“Move,” my girlfriend said quietly, one hand already on the passenger door. “You’re not sitting next to my boyfriend.”
Chapter 1
For a second, nobody in the parking lot moved. My coworker Jenna still had her fingers wrapped around the door handle, and the smile on her face had gone completely flat. I was standing ten feet away with a cooler in my hands, watching two women stake a claim to the same seat—and somehow I still didn’t understand that the real fight had started years before they ever met.
My girlfriend, Molly Hayes, had never liked the expression. We had been together a little over a year, and she was my first serious relationship. Molly was beautiful, sharp-minded, loyal, occasionally ruthless, and completely incapable of pretending she liked someone when she did not. If a restaurant was terrible, she said so. If someone was being phony, she spotted it before I did. Sometimes her honesty could cut too deep, but I had always admired the fact that she never bent herself into shapes just to make strangers comfortable.
Jenna was different. She was free-spirited, messy, impulsive, and frequently difficult, though I had always found her funny. She had a boyfriend of four years, so I never considered her romantically. We had been friends for nearly nine years, and because of that long history, I overlooked behavior from her that annoyed practically everyone else in the office.
Molly knew some of this before they met. She knew Jenna called me her work husband, knew we had lunch together most days, and knew Jenna had once tried to fix me up with one of her friends before Molly and I started dating. After hearing enough stories, Molly had said, “I don’t think I need to meet this woman.”
Then our office planned a Saturday trip to Cedar Point in Ohio. Several coworkers invited spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, and friends, so naturally I asked Molly to come. When I mentioned Jenna would be there, Molly merely said, “Fine.”
I foolishly assumed that meant everything would be fine.
Three coworkers were riding with us. Jenna arrived carrying an oversized purse and a travel mug, marched straight toward my passenger door, and reached for the handle.
Molly was already standing there.
“Where are you going?” Molly asked.
Jenna blinked. “Up front.”
“I’m sitting up front.”
“I always sit in front when I ride with Eric.”
I was loading a cooler into the trunk and heard every word. This was the moment I should have walked over and said, “Molly’s my girlfriend. She sits with me.” It would have taken five seconds.
Instead, I said nothing.
Jenna reached for the handle again.
Molly smiled, but I knew that smile. “Not today, sweetheart.”
Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“I’m the girlfriend. That comes with certain benefits. One of them is shotgun. So slide yourself into the back seat.”
One of my coworkers suddenly became fascinated by his phone.
Jenna looked at me. “Seriously?”
I shrugged. “There’s plenty of room in back.”
That was technically support, but it came far too late. Jenna climbed into the rear seat with an expression suggesting she had been publicly demoted. Molly sat beside me, fastened her seat belt, and started discussing breakfast as if nothing unusual had happened.
The ninety-minute drive was miserable.
At the amusement park, things seemed to improve. We rode roller coasters, ate overpriced burgers, took pictures, and laughed with the rest of the group. Yet underneath everything was an odd current I could not understand.
Jenna kept appearing beside me.
If we stood in line, she stood next to me. If I bought a drink, she asked for a sip. When I spoke to someone, she would lean across me to join the conversation. Once she rested her hand on my shoulder while laughing at something I had said.
None of it registered as unusual.
Molly noticed every second.
By late afternoon, we reached one of the park’s indoor haunted attractions. The cars held two passengers each. There were five of us waiting together, meaning somebody would have to ride beside a stranger.
Jenna hooked her fingers lightly around my arm.
“Eric, ride with me. You know I hate these things.”
Before I could answer, Molly stepped between us.
“He’s riding with me.”
Jenna rolled her eyes. “Come on. You’ll both survive being apart for five minutes.”
Molly stared at her.
Then she said, “Maybe you wouldn’t need to beg somebody else’s boyfriend to sit beside you if your own boyfriend cared enough to come. Or if you weren’t so unpleasant that nobody else wanted the job.”
Everything stopped.
Jenna’s face went white.
“Molly,” I said.
“What?”
“That was completely unnecessary.”
Jenna turned and walked away.
Molly folded her arms. “Of course you think so.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you haven’t noticed a single thing she’s done all day.”
“What has she done?”
Molly actually laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because she could not believe me.
“She has spent six hours hanging off you.”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“She touches your arm every time she talks to you. She interrupts me when I speak to you. She keeps separating you from everybody else. She expected my seat in your car. Now she expects my seat beside you on a ride.”
“She’s my friend.”
“I know.”
“And you humiliated her.”
Molly’s eyes hardened. “You really don’t see it.”
“There’s nothing to see.”
That answer hurt her more than I understood at the time.
For the rest of the evening, she barely spoke to me.
On the drive home, Jenna sat silently in the back while Molly stared through the passenger window. When we reached my apartment, Molly took her overnight bag from the trunk.
“You aren’t staying?”
“No.”
“Can we talk about this?”
“I already tried.”
“Molly, you were cruel to her.”
She looked at me for a long time.
“I apologized to everyone else for making the day uncomfortable,” she said. “I will not apologize to Jenna.”
“Why not?”
“Because she knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“And I don’t think she’s doing anything.”
Molly nodded slowly.
“That,” she said, “is the problem.”
She got into her car and left.
I stood in the parking lot believing my girlfriend had overreacted.
Three days later, I began wondering whether the only person who had failed to understand what happened at the amusement park was me.
