But now I had a difficult decision to make. How and when to tell Damon. Apparently, the option of don’t ever tell him was not an option, especially when we lived in the same zip code. I could always move and relocate Reynolds wines to say France or Spain. They have a good climate and some really magnificent wines. Bonus, I could speak both languages fluently.
But honestly, I thought maybe I would do it last night when we’d found another small motel. He’d booked us into two separate rooms and slammed the door right in my face when I tried to ask him what was wrong. I was really hurt by that rude gesture and felt so used. It reminded me of college all over again. One of my worse memories. Except this kind of felt a little worst for some reason.
He’d probably had his fun and now couldn’t wait to be rid of me. That was probably why I was now getting the cold shoulder brooder bastard routine. I have never seen Damon look at me so coldly before. France or Spain was looking better and better with every minute of this last part of the trip.
Today he was in an even worse mood if that was at all possible. He’d hardly said a word to me other than to growl about my navigation skills before slinking back into his dark funk. I amused myself by thinking his mind was like this dark bat cave where he went to brood. I wanted to jokingly ask him if that was right, but his icy stare was a little off putting. Usually, I go into full attack mode and have a full-on glare battle with him. But I was a little too emotional these days. I never knew which way my mood-o-meter would swing when I opened my mouth. So, I thought it best to ignore him.
Right now, he was trying to find the small town his broken phone was trying to lead us to. After a phone incident yesterday, he’d gone into an even darker mood and was not even coming out of his bat-cave mind to growl at me about my directions. So, maybe flinging his phone out of the window of the moving car had been a little over the top but he’d started the fight.
I had told Damon four times that the turn was coming up. He was driving so slowly that it shouldn’t have taken much for him to do a slow U-turn. But no! Damon had to find the next safe pullover place alongside the road. Well, that pullover place with the next rinky-dink town we came across was about forty miles later! Getting through those forty miles should also not have taken as long as it did even without having to exceed the speed limit. I wanted to say he was driving like a little Miss Daisy but I thought even she would’ve gotten out and walked. I am sure there were laws about driving as slow as we were. I was getting tired of seeing tortoises and snails waving at me as they whizzed by.
And then he’ll started accusing me.
At first, he’d accused my phone of not having updated GPS software and telling me that’s what I get for always having to have the latest technology before it had been thoroughly tested. Damon had rudely shoved his older generation phone in my hand and told me to use a decent phone with decent apps. My anger had already been boiling so much that I’d gotten hiccups trying to keep it at bay. The stupid water bottle I tried to open had one of those impossible lids that were designed to test a person’s patience. When it had eventually opened, water spewed all over me and Damon’s phones. Well, that started what led to the volcanic eruption of my already unstable emotions.
He yelled at me to dry his phone off as it was all we had to help us navigate our way home to call for help if we needed it. I didn’t like the implications that my phone was inferior. And when he’d said that following the GPS was not rocket science and his phone basically did everything for me, the car window had seemed to slide down on its own and his phone had left my hand to join the side of the road. He’d slammed on the brakes and was not amused when I told him his phone had jumped out the window to get away from his bullying.
It did feel good though flinging the phone out of the window. I’d always wanted to do that after seeing it done in the movies. The look on his face had been priceless and so satisfying.
I did feel the slightest bit of guilt that his precious geriatric model of a phone was now broken. But after that and his firing me from navigational duties, it was like a big black cloud lifted off my shoulders. He could drive and navigate on his own with a cracked screen and a GPS that was not very loud and the reason I had to narrate for the thing in the first place.