I am not confrontational.
I prefer peace to being at war with someone.
I like harmony in my life.
I am not a petty person.
Yet all that went out the window when I saw Yvette getting out of her '69 Z28 in the parking lot as Izan and I were pulling in. His father had called an emergency meeting at the family's restaurant and he wanted everyone there. Everyone, including me. I wondered if it was related to the financials Izan and his father had been working on. His father had contacted him and asked for help hunting down some discrepancies Izan had recently discovered before he quit, and instead of saying yes right away, Izan had talked to me first.
"My dad asked me for some help with the restaurant's books. There's some...discrepancies that I'd been noticing but couldn't account for, and he asked for my help straightening it out."
"So help him," I'd said.
"If I do, I told him we wouldn't be meeting at the restaurant or the house."
"Do you want to meet him at my place? Since I'm not there right now." I was still staying at the commune's cabin.
He'd looked thoughtful. "Actually, that'd be great. Do you mind?"
I shook my head. "You still have the key."
Izan had pulled me close. "I don't want you to think I'm getting drawn back in, Mist. I promise I'm not. This is a limited project and the only reason I'm doing it is because it might implicate someone who works in the restaurant. But if you have even the slightest hesitation, I won't do it."
He meant what he said, so I threw a little LEGO block of trust his way and told him to go ahead. He'd either leave it on the ground for me to step on, or he'd add it to the other blocks I'd given him in our trust rebuild.
Seven weeks later, Izan and his father must have figured out what was going on because they were calling a meeting.
"You're family, so Dad and I want you there," Izan had said simply to me. "And I'm sorry to ask you to be there around some people you're uncomfortable with, but this is important, and I want you to be there. You won't be alone. I won't leave you. Dad won't. Mom won't. Abuela won't. Yvette and her family will also be there, but...do you think you can trust me, Mist?"
Looking at Izan sharply, I realized that there must be a very good reason he wanted me to attend this meeting. This family meeting. Could I trust him to have my back? I decided this was a good time to decide if trusting him was the right thing to do. His behavior toward me would be a test of sorts, to see if he kept his promise to protect and defend me. The past seven weeks since he'd quit his job had been nothing but encouraging, but we also hadn't spent any time with his family.
He'd begun working for Sullivan Motors and there was a lightness about him that I could see and feel. He loved the job, and he was excited to go to work every day. The man loved all things cars and the job seemed a perfect fit for him. It certainly brought him more satisfaction than handling the accounting for the restaurant. He came by the commune at least four nights a week, and I always looked forward to the throaty growl of his 1969 Nova SS coming up the road, an audible signal of his impatience to be with me.
"I have to do some bread and butter work at the garage, obviously, but as RJ's seeing more and more of what I'm capable of, he's giving me some harder jobs," Izan said, smile flashing as he spoke. "I like that I'm not sitting behind a desk, stuck inside every day doing basically the same thing. I'm working with my hands and every day's something different."
"I'll go to the family meeting," I said suddenly, handing him another virtual LEGO block. What I didn't say was but you better not mess this up. From the understanding look in his brown eyes, he knew the subtext. Izan knew if he failed me again, he'd never get another chance and we'd be done. Over.
Two days later, we'd arrived for the meeting just after Yvette, and she waited for Izan to open my door and give me his hand to help me out. He insisted on that chivalrous gesture, telling me his father always said if you take care of your woman in the small ways, you'll take care of her in all ways. We ignored Yvette's hovering presence and began to walk past her without a word.
"I see she's still around," she said coldly. "When are you going to get smart, Izan?"
"Fuck off and die, Yvette," Izan flared at her, and we both turned to face her. "And I hope you can tell just how much I mean every word of that."
At her nasty words, I felt something shift inside of me temporarily. Nice Mist had just been shoved aside by I've Had Enough of This Bitch's Shit Mist.
I became confrontational.
I chose war.
I gave two middle fingers to harmony.
I embraced the petty.
"Yvette, out of curiosity, after you got your car back from Izan every time he worked on it, did you get your car detailed?" I asked her and smiled at the confusion on her face.
"Hardly," she said, clearly wondering why I'd asked such a random question. "I don't let strangers put their hands on my baby. That Z28 was my grandfather's car and he left it to me in pristine condition, so I make sure I keep it in the same, perfect condition."
"For taking such good cosmetic care of it, it sure broke down a lot or had serious issues. You had Izan look at it all the time. And being the nice man he is, he always took the time to tune it up, fix it or try to diagnose a nonexistent problem. I don't know a lot about cars, but I do know that something going wrong just about every other week, even in a classic car, is bullshit."
Her hands shot to her hips as she rolled her eyes at me. "What are you implying?"
"I'm saying you used your imaginary car problems to try to take Izan's time and attention away from me. And once I caught on to your little scheme -- and it didn't take long at all -- I took countermeasures. Which is why I asked about the detailing."
"Even when you speak English, you're hard to understand. Maybe you should have focused on mastering your native language before you attempted Spanish."
Izan took a step toward her, and I clamped my hand on his arm, silently asking him to hold off and let me handle this hosebag. I smiled a bit and felt like I understood the look on Mona Lisa's face: she was semi-smiling at and giving side-eye to some smug bitch who thought she had the upper hand.
"Well, then, I'll speak slowly to make sure you understand this: every time Izan worked on your car, and let me emphasize every time, I made sure he fucked me on it or in it. On the hood. On the trunk. In the driver's seat. In the passenger seat. In the backseat. Against each door. Bent over the hood. Unless you had the car detailed inside and out every time he worked on it, Izan and I are all over your car."
Beside me, Izan was laughing and shaking his head, his arm curling around my waist, hand on my hip.
"You what?" she screeched, thoroughly disgusted and infuriated. "You're lying. Izan wouldn't --"
"Oh, he definitely would. And did. Oh, did he," I said throatily to drive home the point. "Over and over and over. I made damn sure he associated that car with me, not you."
"That's disgusting! That was my grandfather's car!" She turned on Izan, her face red with rage. "You knew! You knew what that car means to me and I can't believe you'd do something that horrible. I don't even let people eat in my car --"
"Well, Izan sure did," I interrupted her tirade. "On a number of occasions."
She actually snarled at that. "I can't believe you two! That's really shitty of you, Izan. That was my grandfather's legacy to me! You seriously desecrated my car like that?"
"We could get a black light to prove it, I suppose," I said before he could respond and because I was actually enjoying serving this little surprise to her. "But trust me when I say that we lost track of how many times we desecrated your car. You tried to take his attention away from me by having him work on your car so often, but when I say that you failed, you not only failed, you failed spectacularly."
"You can definitely believe her," Izan said, favoring me with an intimate smile. "We had some excellent times in that Z. On the Z, too."
He was grinning down into my face while Yvette was practically seething in rage.
"How dare you treat my car, my beloved legacy from my grandfather, so dishonorably? I trusted you with it, Izan, and then you stabbed me in the back by doing...doing that in it?"
"And on it," Izan added unhelpfully, smiling cheerfully at Yvette's fury.
"Well, Yvette, another life lesson for you," I said sweetly, drawing her attention back to me. "While you were waging a nasty, verbal war against me, gathering allies, I was waging my own counteroffensive. A silent one but still effective because your attempt to drive a wedge between Izan and me ultimately failed. And you, as the loser of that war, are left driving around in a car that has seen more naked, free-love action than Woodstock. Just picture that, Yvette. My naked body's been on every part of your car on numerous occasions. I hope you think of that every time you get in it. You may take pleasure in driving that car, but I can guarantee I've taken even more pleasure in it."
"You fucking bitch!" she snapped, then walked off toward the restaurant.
"Oh, Yvette!" I called after her. "If you happen to find a pink pair of my panties in your Z, go ahead and throw them out. Izan had pretty much wrecked them anyway."
She let out a screech, hands clenching into fists by her sides, but she kept walking, and I leaned against Izan, laughing, feeling mean but giving myself permission to feel victorious.
"You were always naked when we got into that car," Izan laughed, calling me on my lie.
"I know," I admitted. "But she doesn't so that means she's going to spend hours tearing that car apart looking for them."
Those brown eyes gleamed in approval. "If this meeting wasn't so important, I'd take you home and fuck you right now."
"Raincheck?" I teased.
"Yeah. But right now, Yvette's day is about to get even worse."