I shake my head. “No, you’re not. You’re just some pathetic little changeling that he grew out of a tree.”
He takes an angry step towards me.
“Temper temper,” I say. “You don’t want the good people who came here buying into your peaceful guitar groove to find out you’re really just a nasty little creep, do you?”
He glares, but he stays where he was and I leave the bar.
Well, that went well, I think as I get into the car. Vent
ing like that was just so mature, wasn’t it?
But it felt good.
I have another long cry before I start up the car and head home to put Edric’s belongings on the curb.
“You know,” Gwen says when we’re sitting in the Half Kaffe Café the next day, “I didn’t really mean that I was happy you were having problems.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I had Karen commiserating with me when I brought her car back earlier this morning. Mine was parked where it was supposed to be, on the street, with my resident’s parking pass displayed on the dashboard. Edric’s stuff was all gone—but whether the changeling got it, or street people, I don’t know. Or care.
Now I’ve got Gwen figuratively holding my hand.
“So he really was having an affair,” she says.
I didn’t say anything to either her or Karen about changelings and fairy courts and the fairy tale geas that pushed Edric and I apart. I simply told them there’d been another woman—which wasn’t entirely a lie. He just wasn’t sleeping with her.
“He has this whole other life,” I tell her. “It’s been going on from before we even met and he won’t—he says can’t—give it up. So what am I supposed to do?”
“That sucks,” she says, then she cocks her head. “And there you were, wanting me to ask Bill about his fixation with the SuicideGirls.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” I say. “Not unless he starts listening to Goth music and starts talking about getting a tattoo or a piercing.”
“As if.” Then Gwen sighed and added, “You really just put all Edric’s stuff out on the curb?”
“I wasn’t going to keep it—and I didn’t want to see him again.”
Only it would be the changeling coming by, not Edric, and there’s no way I can explain that without sounding completely mental.
“I’m still surprised you didn’t want to try to work things out,” Gwen says. “I mean, you of all people…”
“I agree there are relationships you can work on, but for ours to stay good, either he or I would have had to have a complete makeover—and you know how I feel about that kind of thing.”
Gwen shakes her head. “I still don’t get it. When we started going our separate ways back in high school, you didn’t give up on us.”
“That’s because, for all our differences, we were actually willing to work on our friendship. You and me. It takes two.”
“I guess. But you and Edric were together for seven years.”
“During which time, he had a secret life that he kept hidden from me. And he won’t give it up, so what can I do?”
“I hate this,” Gwen says.
She reaches across the table and gives my hand a squeeze. The rest of our conversation goes on much the way the one with Karen did, me saying I was okay, really, her being supportive and telling me if there was anything I needed, all I had to do was ask.
There’s something I need, but she can’t give it to me.
I need to turn back the clock, maybe.