Playing Pretend Box Set

by Natasha L. Black

  “I didn’t expect to see them there here,” I said.

  Naomi nodded, saying nothing. She got in the car.

  “Listen,” I said.

  One glance at her face stopped me. There, was everything the situation encompassed. Even if she believed I hadn’t planned to run into my family, they’d still served as a reminder of what we were. And what we weren’t.

  The only thing to ask was, “Want me to drive you home?”

  She only nodded and then I turned the key in the ignition and put my foot on the gas.

  The whole ride there, I didn’t let myself look at her. If I did, if I got thinking too much about what this was and wasn’t, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  I didn’t know how to make it right; what the right thing to do was. Not yet at least.

  19

  Naomi

  I got up to my apartment fast. I needed to. What had happened was still hanging over my head like a noose liable to descend at any moment.

  One of the things I didn’t like about myself was how I never seemed to know how to react in the moment. So right then, as I bee-lined to the TV like it was the cure, I wasn’t sure whether I was angry, or sad, or neither.

  I grabbed the remote control the wrong way, then turned it around and turned on the first Netflix show I saw. What show it was, I couldn’t have told you.

  No, I wasn’t looking at the TV, I was thinking.

  The whole run-into-his-family thing probably hadn’t been a set up. Xander might’ve been many things but wouldn’t blatantly lie right to my face like that. Or at least, I didn’t think so. And the way he had steered me in the opposite direction and hauled ass back to the car should have confirmed that.

  I picked back up the remote, then put it back down.

  Who said I even knew that much about Xander anyway? Sure, I could flatter myself that we’d been growing close the past week or so, but there was still the practical fact of how, and under what circumstances, we’d met and how little time we’d actually known each other.

  I never really had talked to Xander about that. About if he’d gone into that bar intending to marry the first girl who’d talked to him. Or had he just had the idea percolating in the back of his mind, had just happened upon me, saw the opportunity when it drunkenly presented itself, and took it? Did I even want to know?

  Those questions joined hands to form a tormenting marching band, their footsteps pounding deep into a migraine in the center of my forehead. More questions without answers. Just how much longer was I going to put myself through this?

  I stood up, then sat back down. When my phone rang, even though I knew it was Dad, even though I knew what that he was going to ask me if I was coming to dinner that night, I picked up.

  Sure enough, half an hour later, I was sitting at the dinner table with Teren, Mom, and Dad. Although usually it was a sometimes-enjoyable/sometimes-annoying must for me, this time I actually welcomed the distraction. No way did I want to sit at home and have the situation between Xander and I go through my head like a broken record.

  This time I was just happy for my mom’s home cooked meal, even if it was just the usual roasted rosemary chicken and garlic mashed potatoes. Teren was there too, although I was able to avoid his knowing stare by focusing on my food and answering whatever question my parents shot at me. Everything was going fine until my dad asked, “Things still a-ok with you and Xander?”

  I contemplated the lace edge of the tablecloth, throwing a speckled shadow onto my leg.

  “Seems like you found a good one,” Mom said before I could even start thinking of an answer. “Even if he’s not Christian.”

  That cracked a smile out of Teren. He patted me amiably. “And there you have it; you two may go to hell, but you’ll have a good time getting there.”

  “Teren,” Dad scolded, although he was smiling. They may have been conservative and intense about church, but they did have a sense of humor at least.

  I thought they’d leave it at that, but now that my dad had found a subject that he was particularly interested in, he intended to chew the cud for as much as it was worth. “You two really made the most of the bake sale, trying all the samples, dancing up a storm. Even if you didn’t buy any of Reginald’s fanny packs.”

  “Did you?” I asked dryly.

  “Of course we did, honey.” He winked. “What do you think you and your brother are getting for Christmas?”

  As Teren and I groaned, it was my mom and dad’s turn to start chuckling.

  Their hands laced together and they placed them on the table.

  “We’re really happy for you,” Mom said. “That you finally found someone again.”

  Under the fondness and absolute trust illuminating out of Mom’s shining eyes, I couldn’t take it anymore. All the guilt carefully tucked away in me came rolling out at once.

  All the lies… This was Mom and Dad, who’d been there for me when all the craziness with Eric went down. And I was lying to them like this?

  “We’re just glad that you can trust someone again,” Dad squeezed my hand.

  I cleared my throat. “Actually….”

  Teren shot me a ‘no-don’t-do-it’ look, which was along the same lines of what I was thinking. But it was too late. I knew what I had to do.

  “About Xander and I,” I said. I spent a moment trying to figure out how to say it, when I realized there was no way to. No way to explain my mistake in a way they’d understand.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said, and then I told them. How we’d accidentally married the first night we’d met. How we were keeping it that way just over Christmas so Xander could keep his family off his back. He we get along ok, but that’s all it was and most likely all it would ever be.

  The pleasant smiles on my parents faces lingered, uncomprehending for a few moments until they slid into puzzlement, and then the worst thing of all.

  I averted my gaze, but it was too late. I’d seen what was written there on their faces – pity and disappointment.

  “But why?” was all my mom could start to say. I was suddenly, stupidly angry – feeling like that time they caught me having broken Great Aunt Betty’s heirloom ceramic lamp.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just tired of you guys trying to set me up with Reginald and getting on my case about not having healed in enough time and all that crap.” My cheeks flushed. “I know it was wrong to lie. I just….” I searched and didn’t find the words. “I’m sorry.”

  I waited, sitting there, waiting for the other shoe to fall. But it didn’t. My parents sat there, and Teren sat there, looking like he’d gladly stab himself with the chicken-carving knife rather than speak. And I sat there, waiting.

  Although once Mom finally spoke it was even worse. “I just don’t understand.” Her gaze came up and fixed itself on me. “Why don’t you want to be happy?”

  I found myself getting to my feet. “I should go now.”

  Rage, despair, annoyance, these responses I could’ve taken. But pity? Condescension?

  No, not this time. Not today.

  No one argued with me as I left. I walked across the flower-patterned linoleum floor, all the way to the wooden door that I wouldn’t even slam behind me. As I walked out, I noticed two things; that it was raining, and that I didn’t care.

  I barely reached my car when Teren’s voice reached me. “Are you crazy?” he hissed.

  Already, his face was rain-drenched, his eyes standing out bluer in his wet face.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I just couldn’t go on lying to them anymore.”

  “Ok,” Teren said, clearly not getting it. “But then you just leave like that?”

  “What, do they want me back?”

  Teren tch-ed in annoyance. “They started talking about the sermon from earlier today.”

  I had to smile bitterly at that. That sounded like Mom and Dad all right. Just sweep anything untoward under the rug.

  “I’m sorry for not saying anything either,” he said, “
When you just blurted it out like that, with no warning, I thought I was going to choke on my chicken. What are you going to do now?” Teren asked. “Want me to bring over Legally Blonde?”

  “I’ll be fine. Anyway, you have another …” I glanced at my phone time. “An hour to go, at least.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Teren moaned.

  “Cry me a river,” I said, “At least you’re in Mom and Dad’s good graces.”

  “For now, at least,” Teren said. “You were smart to leave before Dad delivered one of his ‘heart’ talks.”

  I couldn’t even smile at that.

  “What about tomorrow then?” Teren said. “After work I can bring over some sangria and we can crack into Friends?”

  “Teren, I’m a grown-ass woman. You don’t have to baby me. Although yes, Friends sometime would be good,” I said.

  “Ok, fine,” he said. “But if you need anything, you’ll tell me?”

  “You know it,” I said. “Anyway, I better go. Last thing I want is Mom and Dad to peer out of the front door and see me sitting here in my car.”

  “You’re probably right,” Teren said. “You should’ve seen how shell-shocked they looked once you walked out the door.”

  No regrets missing that. Just seeing how stupefied my words had made them was bad enough.

  “And Naomi?” Teren said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I know this thing with Xander’s getting in deeper than you ever thought. Just… Be careful.”

  Another well-intentioned thing, which I couldn’t for the life of me find a proper response for.

  So, I just said ‘goodbye’ and he said it back, and he walked back to the house.

  After I got in the car, I didn’t call Xander. I didn’t call him on the long drive home, with the traffic lights so infuriatingly long it almost made me think that they were broken.

  I didn’t call him as I pulled up into my apartment parking lot, when my first instinct was to stay in the car and cry.

  I didn’t call him on the walk all the way up to the building, punctuated by a blissful couple who’d somehow known this would be the perfect time to make out in the middle of the sidewalk.

  I didn’t call him on the elevator ride up, which seemed to stop on every floor to deliver and drop off passengers who all seemed in on this plan to torment me.

  I didn’t call him for those first few seconds when the door slammed in the way it did behind me, and the suffocating emptiness of my apartment settled over me.

  I didn’t call him when I scrolled through our conversations on my phone, reading the texts from that first horrible one, to one more recent.

  I didn’t call him when my finger hovered over the dial button.

  But I did answer when he called me.

  “Hello?”

  “What’s wrong?” he said immediately, sensing something in my voice.

  I swallowed. What would it be; the truth or another lie?

  “Naomi,” he said, sounding endearingly alarmed.

  “I told them,” I said. “I told my parents the truth about us. Hate me if you have to. But I told them. I’m sorry.”

  A pause long enough to convince me he hated me, but instead he said, “I’m coming over now.”

  20

  Xander

  When I saw her … I didn’t let myself finish that sentence.

  If I let myself think it, then it would definitely happen. And I didn’t want it to happen.

  Right then, I just wanted to be there for her.

  While my car crawled to Naomi’s, I played the ‘why did Naomi tell her parents’ game. By the time I was in her building and she’d buzzed me in, and I was knocking on her door, my mind had come up with the following options; to piss me off, to test me, or because the weight of carrying around the lie had grown too burdensome.

  And then she opened the door, and the only thing I was thinking about was how, right then, her wispy smile looked worse than a frown.

  “You came,” she said.

  “Of course I did. I said I was coming, didn’t I?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

  I stepped inside, and the door slammed loudly behind me as I wrapped her in my arms.

  “So, you really did it then.”

  Her limbs felt like piping; all tensed and primed.

  “I did.” She pulled away, her face already wearing the words she was about to say. “I’m tired of all the lies. And my parents didn’t deserve that.”

  I lifted my hands my temples. “None of us deserve this.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know if us doing what we’re doing - this stupid sham marriage - is the worst thing I’ve done yet … Or the best.”

  “Stop it,” her lips said, but her eyes said different.

  “No. I won’t stop it. I can’t.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re saying,” she said.

  “I know that I care about you.”

  My words were like a slap. Naomi recoiled, taking a few steps back, turning away. “Stop it.”

  “Why?” I said, even though I knew the answer.

  The silence wasn’t silent. There was a dog barking in the neighbor’s room, as if voicing its disapproval of what was going on here. I could hardly blame him.

  “I won’t stop.” The words bolstered me as I spoke, as if a shot of vodka straight to my head. “I don’t know what’s happening between us, and I don’t know if it’s right. All I know is the more time I spend with you, the more I can’t stop myself from calling you up, wanting to see you. Wanting to be with you.”

  At some point during my speech, my hand had closed around hers.

  “I didn’t intend for any of this to happen, but it did. And we have to deal with that now.”

  “We don’t have to deal with anything,” she snapped. “You talk like you’re so sure, when this whole thing is built on lies. When you been pushing me away as much as you been bringing me closer.”

  The hourglass of her back was immutable.

  “I’ve just been trying to protect you, trying to….” I trailed off.

  “Protect me from what? Other than your chronic uncertainty.”

  She stormed up to her balcony, ripped open the sliding door and went out.

  Outside, she leaned on the balcony’s railing, leaning over too far. I put a hand on her back. “Naomi.”

  “Xander.” She said the word, my name, dispassionately to the air ahead of us.

  “Why won’t you just talk to me?” I said.

  Her twisting to face me was just that so that her glare could dig in me deeper. “You don’t want to talk. I’ve tried talking to you. All you give are some vague excuses and want for me to blindly follow you off whatever cliff you’re leading us off.”

  “I haven’t been making vague…”

  “Fine then. You want to talk, let’s talk. How about we talk about what the hell you even mean by protecting me from you. What makes you so bad Xander? What is it you can’t tell me? What is it about your dad and your family and this whole screwed up situation that you can’t seem to get through to me?”

  And just like that, there it was. What I’d been hoping to avoid this whole time. And what, conversely, was tied up in everything too.

  We stood there for a minute, the challenge in her eyes like a gun to my throat. And I just stood there. I stood there and let her point it at me. I stood there and said nothing.

  Her smile had no affection.

  “That’s what I thought,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone.

  And then she strode past me.

  “Naomi,” I called after her, “Wait.”

  Now she was out her front door, in the hallway of her building.

  “For what?” she asked. “I’m sorry, Xander. But I’m tired of waiting. Waiting for us to figure out what this is, if anything. Waiting to stop feeling like my heart may break into a million pieces any second.”

&n
bsp; “It’s my dad,” I said.

  The hallways were empty, and yet it felt like I’d just announced his name, and everyone involved in the secret, to a stadium of people.

  “I know,” Naomi said quietly.

  When I opened my mouth again, she stopped me. “It’s fine. I didn’t say that to blackmail you into revealing something to me that you’re not comfortable with.” She sighed. “That’s exactly my point, though. Why would you be comfortable telling me? We don’t really know each other. And us pretending, putting on this charade, isn’t helping things. It’s making everything worse.”

  “You’re not forcing me into it,” I said. “It’s high time I told you all this anyway. It’s not like it’s a secret in my family.” I took a breath. “My dad’s affair. The one that had been going on for years before my mom found out. The one that nearly broke her. She still hasn’t forgiven him, and neither have I.”

  Instead of waiting for Naomi’s response, I found that my mouth, now going, couldn’t stop.

  “And it’s not just him either, it’s my uncles, my granddad, hell, I don’t know a man on my dad or even mom’s side of the family that hasn’t cheated.”

  Naomi was looking at me like she might have started to understand, so I laid it out there for her.

  “I haven’t had a relationship last more than six months. I’m not the person you want to be with. Relationships don’t work for me.”

  Now she was opening her mouth to say something, but I couldn’t let her. Not yet. Not until she heard all that I had to say, all that I knew.

  “Working in the business I do,” I said. “If you saw even half of what I’ve seen. The bitterness, the lies, the way something so beautiful can turn people into the worst, most disgusting versions of themselves.” Clenching my teeth together, I continued, “Then you’d have the same views that I do. That relationships don’t work. Not in this day and age, and not for me.”

  Naomi’s expression wasn’t at all what I expected. I didn’t even know what it was, frankly.

  “What, and you think you’re the only one of us with a checkered past?” Naomi said. “Did you ever wonder why my family was so weird about me bringing you by, so happy?”