“Damn,” I grunted, clenching the steering wheel. “That had better not happen.”
Talking to myself during my commute was my favorite time of the day. I got to speak my mind without being shot down by Garrett, or questioned by any one of a hundred students. It was the purest form of free thought.
I finished breakfast — a dry, crunchy granola bar — and turned through the University’s entrance. Two huge rows of elms lined the main avenue. Students milled back and forth, moving like colorful ants from quad to quad. Classes were in full swing. The chill of fall was a crisp snap in the October air.
“You? Fix up a house?”
I could still hear Garrett’s hollow laugher. Taste the cynicism dripping from his smarmy, know-it-all voice.
“What the hell do you know about repairing anything?”
It was stupid of me to even tell him. Nearly as stupid as living with your ex-husband, almost a year after getting divorced.
Just thinking about the whole situation made me grip the steering wheel even tighter. We’d separated, split up, divorced… and yet there I was, still in the home we’d made together. Only it wasn’t a home anymore. It was more like a prison. Just one of the many reasons I’d taken this side project, so I could spend as much time as possible not getting into it with him.
“You barely fix anything around here,” he’d laughed. “Look at this place. It’s going to hell in a handbasket.”
Hell in a handbasket. Of all the overused phrases he regurgitated several times each week, this had to be one of the worst.
“That’s probably because I hate this place,” I’d told him.
He’d scoffed at me for that. “You used to love it.”
“Not anymore.”
We’d been together five years, married for three. As far as I knew, everything had been going great. We’d bought a house, adopted a dog, even talked about having kids. Then, over dinner one night, Garrett simply announced he wasn’t in love with me anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s just how I feel.”
It was like getting punched in the gut. Hard.
The best part was that in the very next breath, my not-so-loving husband also told me he wanted to see other people. Effective immediately, apparently upon completion of dessert.
“So you’re fucking someone else,” I remember snarling. “Obviously.”
He denied it of course, but I knew he was. And the more I pressed, the less he tried to hide it. First there was Debbie, the girl he worked with. After that came Melissa, followed by some other tramp I never got a name for, and then finally his current girlfriend, Chastity.
Yes, that’s right. Chastity.
You really couldn’t make this shit up.
At first I tried throwing him out, but he flat out refused. He wasn’t leaving “his house,” no matter how much we didn’t get along anymore. We slept in separate bedrooms while the details were worked out, and the details went quickly since we had no assets, no children. But the more we lived together while being apart? The more furious I became. And the more I hated being around him.
“You can always leave,” he’d tell me with a shrug. “You don’t really like this place anyway.”
I was immediately defiant whenever he made the suggestion. As if in leaving, I was somehow surrendering something. Losing, even though there was nothing left to lose.
Besides, I just couldn’t afford a place of my own. Not as an adjunct. Not until I got hired full time.
But maybe, after saving all the extra money I was getting paid for renovations…
I turned into the driveway of the old frat house and instantly stopped short. A huge metal container took up most of the driveway. It was already half-filled with garbage.
I was totally speechless as I parked my car along the curb and made my way across the overgrown front lawn.
“Who ordered the dumpster?” I asked incredulously.
“I did.”