It was on the way back from the last day of the E3 convention in Los Angeles, in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 110 freeway, that Jordan, finding me his captive audience for the hour or hours it would take, laid into me.
He looked up after having fiddled with his phone for the first fifteen minutes. “Goddamn. We should just pull off and go sit somewhere for a few hours until this blows over. This traffic sucks shit.”
“Whether we sit at a bar for hours or just power through the traffic isn’t going to make a difference on how soon we get home.”
“We should have ordered a car and driver so at least we could do some work while sitting in this crap. Or maybe even knock back a beer.”
I shrugged.
Jordan readjusted his sunglasses and set down the phone. It was a warm day. We’d both shed our business attire and the top was down, a cool breeze blowing in from the coast as we motored along at five miles per hour.
“So I gotta ask how Mia’s doing…I haven’t seen her around much.”
“She’s up at her mom’s for a while.”
He jerked his head to glance at me. “‘A while’ sounds like a long time.”
I didn’t reply, checked my mirror and changed lanes.
“You guys okay?”
“Not really.”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘not really’ and why am I only hearing about this now?”
I darted him a quizzical look before jerking my eyes back to the road. “I didn’t realize that I owe you a ‘state of the relationship’ address.”
“Damn right you do. After I gave up my trip to Paris for you guys—”
“I thought you did that for her.”
“I did. But that means you don’t fucking dump your sick girlfriend. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I white-knuckled the steering wheel. “I didn’t dump her and she’s not sick anymore so calm the fuck down, jeez. What the hell happened to you? Someone cut off your balls or something?”
He flipped me the bird. “Don’t be an ass, Adam. What’s going on? You need to talk to someone.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is.”
I let out a long breath and then changed lanes again. Not such a great idea. Some jerk-off honked at me and Jordan sent the driver his middle finger.
“Jesus, you’re gonna start a road rage incident. Put that thing away.”
“So how is it more complicated than any other relationship out there?”
“We have…issues.”
“What issues do you have with Mia?”
“Oh, so you like her all of a sudden, huh?”
He shrugged. “I think she’s a nice girl.”
“She is a nice girl.” A nice girl with a lot of problems.
“So what’s the deal? Is there, like, someone else? Did you fuck around on her? Don’t tell me it was Carisa, because—”
“I didn’t cheat on her.”
“Well?”
“We’re taking a little time off from each other. We have some shit to deal with.”
“And you’re not going to tell me what it is.”
“I would, if I thought you’d take it seriously and not be an ass about it.”
He pulled off his sunglasses and tucked them into his shirt. “Do I look like I’m going to stab you in the back?”
I swallowed. “No.”
“Lay it on me. What happened?”
“I don’t trust her.”
“She fucked around on you?”
“God, nobody fucked around on anybody. Let me just get it out, okay?”
He held up a hand as if to stave off my irritation. “Okay, okay.”
“We broke up because—well, because of stupid shit, really. But while we were broken up, she found out about the cancer and didn’t tell me.”
“Okay.”
“And then in Vegas—”
“Yeah, yeah. I know all about what happened with you and her in Vegas.”
“I have no idea how you know that and it’s kind of creepy. However, what you don’t know is that she got pregnant.”
There was a long silence from the other side of the car. I focused on the traffic and when I finally glanced over at him, he looked pale. He reached into his pocket, grabbed his sunglasses and stuck them back on his face.
“I think I can guess what happened since she has just gone through chemo and is obviously no longer pregnant. That’s uh… that’s some heavy shit.”