by MV Ellis
“I guess a lot. Like I said, I think it’s best if we wind this up now before it gets complicated.”
“How can it get complicated? It’s never been complicated. Isn’t that the whole point? We’re friends who like to get each other off. It doesn’t get simpler than that.”
I sigh heavily. “In theory, yes. In practice, I think it’s about run its course, so it’s time to quit while we’re ahead.”
She nods then. “Fair enough. Can’t argue with that logic. Mind if I crash with you tonight, though? I’ve just stepped off a plane after weeks of shooting and I don’t feel like being home alone. It can be like old times. We’ll watch movies, eat popcorn, and sleep—just sleep—together, like we did when we were kids.”
“Sure, I guess, but I get to choose the movie.” It actually sounds strangely appealing.
“What? No way. I choose.” She’s laughing, which is a good sign. This is going better than I anticipated.
“You’re not in a very good bargaining position, are you? My house. My rules.”
“Ha! Okay, you got me. We have a deal.”
It turns out to be an unexpectedly cool night. We watch movies in bed, eat and doze like friends—like we were teens again, just as she said. After this many years of friends with benefits with her, we’ve been focusing on the benefits to the detriment of the friendship. It feels good to get back to it. I’ve always liked her as a person, which I guess is why our arrangement worked so well for so long—our sexual compatibility was born out of our friendship all those years ago.
In the spirit of our newly rekindled friendship, I tell Marnie about London between movies, even including the bit about the hostile takeover and how I managed to get her working as my housekeeper off the back of that advice. Marnie listens intently and mostly says nothing. It feels good to share, though.
Really, apart from Luke and Gramps, she’s the only person I’ve told about my feelings, and they hardly even count, given they both read me so well that they’d know even if I didn’t tell them. In fact, they both guessed without being told. When I’m done, Marnie turns back to the screen and chooses another movie.
More movies and popcorn, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up the following morning hugging a heavy-breathing Marnie. As soon as I move even slightly, her eyes flash open. Objectively speaking, even with bed hair and sleep in her eyes, she’s still gorgeous, just not the woman I want to see asleep in my arms right now. Or ever again.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey yourself.” She’s still dozy with sleep. “You know that’s the first night I’ve spent with you since we were still in high school?”
“Ha! Yeah, right, we’ve spent thousands of nights together.”
“No, Arlo, we’ve fucked countless times, but spending the night was always a frontier you never wanted to cross. A hard limit. No matter what went down between us”—she winks—“you always had me behaving like some kind of reverse Cinderella, slipping out in the middle of the night before one of us turned into a pumpkin.”
It’s 110 percent true, but it sounds so much douchier coming from her lips than it felt when I was doing it.
“Coffee?”
“Of course.” Some things never change. Marnie is as much of a coffee fiend as Luke and me.
In the kitchen, I turn on the beast of a coffee machine, and while I wait for it to warm up, Marnie sits on the edge of the countertop. She’s wearing an old tour tee of mine and her panties. It’s something we’ve done a thousand times before, but as I approach the machine again, I turn and see that she has now removed the shirt and is bare-breasted. Her pert tits stand to attention. She watches me watching her, and very slowly begins opening and closing her legs.
Damn that morning wood. Not moving her gaze from mine, Marnie stretches a hand out toward me, opening her clenched fist. I look down and see that she has taken a condom from the kitchen drawer and is offering it to me. She knows the whereabouts of all my stashes around the house.
“One last goodbye, for old times’ sake?” she says softly, waving the condom back and forth like a fan. Against my better judgment, and even my desire, I take the condom from her and sheath up.
I push inside her, and from the very first thrust, it feels wrong. I know I should stop right there, but I ignore the red flags and sirens protesting wildly in my mind, pushing in and out of Marnie robotically. I’m going through the motions, almost certain she’s doing the same.
The sex has always been great between us. We now have it down to a fine art—which buttons to press, and all the dirty shit we like done and to do to each other. Today we’re playing characters, putting on a show that neither of us even wants to appear in. As the thought enters my mind, I feel a slight shift as Marnie stiffens momentarily, before continuing to rock back and forth.
I know instantly that London has walked in on us. I feel her presence even before I hear her sharp intake of breath. As I hear her retreat down the hall, I don’t want to be inside Marnie a moment longer. I can’t face even another stroke. I pull out, yanking off the condom before tucking myself back into my loose sweatpants. Fuck. I fight the urge to tear out of the kitchen, but only just.
“I’m sorry, Marns, I just can’t. You’re right, I think I’m falling in love with her.”
Marnie looks at me like I just ran over her kitten. Twice.
“I’m gonna get out of here.” She slides down from the countertop, eyeing me warily. I’ve been pacing the kitchen like a hamster on a wheel, so lost in my own thoughts I momentarily forgot she was even there. I look up and meet her gaze.
“Yeah, look, I’m really sorry….” I reach for her arm, but she jumps back, snatching it from my reach as though burned. I guess in a way she is.
“Don’t, Arlo. Just. Don’t. Even.” I watch her head off down the hall, just like London.
Why the fuck did it take me putting my dick in another woman for me to realize that the only person I ever want to be in that position—or any position—with ever again is the one I’ve just hurt in the worst possible way? More to the point, how the ever loving fuck am I going to fix this?
Chapter Twelve
I jump in the car and call Jake as I drive.
“Hey bro, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” He’s a jovial bastard. Makes me want to throat punch him a lot of the time.
“I’m on my way over. I need to talk to you.” There’s a pregnant pause where I’m willing to bet Jake is mouthing something about loser Arlo heading over uninvited to his wife, Kris, before he speaks again.
“Yeah, okay, man, all cool. Umm… I’ll see you soon.”
It sounds like it’s anything but fine, and any decent human would turn right back around and leave Jake to his family time. Unfortunately, Jake is dealing with me, not a decent human.
“Yeah, ’kay. You got booze in the Cave or you need me to stop at the store on the way?”
“Nah man, you’re good, I got it covered. But if you’re hungry bring takeout, and we’ll eat it in there. Kris is already pissed about the impromptu visit without you eating us out of house and home too, and we all know how much you love her pot roast.”
I laugh. Jake’s wife is great, but she takes no prisoners, and her wrong side isn’t somewhere anyone in their right mind wants to be, even though she officially makes the best pot roast in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m not particularly hungry, but I stop and get pizza and donuts on the way in. Donuts are a peace offering for Kris and the kids, and the pizza is just in case hunger kicks in at some point.
Forty minutes later I pull up outside Jake’s huge suburban family home. I still can’t fathom why he would want to live in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere like this, but whenever we question him about it he rattles on about being part of a friendly neighborhood community and a great place to bring up kids, yada, yada, yada—I tune out the exact details, but that’s the general theme—he might as well be speaking Greek for all that shit means to me.
I do know that it makes his
place the last choice when it comes to crashing after gigs, or generally doing what I’m doing now—turning up out of the blue to hang out. I definitely wouldn’t normally bother, but this is almost an emergency. I suspect that was a large part of the appeal of moving out, though Jake has never said it in those exact terms.
As I approach the front door, it flies open before I have the chance to press the doorbell. I have my finger hovering over it in readiness. I’m greeted with an angry-looking Kris, who hisses, “Don’t even think about it. If you wake up the dogs and then the little one, I will personally hack off your dick and balls with a blunt, rusted knife, and feed them to the foxes. Got it?”
“Umm, yeah. Loud and clear, Kris. Totally got it. Hey, beautiful, so great to see you too, as always.”
“Fuck off.” Despite her words, she’s smiling. She really is a fucking legend.
I produce the box of donuts from behind my back. “Does this make a difference to my welcome?”
“Not really. If you use the bell, you’re still going home without your manhood, donuts or not, but these”—she waggles the box from side to side—“do earn you a kiss and a hug.”
“That’s good enough for me.” I lean in and plant a kiss on her cheek, then lift her into a huge bear hug. The rest of us boys love her almost as much as Jake does.
“Hi.” She gives me a warm hug in return.
One of the great things about Kris is that her bark is far worse than her bite, and underneath it all, she’s a pussycat, as long as you play by her rules. The major thing we all love about her is that she’s known us since we were stupid boys goofing around in my mom’s garage, and in many ways, she still treats us that way now. She’s pretty much the least showbiz person you’ll ever meet. If you want some starstruck sycophant to blow smoke up your ass, she’s not it. On the other hand, if you want someone to keep it real, keep you grounded, and always tell you when you’re being a dick, she’s got your back. Each and every time.
“Hi, yourself. Where’s the man of the manor?” I release her from the hug and drape my arm loosely across her shoulders.
“He’s already out in the Cave. You should have just gone straight out there instead of coming here and harassing me.”
“Where’s the fun in that? My life wouldn’t have been complete without the threat of having my dismembered junk gnawed on by wild animals. Plus I had to give my favorite girl my special offering.” I’m referring to the donuts, of course.
“Listen, stop your flirting and get on out there. You know I’m immune to that shit, and I don’t have all night to stand here yacking with the likes of you. I have kids to terrorize, you know.”
It might not always come in the most easily digestible package, but Kris is good people. She’s good for and to Jake, and is like family to the rest of us. I wink and head on out.
The Cave is Jake’s home studio and media room. Basically a state of the art man cave where nobody can hear him scream. It’s got everything he needs to live out there if he wanted to—movie screen TV, consoles, refrigerator full of the good stuff, even a shower and kitchenette, as well as a decent studio setup and gym area. When I get there, he’s sprawled on the couch, flicking through the options on Netflix.
“Well, look what the icy north wind blew in! Must be a crisis if it brings you all the way out here to tell me about it.”
“Yeah, you could say that. It’s about a woman.”
“London.”
“Yeah. How—”
“Luke.”
“Of course. Trust Douchey to flap his trap before I can.” I’m not really mad. It’s an unwritten rule that unless sworn to secrecy (and sometimes even then), what one member of the band knows, we all know. Saves us telling the same story multiple times. I flop down on the opposite end of the couch.
“I think he has PTSD from dealing with your mood swings over this chick. He came to me for counseling. I’m sure he’ll be okay, but there was a lot of trauma there. It was touch and go for a while.” He can barely finish the sentence, he’s laughing so hard.
“Eat a dick.”
Jake mimics doing just that.
“Hey, listen, as much as I love being in the doghouse with my wife for ditching my family responsibilities to hang with you, I’d like to think I didn’t do that just to exchange high school jokes. So shoot, what’s the deal?” He hands me a beer as though to soften the blow, throwing himself back down on the couch. I join him.
As Luke has already filled him in on some stuff, I give him the abridged version of events leading up to this morning.
When I finish, he gives me a slow, sarcastic round of applause. I’m thoroughly confused as to what he thinks is worth clapping for—the whole thing is a train wreck.
“Well done.”
Huh?
“I give you ten out of ten for self-sabotage. No, fifteen out of ten. Above and beyond the call of duty. That’s what you’re doing, right? Ruining your chances with this woman so that you can forever reminisce about your ill-fated one true love, or whatever. Never mind that it never was ill-fated. Instead, you’ve just systematically gone about derailing the thing before the train even left the station, so to speak. So what’s the deal? Do you secretly think she’s too good for you, so you’re screwing it up before she gets the chance to reject you? Or are you scared you don’t know how to be in a proper adult relationship, given the fact that unlike the rest of us, you actually never have been?”
I guess this is why Kris and Jake work so well as a couple. Neither of them pulls any punches. Jake’s not about to massage my ego and tell me everything’s cool. If I ask his opinion or advice, I know I’m going to get an unfiltered response.
“You know, it was getting to the point where I was beginning to think that maybe you were gay, and that all of these thousands of women you slept with were just your closeted way of denying the truth or some shit—beards, basically. Not that it would matter if you were gay of course. We’d all love you just the same. You’re not… are you?”
What the actual fuck? Maybe I made a mistake coming to this idiot for advice. Of all of us, I thought he knew his shit, but now I’m not so sure.
“Fuck off, man, don’t try to head shrink me, especially because you couldn’t be further off base if you were in Ant-fucking-arctica. I came here for advice on how to fix this shit, not for a dose of poor man’s pop psychology. I’m not, nor have I ever been gay. I’m also not Stevie. I don’t need a twelve-step program. I just need to not make an asshole of myself for long enough to count for something with this chick, is all.”
“Ha! I don’t think you should stand in your glass house throwing ego-shaped stones at Stevie, because frankly, even with his issues, your behavior makes him look like he has his shit together. Seriously, AJ, you’re a fucking disaster.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Why do you think I’m out in the middle of the asshole of the world risking getting my balls sliced off by Kris? I’m in need of serious help here.” Jake can barely hold his head up, he’s laughing so hard.
“It’s not funny. Did you let me drive all the way out here just so that you could laugh at me in person?”
“Let’s get a few things straight before we go on. First, forty-five minutes out of the city isn’t the ass-end of nowhere, so stop carrying on like I’ve lured you out to my lair in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Second, I didn’t ask you here, remember? You forced your way in, pissing off my wife, which I will have to make up to her once you take your sorry ass home. So all in all, acting like I’m remiss in my hosting and counseling duties is a bit rough. Third, my beer, my place, my rules. If you want my advice, it’s my way or the highway. Okay, bud?” I remain silent. There’s no way I’m going to agree to those terms, even though I know he totally has a point.
In the absence of formal agreement from me, he carries on. “First things first, you need to pay your pizza tax—give it to me.” I stretch across and hand him the box. He selects a slice, takes a bite, and chews thoughtfully be
fore gulping down another mouthful of beer.
“Where are the donuts?” Donuts are kind of a tradition on the rare occasion I make the trek out here.
“I gave them to Kris.”
“Thus ensuring that I don’t even get a lick of the leftover sugar at the bottom of the box. Way to go, friend.”
“Consider it a favor—looks like you’ve had enough donuts lately.” I point toward his gut. “Plus, I have my priorities straight. I had to pay the wifey tax first and foremost. I’d like my manhood to stay exactly where it is, so I know better than to piss her off.”
“Ha! Considering you’re the one who needs help, you have an interesting way of ‘negotiating.’”
He’s right.
“Okay. In all seriousness, what the fuck should I do? There’s something about this chick that has me twisted. I think the feeling is mutual, but I also know that I’m skating on thin ice. There’s only so many times I can fuck up as epically as I have before she throws in the towel. In fact, maybe she’s already written me off as a lost cause. She has me on the ropes here, and I need to fix it.”
I’m in dangerously uncharted territory right now. I honestly can’t remember the last time I asked someone for advice. It sounds arrogant as shit, but it is what it is. I’ve had my shtick worked out since I was fifteen and have been rolling with it ever since. I’m of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fuck with it” school of thought, and until I met London, there was definitely nothing that needed fixing. Now I’m not so sure, but I know+ I don’t like feeling this way.
Sitting around with the guys talking about feelings is the emotional equivalent of a visit to the urologist for a rectal exam—just as embarrassing, and only slightly less painful. I’m glad we’re sitting side by side on Jake’s giant leather La-Z-Boy sofas, not facing each other. There’s no way I could say all this while maintaining eye contact, then ever look him in the eye again. I’m not Luke.