I heard her slippers on the stairs. I didn’t look up.
“Morning,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“Morning.”
She came around the island, leaned down to press a brief, warm kiss to the top of my head, and reached for her mug. Her hand froze mid-air. Her eyes locked onto the leather-bound Genesis fob.
I turned a page on my screen.
“Julian,” she said slowly, her voice losing its sleepiness. “Whose keys are these?”
“Yours. I replaced your Honda with a new car. It’s parked in your space.”
She didn't move for a long beat. I felt her standing behind me, the air in the kitchen instantly tightening. Then she set her un-sipped coffee down with a sharp, hollowclinkagainst the quartz.
Silence. Total, suffocating silence. She crossed her arms flat against her chest. “Where is my car, Julian?”
“I had it moved. A flatbed is picking it up tomorrow. I bought you the Genesis. It's yours.”
“You had my car moved and arranged to have it what? Sold? Without asking me.”
“Your check engine light stays on, Alyssa. The transmission is slipping. It isn't a safe vehicle for you.”
“That doesn't mean you get to ambush me,” she snapped. “You don't just buy someone a car like that with no discussion, Julian.”
Ambush. An ambush was something you did to an enemy, and I'd put a safer car in her space while she slept. I turned it over in my head looking for the place I'd done somethingtoher, and I couldn't find it. I’d done itforher. She was standing in her own kitchen telling me those were the same thing. To me they weren't even in the same room.
“I do. And I did,” I said, my own irritation flaring at her immediate hostility. “I spent the last week researching the highest safety ratings on the market so you wouldn't have to stress about it. It’s a reliable car, Alyssa. Yours is a liability. I don’t understand why you are mad at that.”
“Because you didn't give me a choice!” she insisted.
She kept coming back to “choice” like it was a thing I'd stolen out of the kitchen. I stared at her and tried to make sense of what she was saying. I couldn’t, because the choicewasthe problem. The choice was her white-knuckling a dead transmission down I-40, because some part of her would sooner risk the shoulder of a highway than let a person close a gap for her. I'd taken the one thing standing between her and the side of the road, and she was acting like I'd taken something that mattered.
“You just decided you knew what was best for me, wiped out my own hard-earned property, and expected me to just accept it,” she continued. “I don't want to owe you, Julian. I don't want to look at a car every morning and feel like I'm being managed.Handled.”
Her eyes flashed with a sudden, defensive volatility. “I know you're used to women who want you for what you can get for them, but I amnot one of them. I’mnot. This feels transactional, and it makes me feel cheapened. Like I'm just a gold digger on your list.”
I stared at her with irritation rising up the back of my neck. I had done this out of care, and she was reducing it to a slick, rich-man power move.
“Cheapened?” I stood up from the barstool, the peaceful Saturday morning completely vaporized between us. “You think I'm trying to buy you? I saw a safety hazard threatening my woman and her son, and I used my resources to fix it. That doesn’tcheapenyou!”
“It does!” she shot back.
I scoffed, and a harsh, low blow began rising up out of me before I could lock it down. “Alyssa, you cheapenedyourselfby spending years having zero expectations from men who were beneath you. Completely useless and worthlessassholes. Just because they taught you that a gift is a debt doesn't mean I am wrong for giving you one.”
She flinched as if I’d struck her.
“And let's be entirely clear about something,” I continued, my all-business tone taking over because I was too hurt to stop. “If you think I am going to be okay with having these kinds of means, watching the woman I’m with move around in a goddamn junk box, when I caneasilyget her something better? You’re smoking crack. I’m not doing it.”
She stared at me, her chest heaving, and her eyes narrowed into something venomous. “Oh.Oooh, I see. So you're embarrassed by me?”
“What?”
“Julian Wade can't have a woman on his arm who drives an old Honda?” she spat. “Is that what this is? It hurts your brand? Your image?”
“Are you out of your mind?” I shouted, any composure I had left shattering entirely. “You are completely twisting my words and you know it!”
“Am I? You just told me my car is an embarrassment to your lifestyle!”