Authors: Ever McCormick
"You don't think that's a coincidence, do you?" he said.
"Absolutely not."
He nodded and kept up with my frantic pace.
"That company, it's where—" I don't know why it was so hard for me to say. I wasn't the idea thief. "It's where Michael works."
The look of shock that flashed across Adam's f
ace was replaced with understanding, anger, and then concern.
"Sorry, Ina."
Getting into the truck and back on the road was a blur. I went through long periods of quiet disbelief when I tried to put together what must have happened, imagining scenarios to explain how this whole turn of events might have gone down. Then, fed up with all the realizations I was making at once, I'd explain something to Adam in my unrestrained angry voice.
"Some of that crap was word for word," I screamed. "He didn't even ask me." I didn't think I coul
d get angrier and then I did. Adam didn't say much. He simply let me stew for a while. Then his sensible, calm voice spoke so softly, it seemed like how he might talk to an injured animal that he didn't want to bolt.
"Not the best circumstances, but your idea's out there, and you should feel good that your ideas have been embraced
—even though you're not getting credit for them. That poster was pretty powerful."
What he was saying made some sense, but this sucked. It was a perfect metaphor for what was wrong with the world. Good guys toiled in obscurity while bad guys ran away and got rich off the good guys' hard work. I wanted to scream. Why did I have to be a good guy?
"Seriously," Adam went on, seemingly unfazed by my lack of response to his positive outlook. "I'd hire you to do an advertising campaign for my cabins. You're the only person I've ever met who I
would
hire in fact. I've never done much advertising because it doesn't jive well with the mountain. The kind of people attracted to million dollar ad campaigns are not the same people who spend money on an experience with nature, but your ideas are different. I believe you could get the attention of the people I want as customers."
I shook my head and closed my eyes tight. I tried not to cry, but the truth was that something about the feeling in my belly was a lot like the feeling I had when I discovered Michael with my roommate. I felt scraped out and
hurt, but more than anything I felt incredibly stupid and naive.
I tried to let
Adam's words soothe me. I watched the headlights of the opposing traffic. I pictured the perfect evening I'd been having up until I saw the ad, but I couldn't stop remembering that Michael had yet again shown me how disposable I was.
"I can't get an entry level
job at any of the countless agencies across the country. What makes you think I can sell cabins in the middle of nowhere?"
I
kind of expected him to snap at me for that. Maybe I wanted him to. It was hard to be so angry at someone and something who was nowhere in sight. The anger was getting worse and worse, but there was no conceivable way to release it. Maybe I wanted to start a fight with Adam just so I could scream at someone. I didn't want to do that to him. I didn't want to be mean to someone who had been nothing but nice to me so I tried to make a joke out of it.
"I am so mad at him, I swear to god I would sleep with you
right now just to piss him off."
Adam looked at me sideways from the driver's side and then pressed on the gas pedal, sending us jolting forward. Unbelieving it was happening, I actually laughed.
"That's more like it."
"I can't believe you made me laugh," I admitted. "I am so mad right now!"
"I'm right there with you," he said. "As much as I am telling you to calm down and look at the bright side, I'd like to kill your ex."
He was very calm. When he said "kill," he was almost too calm. His eyes momentarily squinted in an angry way and his jaw tightened. I swallowed and felt the anger ease away just the tiniest bit. As usual, having someone else to share the anger with helped alleviate it.
I stared at his profile. His clean-shaven skin was lit up by pale moonlight and already beginning to show a trace of stubble. I wanted to run my hand across it. I wondered if lying next to him would make more of the anger evaporate. I was about the reach out and grab his leg when he sighed and began to slightly slow his speed. I glanced to the side of the road and saw a car with its blinkers on.
"As lovely as your offer sounds
— you know sleeping with me out of spite — I have a soft spot for women on the side of the road having car trouble."
Feeling jealous again, I looked at the car stopped in front of us. The interior light was on and I could see a woman in the driver's seat watching us from the rear view mirror. She turned to talk to someone and I noticed a car seat in the back of the car. A small head poked up and turned around to watch us.
The jealousy went away. Some of the anger did too. It could be a lot worse, I told myself. I was suddenly very grateful that we had been the first people to come across this woman and not some dangerous criminal who would take advantage of her. There was too much of that in the world.
I watched Adam walk to the woman's window on the passenger side and signal her to roll it down. They exchanged a few words and then she popped her hood, staying inside the car while Adam walked behind the hood where I couldn't see him.
He'd left the truck running for me, but I just wanted silence. Even the low hum of the cars passing back and forth seemed so loud and unnatural to me after my days on the mountain. I could barely hear the wind through the leaves. Those sounds had been so clear and crisp on the mountain, but out here nothing could be heard but motors and tires and rumble strips warning cars back between the lines.
I rolled down the window to let i
n fresh air. I turned the key, shutting off all of the interior lights and our own idling engine. I took a deep breath and tried to enjoy the dark silence.
A small red light flashed from the center console. I sighed and leaned forward trying to see what it was. Up close, I realized it was a small track phone
—one of those pre-paid tiny things that people only keep around for emergencies. I looked ahead to the broken down scene in front of me. I still couldn't see Adam behind the hood.
I flipped open the phone and all of the lights blinked on. This baby had a full charge. I dialed the numbers I knew better than anyone else's and sat through three rings before Michael finally answered.
14
"Hello," he said in his confident all-business voice. "Michael Zenia here."
I paused before saying anything and considered hanging up. I hadn't planned what I was going to say and it was so strange to hear his voice. It was so famili
ar that my body physically responded and I hadn’t counted on that. I felt excited and forgot why I called. Then I saw the poster in my mind and the anger returned. Suddenly I couldn't see the truck or Adam or the stranded car. I saw only Michael, sitting in his apartment looking smug.
"How could you?" I muttered
quietly.
"Ina?" The business accent dripped f
rom his voice, leaving behind only the regular voice I was used to. "Are you all right? Where are you?"
"I am on the side of a major highway in complete darkness, wondering how the hell you could steal my ideas and pass them off as your own. Where are
you
?"
"You saw?"
"Yes, I saw!" My voice choked, but I covered the pain with anger. "How could you do that to me, Michael?" My voice dropped from its shrill questioning tone to a low confrontational roar. "Three months ago we talked about marriage like it was inevitable. Two months ago, you were banging my friends. Now you're stealing my ideas? What the hell did I do to you to make you treat me this way?" The tears were pouring now. I couldn't stop them from streaming down my face and into my lap as I let him have it, as I finally let him know what I really thought.
"I'm so sorry, Ina. I was desperate."
"What do you mean?"
"This job is so difficult. On my first day, they showed me and a few other agents a huge loss the company was suffering and told us one of us had to fix it
—and that one of us would still have a job next year."
I didn't feel sorry for him. No way. I couldn't even get a job and he wanted me to feel sorry for him?
"They hated all of my ideas," he went on. "Every time I came up with a concept, they trashed it, or laughed at it. The only thing that got their respect is when I started quoting you."
I breathed. I closed my eyes. I tried to stop the tears.
"I didn't mean to steal your ideas. I just meant to learn from them, to glean something from them that would help me develop an idea of my own that would help me keep my job."
"Michael, it's just
— I don't even have a word for what I am feeling right now."
"
You’re mad, and I don't blame you for being angry, Ina. Just please try to understand. I am under so much pressure here. It's so much more pressure than I thought it would be, and I'm doing all of this alone. I am doing this without you."
"Because you cheated on me!" I reminded him.
"I know, Ina. I know. Don't you see? What the hell is wrong with me? I screw up everything!"
Yes, he did, but he was the one with a job. He was the one with the leading ad campaign. What they said was turning out
to be wrong: Cheaters ALWAYS won.
I breathed unevenly. I didn't know what else to say.
"Ina," he asked is a small hesitant voice, "what are you doing on the side of the road? Are you okay?"
My eyes flashed up to Adam in front of me helping the woman in the broken down car. He had leaned around the hood and was yelling something to her. "I'm fine," I whispered. "I'm driving home from dinner. I saw one of your
—or should I say
my
—ads while I was in town and I was so mad I had to pull over and call you. I still can't believe it, Michael."
We didn't say anything for a minute or two. We just listened to each other's breath. The anger subsided and there was something else underneath it, an old habit, I suppose, the way we used to be when we'd listen to each other's problems and then try to talk each other through them. "I know it must be hard to be in the real world."
"You have no idea, Ina. It sucks."
I tried not to take that as a dig
—that I had no idea what the real world was like. Personally, I thought I'd gotten a taste of the real world when my thesis went viral and random people I’d never met felt they had the right to call me a stupid, spoiled bitch in public forums on the Internet.
"I wish everything would have gone differently. God, if you had been here, it would have been so different. You would have talked some sense into me."
I kept telling my inner voice to shut up, to not show that I cared about the answer in any way, shape or form, but I couldn't stop myself from asking the question. "Are you seeing anyone?" I shut my eyes again, preparing myself for the answer.
"No," Michael said quietly. I could hear his pen hitting his desk over and over like a drumstick. It was an old nervous habit of his. "Are you?"
My eyes flashed open and took in the scene in front of me. Adam now crouched down next to the passenger's side window. The woman had turned on the interior light so I could see that Adam was smiling and talking to the child in the back seat.
I wanted to say yes just because it would hurt Michael, but I was a bad liar, and as much as I was lied to, I really didn't want to start doing it to others. As much as I was learning that cheaters win and liars prosper, I was still holding on to the possibility that I didn't have to succumb to that kind of behavior just because everyone around me did. I could be an exception.
"No, I'm not seeing anyone." I said.
He exhaled a large breath. "How is your wilderness escape?" he asked.
"It's perfect." As much as I wasn't prepared to lie, I didn't feel like telling him the whole truth. He didn't need to know about Roadsie. I didn't want him telling me I had to get out of there. He'd probably call my mother and tell her. She'd have the National Guard out here searching for me. "I'm learning a lot." That much was true.
"Are you rethinking us?"
"I don't know what to think of us. I thought I knew you and then you ended up being a completely different person from what I thought."
"I was confused. Cheating on you was the biggest mistake of my life."
I'd never heard him say anything quite so remorseful before this moment. He had apologized, but he never called it the "biggest mistake of his life" before. To be honest, I didn't think he had all that much remorse in him for his behavior. "Where is this coming from? If you thought you made a mistake, why didn't you call?"
"I don't know," he admitted
. "I figured I blew it. What was the point?"
"Yeah, you did blow it." The tears from my eyes had stopped, but a single one escaped as I spoke. "We had something good, Michael. We could have saved the memories at least, but now whenever I think of you, I think of you banging Cara in my dorm room. You sullied the whole idea of you in my head."