Her Earthly World, My Cold Marriage

I didn't take it. "And if I refuse to sign?"

Tracy Weaver froze for a moment before replying, "Then your family won't even keep what little it has left."

For some punk who scribbled on walls, she was ready to write off our three-year arrangement in one stroke.

"Fine. I'll think about it."

The moment I left the Weaver estate, I had someone look into the boy. His name was Josh Lucas.

His file was short: twenty years old, a college dropout, a street artist who lived in a basement.

This was the person Tracy held closest to her heart?

I drove to the abandoned factory where Josh often hung out.

From a distance, I spotted a boy in a tank top and ripped jeans standing at the foot of a scaffold, spraying paint onto the wall.

He wasn't bad-looking, and he had a bit of a wild edge. But I could tell his painting was a mess. He was just spraying at random.

Tracy had terrible taste.

"Watch out!" someone shouted.

I looked up. The scaffold was swaying, and several buckets of paint were tumbling off the top.

Josh stood right below, frozen.

Without thinking, I rushed over and shoved him out of the way.

The buckets slammed into my back. Pain shot through me, and red paint streamed down my body.

"Are you okay?" I asked, gritting my teeth through the pain.

Josh scrambled up off the ground without even glancing at me and cursed up at the scaffold. "Who did this? My painting!"

I had just saved his life, and all he cared about was his crappy painting?

"Hey, I just saved you."

Only then did Josh turn to look at me. "Who asked you to butt in? I spent three days planning this piece! Now you've ruined all of it! Can you even afford to pay for it?"

"Do you know that thing could've killed you if it hit your head?"

"What do I care if someone dies? Art demands sacrifice!"

A Maybach screeched to a halt by the curb.

Tracy got out and ran over, the hem of her plain silk dress fluttering in disarray.

"Josh!"

She rushed up without looking at me, grabbed Josh's hands, and turned them over and over. "Did you hurt your hands? Let me see."

"I'm fine, Tracy. This old guy just ruined my painting. It's so annoying." Josh pointed at me.

Only then did Tracy turn to me. "Michael, are you stalking me?"

Fighting the pain in my back, I pointed at the paint buckets on the ground. "He almost got hit. I saved him."

"Saved him?"

Tracy took out a handkerchief and wiped a speck of dust off Josh's fingers.

Watching how gently and carefully she did it, I found the whole thing absurd.

In our three years of marriage, her germaphobia was so severe that if I so much as brushed her fingertips, she acted like I had defiled her.

Now she was going out of her way to wipe the dust off another man's hand.

"Josh is a born artist. He doesn't need someone like you to save him. I think you approached him on purpose so you could do something nasty."

The searing pain in my back and the sticky paint kept drilling into my head, wave after wave.

"I almost got crushed to death!"

"That's karma for you."

Tracy tossed the used handkerchief aside. It landed right in front of my toes.

That white handkerchief felt like a slap seared across my face.

"Apologize to Josh, pay for his painting, and then get lost."