Chapter 12 - True Colors
|
Evelyn rolled down her passenger window, leaning across the leather console with a haughty, defensive scowl.
“What is taking so long, Nathan?” she shouted over the low rumble of her exhaust.
“Get your stuff so we can end this pathetic drama!”
I walked down the three front steps and stopped at the edge of the brick walkway, looking Evelyn Harper directly in the eyes.
She looked smaller in person than she did on her filtered social media profile.
Her expensive makeup was beginning to crease around her eyes, and her designer sweater could not hide the brittle insecurity radiating from her posture.
“He doesn't have any stuff here, Evelyn,” I said, projecting my voice across the lawn.
Nathan whirled around, panic turning his movements clumsy.
“Claire, what did you do with my things?” he cried.
“Your personal property has been packed, cataloged, and delivered to a climate-controlled storage unit forty miles south on 28th Street,” I replied smoothly.
“Unit 412.”
“The first month of rent has been paid in full.”
“The key and access code were sent via certified mail to your desk at Dr. Vance’s practice.”
“If you do not claim your belongings within thirty days, the storage facility will auction them to the highest bidder.”
Nathan grabbed his head with both hands, let out a guttural groan, and fell to his knees on the damp grass.
“You gave away my things?” he wailed.
“You threw me out like garbage?”
“I didn't throw you out,” I said with a faint smile.
“I gave you freedom.”
“You said this house was a cage, Nathan.”
“Consider the door permanently unlocked.”
Nathan turned on his knees, looking desperately toward Evelyn’s idling SUV.
“Evelyn!” he pleaded, his voice cracking with humiliation.
“You have to let me stay at your place!”
“Just until I find an apartment!”
“You have an extra bedroom, right?”
“You said we were in this together!”
Evelyn stared at Nathan as if he were a stray animal that had crawled out of a storm drain.
The romantic fantasy of the rugged, tattooed dental hygienist had completely evaporated under the gray Michigan drizzle.
In front of her was an unemployed, broke, dependent man with twenty boxes in a suburban storage locker and seventy-four hundred dollars in debt.
“Are you completely out of your mind, Nathan?” Evelyn scoffed, her voice dripping with disgust.
“Let you stay at my luxury condo?”
“With what money are you going to pay rent?”
“You couldn't even cover a three-hundred-dollar brunch this morning!”
“You told me you loved me!” Nathan screamed, scrambling to his feet.
“You told me I was the only man who understood you!”
“I told you what you needed to hear to get you into my bed for the weekend, you idiot,” Evelyn snapped callously.
“You were a fun distraction in the breakroom, Nathan.”
“You were never an investment.”
“Did you honestly believe an office manager with my lifestyle was going to take care of a twenty-seven-year-old child?”
She shifted the SUV into drive, revved the engine, and looked at me through the open window.
For a fraction of a second, I saw a flicker of raw fear in Evelyn’s eyes.
She knew that a woman capable of orchestrating this level of eviction in seventy-two hours was not going to stop at the front porch.
Evelyn slammed her foot onto the gas pedal.
The black SUV surged forward, tires spinning against the wet leaves, and sped away down Michigan Street, disappearing into the Sunday dusk.
Nathan stood alone on the curb, his shoulders slumped, his duffel bag resting in a puddle of muddy rainwater.
May you like
He had traded a partner who built him up for a predator who tore him down.
And now, he had neither.
