“I was joking!”
“Were you?”
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Then she pointed toward the driveway.
“So you purposely bought me the ugliest car you could find to embarrass me?”
“No. We bought you a safe, reliable first car.”
“You knew I wouldn’t want that.”
“I knew you expected something else.”
“Because you basically told me I was getting it!”
“I never told you that once.”
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“You knew what I wanted!”
That was when Dorian quietly slid a folder across the counter.
Stacy looked at him, then at me.
“What’s that?”
“Open it,” I said.
Inside was the information from the dealership for the used Tesla I’d been considering.
The color she wanted.
The mileage.
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Everything.
Stacy stopped breathing for a second.
“You were actually buying it?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to give you that car because I loved you. Then I heard you telling your friends I’d give it to you because you knew how to make me cave.”
She looked down at the papers.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?”
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She had no answer.
Finally, she shoved the folder away.
“I’m not driving that car to school.”
“Okay.”
That clearly wasn’t the response she’d expected.
“What?”
“You don’t have to drive it.”
“So what am I supposed to drive?”
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“You can keep getting rides with us.”
Her mouth fell open.
“If you don’t want the car, that’s your decision. But there isn’t another one coming.”
She stormed upstairs.
I thought that was the end of the birthday confrontation.
It wasn’t.
About an hour later, I found her sitting on the floor beside her bed, crying.
I expected her to start arguing about the Tesla again.
Instead, she said, “Please don’t tell anybody.”
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“Tell anybody what?”
“That you heard me.”
Something about the panic in her voice stopped me.
“Why?”
“Because they’ll know.”
“Know what?”
She wiped her face.
“That I lied.”
I sat down.
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“About the Tesla?”
She didn’t answer.
“Stacy?”
“Not just that.”
The next 20 minutes changed how I understood the last two years.
It started small.
She’d implied that we’d stayed in a more expensive room on one vacation because that was the part of the hotel she’d photographed.
She’d let friends believe a designer jacket she’d borrowed from her cousin was hers.
She’d exaggerated how much certain things cost.
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When I refused to buy something, she’d sometimes tell her friends I’d already ordered it.
And the Tesla?
She’d been talking about it for months as though it were guaranteed.
“Why?” I asked.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
She resisted until I asked to see the group messages she kept referring to.
She handed me her phone.
Nobody was threatening her.
