the while, my fingers itched, wanting to text Geena, hoping that she’d send me something, anything. But I heard nothing. Maybe I wouldn’t see her anytime soon. Maybe I’d never see her again. I’d cherish that night, the freedom of it, and hoped I’d find someone who sparked the life inside me like Geena did. Just not today.

On the last day before Rick came back to the apartment, I threw the last of my knickknacks into a laundry basket, ready to leave Rick behind for good. The apartment looked sparse, a picture of his place when we first met in college: a rickety recliner, an absurdly large television, and his X-Box all that remained besides the Christmas tree. The imprints of my presence remained in the carpet, a pristine white compared to the dingy grey in the rest of the room.

A light dusting of snow powdered itself across the sidewalk to my rental car, the heated seats and blasting vents doing nothing to keep me warm as I drove away. But fifteen minutes after I left, I skidded to a halt – not because of the weather, but because I forgot something. I would not abandon my pressure cooker to rot beneath Rick’s counter because he didn’t have a damn clue how to use it.

It took me almost double the time to get back to the apartment, the snow now falling steadily as I approached. And as I moved to park in the same spot I just abandoned, my heart stopped. The unmistakable Jeep Grand Cherokee, silvered scrotum swinging from the back bumper and steam still emitting from the exhaust was parked in the same spot. My spot.

Geena was here.

My hands shook as I punched in the code to the front door, ears straining to hear for her voice as I ran to the apartment. I couldn’t believe she remembered my address, wondering why she would just show up unannounced… but Geena did not seem like the kind of woman who planned further than the next second. The hall to our unit remained empty, silent. But I could smell the reek of tobacco in the air.

I shoved my key into the door, the handle jangling as I shouldered my way in. And all thoughts of retrieving my pressure cooker vanished like vapor as I stared at the writhing bodies on the carpet.

Geena’s porcelain skin gleamed as the fluorescent light from the hall poured into the room, her raven hair tangled in a nest as Rick’s fingers gripped at the roots. She moaned as he pulled her back, her neck bared to me as he fucked her from behind, her hands lined up with the corners of the indented carpet my Peloton once occupied. She stared at me, eyes gleaming garnet as they caught the glow of the Christmas lights in the corner

“Merry Christmas,” Geena breathed, her breath pulsed as Rick thrust behind her.

That fucking bitch. The flirtation, the kindness, the accident. She knew. She knew. And Rick… he wasn’t a victim to her manipulation. This wasn’t a chance encounter. This was premeditated, an orchestrated dissolution of our relationship so that Geena could slip into my place.

I gripped the door frame, unable to look away from their sweating bodies. But as my hand dropped down, the heel collided with the end of the baseball bat. Rick’s baseball bat. The highest level of security a man could offer. My fingers extended, lacing around the gummy grip. And with a smile that rivaled Geena’s, her own now wiped clean from her face, I pulled the bat overhead.

“Didn’t see you there.”