The drive {Short Story part 2}

This started as a fun way to exercise a muscle I rarely use: Fiction writing.  Just a little something to link up with Jenni at Story of My Life.  I was so anxious to hit the publish button, fiction is not my bag.  But you readers were wonderful, and very encouraging so I decided to think about Jenn and Caleb a little more, and Melissa a lot more.  Part one is Here.  Today I publish part two, and like I requested before, please be kind, but critique, edit, tell me what you like and what you don't.  I have not problem editing and rewriting.  Thanks in advance for participating.


The Drive
We sat in silence as Caleb drove.  Melissa and Ed only lived a mere fifteen minutes from us, but it might as well have been fifty.  The silence was excruciating.  It was heavy, it was humid, it was strangling me.  The only sound was the ping from his phone.  Ping.  Ping.  Ping.  As usual his phone was inundated with text messages.  According to Caleb, always work.  Always an issue at the office. Always an issue with a client.  And since his work, paid my bills, he had to take every call, and I had to remain silent.  Or so this was the routine that we fell into.  Ping.  Ping.  What was so damn important?
I could have broken the silence.  Easily.  I could have asked about the messages, but like everything with Caleb this was another battle.  Another contest in who could be the more stoic spouse.  The unhappiest spouse.  I would not be the one to break the silence and lose. How had it come to this? When did we turn into two people who just tolerated each other? Did we even tolerate each other anymore? 
In the silence that held me tighter than my seat belt, I tried to remember the last time Caleb and I were in the car alone.  The day we brought Addy home?  Could it be that we had not been completely alone for six months?  Then I remembered the Christmas party.  His company Christmas party.  Back then we were still in high spirits.  When we still said I love you, and had conversations that were important to both of us.  We were dressed up, even me, in a maternity wrap dress that thank God didn't look maternity.  I wore perfume and he told I looked beautiful.  It was going to be a great night.  A night for reconnecting.  A night for wine, a free dinner, and hopefully some amazing desserts, before and after the party.  I'm sure it would have gone, just as I had imagined if not for Claire McGill.  Claire McGill, beautiful, childless, and apparently my Husband's work wife.
Sure Caleb had talked about her, but he called her McGill, which lead me to believe that she was a man. McGill called all the time.  McGill sent text messages by the hour.  McGill, always bought the first round on Friday night.  So at the Aaron and Associates Christmas party, I was shocked to find that McGill was, not only a woman, but a  blond, twenty four, and no more than ninety five pounds, kind of woman.  The icing on the cake was her ringless finger.  
Caleb backtracked, swore, on nothing short of the Bible, that he had told me that McGill was a woman, but I could see it in his eyes.  A deer caught in headlights.  That look of utter terror, that now all his secrets were spilling out and he could do nothing to stop it.  He knew that I knew, this was why he was never home on Friday nights.  This is why we had fought every Friday night since Addy was born.  McGill was his Friday nights.
Just as I was angry all over again, Caleb turned onto Melissa's street.  Mini mansions all in a row, only deviated by color.  
"So, we're going to keep to the original plan?", Caleb said, breaking the silence and declaring me the winner of this round.
"Yes, please.  Just say it's all perfect.  Addy is perfect.  We are perfect.  I can't have it any other way tonight.  This is going to be a category five shit show", I replied, the anxiety threatening to come up the back of my throat.
"Jenn, it's ok you know, it's ok that Addy doesn't sleep through the night", Caleb countered as he slowed to the curb across the street from Melissa's fortress.
"I just don't want Melissa to know.  She'll try to fix it, with a book, or a website or..."
"Fuck her", Caleb said and it cut right into me.
Caleb took the keys out of the ignition and turned to look at me.  His eyes were sad and angry at the same time.  He looked like a stranger.  I don't remember the last time we looked directly at each other.
"Seriously, Jenn, I mean it.  Don't let her make you feel like shit.  Now let's get in there and lie about our life and drink all their good booze.  And if we are lucky Mandy won't call".
I nodded and took a deep breath as I opened my door.  Caleb waited for me and we crossed the street together.  I was just about to knock, when Caleb took my hand.
"You look really great tonight.  I meant to tell you earlier", Caleb said, almost shyly.
I smiled, without looking at him and knocked on the door.