Every building on Langley is a cold, bluish smear in all this rain. We pass a Claude Monet version of Rise and Smile, and I pray Nicholas doesn’t have the vision of a hawk and can miraculously see me in the passenger seat of a strange car. If he gets wind that I didn’t drive today, he’s going to ask why. I have no legitimate excuse. He’s going to find out I was lying about my car know-how, and his smug I-knew-it face is going to piss me off so bad that I’ll get an acne breakout. He has no business being suspicious of my repairwoman prowess, anyway. It’s sexist to assume I wouldn’t know how to fix leaky hoses and sanding belts and whatever else makes a car go vroom. He should assume that all of my lies are true.

I want Leon to hurry up, even though it’s slippery and I would very much prefer not to die in this car that smells like it’s huffed an entire forest up its grille. I wonder how I can phrase the request to put his life in mortal peril so that I’ll have time to look up YouTube tutorials before Nicholas gets home. Is it worth the possibility of skidding off the road in order to maintain this con? Yes. Yes, it is. I haven’t been cultivating it for this long to have it blow up in my face over some rain.

I pick up a to-go cup off the floor and turn it over. “Dunkin’ Donuts, huh? Don’t let Brandy find out.”

Brandy’s sister owns a coffee shop, Blue Tulip Café, and Brandy is her Junk Yard ambassador. She doesn’t let anyone at work get away with patronizing big coffee chains.

Leon chuckles. “Oh, I know. I have to hide it like it’s a dirty secret. But the coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts tastes better, and then you’ve got to consider my allegiance to the name. When you share a last name with Dunkin’ Donuts, that’s where your loyalty goes.”

“Your last name is Donuts?” I reply like a complete idiot, a split second before I realize my obvious mistake.

“My last name is Duncan, Naomi.” Leon slides me a glance, and his expression wants to be Are you serious because this is a detail I should probably know by now, having worked with him since February at the Junk Yard, which is not literally a junkyard. It’s a mom-and-pop store. But his manners are infinitely superior to mine, so instead his expression is Oh, that’s a perfectly understandable thing to say, I suppose.

I want to open the door and roll out, but I resist. It’s a monsoon out there and I’ll have copper shimmer streaking down my cheeks. With this visibility, I’ll wander into traffic and get run down. My black-and-white engagement photo will appear in the newspaper, with a notice that in lieu of flowers, my fiancé’s family requests donations be made to their for-profit charity, Rows of Books, which sends dental hygiene textbooks to underprivileged schools.

I seethe for a moment because that is exactly what would happen, and I’m spiteful enough that I think I’d rather take the flowers.

Finally, finally we pull onto my street. I’m already unbuckling the seat belt when I point at the little white house with my dependable old Saturn and a gold Maserati out front, mismatched as can be.

Nicholas is home, goddamn it.

Standing on the porch with today’s mail and a leather satchel tucked under his arm, unlocking the front door. The one time I need him to dote on his mother after work, and he comes straight home instead like a jackass. I check out my car and wheeze; the tire is so flat, the whole thing is lopsided. It’ll be a miracle if Nicholas hasn’t noticed. The Saturn looks pitiful next to Nicholas’s flashy car, so out of place in Morris that everyone knows who it belongs to whenever it whizzes through the stoplight just as it turns red.

Conversely, Leon’s vehicle is a Frankenstein’s monster of Japanese parts. Most of it’s a dull gray-blue, except for the driver’s-side door, which is red and eroded from rust, and the trunk, which is white and doesn’t close properly. It’s been bumping the whole ride, which probably accounts for my visions of somebody bound and gagged back there. Poor Leon. I know they say it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for, but he’s never been anything but nice to me and doesn’t deserve the side-eye. He is probably not Jack the Ripper.

“See you tonight,” he says.

Brandy hosts a game night most Friday evenings. She invites Zach, Melissa, Leon, and me, with a standing invitation for our significant others. Nicholas has never gone to one of Brandy’s game nights, Zach’s barbecues, or Melissa’s mini golf outings, which is just fine by me. He can go do his own thing with his own friends, whom he doesn’t even like but hangs out with anyway because it’s hard to make new friends when you’re thirty-two.

I’m halfway across the yard when Leon unexpectedly yells, “Hey, Nicholas!”

Nicholas gives him a confused wave. My coworkers tend to ignore him whenever they come into contact, and vice versa. “Hey?”

“You coming to game night?” Leon asks him.

A laugh that sounds like “Bagh” escapes me, because of course Nicholas isn’t coming. Nobody there likes him and he’d just be defensive and sulky the whole time, which would suck all the fun out of it for me. If he went, my friends (I am still counting Melissa as a friend even if she’d rather I didn’t, because I’m holding out hope she’ll be nice to me again someday) might catch on that we’re not the yin-and-yang lovebirds I’ve been pretending we are in my Instagram stories. In a way, it’s convenient that Nicholas avoids my friends and doesn’t stray close enough for them to inspect. Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us, since in reality what we have isn’t enviable at all.

“What’s that laugh for?” Nicholas asks, looking offended.

“You never go to game night. Why’d he even ask?” To Leon, I call, “No, he’s busy.”

“That’s too bad,” Leon replies. “You know you’re welcome to swing by if your schedule opens up, Nicholas.”

Nicholas’s narrowed eyes never leave mine as he responds, “You know what? I think I’ll go.”

Leon waves cheerfully, which is at total odds with the shock I hasten to cover up. “Cool! See you, Naomi.” Then he drives off.

Someone has said the simplest thing, See you, Naomi, and I have a strange thought.

It’s been a long time since anyone has seen me, since I keep so much about myself hidden. Me, who I am really, an individual who has been alive for twenty-eight years, twenty-six of those not knowing Nicholas Rose existed. I’ve been slowly bleeding out the Westfield parts of myself to become pre– Naomi Rose. Almost Mrs. Rose. I’ve been one half of a whole for nearly two years and lately, I don’t know if I’d even count as a half.