A Missing Heart(19)

“Don’t be an ass,” she says, slamming her visor closed. “I have a valid reason for feeling the way I do.”

“Let me guess…that’s what your therapist said?” I’m going too far. I can’t help it. I’ll regret this, or maybe I won’t.

“You know,” she squeaks. “Everything was so perfect between us when we agreed to keep things simple. You didn’t have to know every little thing about the way my mind works, and I didn’t have to spend time digging through your damn cobwebs to figure out that you have an empty brain.” And now we’ve switched over into child mode. I’m not biting the bait on this one.

Well, maybe one little bite. “And if you remembered to take your birth control pill every night…”

She reaches for the handle on the door while I’m driving her stupid little Audi. “Let me out,” she demands.

“We’re on a highway right now. Don’t be such a drama queen,” I say, through laughter. My laughter is out of rage, not humility, but it’s the only reaction I can come up with right now.

“Pull over or I will open the door,” she growls.

“Our son is in the back seat, for God’s sake. Have a little pride in yourself.” If I were thinking clearly, I’d be cautious about what was coming out of my mouth, but like every other thing that has come out of Tori’s mouth in the past few months, this is yet another completely shocking move on her behalf. This girl was the calmest chick with the biggest smile when I first met her. One f*cking year later, she’s threatening to jump out of a moving car. How in the world did we get here? I know I’m not that bad of a husband. Actually, I’m pretty damn good considering I treat her like gold.

Regardless that Gavin can’t understand what his mother is doing right now, I would not want to tell him some day about the time his mother jumped out of a moving car that I was driving. I don’t think Tori would ever do something so stupid but she’s screaming right now, louder than I’ve ever heard.

I jerk the car to the side of the road, with plans to stop. However, the wheels haven’t even come to a complete halt when the door opens and she jumps out of the car. Okay, maybe it’s a good thing I pulled over when I did.

Taking the deep breath I need, I close my eyes and count to five, hoping to calm down. When I reopen my eyes, I find Tori curled up in a ball on the side of the highway in a heap of brown grass and dirt. What the f*ck is she doing? Has she lost her goddamn mind? I have Gavin in the back seat, and there’s no way I’m getting out to talk her off a cliff because she can’t control herself. “I’m not leaving Gavin in the car on the side of the highway, T. Come back in here so we can talk…please.” I do my best to keep my voice calm, but it’s like she doesn’t hear me. I’ve never seen her cry this hard, and I wish she would open up and tell me what’s going on. We’re married; she’s supposed to confide in me. Except, neither of us have ever really opened up to one another, which is strange for a married couple, I suppose. It was what worked for us, though. We wanted to focus on the current and future, rather than the past. After going through a disgusting divorce from Alexa, who cheated on me and got pregnant with another dude, and of course, losing the love of my life and our daughter, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about anything that had to do with a yesterday. Maybe we took that too far, because right now I feel like I don’t know anything about Tori at all.

“Babe,” I call out. “Come on, you’re getting your white pants all dirty.”

I know something is wrong when she hears me say that but doesn’t respond. The Tori I know would never sit on anything with white pants, never mind a pile of raw dirt on the side of a highway. This is so f*cking stupid. I hop out of the car and jog around to the other side, opening Gavin’s door. I lift the baby car seat out so I can take it with me on the twenty-step hike. After seeing too many of those stupid videos on Facebook where a truck flies into a parked car on the side of the highway, I’m not taking my chances there.

I place Gavin down and wrench my hand around Tori’s arm, lifting her up from the ground. She’s fighting me on it, but she’s not going to win. Her fists are crashing into my chest, and when I look at her face, there is nothing familiar about her now. Dark streaks of makeup form lines from her bottom lashes to the corners of her lips and then down past the bottom of her chin. Her normally pale complexion is bright red, and her lips are bowed down into a deeper frown than I’ve ever seen her wear, not even when she was in labor. “I don’t want to be her,” Tori cries out. “Every second of every day, I feel her inside of me. In my brain. In my words. In my actions. I’m her and I hate her. Make her go away, AJ.”

I’m trying my hardest to digest and comprehend everything she’s saying but none of it makes any sense. She’s lost her mind, I think. “T, I don’t know her. Are you her? Is that what you’re saying?” God I hope that’s not what she’s saying, because I’m about one “her” away from calling 9-1-1.

“You don’t know her,” she grunts.

“Okay, babe, you are sort of freaking me out, and I don’t know what to say or do to make you feel better right now. We’re on the side of the road, you’re hysterical, our baby is in a car seat…on the side of the road, and if anyone drives by and cares to evaluate this scene, we’re probably going to have some state officials and possibly the Department of Social Services pulling up behind us.”