I come from a place of privilege in many ways, and I try not to flaunt it or brag about the comforts I often enjoy because I understand that wealth is often earned by a combination of hard work and luck. Hard working people can dedicate their lives to a trade or a task or a project and never see the financial gain they deserve for their commitment. Caroline is very likely one such person. I can’t help but think it wouldn’t be so hard helping her if she weren’t so aware of that very fact. Needless to say, it resulted in an argument today.
-_~* Week 18 *~_-
Can you come pick me up? Am stuck 😦
Santiago’s brain fractures into a thousand tiny pieces – again. Ever since he’s met Caroline she’s had trouble with this damn car. More than once he’s offered to pay to have it fixed. He even asked if she wanted a new car for Christmas, which she vehemently argued against any time the discussion began. She was incessantly insistent that she could handle this on her own.
And now she’s stuck.
Again.
Where this time?
While awaiting the answer, he stands up from his chair in the living room and stretches out. His roommate is home and raises an eyebrow at him while continuing to play a game from the couch. “Is your girlfriend’s car acting up again?”
“Yes,” his reply comes involuntarily and with a tone of irritation; admittedly, it’s an accurate depiction of his feelings. He doesn’t completely understand why she doesn’t want him to help her with this one thing. It is, arguably, the most important thing that she could need help with outside of health issues. “I hope she’s stuck at work so I can at least grab a coffee while I’m out.”
“Me too, dude,” he replies, losing interest in the conversation quickly. Recognizing that they’ve pretty well run out of things to say to each other, Santiago makes his way back to his bedroom to get on some socks and grab his wallet.
CC drive thru
“Seriously?” he groans to himself.
Is it still in the drive thru?
yep so get here PRONTO
The expectation of him to just show up whenever she’s in need is very annoying when she won’t actually let him help her. If she would drop some of her pride and just let him buy her a new car – it doesn’t even need to be anything fancy – it would reduce the number of times she texts him saying ‘get here pronto’ because she’s stuck somewhere inconvenient.
The drive to Cecelia’s Dinner 2-Go doesn’t take long. In fact, he’s willing to bet that Caroline was on her way to his dorm to eat dinner. For a while now, they’ve tried to eat at least one meal per day together, but all of her extra hours at the shop have made it nearly impossible to meet up other than for a coffee or snack break between shifts and running around. Today was supposed to be her first semi-open since Christmas day.
When he gets there, he finds that someone must have helped Caroline push her car into a parking space. He pulls up next to her and stares across the empty passenger seat into her driver’s side window. She’s already eating. Maybe she wasn’t grabbing food for the pair of them after all.
Santiago can’t stop his heart from sinking. He takes a moment and rests his head on the steering wheel.
nvm – dana is coming
Well, that really puts the cherry on top of a shitty situation. Caroline not only refuses any offer of assistance but now doesn’t even care if he shows up to help or not. A heavy wave of frustration drags his stomach to his feet, leaving a significant emptiness in his gut that he can’t pretend isn’t there. Does she prefer her time away from him now?
Is this a sign of something more?
I’m already en route…
dana is on her way from work ne waygo back home and don’t bother
Grumbling in utter defeat, he gets out of the car with the intent of knocking on Caroline’s door. Instead, however, he goes inside and orders a drink and a cheeseburger. He certainly can’t confront her feeling as empty as he does right now, so he may as well eat something and then try talking to her about her sudden desire to avoid him.
Brisk air leaves a chill shaking through his body when he walks back out the door. At first, he doesn’t notice that there’s a third car parked near Caroline’s spot. But it’s hard to miss the flashlight moving all around. That’s when he notices the hood of her car is up and that someone is laughing – someone who isn’t Caroline.
And it’s not Dana’s laugh. It’s not even a girl’s laugh. In that exact moment, anger bubbles up Santiago’s esophagus and burns the back of his tongue.
Well I’m already here. Grabbing dinner inside.
“Shit,” he hears Caroline swear. “He’s here. You need to get back in your car.”
His brain jumps to every conclusion there is to be had in a scenario like this one. The first thought, and perhaps the most suffocating one, is that he may have misjudged Caroline’s relationship with Casper all along. Had he just been strung along until he couldn’t be tolerated anymore? Was she just not interested in someone who couldn’t give her the physical intimacy she craved? What was happening that she would turn to Casper for help before letting her own boyfriend do something to make a difference in her life?
“What the fuck, Caroline? He doesn’t know you’ve been calling me to work on your goddamn car? Are you fucking kidding me?” It seems that Casper is just as pissed off as Santiago, and as much as he should sympathize with the man – he doesn’t. As it stands, Casper is standing on the other side of an invisible line with his girlfriend. The only way Santiago can see him is as an enemy – as a threat.
Even though her face can’t be seen, Santiago is sure that Caroline is rolling her eyes. “How do you think he would feel if he knew that you’ve been working on my car? He probably doesn’t even know you work on cars.”
“I don’t care what he knows,” Casper says, slamming the car hood down and pointing the flashlight in her face. It makes her wince. “You can’t just lie about this kind of thing. If you really love him that much then you shouldn’t fucking lie to him. Especially not about this kind of thing! I’m only here because I promised your grandma that I’d keep it running if she passed away before she could replace it.”
Caroline spins around on her heel and shakes her head. She quickly lifts a hand to her face, presumably to wipe away a few tears. “Whatever, asshole. Just get out of here before Santiago comes outside looking for me.”
“Gladly!” his shout echoes throughout the entire parking lot. Casper whips his car out of the parking lot, leaving Caroline leaning against her car full on sobbing. And he’s just standing on the sidewalk, waiting for a clue from the universe about what he should do.
Thankfully, Caroline only wanted him to work on his car, which means it wasn’t what his brain originally though – which is a massive relief – but it brings up plenty of other questions about his relevance in Caroline’s life. Additionally, Casper made it seem like Caroline has said that she loves him, loves ‘him’ as in Santiago. They haven’t really even broached that topic except when he said he’s at that stage before saying ‘I love you.’ The feelings he’s had for her have grown and morphed so quickly, he can’t hardly believe that it’s only been nearly four months since they’ve first met. Though he doesn’t totally believe in the concept, there are times where he feels like their relationship was ‘meant to be’ in a way.
And, lastly, he wonders what she’s going to do now. Will she call him and tell the truth? Or will she really call Dana this time? Should he just walk over to her and tell her what he overheard? There are so many possibilities for what he should do and nothing screams ‘this is the right thing to do’ to him because there’s something that goes wrong in every scenario.
Where are you?
dana already got me she was really close we were gonna try to hang tonight bc she was off early
Choosing to be hurt is something that Santiago knows he can’t afford right now. Angry and hurt people make snap decisions without thinking about the consequences of those choices. He’s learned something from Doctor Anya, and he’s going to be as strong as he can right now. Santiago’s decision is to go straight to her car. What will she do now that she’s caught in a series of lies? He hopes that she won’t make excuses, but he might be setting his sights too high on this one.
Caroline doesn’t even flinch at the sound of footsteps. She probably saw someone pull in but was too caught up in her game to notice how familiar the vehicle was to her. So she’s probably just assuming that it’s the car owner. It couldn’t possibly be her boyfriend, not in her mind, and she just carries on crying right in front of him.
“So,” he starts, giving her a moment to realize the mess she’s in. “How offended should I be that you couldn’t tell me the truth?”
Already pale in the deeply set sun and the pale rays of the moonlight hailing down on her, any color remaining simply pours from her skin. Even her eyes appear colorless. The sight brings him nothing but pain, but he knows he’d take this suffering if it means proving to Caroline that she can trust him.
“How dare you,” she growls through the tightening of her throat.
Santiago shrugs his shoulders. “Was the problem my offering to help you all the time that turned you off to telling me that you’ve been having Casper work on your car? Or was it my always showing up when you called me, no matter what I was doing, to make sure you weren’t stuck alone in your car for hours on end waiting for a tow truck?”
Caroline takes his drink from his hand and throws it on the ground. “So you’ve been listening? You’ve been out here just watching the show?” Then she takes his cheeseburger and throws it across the parking lot. He’s astounded by how immature she’s acting. It wasn’t that he expected her to be calm, or for her to admit her guilt, but he didn’t really think she would behave this way. “Was it a five-star performance? Were you impressed?”
Santiago laughs, though not seriously. It is completely out of irony. “I come to save the day and, instead, catch you in a lie, but I’ve somehow hurt your feelings. Do you even know what went through my mind when I heard Casper talking out here?”
“I don’t care what you thought,” Caroline says, climbing back into her car, trying to start it. She obviously wants to get away from the scene. While he doesn’t know much about cars, he’s done some research online, and whatever is causing her car to break down so often is no small thing. There’s no chance that she’s going to get it running and leave the scene of her crime.
Santiago opens the car door just in time for her to start screaming and smacking the wheel. Ignoring her outburst, he just says what he needs to say so that she knows what she needs to know. “I forgive you for lying, Caroline, because you’re the only person left alive that I care about more than I care about myself. But if you don’t care for even one second how your lying feels for me, then maybe you need some time to reassess what this relationship means to you.”
Caroline doesn’t respond. Tears are rolling off her face into her lap, and her body is slowly lurching forward, crumbling in defeat. When she doesn’t respond, he assumes that she means to ignore him. Since there’s nothing more he can say or do to calm her down and convince her to talk to him. “I’ll be in my car if you need me. Otherwise, I’m calling a tow truck and waiting until it gets here for your car so I can pay for it. Call whoever you need to call to get home.”
At some point during the wait, Caroline gets out of her car and goes back inside Cecelia’s Dinner 2-Go. Nothing really comes to Santiago’s mind when she does get out of the car because he’s playing games on his phone – word searches, Sudoku, maze puzzles – but when she comes back she knocks on his passenger side window. He’s very tempted to ignore her, but his heart won’t let him. Slowly, he waves at her to go ahead and open the door.
“I’m sorry,” she says as soon as the door swings open. Then she hands off a cheeseburger and a drink back to him. “I shouldn’t have acted like that. I got what I deserved.”
Santiago’s heart sinks. He doesn’t want to make her feel that she deserved to feel bad or that she earned this embarrassing moment. All he wants her to feel is comforted by the fact that she doesn’t have to keep secrets from him for any reason. “You just got a reminder that I’m always here for you, Caroline, and nothing else. Thank you for replacing my dinner.”
The fight isn’t long. However, it is a very serious one. Lying can ruin relationships. It can ruin people as a whole. Trying to remain strong in the face of it is more than Santiago has ever had to do, even harder than dealing with his parents’ deaths. At least when they died he knew it was real. It’s going to take some time to be at peace with Caroline’s mistake, but he can only hope now that it was a one-time mistake.
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