I rolled my eyes, then held the pink bag out to her.
“Wow.” She paused. “When you said tiny, I was expecting like a miniature version of yours. This is a full-size backpack.”
“A full-size backpack that doesn’t fit shit in it,” I agreed. “It’s yours if you want it.”
She hugged it close and grinned. “I’ll cherish it. And put the grips that you discarded in there.”
I rolled my eyes and held the door open for her to exit. Once she did, I waited to see what Gumby wanted to do, only to already see him heading for my bedroom. Which meant he’d sleep on my fuckin’ pillow.
Closing the door and shutting him inside, I locked it, then set the alarm using my phone.
When I turned around, it was to find Fran already leaning into the car and pulling out the grips I’d given her yesterday.
They were too big for her.
They were practically brand new.
But I’d wanted her to have them.
She didn’t need to know that I’d literally just bought them and had probably only worn them a handful of times.
She was doing me a favor by driving me around, anyway.
Not that she would’ve taken them had I told her that they were new.
So I’d fibbed a little bit.
“Works great,” she teased. “Now, I need to go get one of those pink jump ropes that are in the ads I’m seeing all over social media.”
I snorted. “Isn’t it fuckin’ weird that you think about something, and all of a sudden it’s in your news feed? I mean, literally, last night, I was thinking about how I needed to buy some new chalk for the gym. Fast-forward to this morning, and that’s all I’m seeing in almost all of my ads.”
“Last night, I told my sister that I wanted some new CrossFit shoes. This morning, I’m seeing some Superwoman ones, and I’m buying them.”
I snickered at her words.
“That’s the way of it.” I rolled my eyes and opened her car door for her.
The passenger side.
Turns out, Fran really hated to drive.
As in, she detested it.
Something I’d found out when she offered me the keys to her vehicle nine times out of ten when we were driving around.
Which was fuckin’ hilarious seeing as she ran errands for a living, which made her drive around town a lot.
“I’ve heard a lot about those. But you won’t get any of them. They sold out within the first day, I think,” I said as I backed out of the driveway and started heading for the gym.
Her car sputtered and coughed, and I said, “When I get mine back, we’re doing an ol’ switcheroo. Yours is going in, and then I’ll let you drive mine around while doing shit.”
Her eyes sparkled as she said, “That sounds like a mess.”
“Sounds like I owe you one,” I told her. “And this car sounds like it’s going to break down any second.”
She started to snicker. “It might.”
I looked over at her and winked.
When we got to the gym, it was to find Maria already waiting for us.
“I fuckin’ hate her,” I muttered underneath my breath, trying to keep it low enough that Fran wouldn’t hear.
But she did hear.
And she was snickering as we both got out of her car.
“I never thought I’d see you in a run-down ‘piece of shit’ like that, T,” Maria chided me.
I felt my eye twitch at the sound of her voice.
Maria and I had gotten married young. As in, she was seventeen with her parents’ permission, and I was eighteen. I went into the Army, and she went to college. We were together throughout all of that, and happy. But I now knew the reason we were happy was because we were separated from each other.
She was off at a university in Kentucky, and I was stationed in Louisiana until I was sent overseas. Then I was deployed.
When I finally got back home and spent some real time with Maria, I realized that I didn’t really like her all that much as a person.
Yet, I stuck with her anyway because shortly after we arrived back home with each other, she got pregnant. Only she miscarried. Which fuckin’ sucked.
However, we both dealt with that miscarriage differently.
Me by becoming a little more introverted and her by becoming a party animal that never could hear the word ‘no’ without throwing a fit.
When I started working as a detective, it was long hours, and it ended up being another blessing in disguise for me.
Sadly, that only made our marriage last just a little bit longer than it really should have.
By the time that I finally realized enough was enough, almost twenty years had passed.
Now, I was a thirty-six-year-old man that had just started his life over.
A thirty-six-year-old man who hated his ex-wife’s guts.
Even worse, I hated that she gave Fran shit, because I was really starting to like Fran.