Or I should have shared with Alyssa.
Or I should have found a more mature way to deal with Robin so I could pick over everything with her.
Most especially the fact that, no matter how tedious, I had moved on so far that I was to the point of dating, something else which I wished I could pat myself on the back for.
On this thought, I wandered to my kitchen counter, dropped my sleek new clutch to it and pulled out my phone.
I went to Robin’s text string and typed in, Haven’t heard from you in a while. All okay? And hit send.
It was a puny attempt at communication but at least it was something.
I was staring at my phone, like Robin was hanging around waiting for me to text so she could reply immediately (when she was possibly making voodoo dolls of her selfish, thoughtless, gutless ex-friend who didn’t have the courage to lay it out about the way it needed to be, and sticking pins in it, something I knew she did because I’d done it with her—repeatedly) when it rang in my hand.
I stared at the display giving me a local number I didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t late. Not early, after nine so really too late to call and do it politely (according to my mother, who had a cutoff of nine o’clock for some Felicia Hathaway reason).
That was, unless you were in California, got a new phone with a new number that you hadn’t shared, and wanted to call your wayward daughter or friend and blast it to them.
It was hours earlier in California.
Shit.
Even on this thought, I took the call, putting the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“You went out with that dick.”
I stared at my counter.
It was Mickey.
“Mickey?” I asked to confirm.
He didn’t confirm but he didn’t need to.
What he did was ask, “You talk to Josie about that guy?”
“I’m not really sure how this is any of your business,” I replied.
“You didn’t,” he stated. “You did, Josie woulda told you that that asshole tried to steal her home from her. Lavender House.”
I blinked at my counter.
Lavender House, Josie’s house, was beautiful. Stunning. And it was pure Josie, imposing and welcoming at the same time.
Further, she’d told me it had been in her family for generations.
She loved it. She loved the family in it. In all that was Josie, who was her brand of kind and sweet but still kind of a hard nut to crack, those two facts were plain to see.
“What?” I breathed to Mickey.
“Yeah. And not up front. He did it nasty. Freaked her out. Scared her shitless. Brought back family, the bad kind Josie hadn’t seen in years, who not only got up in her face publicly, but also tried to break in to steal shit in the middle of the night.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Good people, Boston Stone,” he said sarcastically and my spine snapped to.
“You could have said this to me yesterday, Mickey.”
“You weren’t big on listenin’ to me yesterday, Amy.”
“That’s because you were being kind of a jerk yesterday, Mickey,” I retorted.
“Kind of a jerk lookin’ out for you, Amy,” he shot back.
He was kind of right about that so I changed tactics.
“I’ll have you know,” I began, “that my daughter was standing on the sidewalk and she heard what you said about her father.”
“I’m sure that’s supposed to make me feel bad,” he returned instantly. “But it doesn’t. See, I’ve been tryin’ to puzzle out why a woman who makes unbe-fucking-lievable cupcakes, who plays Frisbee in my backyard, who’s got so much money she doesn’t have to work but she doesn’t spend her time at the spa and instead spends it at a goddamned nursing home, who looks about ready to rope my kid to the chair at the fuckin’ possibility he might do something dangerous for a living, that happening in a fucking decade…why that woman has only got her kids for two days of the month.”
I sucked in a breath.
But Mickey was not done speaking.
“Instead, they’re with your ex, who’s a fuckin’ dick.”
“Mickey,” I breathed. “Are you spying on me?”
“Red Civic in your drive, babe, not hard to see.”
Time to give Auden a garage door opener and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already.
And if my son didn’t respond to a text to come get it (which he wouldn’t), I’d mail the thing to him.
Mickey spoke into my silence.
“You’re loaded so it can’t be that you don’t have the cake to hire a decent lawyer to look out for you. So not sure what it could be. ’Cept he did what dicks like him do. Especially dicks like him who think they can treat women the way he treated you. He convinced you that you were a piece of shit when he is and you went down without a fight.”
Oh God.
“Mickey, please—”
He again spoke over me. “And maybe he’s convinced your kids you’re a piece of shit too. They’re old enough to get to you if they wanna see their mom. But that Civic isn’t in your drive but a coupla days a month. So maybe your girl heard me and woke up a little to the way it really is, Amy, and I gotta tell you, I don’t feel bad about that shit at all.”
“I…can’t talk about this with you,” I told him shakily, his words rattling me.
“Not surprised,” he replied and then socked it to me. “Down without a fight.”
I forgot about being rattled and snapped, “None of this is any of your business.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that clear.”
What did he mean with that? How did I make that clear?
No. No, I didn’t care.
“Not clear enough,” I returned. “Has it occurred to you with all you’ve said about things you know nothing about that perhaps you are treating me much like Conrad did?”
“Oh no,” he whispered and a chill chased up my spine at the sound of it. “No, you fuckin’ do not, Amelia,” he kept whispering sinisterly. “If you were mine, no matter if you fucked me, you’d get respect from me. I know that shit because my wife sunk into a bottle, she fucked up our lives, our future, our kids, and she never gets that shit from me. You cannot tell me that whatever it is that happened between you two is as bad as you pickin’ booze over your family. So you cannot tell me the way he spoke to you was what you deserved because I know that shit isn’t fucking true.”
Again, he was right and this time, not kind of.
This time, he was really right in a way that again rattled me.
“I can’t imagine why we’re discussing this,” I said defensively. “We hardly know each other, and again, my business isn’t yours.”
“I figure you’re right, you can’t imagine why we’re discussing this because even someone who gives a shit about you, we hardly know each other or not, lays it out straight with no bullshit, you’re so deep in what he’s taught you to believe, you refuse to see.”
Again.
Right.
Again.
Rattled.
“Maybe we should stop talking,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” he returned.
“Like, ever,” I went on.