by Daniel Riley
Will finished his drink. “You’re telling me all it takes is one hot fuck to turn you inside out like this? You’re saying that’s all this is. That there’s nothing else going on…I just don’t buy it anymore! I’m sorry. I love you. But I’m getting sick of you bullshitting me like this. I just don’t believe that there’s not something bigger going on.”
He was talking so much. She was getting fed up. “What do you want me to say?! That I’ve known all my life that I wasn’t pegged at one hundred on the spectrum or whatever? Nobody is!”
“I think some people are, actually? I fucking am!”
“Well, that’s fitting, right? Reliable, dependable, conventional Will.”
“Are you suggesting my heterosexuality is too boring for you? Are you saying—”
“I’m saying you’re lucky, okay? But this actually isn’t about you for once. Not everything’s about how fucking glorious your gloriously uninteresting life is.”
He chuckled darkly and shook his head. “You and I used to sit around talking about how nice it was to just know. To just know that you were the one for me, and I was the one for you, and that we didn’t have to worry about that stuff, because only movie stars like Adrien Fucking Green could come between us. About how lucky we were to have survived growing up and figuring ourselves out, unlike so many other people we know. But now you’re saying, what—that that wasn’t the case, after all?”
“I don’t have the answers for you. Or for me. I’m sorry. I just can’t explain any of this right now…I’m saying it’s never been one hundred percent for me, things were never quite the way you had it for yourself. It’s never been all the way, and lately it’s been harder…different…shifting. It’s been louder.”
“Lately.”
“These last few months. These last couple…years.”
“Years?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know why and I don’t know how. Growing up, I mean, obviously it wasn’t a possibility. There was nothing to do but shove it down into the deepest drawer, and never acknowledge its existence. But then in—”
“You’re saying you’ve felt this way since you were a kid?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying! Okay? I’m saying there have been things at times that don’t feel like I feel with you, or with the other boys I dated, or the—”
“The other three boys you dated,” he said.
“I don’t know what you want me to do with that fact. What you intend for it to mean.”
“I just mean you weren’t exactly serially out there, boy crazy, even in…so it actually makes sense when you think about it, if you’ve just been—”
“Please don’t start turning over every rock to find convenient explanations. Connecting everything to this one fucking thing.”
“I can’t tell whether you’re saying that this is the smallest thing or the biggest thing in the world. If this is nothing or if it’s everything. If it wasn’t a big deal, you just wouldn’t have kept it concealed like this. And there wouldn’t be 73 emails with you and this woman drooling over the prospect of fucking each other again.”
“I just don’t know.”
“She’s quite striking. Not what I would’ve expected. But it’s interesting to see where you went when you had the opportunity.”
Her nails were making the soft sensitive flesh in her webs turn red.
“And that’s a hell of a deal she signed last year,” he said. “I guess I get it. But just know that it makes me fucking crazy, okay? That this epistolary romance was going on this whole fucking time…”
She was crying again.
“Every time you had to rush home for Wi-Fi,” he said, “or get up in the middle of the night to respond to ‘work emails’…”
She was heaving and her breath was skipping.
“See?” he said. “I knew it. I knew it was more than nothing. More than you just not wanting to be rude.”
She whispered it: “I just don’t know what to tell you.”
“Please do your fucking best.”
She pulled at her hair. She pulled it hard and Will could hear some of the strands click from her scalp. “There’ve been things for a while, little things in the back of my head,” she said. “Same as when you see a beautiful woman cross the street in front of you, the things you’ve said that jump into your head. But my things were nothing I didn’t think everyone experienced.”
He looked back at her, so very calm. It was as though he was hearing her clearly, at last.
“So what has this been, then?” he said. “The whole of these past seven years?”
“This has been my life,” she said. “The relationship of my life. With the love of my life.”
“Was being with me, like, a cover-up for something else? Or an alternative to something you kept yourself from pursuing all this time? Was there anyone else?”
“No. It never even occurred to me to think about it too hard. As more than just a fantasy. It was just a thing that would never happen. That’s the truth. That’s the deepest true thing I can tell you. I was with you. I was in love. I loved you. I love you. It’s simple. That’s all it is.”
“What if we hadn’t been together? What if you’d been single?”
“I probably would’ve dated some other boy, or several other boys.”
“Really.”
“Yes, of course I would’ve met somebody else.”
“Other boys.”
“Maybe I would’ve dated a girl. Is that what you want me to say?”
“No wonder getting married is so terrifying to you. You don’t even know if…No wonder marriage is the scariest thing there is.”
“It’s what I want,” she said. “It’s what I want more than anything. It is.”
“It’s not,” he said. “And it’s okay that it isn’t. Really. Just be honest with me. Finally. Please, Whit. Just please start helping me understand what any of this actually means.”
She lifted her head but her eyes were shut again now. “Everyone’s a little afraid of marriage,” she said. “But it’s not you that I’m afraid of. It’s…letting the fucking state…and St. Luke’s…and whatever else into our lives, into our private personal situation together. It’s so fucking official, and legal, and none of their business, really.”
“Don’t do this,” he said. “You don’t have to do this for my benefit. Letting the state into your life is not what twists you up inside.”
“That’s all there is. That’s all there was and is to it.”
“Just tell me what this thing is now,” he said. “You can’t say that it’s nothing, that it changes nothing. You know that doesn’t make any sense. Just tell me what—”
“Stop saying the same thing over and over! Okay?! I don’t know what to tell you! I just don’t know who the fuck I am right now, okay?!”
He let her hang there breathing. He’d pushed it there and it wasn’t satisfying to him in the least. He knew he was bullying her and it disgusted him. Despite everything. Despite everything she’d done. He loved her, even if it was over, and he was making things worse for her. He reached for her hands. He pulled them from her knees.
“You’re Whitney,” he said.
“And who is that?” she said.
“That’s the person I love more than anyone in the world,” he said.
She started crying again, swellingly grateful, relieved that the inquisition was over.
He nodded and stood. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“So, what now?” he said.
She shrugged and her mouth was small.
“So, we pack,” he said, folding another shirt.
She sat there on the edge of the bed, waiting for more, waiting for anything else from him.
“I didn’t do this to hurt you,” she said.
“I know. How could you have known that it would mean something, right?”
She paused and swallowed. “I couldn’t have expected this, whatever this is,” she
said, swallowing again. “But I should tell you, because…I should tell you that it wasn’t my first time with a woman.”
“Ah.” He shook his head.
“When I was abroad junior year. When I was all alone and all fucked up after everything that had happened that summer. There was a girl from Paris. It happened a few times over a few weeks. Then I saw her again spring break senior year, when I went back alone. But it was nothing. And I never even thought about it again, really, but—”
“So, right before we met. You went and saw her, like, a week before we got together.”
“I didn’t go to see her. I went to Paris and she was there.”
He licked his lips and shook his head again. “And you never thought about it all this time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. It didn’t mean anything to me then. I guess I could’ve told you in the beginning, but I didn’t think it was all that important. I was doing everything to make this work. I didn’t want to risk anything.…It’s not like I was hung up on it or something, or had all these feelings for her. It was just something that happened. I know a lot of women who…”
“You’re right, everyone’s done it, I forgot,” he said. “Anything else to report?”
She shut her eyes and was pulling her hair again. She had her hair twisted around her longest finger and was yanking mindlessly. “I…I don’t know how important or not this is…but I need to tell you so that we never have to talk about it again. To just…say everything about.…It happened on a Friday, a weekend, and so…” Her voice caught on a hitch. “…it happened again in the morning.”
He stared back at her.
“It happened again in the morning,” she said, “and then again the next day.”
“Whitney,” he said. “C’mon.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s nothing else.”
“How could there be?” he said.
“There’s nothing else, I just wanted you to know.”
“Okay.”
“I would’ve never in a million years done it if I’d known this is how I would feel afterward.”
“Okay. I’m sorry you’re confused.”
“But it doesn’t change anything, okay?”
“If you say so,” he said, packing still, eyes on his crumpled boxers and shirts.
“I couldn’t have known…”
He looked up at her with ice behind his eyes. “Right, but, like, maybe just a little…” he said. “You maybe knew just a fucking little, right?”
Her face was rolling to a boil again, on the verge of tears all over.
“No,” she said, shaking her head faintly. “The only thing I know is that I can’t figure any of this out without…I just can’t live my life without you, okay? I can’t not be with you.”
He looked at her, tears in his eyes now.
“How can that possibly be?” he said.
She inhaled like before. A fresh blade in the other lung. “What do you mean?”
“It’s very clear that you’ve got some shit to figure out.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with—”
“I just assumed,” he said, twisting a shirt in his hands. “After all this, after all the secrets, after everything you’ve just said you’re feeling—how could we possibly be okay?”
“Will, what are you talking about?” she said, moving toward him suddenly, reaching for him. “Of course this doesn’t mean that we aren’t—”
“Stop,” he said. “I just…I don’t know right now, just like you don’t know. What am I supposed to do with all this? All the fucking deception. Do you have any idea how horrifying it is to realize that the single person you think you know best in the world you don’t actually have a fucking clue about?”
“I hope you don’t mean that.”
“It’s true!”
“Imagine how it is for me?!” she said softly. “How much scarier it is for me?!”
“What do you want me to do, Whit?! You broke the rules. You didn’t tell me about it. And you obviously loved it. You obviously couldn’t get enough—and neither could she. It’s fucked you up. It’s changed you. You’re telling me you have no idea who you are or how you feel about any of this stuff. Everything has fucking changed. Everything.”
She stood up and grabbed him, grabbed his body but also picked up the arms that were hanging at his sides and slung them around her shoulders, forcing him to touch her, to wrap her up.
“Will, please,” she said.
“What do you expect?” he said.
“What do you mean, What do I expect?”
“We’re fucking broken,” he said. “We are forcing something like we’ve never had to force it before. There is something clearly not right in this relationship. This whole thing is obviously off the rails in ways we’ve never acknowledged, and it’s making us insane.”
“No,” she said, grabbing his face and shaking her head. “No. No no no no. Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that. I can’t not be with you, okay? Not a minute. You’re my family. You are my family…I can’t imagine living—let’s just finally do this, okay? Let’s tell our parents today. Let’s tell our friends. Let’s set a date. Let’s do it this week. Let’s do it right here before they close the courthouse tonight, okay? We survived. We made it. It’s time now.”
He shook his head. “No. No way. How can you say that with everything else you’re saying? With everything else you’re feeling? The fundamental things you’re talking about.”
She collapsed onto the edge of the bed. On her face was the dawning realization that she’d perhaps ruined everything. The delicate balance. The even score. The precarious framework of 1-2-3 and the fragile architecture of a seven-year relationship. She’d poisoned the order of things with her confession, and the implication was coursing through her veins.
“Please…” she said, sprawling over the comforter to meet his downcast eyes. “Will, please.”
He slipped her gaze and started throwing laundry into his bag again.
“We don’t have to do any more of this right now, okay?” he said. “Let’s just pack and get to the airport and get home. We have time to figure this out.”
“No,” she said, desperate. “I need you to tell me you understand what I’m saying. That nothing needs to change. That you understand and that we’re okay. I need to know, Will. I need to know right now that we’re going to be okay, or I’m gonna fucking die.”
“Look: I didn’t do anything. I’m not the fucking liar here. I’m not the one who’s changing the rules as she goes along. I’m the boring one—you said it yourself. With me, you know what you get. You’re the ground that’s shifting, Whit. None of this was my idea. None of it was my decision. You made the choices. You tell me what the new reality is, and I’ll decide on my own fucking timeline whether I want a part of it.”
“I can’t possibly…” she said, tears slipping from her eyes again. “If this ends, then what? What, Will? What am I? If this ends, you’re going to tell people, aren’t you? Somebody’s going to find out what happened. I can’t tell my friends about this. I can’t tell my parents. I can’t fucking tell my mom, Will!”
“We’re not with your mom right now. We’re packing our bags.”
“We don’t have to leave for hours! You don’t have to pack right now!”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Maybe I can’t talk about this anymore without breaking a fucking window.”
“There’s nothing else,” she said. “Nothing. Nothing has changed. Nothing is broken.”
“Okay,” he said, stuffing, folding, stuffing.
“Nothing changes. Nobody besides you and me has to know a thing. We go home, we put it behind us, life is as it was. Please.”
“Please, what?”
“Please believe me.”
“I don’t even know what you’re asking me to believe.”
“I’m the same as ever. I’m me. Everything is okay, okay?”
He moved to the other side of the bed to retrieve a pair of pants.
She could tell he was dismissing her, finished, deferring to the place beyond today. She could tell she’d lost him, and so she sat on the edge of the bed and started heaving again.
Which is when the music turned over from one old song to another.
“I’m so sick of these shit-ass speakers,” he said, walking out into the living room, searching for any better way to amplify the music. He pressed some buttons and banged some switches, but couldn’t get the sound system going. He’d just needed out of the room. Whitney heard her own breathing and then she heard him clattering around in the kitchen. She heard the sound of freezer-burned ice cubes. She heard the threads of the bottle top. He returned with a fresh glass of whiskey.
“This is all that’s left if you want some,” he said, placing the glass on the side table. She’d collapsed again on the bed. Her face was slick. She was puddled up in the rumpled comforter.
The next song started. Something essential unearthed by the algorithm. It was a song from that first spring seven years ago. A song from another era; they’d spanned eras together. Something from the first concert they ever attended together, at a small club half an hour off campus, a concert for which they’d borrowed someone else’s car, stayed out all night, listened to this very record again and again on the way there and on the way back, and again while they made out in the front seat on a poorly lit wooded road.
Neither of them had reacted to the music at first, except in their faces. Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he laughed, a sick bark, and he shook his head in acknowledgment of the unwelcome ways the world was nosing in on their business. Why? Why this song just now? Her mouth was fixed in a frown, drawn down at the edges by the weight of her face. She wiped her eyes again and tried extra hard to draw Will’s gaze back toward hers. It was something they could do to each other, a power they’d had since the beginning. He sensed the request, the heat and the signal, the silver lights flashing up at him from the bed.
He sat down and looked at her. And then it happened the way it sometimes happened for them. He didn’t want it just then, but he couldn’t help himself and she couldn’t help herself. Since the beginning, it had gone that way: He’d look at her and she’d look at him, and there would be something chemical. A syncing-up. A pure meld. And now, as their eyes locked, it knitted them in place, sewed them right there into the comforter. The two minds behind the four eyes became one for an instant—it was all just chemistry—and the whole movie started to play in reverse: