Forehead puckered in concentration, Genevieve kept her head bowed over her knees so she wouldn’t make a mistake. “I like it here in Whiskey Creek.”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Because you just moved here last year, so it’s new—and you have more freedom now that your mother’s helping you raise Tommy.” He was at Genevieve’s mother’s house right now, thank God. Only two, he got into everything or threw a tantrum if he was refused. Noelle couldn’t stand the little monster.
“A town can’t get any cuter than this one. As soon as my mother moved here, I knew I wanted to come, too.” She added a slight shrug. “But you grew up in this area. I guess you can’t fully appreciate it.”
“What’s to appreciate?” Noelle wiped a red smear from the side of her big toe. “That I’ll never get my lucky break living with all these backwoods rednecks?”
“We’re in California. There aren’t many rednecks,” she said with a laugh that only irritated Noelle further. “Unless you’re talking about timber country farther north. Anyway, you should go to the Midwest if you want to see a real redneck. You’re just mad at Kyle.”
“Of course I’m mad at Kyle! He thinks he can screw me over whenever he wants.”
The smell of acrylic intensified as Genevieve opened a bottle of topcoat. “Screw you over? That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? What’s he done? He’s been making his payments. I know that, because it was his money we used to go to San Francisco last month.” She sent Noelle a conspirator’s smile. “You told him you were about to have your utilities turned off, remember?”
“I was about to have my utilities turned off. I just told him I needed more than I did. I deserve to get out and have some fun every once in a while, don’t I? He does.”
“At least he helped you out. And he gave you a water heater when yours broke, didn’t he?”
Genevieve had stopped by while they were installing the water heater or she wouldn’t have known about it. That was sort of inconvenient, because it made Kyle look nicer than he really was.
“This isn’t about money,” Noelle said.
“Okay...but from what I can tell, he can’t be all bad. You should see what my ex-boyfriend was like.” She pointed to a jagged scar on her temple. “That’s where he hit me with the claw side of a hammer. If I hadn’t been stepping away from him at that exact moment, who knows what kind of damage he would’ve done?”
Noelle scowled at her. “Why do you have to bring everything back to your ex? We weren’t talking about Doug.”
“Fine. Jeez. What’s gotten into you? We can talk about Kyle, if that’s what you want. But he doesn’t seem so bad, and I thought you agreed. You were grateful for that water heater when you were installing it. You said it would’ve cost nearly a thousand bucks to buy a new one.”
“That just goes to show how easily I let him buy me off.”
Genevieve put the lid on the bottle of topcoat and stretched out to let her toes dry. “Does this have something to do with that meal you made him? Didn’t he like it or wouldn’t he eat it or—”
“Yeah, he ate it,” she said, but that meal was just more proof of how hard she’d tried. She was tired of being overlooked and taken for granted, tired of feeling she wasn’t good enough for him. Even when they were married, he’d treated her as if she had some communicable disease, as if he’d rather not get too close. Whenever they made love, she had to initiate it, and then he’d make sure she got what she wanted, but he didn’t seem to enjoy it much himself.
He’d never loved her, never given her a chance the way he should have. Now that she thought of all the pain and anguish he’d put her through, she couldn’t believe she’d ever had a kind word for him.
“Do I have to keep guessing?” Genevieve asked. “Why don’t you tell me what he’s done and get it over with?”
“I’d rather not go into it. Everyone thinks he’s so great. But they don’t know him like I do.”