The Swap

by Robyn Harding

  An incredulous laugh erupted from Jamie’s throat. “Do you really expect me to believe that? How long have you been fucking my best friend?” The vulgarity was out of character, but appropriate, given the circumstances. But I chose different words.

  “I’m not… sleeping with her,” I said. “I slept with her. The night you slept with Max.”

  My wife’s olive face blanched as guilt, confusion, and shame flitted across her features. But I knew my own pallor was even paler, even sicker. Articulating what happened that night, saying the words out loud, made me want to puke.

  Jamie swallowed audibly. “Why did you lie to me? I’ve been racked with guilt.”

  “Poor you.” My sarcasm was cutting. “Freya told me how much you wanted Max. She told me you were bored with me, desperate to have sex with someone else. That you’d missed out on so much, because of me.”

  “No.…” But her voice was weak.

  “Freya said the swap would make you happy. That no one would get hurt. But I got hurt, Jamie. The thought of you and… him.” My throat clogged, and I couldn’t continue.

  “No.” It was firm this time. She got off the couch and rushed toward me. “Freya twisted my words. I never wanted to be with Max. But he said you and Freya were already in bed together. I was high. And I was weak. So I just… I went along with it. But I’ve hated myself ever since.”

  She tried to hug me, but I folded my arms, backed away. I wasn’t ready to forgive her. Or myself.

  “I wanted to talk to you about it afterward,” my wife continued. “I wanted you to know that I only want to be with you. Ever. But you went out in the boat with Max. You acted like everything was normal.”

  “I was in shock. Maybe I was still high. I don’t know.…”

  “And then later, when I asked you point-blank, you denied that anything happened with you and Freya.”

  “I didn’t deny it. I just told you that you’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to be with. And that’s the truth.”

  “But we could have talked it through.”

  “I didn’t want to talk it through.” I forced the words past the knot of emotion in my throat. “The thought of you with this rich, handsome fucking athlete eats me alive. I can’t write. I can’t sleep. I can’t think.…”

  I let her take me in her arms then, let her run her fingers through my hair, let her whisper words of love in my ear. My shoulders sagged with relief, the tension in my jaw relaxed. Jamie was right. We needed to bring this out into the open, to talk about it and heal from it. Then I felt her pull away from me.

  “Why were you meeting Freya at the canyon?”

  Here it was. The part that would hurt her most.

  “That night… we didn’t use protection. Freya said we didn’t have to worry. She and Max had been tested for STDs and they’d been monogamous since they moved to the island. And”—my voice caught, but I forced the words out—“she told me she couldn’t get pregnant. She said she couldn’t conceive.”

  Jamie’s voice was a whisper as she put the pieces together. “Oh my god.”

  “When you told me she was expecting, I didn’t know what to think. I had to talk to her. I had to ask her if…”

  My wife’s strangled voice completed my sentence. “If Freya’s baby could be yours.”

  “The timing’s off,” I assured her. “The baby isn’t due until May. The night we… had sex was in July. So, if the baby were mine, it would be due early April.”

  “How do you know her due date? Are you taking her word for it?”

  I was a step ahead of her. “I asked Freya to show me a dated ultrasound photo. She brought it to me today.”

  “Those things can be faked. You know that from the fiasco with the baby in Chicago.”

  “It wasn’t like Mia’s ultrasound. This one had the hospital information on it. It looked legit.”

  “Do you have it? I want to see it.”

  “Freya kept it,” I said. And then, “She’s your best friend. Do you really think she’d lie to us?”

  My wife’s brow furrowed as she considered her answer. “I think anyone is capable of lying under the right circumstances.”

  “And she lied about you wanting to sleep with Max,” I said, a hopeful lilt in my voice.

  “I think she just misread our conversation.” Jamie’s eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “I don’t think she’s a blatant liar.”

  “Right. Well, that’s it, then,” I retorted. “We can close the door on this. Forget that night ever happened.”

  Jamie’s smile was weak. “Happy to.”

  But we couldn’t, of course. What happened that night would haunt us forever.

  winter 2020

  32 low

  One day in late January, just as my mother had promised, Eckhart abruptly stopped screaming. He was really quite cute when his face wasn’t beet red and covered in tears and snot. I began to warm to him. In contrast to his first months as a malcontent, he was now extremely chill and docile. And, as if to make up for his months of endless rage, he slept long and hard. I decided to photograph him.

  It was bright and crisp that day, the sun high in a deep-blue cloudless sky. After Eckhart had his breast milk breakfast, I bundled him up, put him in the sling, and walked down a path to the beach-access road. By the time I hit the shoreline, Eckhart was sound asleep. I removed the comatose little parcel and positioned him on the sand as the tide nipped around him. I took a number of shots of my snoozing sibling, and I liked what I saw. It became our routine. After nursing, my mom would hand over my brother. I’d walk him to the beach or into the forest and then photograph him as he slept on a piece of driftwood, a bed of polished pebbles, or a nest of cedar boughs.

  The photos were reminiscent of the ones taken by Anne Geddes, but without the silly costumes and flowers. Eckhart was wrapped in a thick, natural wool blanket and wore a simple knitted hat. He wasn’t a tiny newborn, either, but four months old now. He was small for his age, though; his incessant wailing had burned a lot of calories. The images were natural, rustic, and appealing. I’d used Lightroom, a photo-editing program to make them crisp and luminous, the colors deep and saturated. I was proud of them. I decided to print and frame a couple for my parents. I sent the files to the only drugstore in town, and twenty-four hours later, went to retrieve them.

  Behind the counter was Thompson Ingleby, a kid from my senior photography class. Like me, he had been persona non grata at Bayview High. He was stocky, about five foot six, with green eyes and dirty-blond hair. I’d thought he was cute once, back in ninth grade, but then I’d grown half a foot and lost interest. He’d spent the first years of high school smoking pot at the edge of the soccer field with the other burnouts, but he’d suddenly became more academically focused in twelfth grade and subsequently lost all his friends. His family lived on one of the remote homesteads in the center of the island. Rumors of drugs and guns and sex dungeons swirled around them. We could have been allies, but throwing my lot in with Thompson Ingleby would not have improved my popularity.

  “Hey, Low,” he said, as if he were genuinely glad to see me. Unlike me, Thompson wasn’t broody and resentful, but chipper, happy-go-lucky. He clearly wasn’t right in the head.

  “Hey,” I mumbled. “I’m picking up some prints. Under Morrison.”

  “Right,” he chirped, pulling open a long drawer near his knees. He extracted a blue envelope and slid it across the counter toward me. “Your photos are awesome.”

  “You looked at my photos?” I snapped.

  “Umm… that’s my job. Cashier and quality control. I make sure the photos print out properly. You’d be surprised how often the printer will screw up. But yours came out great. You could sell them.”

  “Who would want pictures of my brother?”

  “People like babies,” he said. “They don’t care who they are.” He read the back of the envelope and punched some numbers into the till. “Four sixty-eight, please.

  As I dug into my wallet, Thompson s
aid, “Are you on Instagram?”

  “No.”

  “You should set up a page for your photography. You never know what might happen.”

  I plunked a bill onto the counter. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know… Maybe someone would hire you to photograph their baby?”

  “Gross.”

  “But what if they lived in New York? Or Paris? They might fly you out there.”

  That was more enticing.

  “You might get a gallery showing. Or free camera equipment. Or baby swag.”

  “Why would I want baby swag?”

  “For your brother,” he said, as he made change. “I manage a page for my cousin’s baking business. She’s got over three thousand followers now. She’s getting her brand out there and she’s starting to get a few orders.” He leaned toward me and I saw a few straggly whiskers under his bottom lip, an attempt at a soul patch. “Don’t tell anyone, but her food looks better than it tastes.”

  He handed me some coins. “When you get your page up, let me know. I’ll give you a shout-out in our stories.”

  I wasn’t sure why Thompson Ingleby wanted to help me. I’d never been very nice to him. On the other hand, I’d never been overtly mean to him, either, and maybe, in Thompson’s world, that was enough.

  “Thanks.” I grabbed my prints and left.

  33

  For an outcast like me, social media was a fresh kind of hell—somewhere between livestreaming your Brazilian wax and being disemboweled and having your entrails set on fire in front of you. By avoiding Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, I could almost enjoy my complete lack of a social life. During my previous sojourn onto social media, I had realized its sole purpose was to make me feel bad about all the fun and frivolity I was missing out on, all the typical teen experiences I would never have. Though I hated fun and frivolity, and didn’t even want those clichéd experiences, seeing my peers drinking and partying and declaring their undying love for one another with hashtags—#BFF #timeofmylife #memories—made me want to hurl.

  But this Instagram page would be faceless. It would be about my photography only. I might actually enjoy having a bunch of strangers fawn over my work. Freya said it was the best feeling in the world… until it became the worst. It was all fake, she had said, and the people who adored you one minute would turn on you the next. There were bullies out there, empowered by the anonymity of the internet. Depression, anxiety, and negative body image were just some of the side effects of a diet of social media. But that wouldn’t happen to me. Because this wasn’t about me. It was about sharing my art with the world.

  The name I chose was “Hawkeye 61.” (Actually, I had to use The_Hawkeye_61 because someone already had the other label.) The moniker was derived from the town of Hawking combined with my eye for photography, and the fact that I was six foot one. I had always related to hawks. They were loners, watching, circling, waiting to strike. Over the next few days, I uploaded some of my favorite photos—of Eckhart, of nature, of the pig and the goat. I DM’d Thompson Ingleby and he worked his magic. Within the first few days, I had over four hundred followers.

  I had conditioned myself to view social media platforms as evil, but I was beginning to see the beauty in them. Instagram didn’t care if you hadn’t grown since the ninth grade like Thompson, or if you had grown to a near-freakish height like me. It only cared about the facade, the pretense you chose to share with the world. And that worked well for me. My talent was being appreciated without the distraction of my unfortunate physicality. My confidence bloomed.

  Freya had taught me the tricks of the social media trade. How to build my following, when to post to receive maximum exposure. The photos of my sleeping brother were the most popular, with the goat a distant second. In fact, Eckhart’s images garnered a lot of attention from other photographers, mommy blogger types, and baby-clothing companies. One morning I woke up to three hundred new followers. Another day, I gained over five hundred!

  As soon as I set up my account, I searched for Freya Light. I was thrilled to find she had reactivated her Instagram page: Frey_of_Light. So clever! Her account was public, so I followed her. She posted mostly selfies, all focused around her pregnancy. She and Max had spent much of the winter in Mexico—Sayulita, Nayarit, according to the geo tag. They were on a “babymoon” sponsored by a five-star resort. Free accommodation in exchange for posts of the photogenic mother-to-be in her high-end quarters and around the scenic property. One photo offered a view of Freya’s tanned belly and shapely legs, the ocean in the background. There was a shot of her round tummy floating in an infinity pool; a pic of her in a white robe eating fresh papaya for breakfast in her suite; one of her maternal cleavage bursting out of her bikini top, with the caption: These babies are ready for baby! #breastfeed #mothersmilk #noboobjob

  While I was thrilled when I got a hundred likes, Freya got thousands. Scrolling through the comments, I found them to be largely positive and supportive.

  So beautiful!

  That’s going to be a gorgeous baby!

  Enjoy this special time!

  Only a handful were cruel.

  Ryan Klassen is dead. But enjoy your holiday!

  Will baby grow up to be a killer like daddy?

  Superficial, shallow c**t.

  Monitoring her page, I found that Freya posted roughly every other day. She was back in the game. And it was only a matter of time before her dabbling became a full-blown career again. Her photos were decent, she looked stunning, but they were amateurish. That’s when I saw an opportunity to get back into Freya’s life. But I needed Thompson Ingleby’s help.

  I texted him and asked him to meet me for a slice of pizza. He responded instantly and exuberantly.

  Sounds great!!!

  When I arrived at the restaurant, he was already there, seated at a red vinyl booth. He stood when I entered. “Can I buy you a slice?”

  “My treat,” I said. “What’ll you have?”

  “I insist,” Thompson said. “Unless you think that’s chauvinistic? I respect you as a woman and your ability to pay for your own food.”

  “It’s fine.” I slid into the booth. “I’ll have a meat-lovers and a Coke.”

  Thompson hurried to the counter and soon returned with a slice and a drink for each of us. He set my meal in front of me with a flourish.

  “M’lady.”

  Like he’d just slayed a dragon for me. Four years ago, I would have been charmed, but this was a business meeting only. I knew I had to start with some small talk.

  “How’s your cousin’s bakery business going?”

  “Not bad,” Thompson said, then proceeded to regale me with tales of his cousin’s photogenic petit fours that looked great but tasted like dirt sandwiches. I nodded along, though I was barely listening.

  “How’s the photography coming along?” Thompson asked. “Are you still working at the gift shop?”

  Instead of responding to his two-part question, I said, “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Sure.”

  “I want you to DM someone for me on Instagram. I want you to tell her about my page.”

  “I could do another story. You’ll get more followers that way.”

  “I don’t care about more followers. I want to photograph her.”

  Thompson chewed for a moment. “Who is it?”

  “Freya Light. She’s an Insta celebrity. At least she used to be. She lives here now.”

  “Cool.” He was already digging out his phone, already looking her up. “She’s very pregnant. And she’s gorgeous.” He looked up at me. “If you like that petite, blond type.”

  Was he flirting with me? I had literally no experience, so I couldn’t tell. If he was, I should say something flirtatious back. But what? You’re kind of cute, and I might be into you if you weren’t a head shorter than I am. That wasn’t all that charming, I realized, so I said nothing.

  Thompson turned his attention back to the phone. “What do you want me to say?�
��

  “Tell her you love her page, but there’s a local photographer who could take it to the next level. Her Insta photos should be taken and edited properly. Then direct her to my page.”

  He tapped away for a few seconds. “Done.”

  “Thanks.” I stood up.

  “Do you want to get some ice cream?” he said quickly. “Or we could have some drinks? My parents make their own grain alcohol.”

  “I have to go home and babysit my brother,” I lied.

  Thompson looked bummed as he slid out of the booth, then followed me to the parking lot. “We should do this again sometime,” he said.

  I looked down at him. “Sure.”

  “When’s good for you? I work Friday nights, but I can do any other night.”

  “My schedule is erratic. I’ll let you know.”

  He hovered for a beat, and I suddenly wondered if he was going to try to kiss me good night (try being the operative word, since he would need a stool to reach my lips). But then he said, “ ’Night, Low. I hope this Freya person messages you soon. I’m sure her baby will be really cute.”

  “It will be.”

  But I would still hate it.

  34 jamie

  Freya and Max were gone for most of December and January, giving me ample time to dwell on the fact, now irrefutable, that my best friend had slept with my husband. I had no right to be upset—I had done the same to her—and yet, I was. I knew Freya was highly sexual, adventurous, and a risk-taker. And Max seemed to go along with whatever made his hedonistic wife happy. Swapping partners was probably no big deal for them. But that night had rattled my husband and me, shaken our foundation. And Freya had orchestrated the whole thing.

  Shortly before their return, Brian announced that he didn’t want to see them. “I feel awkward around Freya, and insecure around Max. Maybe I’ll get over it in time, but for now… I’m not interested in being friends with them.”

  Freya had planted a toxic seed in my husband’s psyche, and I resented her for it. She had made him think he wasn’t enough for me, and I had my work cut out for me proving her wrong. I considered editing Freya out of my life, too. It was what Brian wanted—not that he’d said so specifically. But I had to agree that ending my friendship with my husband’s lover, who was also my lover’s wife, would make things a hell of a lot simpler. But I couldn’t let Freya go.