Whose side are you on anyway?
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After inadvertently forgetting to put the car in PARK, thus causing both AAA and Rob to come to her rescue at a turnpike rest stop when the car wouldn’t start, Rob is driving Celia home. Her mother, who had been with Celia, is driving Celia’s car home behind them.
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Celia could not recall the last time she had been so enraged. It was bad enough that her mother had made fun of her for her mistake, stupid and ridiculous though it may have been. But when Celia burst into tears at her thoughtless comment, Rob had added insult to injury with, “So how long do you plan on being such a flake?” He probably didn’t mean anything by it, but for Celia, already exhausted after a weekend of packing up her mother’s house and entering another new tired phase of pregnancy, it was the last straw.
She sat weeping in the passenger seat, unable to stop and silently cursing the hormones that seemed to rule her emotions.
“I should have finished the drive alone,” she said. “You and Mom could drive together and continue to have a good time at my expense.” She fumbled in her purse for tissues but could not find any.
“Celia, I’m sorry,” Rob said. “You don’t have much of a sense of humor right now.”
Celia felt cornered, stuck in the car and for the rest of her life with a man she momentarily loathed; stuck in an arrangement in which her most unhelpful mother might be living with permanently. She was enraged now at herself; she must have been out of her mind to agree to any of this.
“No, I don’t have much of a sense of humor,” she said. “I left it at home, in our bedroom, because this baby is taking up all the space I have.” Rob had gotten her pregnant, too (her anger reminded her), even as the remaining rational parts of her mind knew that there had been two of them in the bed.
At the moment she could not imagine how she was going to coordinate getting their new house ready and planning a move; she was utterly overwhelmed.
“I’m sorry you had to drive out here on your day off. You deserve a day off and I am being a flake.” She was still crying and it was hard to get the words out. “But I need you to be on my side. I don’t have any energy left to defend myself against you, too.”
“I told you I’m sorry I said that,” Rob said. “But I don’t have a lot of energy to spare myself right now.”
What happens next?
