by JD Hawkins
I think about that dinner again with a sense of disgust, a sense of betrayal. All the things he said during our talk, the conviction and the earnestness, suddenly feeling false and insidious. My trust in him suddenly like a poison that makes me nauseous.
“Are you ok?” Winnie says, and I look up to see her leaning toward me as if to peer at the thoughts behind my eyes. “You look a little pale.”
“Uh…yeah…” I say, forcing a smile. “I just need a drink.”
“Here,” Becca says, stepping aside to reveal the gin bottle and paper cups on the table beside her. “You know I’m never three feet from the good stuff.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll go grab a beer from the kitchen,” I mumble, backing away.
“Ok,” Winnie says, still looking concerned. “Well tell Wyatt to get out here so we can grill him about the date.”
I let out what I mean to sound like a nonchalant laugh, but that probably sounds more like the shrieking rattle of nerves, then turn and stalk back into the house.
What an idiot I was, I mentally chastise myself as my anger burns inside of me, larger with each step. How could I have trusted Wyatt when he probably can’t even trust himself? I remember Aiden’s words at the museum again, about how Wyatt wasn’t interested in settling down, how he hadn’t finished screwing his way through L.A. yet, and wonder how the hell I imagined things with me and him would be any different.
I feel like a storm cloud marching through the hallway, unsure of what I’ll do when I finally see Wyatt’s face, but willing to let the fury rolling inside my chest make my decisions for me.
“Hey, Melina!” Bob calls out from the living room as I stride past it. “Just who I wanted to see. Get over here a second.”
I look forward, then back at the living room, exasperated that I can’t continue marching, then move toward Bob.
“Have you seen Wyatt?” I ask, barely able to keep my teeth from clenching at the tension in my body.
Bob looks up from his phone for a second, head swiveling as if Wyatt might be hiding in one of the corners of the room, then shrugs and shakes his head at me.
“Look at this, would you?” he says, inviting me to peer over his phone with him. “I can’t get the video camera working.”
“Just swipe over to where it says ‘video,’” I say, already pulling back to continue searching.
“I’m doing that,” he says, helplessly. “But swiping does nothing.”
I suppress a sigh of irritation, not wanting anyone to realize how pissed off I am, and go toward him to check his phone.
“No…you see…you’re in the wrong app,” I say, taking the phone from him.
“That’s the camera app—I need video.”
“Same app,” I say, impatiently turning on the camera and handing it back to him.
“Ah, thanks Melina! You’re a godsend.”
Already walking away, I call back over my shoulder, “If you see Wyatt, tell him I need to speak to him.”
I check the study, and then the bathroom, and then consider checking upstairs, when Cody comes bounding down them.
“Hey Melina, can I talk to you a second?”
I hold up a hand, trying to control the shake in my voice. “Not right now, Cody. I need to find your brother.”
Cody smiles broadly.
“That’s actually what I wanted to ask you about. You know…‘working together’ and all th—”
“Have you seen him?” I ask tetchily.
Cody drops the smile and shakes his head.
“Tell him I’m looking for him if you do,” I say, and stride with even more firm rage toward the kitchen, as if all the interruptions and obstacles getting in the way of finding him have somehow proven all my worst presumptions right.
And there he is, standing over the counter, an apple in one hand and a glass of water in the other. He looks at me and smiles before taking a big, traitorous bite out of it.
“What the fuck, Wyatt?” I say, marching toward him.
He chews quickly, his expression twisting with confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“You went on a date? When were you going to tell me about this?”
“Whoa, whoa!” Wyatt says, putting the apple and water down to raise his palms up in innocence. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh no? You just ‘accidentally’ found yourself chatting up some super-hot doctor? And then, what, you took her home? Didn’t think I’d find out?”
“Melina—”
“And then a day later you’re telling me about how ‘meaningful’ this is to you. Seriously? Did she blow you off, or were you planning to just juggle the both of us as long as you could get away with it? Are there others?”
Wyatt looks over my shoulder and nods at someone in the doorway, his smile back on his face as easily as putting on a mask.
“I’ll catch you outside, bro,” he says, pointing. Then he drops the mask and looks back at with a frenzied focus.
“Look, can we talk somewhere more private? Unless you want to announce us by having a full-on argument that everyone including the neighbors can hear.”
As he says this, he puts his hand gently on my back and ushers me toward the pantry—the one he caught me inside just a few weeks and an entire lifetime ago.
“How can we announce ‘us’ when ‘us’ doesn’t even matter to you?” I say, even as I let him move me toward the door beside the fridge. I watch him as he opens it. “I mean, Jesus, just because I was mad at you at work, you decide to drop everything and go out with someone else? You couldn’t wait like one day? Or even better, maybe try to fix it? God, how could I be so naïve? You haven’t changed a bit.”
Wyatt doesn’t answer, and I suddenly notice the frozen quality in his eyes. They’re not looking at me, but inside the pantry. I turn to look, and freeze also.
Joe and Elise, Wyatt’s parents—his very divorced parents—are tangled around each other like a couple of teenagers. Joe’s got lipstick smeared all over his mouth, and Elise’s usually-perfect hair is a messy tangle.
“Oh!” Elise shrieks, reaching up to pat her hair down. “We were just…umm…”
She pushes back from Joe, who looks guiltily at us as well.
Then we stand there, all stiff, staring each other down as if it’s an Old West stand-off. I look at Wyatt, his face like I’ve never seen it, the face of someone witnessing their whole world come crashing down around them. I reach for his arm but he pulls away, and I wonder what the hell is going on, and how much of our argument his parents just heard.
How did we get into this mess?
18
Wyatt
What the fuck is this?
I’m not sure if I actually say those words out loud, or just think them so hard my parents read them all over my face.
Something snaps inside of me. A wrench thrown into the cogs, seeming to stop everything; my thoughts, my body, time itself. It feels like a bad dream—in fact, I’m pretty sure I had a dream where this exact thing happened—except the angry tightening inside of me, like I just had my guts sucked into a black hole, is too real to mistake.
The details, too, like the way my mom clears her throat and smooths her dress in that schoolgirl manner, and my dad’s half-smile that he uses when he feels embarrassed… If this is a dream, it’s a high-fidelity, technicolor, surround-sound, lucid nightmare.
“We were going to wait to tell everyone, but. Well. We’ve decided… We’re…” my mom grins, “getting back together!”
After she says it, she giggles slightly, as if saying it out loud is some exciting barrier she’s crossed.
My dad winds his arm around her waist and pulls her closer.
“We are back together,” he says warmly, swapping a tender look with her.
I feel a deep swirl of nausea at the center of my being. After a few seconds they look back at me, as if remembering I’m still here.
“We were going to announce it later, when everyone was together,”
my mom adds.
Dad nods. “Yeah. But I couldn’t keep my hands off her—not in that dress.”
Mom looks up at him and winks. “Why do you think I wore it?”
“Jesus Christ!” I finally manage to blurt out, though the exclamation seems to come more from the vexation within me than any kind of rational thought. “This isn’t happening.”
“Wyatt,” Dad says, finally pulling away from my mom to come close, “listen, I know this must be—”
“No,” I say, already turning away, feeling like some giant has his fist around my chest, “I need some air.”
I stalk out of the kitchen, through the hallway, back outside, feeling like a bull that’s sick of his pen, a prisoner in need of some open space.
“Hey,” someone starts.
“Wyatt!”
“Where you going, man?”
The calls come from the people already out in the yard, sitting back and enjoying drinks, as well as my parents and Melina, who have followed me out of the house.
I pace across the yard, pinching the bridge of my nose, suddenly wondering why I didn’t go out the front, to my car, and get as far away from here as possible.
The commotion brings everyone into a cluster, drawing them to the tables.
“What’s going on?” Bob asks, loud enough to be heard above everyone else.
Their chattering dies down, and in the anticipatory silence I hear Aiden say,
“No way!”
I look back at them. My mom and dad are standing side by side against the patio doors, everyone already looking on in shock—he’s got his arm around her waist again, both of them with grins like they’re presenting an award.
“Yes way,” my dad says.
“Joe and I are back together,” my mom says, and the words cause an uproar among the others. Some get up to offer congratulations, while others whoop and utter exclamations of shock to each other.
“That’s amazing!”
“Is this a joke?”
“Finally!”
“How the hell did you keep this a secret?”
“I’m so happy for you both! I knew this would happen eventually!”
I can barely stand it, the happy shrieks and laughing voices ringing brittle and hollow in my ears. Once again, I can barely hold myself back when I finally do speak, the words coming from a pit of emotion.
“Are you all fucking crazy?”
They all stop. Mid-hug, mid-sentence, mid-smile. As if somebody hit the pause button on their celebration. They look at me in bemusement, frowning their confusion.
“How is this a good thing?” I sputter. “Did you all forget how much of a mess it was last time? Am I the only one who remembers how bad you were together? How much the divorce was the only thing that kept you both going?”
“Come on, bro,” Cody says, stepping toward me as if negotiating with a hostage. “This is a good thing. Don’t you want to see them happy?”
“I do—that’s why I think this is a terrible idea,” I say, then look him right in the eye, so he can see how much I mean this. “You were too young, Cody. Too young to have Dad call you in the middle of the night three nights a week, drunk and crying—never knowing whether it was to call her names or tell you how much he missed her. Too young to watch Mom grind down her self-esteem dating a string of losers, because she spent so long as a couple she couldn’t learn how to be alone again.”
A few of them shift uncomfortably, before my dad steps forward.
“That’s not fair, Wyatt. I know it was hard on you, but this time is different.”
“Nothing’s different,” I say forcefully back to him. “Nothing. Dad—you still don’t make any money. In fact, you make less than you did when you were a mechanic. And Mom—you still spend all day either working or out having coffee with friends. You’re still the same people. If you do this you’re going to bring it all crashing down, all over again—and I’m done cleaning up the mess.”
“Wyatt,” coos Winnie, half-sympathetic, “we can all understand why you think that.”
“No you don’t,” I reply coldly, the force inside of me fully taking over now.
Years of pain and disappointment seize control of my body. All those pent-up emotions I spent half my life meticulously bottling up and pushing further down fully unleashed and spilling out.
“None of you do. Look at you all. You live in some fantasy world. You think all it takes is a few flirtations and a mutual promise and then it’s ‘happily ever after’? You think announcing to the world you’re together makes it something that’ll last? There’s no such thing as ‘happily ever after,’ ok? And if you try to force it, it just makes everything worse.”
Melina frowns at me as I say this, and I suddenly notice her. I wince, knowing what she must think, but I’m not in control anymore.
I let out a deep sigh of disgust and hold my palms up as I move forward.
“Have a great Labor Day, everyone,” I say. “But I’m out of here.”
The crowd parts, as if the intensity of my anger has created a force field around me, and I stalk through them into the house, then out the front door.
As I near my car I hear steps on the gravel behind me, but I don’t turn.
“Wyatt! Wait!”
It’s Melina.
I stop and turn to face her, my expression of hard frustration fixed, unable to change it even if I wanted. We look at each other, both of us breathing heavily.
“Where are you going?” she asks, her voice coming out soft and placating.
“I don’t care, to be honest. Just…away from here. I’m not gonna force myself to stick around and watch them act like this.”
“Obviously.” I take the jab as a signal to leave and turn, but then she says, “We still need to talk.”
“About what?”
Melina shakes her head and narrows her eyes as if it should be obvious.
“About us? About the date you went on just a few days ago, and whether you’re seeing other people? What about telling everyone we’re together? And all that stuff you just said back there… ‘No such thing as happily ever after’… What was that about?”
I let out a disappointed laugh, more an expulsion of the negative energy in me than amusement.
“Exactly this,” I say. “This is what I meant…I wanted things to be perfect between us, and for a moment there I thought it could work—you had me believing. But it’s only been a couple of days and we’re already arguing…you really believed I just went on some date with a girl because I was mad at you? That I’m seeing other women? Come on…you should know better than to believe all that bullshit about me. I know I’ve got a reputation, but I wouldn’t do something like that.”
Melina folds her arms, still looking tense and uncertain.
“I’m sorry, I just…you never said anything. Why would you keep something like that from me? Of all the shitty things going on…I really was trying to trust you.”
Those big, expressive eyes almost cut through my anger, nearly make the heat dissipate, nearly bring me back to a sense of wellbeing—but then I remember my parents and my teeth clench once again.
“No,” I say, stepping toward her. “You were right not to trust me. I have been holding something back from you.”
She looks at me suspiciously now.
“What do you mean?”
I take a breath, then force the words out. “You’re fired,” I say flatly.
Her mouth drops open, but apart from that she doesn’t react, as if I’ve said nothing at all.
“Jim wants you gone at the end of the month,” I continue. “I tried talking him out of it. I tried telling him it was a terrible idea—especially since you’re the only one doing good work for him—but the guy… The guy’s a fucking idiot.”
“So I’m fired? Just like that?” Melina says, as if she’s only just processing the first thing I said.
“Yeah,” I nod. “I was supposed to tell you days ago, but what with all the other stu
ff that happened…I was trying to fix things, and I thought I might—”
“I’m fired?” Melina repeats. “And you knew, and you said nothing?”
“Yeah,” I say solemnly, not bothering to explain further this time.
Melina looks down, rubbing her forehead, then back up at me. “I don’t know what to say to you.”
I see a hurt and anger in her eyes, and I’m not sure if it’s directed at me, or the universe—at this point, I’m not sure it even matters.
“Well, there you have it,” I say, walking backwards to my car, “our ‘happily ever after.’ Lasted all of a few days. And you’re already jumping to conclusions about me, and I’m already keeping things from you. And in the end, we have nothing to say to each other.” I walk around to the driver’s side and open the door, looking at her one last time over the car roof. “I’ll give my parents credit for one thing: They got a good few years out of it before they fucked things up. You and I couldn’t even manage that.”
I take her in one last time. The fists clenched at her side, the middle-distance glare, the focused intent of her hurt. I wish I could let everything go, take her in my arms again and pretend we can rewind time, but life doesn’t work like that. I learned that the hard way.
“It was good while it lasted,” I say. “I’m done.”
I get into the car, rev the engine, and drive away.
19
Melina
I don’t turn up for work the next few days. Wyatt doesn’t call. Either he knows I won’t answer, or he’s still as angry about everything that happened at the barbecue as I am.
Usually, when I feel this bad, I find a photography project to get lost in, but every time I go near my cameras they seem to glare at me accusingly, their big, black eyes reflecting back my own failures, reminding me of what a loser I am—as a photographer, as a person, and in relationships, too.
So here I am, at 2 PM on a Thursday, in my tiny apartment, slumped on the couch eating Ben and Jerry’s as if the cold sweetness will numb my brain and stop me from reliving, for the millionth time, every detail of every excruciating moment leading up to this.