by K. B. Nelson
The question hits me hard. I wasn’t expecting an inquiry so deep. My mind is too scrambled to make sense of his question, and I can’t finger a motive. “I think it took less time than that to fall in love with my husband,” I say softly, reflecting on memories belonging to my former self. “Everything fell apart just as fast.”
“Do you still love him?” he asks with a certain heft in his tone, as if he’s afraid to hear an answer that doesn’t agree with his unknown motives.
“That’s one hell of a loaded question, but the answer will always be the same. I do.”
“What are we to you?” Another question is tossed from his lips, but his focus on the road is now unflinching. He’s interrogating me, not as himself, but as a robot far removed from the emotional entanglement.
“The hell if I know,” I sigh.
“Is it bad? Is it good? Is it a temporary distraction?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head and raise my thumb to my mouth. “It is what it is. Nothing more and nothing less?” Nervously, I scrape my fingernail with my tooth, waiting for him to react however he’s going to react, but the only response is an affirmative nod and then silence giving way to radio static once more.
“I’m okay with a day at a time.” He looks to me, but all I see is my reflection in his sunglasses.
I reach for his shades and pull them from his face so I can see the honesty in his dark eyes. I have a strong inkling what his answer to my question will be, but absolute confirmation is what I crave. “Do you think you can fall in love in a day?”
“I know I can,” he says lowly, his eyes glistening with poignant honesty.
I grow cold, the hairs of my body standing and on high alert. I shift myself toward him as his eyes trail back to the road. “Do you love me?”
“Would it make a difference?” He bats his eye at me, waiting for an answer that will never come. “Do you love me?”
I want to, is what I want to say, and it’d be the truth. The truth is more complicated than a simple, I do or I don’t. There are a thousand different variables between the two. “I don’t love you, Kemper.” I place my palm on his thigh. “But I’m not ready for this to be over.”
“Could you be a little less cryptic?” He flashes a wide grin and jabs me with his elbow.
“No one can ever know,” I say to him softly, but my words carry weight. “If this gets out—“
“I wouldn’t dare tell a soul,” he interrupts, and for the first time, I’m not annoyed with this particular annoying habit of him. It’s different on this side of a soul-awakening realization.
I’ve become a cheater, and a woman I can hardly recognize. I’m a liar, unable to maneuver the truth from my tongue. The truth is that there’s a thump in my heart when Kemper smiles, and there’s a roar when he laughs. There’s absolute thunder when he kisses me, and I can’t begin to understand the specifics of it all. I wouldn’t pretend to. It doesn’t make sense. It never has, never does, and probably never will.
It’s a feeling that defies definition, though we try in vein to get a handle on it. We think we know what causes it, and how to hold onto it past its expiration date. We have more scientific understanding than we’ve ever had before, but the truth remains as elusive as chasing eternity.
It’s the reason football can be so exciting, the reason why our nation pulses with the conviction of obsession come autumn every single goddamn year. Sometimes, we never see a win coming. Other times, the players on the field are only chasing the inevitable.
Just as in life, the biggest blind side of all often comes when we’re least expecting it.
Love or something like it, fuck the semantics because the writing on the wall remains the same; I’m falling in love with Kemper Scott, and in doing so, I’ve stamped my one-way ticket to hell.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but my intentions started as anything but. I wonder if the powers that be will take that into consideration when they stamp my passport.
18
I’m expecting scorn, but I’ll live with silence. I strut into my house without a care in the world at 7PM on a Sunday night after having been gone for almost forty-eight hours. I’m high on confidence, perhaps because I know I can’t technically be reported as a missing person until forty-eight hours have passed.
I push the door shut behind me and hear a stir in the living room to the left of the foyer. When I make my way into the living space, Brock is standing beside the couch, holding the home phone in his hands.
Worry is stitched into the fabric of his face, and I can’t help but to chuckle.
“Where have you been?” he asks as stern as my father the first time I stayed out all night as a teen, the same night I lost my virginity to my future husband. “I’ve been worried sick.”
“That’s interesting.” I drop down on the couch opposite from him. “Did you try calling?” Of course, I know the answer. He called too many times, but he should have known to surrender the fight after the first few missed calls.
“Are we really going to do this?”
“Go ahead.” I twirl my finger at him. “Do your song and dance, but if you don’t mind, I’m too exhausted to stand.”
“Fuck you, Stassi!” He throws the phone against the wall, and I hardly even flinch. “You ungrateful bitch.”
I clap for him. “Do you feel better, babe?”
“Babe?” he scoffs and runs his palm against his mouth. “Is that who I am to you?”
“Fine.” I roll my eyes and climb to my feet. “Coach,” I taunt him as I pass him and step into the kitchen. I hear his feet stomping against the tile as he follows me. “Are you hungry?” I turn to him and rest my elbows on the counter.
“Where were you?”
“If you must know, I was at Ashley’s,” I lie through my teeth and have no problem doing so. “She dropped me off to pick up my car a half hour ago.”
“Your car was left in the school parking lot.” He pushes his tongue against his inner cheek. “I didn’t know if you had been kidnapped or if you were lying dead in a ditch.”
“I wanted to die.” I narrow my eyes at him. “I needed to get away from this place.”
“That’s stupid talk.”
“What’s stupid is pretending this can work out.” I lean across the counter and try to plead with him. “I’m tired of this ridiculous charade. We’re not together.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I know you do. I just wish everyone else could know the truth.”
“You know they can’t,” he says softly and shifts his eyes to the floor, showing vulnerability I had forgotten used to be there. It doesn’t matter though.
“I’m tired of being held captive by something that’s out of our control,” I howl at him and pound my fist against the counter. “I’m sorry that your mother is dying, and sometimes I try to hold whatever resentment or anger I’m holding against you inside because I know what you’re going through.”
“Don’t bring her into this.” He cranes his face to look me straight in the eye. “Please.”
“That’s the problem,” I whisper. “I’m trapped in this house and this marriage with you because we don’t want to hurt your dying mother.” I pause, judging whether or not the foundation beneath us is solid enough to continue. “What about me?” I cry, and wipe my palm against dry eyes, expecting tears that won’t come. “I’m dead inside, Brock.”
He levels his sight on me, a hollow sadness settling in. “Brock?”
“Coach,” I say and step away from the counter with my back toward him.
“I still love you.”
“No,” I turn to him with contempt, “you don’t.”
“Do you still love me?”
“I’m learning not to,” it’s a somber admission crafted from pain and betrayal.
He freezes in place, sinking into the tile floor beneath us. His eyes rumble, trying to process the words I’ve shot him with. He’s bleeding out, and I do not
hing to heal the wound. “Get out of my house,” he screams at me, but it’s more of a half-cry. His face flushes red and he charges toward me, but I swing out of the way and around the kitchen corner.
He chases me through the living room and up the stairs, but I’m too fast for him and lock myself in our bedroom before he’s even reached the landing. He pounds his fist against the door.
I push my back against the door and close my eyes, only to feel the dampness underneath my eyelids. He pounds against the door a few more times, but soon surrenders. I peel open the door when I hear him stumbling down the steps.
When enough time has passed for Brock to calm down, I make my way downstairs to discover the front door wide open, with only the screen door protecting the interior from an array of autumn bugs.
The screen door creaks as I push it open to find Brock leaning over the white railing of the wrap-around porch. He knows I’m here, but he doesn’t say a word. That’s fair as it’s I who needs to unload some more baggage, but an apology is in order first.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper and land my palm on his back. It feels like a violation, and my soul fractures. I have no right to comfort him after the things I’ve done these past few weeks. “I can’t keep living like this.” I lean over the railing beside him, staring out into the vacant property beside our house.
“I’m sorry about what happened with Nathan,” he says, low and under his breath.
“Please don’t.”
“Jesus, Stassi,” he scowls and rips away from the banister. “I can’t do anything right.”
“Sorry doesn’t make it better.” It’s like he’s one of my students, just now learning this very important life lesson. Sorry is a beautiful word, but it doesn’t render everything that transpired before meaningless.
“It’s all I have left,” he crows. “You’re not the only one who lost something—“
Of course, this is going to turn into a fight. I should have stayed upstairs. “I was going through a difficult time,” I remind him, trying to keep my voice down, but the bubbling emotions begin to skyrocket from within. “You were content to let me wallow in emotional pain while you went around sleeping with every other woman who'd throw herself at you because you're the fucking king of this town.” He stares at me, unflinching in his resolve as I annihilate him. “I was in pain. You squashed yours the second you became unfaithful.”
“You were in the hospital unconscious.” He shrugs and bats his eyes. “I thought you were dying.”
“So that makes it all better?”
He throws a finger at me, but keeps his distance. The space between us becomes a battlefield, and we’re each rallying our troops, armed with sharp tongues. “You’re the one who decided to get into that car with that kid.”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.”
“You had to have known.”
“I didn’t,” I seethe through gritted teeth.
“You did,” he says so matter-of-a-fucking-factly that I want to punch him in the goddamn throat.
“He needed help!” I scream, letting my rage tangle with my words so I don’t react with my fists.
“There it is, the truth.”
“He was seventeen years old and completely down.”
“He was a student,” he screams and thumps his knuckle against his skull for emphasis.
“Do I need to remind you the catalyst for everything we lost that night?” I step toward him and ball my fingers into a fist, my sharp nails cutting through the skin of my palm. “His parents disowned him because of your actions. I didn’t think he was drunk. I thought he was just emotional,” my voice cracks in half because I know it’s a lie. I knew damn well he had been drinking, but I wanted to help him so bad that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me, and everything I stood to lose. Hindsight hurts similar to a bullet through the heart.
“He wanted to die and had no problem taking you down with him.” He matches me step for step until he’s standing right above me, and looks down to me with hollow eyes. “And now he’s dead, but we’re still left reeling.”
“I forced my way into his car,” I whisper, still trying to entrap the truth somewhere between falsehoods and best-case scenarios, because I can’t live with the guilt of getting in the car, or the guilt of wishing I hadn’t. No matter my actions that night, something would have been lost.
“Do you not realize how terribly clear this is?”
“The only thing I see clear as day is you had no right telling his parents.”
He squeezes his temples and lets out a furious laugh. “It is a violation of the school code and the law to engage in sexual intercourse on school grounds, especially behind the bleachers during a packed football game where anyone can see.”
“You knew his parents. You knew how they'd react.” I shake my head. “You didn't care.”
“Actions have consequences.” He shrugs his shoulders with apathy and repulsive smugness.
“Go to hell,” I spit and reach for the screen door.
“You get caught with your pants down, banging some kid under the bleachers? You get expelled. You get into a car with a drunk teenager, you lose your right to the high moral ground.”
“Actions have consequences, Coach.” I crane my head over my shoulder. “You sleep around with my sister, who I now hate because of what you did, and you get a divorce.”
“Hate’s a strong word.”
I slam the screen door shut and turn to him fully. “I resent her. She infuriates me. She makes me sick to my stomach. Is that better?”
“I don’t know, Stassi. Why don’t you pull out a thesaurus?”
It builds slowly, but boils to the surface with the strength of a twister in slow motion. “I want a divorce.”
“You're not getting one.”
“We're not together,” I remind him. “Well finish out this semester, to keep up appearances but once the season is over, and winter break begins, I'm done.”
He purses his lips and shakes his head, disillusioned by my words as if we didn’t just fight to the death. “You have to let this all go.”
“You brought her into our home,” there’s gravel in my voice, “into our bed.”
“I fucked up,” he says softly. “We both fucked up, but you can’t wake up one day and stop loving someone.”
“You’re telling me nothing I don’t already know.” He’s right. So fucking on the nose. “God, I wish I could hate you. It’d make everything so much easier, but I can’t.”
“So you’ll pretend.”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Something like that.”
I leave him alone on the porch, sad-eyed and broken.
Love has no rules, and it has no limits. I used to believe it was a balancing act—a carefully crafted equation of give and take. Now, I know it can never be balanced. To love you must lose. To lose, you must truly love first.
And I loved Brock Hamilton in every way I ever knew how. And I’ve lost him, because I loved him. I know what I’m giving up, but I’m not sure the world will get it. What they’ll see; a woman betraying her loving husband.
I’m not losing him, because you can’t lose what’s no longer yours. He stopped being mine around the same time I stopped being his, maybe a few months after or however the hell long it took to figure it out. My life will no longer be defined by the man whom holds my hand in public nor will it be defined by the man with whom I hide in the dark.
I’m not losing him. I’m losing everything he and I built together—all the little puzzle pieces forced into perfect formation around an always deteriorating façade of why can’t that be us?
The truth is that nobody actually wants to be us. Or maybe they do, but that’s only because they weren’t us and haven’t experienced everything being us entails. They haven’t experienced the heartbreak of losing your one and only after years of being told the two of you entailed the ideal American dream.
If I lived the American dream, then what the fuck does it say abou
t me that I’m willing to give it up for what most people would call a lapse of judgment, or a crime of passion? Because let me tell you all something that should be nothing more than common sense, when you win the lottery of life, you don’t give it away. Ever. That’s all the proof I need to know that I never actually won.
I just thought I did because I was young, naïve, or stupid. Probably all three.
I’m giving up stability, which whatever, stability has been nothing more than the noose around my neck. If I stay, I’m stuck in place for eternity. If I leave, the rope will snap my neck—a different kind of eternity, but the difference becomes blurrier with every passing day.
I’m giving up
And I’m giving it all up for the other him. The him I shouldn’t involve myself with. The him I should have walked away from the moment he first smiled at me. The him I should have known better than to engage with. The him I barely know, but takes me higher than the clouds. The him that completes me, even as the puzzle pieces disappear piece by piece until I’m left open and vulnerable, and all that’s left is myself and him, while the world tries to put the pieces together.
They’ll never understand.
But fuck em’, right?
My life will be defined by my happiness and nothing more.
19
My mother once told me that women were grown from pain, and harvested by heartbreak. Every little fracture of our hearts plants another seed, and eventually one of those seeds will grow tall enough to withstand the weight of this world. It would grow tall enough to survive long enough to receive a happy ending in life.
And then, we wither and die, taking our pain back into the dirt, fertilizing the ground for the next generation of girls.
My plant bloomed a long time ago, but after tragedy, it began to recess back into the dirt, but now with a sunny forecast of freedom, I feel myself growing again, towering toward the sky. It’s a heavy burden, to love one man while falling for another, and I can no longer bear the weight on my shoulders alone.
On this cool October night, I sit beside Ashley on a tan sofa in front of a burning fireplace. The wood crackles as embers spark against the brick entrapment. In one hand, I carry a tall glass of red wine. In the other, I carry a heavy secret. I’m ready to spill, and I’m not talking about the wine.