Trashley: Forty-Nine

The Fork in the Road

Michelle and I hid in the laundry room while Ashley picked up her daughter so she wouldn’t know we were visiting Cecelia. We overheard Ashley say that her Mom was in town, too. I gagged at the thought of Stacey. Ashley’s mom had covered up our affair, gaslighting Cecelia into thinking Ashley had been living in Bakersfield all year. She had also helped Ashley secretly sell Cecelia and Ashley’s family Subaru so Ashley could buy a used Tesla. While lying and stealing from Cecelia and her own grandchildren, Stacey had lied to me about Ashley owning an apartment in San Francisco and going to MIT. 

Whoever had created this woman was like, “Here’s a bunch of toxic traits. Let’s call her… Stacey.”

Ashley left, and the four of us packed into Cecelia’s car and headed to the farmer's market. I was getting a little taste of what life was like in the land that bridged together NYC and LA. I could see the appeal. The air was clean, without an ounce of smog. The trash was inside trash cans instead of overflowing into the street. The grass was so green you could probably eat off of it. This was the life Ashley had left behind.

“I can’t believe her Mom is here,” I said. “How embarrassing to lie to you and then show up in your town as if nothing happened.”

“So embarrassing,” said Cecelia, “At least I won’t run into her since they don’t do anything here except sit in Ashley’s apartment with the blinds closed or go to the Casino and play slots.”

“All Stacey did in Bakersfield was sit on her couch and watch TV with her little minion.”

“That’s all they do. She hates going outside.”

“Unless you’re Bubble Boy, there’s no excuse not to go outside,” I said.

The farmer’s market was near the University campus. We parked, put the baby in the stroller, and walked around.

The buildings were immaculate, each brick placed perfectly like a Lego set built by a giant. The flower’s at the farmer’s market were vibrant, the only other time I saw colors that strong I was on acid in a nude-optional cave in Big Sur. And the strawberries were affordable. I was still paying off a loan from the last time I bought strawberries at the Hollywood farmer's market.

We sat down for lunch on the water, and a breeze swept through the air. It was a perfect summer day, and I couldn’t fathom not wanting to enjoy it outside.

Cecelia and the baby. Blur sponsored by Blurox.

“So what’s the rest of the plan this weekend?” I asked Cecelia.

“Tomorrow, Ashley has our daughter for a few hours in the morning. After she picks her up, we could go for a bike ride through the nature conservancy by the house. But I only have two bikes.”

“You guys can bike. I’ll go for a run,” Michelle said.

“Perfect,” said Cecelia. "Then we can drive to my parents' house after she drops her back off.”

We left lunch and drove back to the house. Ashley dropped their daughter off, having no idea Michelle and I were hanging out in the backyard.

“I wonder if she’ll get suspicious of my car since it has Missouri plates,” Michelle said.

“I don’t know if she’s smart enough to put it all together,” I said.

Ashley was smart but not MIT smart. Okay, she was an idiot. The dumbest idiot smart person I’d ever known. It was such a shame the person she wanted to be didn’t exist. She was smart enough to keep most of her lies straight, but she wasn’t original enough to come up with her own content. She stole her stories from other people, TV shows, movies, and T-shirts. And she was guaranteed to get lazy the more comfortable she was. That’s when her act would crumble.

I wondered what she would do if she used her stupid-smart brain for good instead of evil. Who she could’ve been. Who I thought we were going to be.

She probably could have done something signifigant with her life, like creating video games with multiverses while making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But she took the dumbest path she could, choosing to catfish and lie to women on the internet instead.

That night, Cecelia’s friend Lyla came over, and we sat on the deck talking over beer and wine while the kids played in their sandpit nearby. Lyla was cool. She had full-arm tattoos and owned a hair salon in town. She looked like she had just stepped out of modern-day Intelligentsia Coffee in Silver Lake.

Lil' backyard hang.

“Last summer was so awful. Ashley kept lying about being out of town for work, but we all knew she was living with you. We’d look at your instagram and see that you guys were off on camping trips and going to New York, and here was Cecelia, left with their two-year-old and a newborn with hardly any money and an unpaid mortgage.”

“She’s cruel,” I said. “She love-bombed me so hard, acting like her money was endless.”

“We added it up. She pocketed twenty-seven grand from not paying for the house.”

“That’s so fucked up. The house that her children were living in.”

We both looked down at the ground and shook our heads. What a horrible mess. I felt sick for being a part of it.

During the months following our breakup, Ashley had been fired from her job as an executive at the headhunting company. She was so focused on saving her affair, keeping her free apartment and fake LA life that she flat-out stopped doing her job.

When Lyla left, Cecelia put the kids down for the night. Michelle and I stayed up talking in the backyard. We had a fun first day. Ashley had no idea we were in town, and we wanted to keep it that way because our visit was to meet each other, share stories, and bond. It had nothing to do with Ashley. She was just the catalyst that brought us all together. Plus Cecelia would be the one having to deal with Ashley’s reaction, and we wanted to stay under the radar to prevent that from happening.

The following day, the house was alive with the screams of young children. Cecelia’s daughter was the ringleader. She ran from one side of the house to the other, with her baby brother wobbling behind. I poured a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen island while the kids served major crackhead energy for so early in the morning.

“Good morning, how’d you sleep?” Cecelia asked.

“Excellent. I wasn’t jolted awake by a pack of coyotes tearing apart a kitten. It’s so peaceful here.”

“I know, right?” Cecelia said, “So I’m going to take the kids out front to play with their remote car. And Ashley’s coming here at ten to pick up our daughter, and we can do our bike ride while they’re together.”

“Perfect, I’ll be ready.”

Cecelia went out front with the kids, and I wrote in my journal from the living room. Michelle and I were having a low-key Sunday morning, and she was leaving the next day to drive back to Missouri.

I looked out the front window and saw a gray jeep pull up in front of the house. It was Ashley. She was early.

“Oh shit,” I said and turned to Michelle, “Ashley’s here.”

 She couldn’t pull into the driveway because the kid’s remote car stalled, so she had to park on the street.

“We gotta hide.”

We spun around in circles, wondering where the best hiding spot was.

“Hurry, upstairs,” Michelle said.

We ran upstairs and locked ourselves in Cecelia’s bedroom, which faced the street.

We heard Ashley’s voice below, “Why aren’t her shoes on? Jesus, do you even do anything?” she snapped at Cecelia.

“I didn’t know you were coming early, or I would have her ready,” Cecelia said.

The way she spoke to Cecelia was incredibly rude and harsh for no reason. My face burned in anger.

Ashley slammed the door again while continuing to berate Cecelia. Michelle and I made eye contact.

“I want to see what she looks like,” Michelle whispered.

“Go for it,” I said. “I’m good.” I’d seen enough.

Michelle pulled the curtain back and peeked out the window. 

“She even looks mean,” Michelle said.

I watched Michelle as she caught her first glimpses of the woman who catfished her, pretending to be Duncan.

In a perfect world, I’d burst open the bedroom window and dangle Michelle out of it, like Michael Jackson did with Blanket. And Michelle would say, “Did you miss me?” And then laugh maniacly before I pulled her back inside and slammed the window shut.

“Shit,” Michelle said, dropping down to the floor. “I think she saw me.”

“Who the fuck is in our bedroom?” Ashley demanded.

“What are you talking about?” Cecelia said.

“I saw someone up there. Who are you hiding? Your fucking girlfriend? I knew you had one!”

“I don’t have a girlfriend. My friend is over, and we’re gonna go for a bike ride. That’s all.”

Ashley wouldn’t be able to handle it if Cecelia had a girlfriend. The thought alone would send her to space, where her jealousy would override the system. Yet, it was fine for her to live with me for a year. She wanted Cecelia to be just as sad, lonely, and miserable as she was.

Another car door slammed and Ashley ripped out of the driveway. Michelle and I went downstairs and Cecelia came inside holding the baby.

“Shit,” she said, “She’s gonna try to use this against me somehow.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” I reminded her.

“She’s going to spiral and take her rage out on me. I’m always her punching bag.”

It was true. This was Cecelia’s reality. Ashley would speak to her in the most horrific way, and she would make Cecelia’s life difficult every chance she could.

She shook it off. It was a gorgeous day and we weren’t going to let Ashley ruin it. Michelle went on a long run, and Cecelia and I pulled the electric bikes out of the garage, strapped the baby into his carriage, and took off to the nature preserve.

We stopped at a nearby pond to watch the Sandhill cranes. I don’t like birds that much, ever since an ostrich bit me, but these ones were beauties. They were the zen palette cleanse we needed.

Crane gang.

“It’s so nice here,” I said to Cecelia.

“We should do a sunset ride tomorrow night so you can see the grass turn golden, it looks like a movie set.”

We left the birds behind and continued riding.

Ding!

“On your left!” Cecelia rang her bell as we passed other people on the trail.

I’d never ridden an electric bike before, but me likey. Me likey a lot.

“I wish I could have an electric bike in Los Angeles,” I yelled up to Cecelia.

“Why can’t you?” she yelled back.

“Everyone steals everything there.”

The path forked into two trails. Cecelia took a right, and I followed twenty feet behind her. We drove down a wooden plank that was built between the maple trees.

“I never go this way,” Cecelia turned to yell back, “But I want to show you this path where all the trees and the creek look like a jungle.”

Welcome to the jungle. Ding! And yes, that is a sippy cup of wine on my dashboard.

Cecelia’s head was turned back at me still when I spotted two human sized lumps of darkness pushing a stroller in our direction.

I nodded up at Cecelia, signaling her to look ahead. She turned around and realized we were about to bike past Ashley, Stacey, and Ashley and Cecelia’s daughter in the stroller.

Ashley was in gray sweatpants and her maroon MIT shirt. Stacey was dressed in black from head to toe. She looked like she had just crawled out of the upside-down world, and she was totally out of place in the nature preserve.

Stacey smirked at Cecelia as if to say, “We caught you and your little girlfriend, bitch.” 

As if it was illegal for Cecelia to move on with her life.

“Uhh, hi,” Cecelia said as she passed Stacey and Ashley.

“Hi there,” Stacey said in a fake, high-pitched voice that scared a nearby tree filled with sparrows. Her smirk was so delightfully evil. 

They were sure they had caught Cecelia on a date. That was the only reason they went outside.

Stacey looked in my direction next. Her face looked like a Snapchat filter with her tiny nose pinched in the middle. I watched as her face melted off when she realized it was me, and that I had become friends with Cecelia, visiting her from beautiful, sunny Los Angeles, California. 

You’re not the only one who can get on an airplane, bitch.

Ashley and Stacey stopped dead in their path as if they’d been stunned by a volt of electricity.

I slowed down time, knowing I’d have to savor this moment. It felt like the end of Hamilton when Burr shoots him with a bullet, but it travels in slow motion, long enough to sing an entire song before hitting him.

They stood dumbfounded with their jaws gaping wide open.

Ding!

I hit my bike bell.

I cruised by in slow motion, a foot away from them. I think I even planked on my bike seat. I gave Stacey the biggest smile ever. She was the root of the family’s evil. Bullying and gaslighting a pregnant woman, covering up for Ashley’s affair. Truly the most despicable human I’d ever met. 

At that moment, Stacey knew everything she tried so hard to cover up was out in the open, and I was on team Cecelia.

I held my smile, passed them, and kept going. I didn’t even turn around to watch their heads explode. I was the last person they expected to see in Minnesota. And they still had no idea Michelle was on the trail too.

I rounded the corner and caught up with Cecelia.

“OH MY GOD,” we said simultaneously.

I was elated. It was glorious, and it was redemption. I could live off this high for several lifetimes. Cecelia was more shocked and slightly terrified.

“I never take this trail! It’s so crazy that we ran into them.”

“The Universe set it up beautifully. She wanted them to see us together,” I said.

I texted Michelle, telling her we had just run into Ashley and her Mom on the trail, and I hoped she would run into them next.