How We Love

by Michael Ryan Webb

  He'd always loved Halloween, so I knew he'd be in a good mood then. It was the perfect time to give him good news, assuming I still had good news. For the most part, my symptoms had become more manageable. I left the house at least once every day. By the end of September, I'd started doing my own grocery shopping again, but still giving the neighbors' son $20 a week to drive me to the less busy grocery store across town. I hadn't quite worked my way up to driving and couldn't quite handle the large crowd at the store in our neighborhood.

  Every once in a while I'd have a rough day that made me question whether I could still win Adam back at all. But I didn't lose hope entirely. I kept the handkerchief Grayson had given me handy as a reminder that I'd made at least one huge stride and had at least one person in my corner. That made it a lot easier to keep working on it.

  In the meantime, I began walking to the Blue Moose Diner every Wednesday for lunch and to visit Grayson and Dolly. Grayson and I bonded very quickly over our shared experiences. He'd largely kept to himself after he lost his brother. So, like me, he was happy to have someone who understood him to hang out with. Though part of me worried that he knew too much about me so quickly, I was mostly just grateful to have a friend.

  In the first week of October, Grayson called early in the morning. I was afraid to answer, terrified that something had gone wrong. I tried to keep my voice steady as I answered.

  "Hey, I'm really sorry to wake you up, but my baker, Chelsea, just quit on me," he whispered. "I remembered you saying you loved to bake and was hoping you might be able to help me out today? I'm gonna try to hire somebody quick, but I can't bake to save my life. I really hate to ask, but you'd really be doing me a huge favor. You can eat here free for the next month."

  You'll burn the place down. Or you'll just be really terrible at it. Either way, he'll never speak to you again. It's a miracle he's been tolerating you this long.

  "I'll be right over," I said, ignoring the voice in my head much more easily than I'd been able to before I restarted therapy.

  I spent 10 hours total at the Blue Moose that day, baking various pastries and even helping to cover tables and the cash register. There were a couple of moments where I thought I might not be able to handle it, but I worked through them. It felt good to actually be doing something productive outside of my own house, and to be helping someone who had helped me. So good in fact, that it gave me an idea.

  Grayson had been interviewing candidates to fill the open baker position all day, but didn’t seem to be having any luck. When the diner closed for the day, I went back to the cottage and asked him if he'd be willing to let me fill the position, at least temporarily to give him more time to find a better permanent option.

  "Are you kidding me?" he responded, cartoonishly grabbing the nearby trashcan and sliding the pile of applications and baked good samples on his table into it. "Buddy, you can work here as long as you want! You really saved my butt today, and not one of these people was anywhere near as talented as you are. I swiped half of the brownies you made for myself before I came home because they were so good."

  "Oh, wow. Thank you so much," I said. "I mean, I don't want you to feel obligated or let me do it out of pity. If you really think it's a good idea though, I'd love to do it."

  "Hey, I don't pity you, Mark," he said. "I've actually been really impressed with the progress I've seen you make since we met. Look how long you were here today and you didn't seem to have any major issues. A month ago you were barely getting out of the house. That's amazing. But are you sure? It pays a lot less than a fancy law partnership."

  "Oh, good point. I don’t know how I'd make it through a work week without access to the golden toilets and unlimited cucumber water from my old office. I guess you should hire whoever made those tragic looking lizard cupcakes," I joked.

  "I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Kermit the Frog," he said, laughing. "But seriously, are we doing this? Is that a yes?"

  "That's a hell yes," I said. He raised his hand for a high-five. I slapped my hand against his. Dolly, now twice the size she'd been when I met her, barked excitedly. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow then, boss."

  I was so excited that I ran all the way home. When I got there, I immediately dialed Adam's number. Everything was going so well, I couldn't wait to tell him any longer. He didn't answer.

  He doesn't want anything to do with you. Why should he? You ruined your marriage. He's probably much better off without you.

  "No. He's probably just busy. It's a school night. He probably has papers to grade. He'll call back when he can," I said to myself. And I really believed that. I had every reason to be hopeful. Unfortunately, hope doesn't always mean a happy ending.

  A week passed. Then another. I was having a blast working at the Blue Moose. I truly enjoyed the work, and I was getting to know some of the regular customers. I was really starting to feel like myself again, even though I was so far from my old environment. But I couldn't help but feel that something was missing – Adam. The leaves had started to show signs that autumn was setting in, and that time of year was always Adam’s favorite. It made me miss him even more.

  I tried again, and this time, he answered. At least, I thought he did.

  "Hey, stranger," I almost shouted, unable to contain my excitement.

  "Hey..." an unfamiliar man's voice said.

  "Oh, hello," I said, trying not to let my mind run wild. "Who is this?"

  "This is Aaron. On Adam's phone. Who is this?" he asked.

  Who the hell is Aaron? He already replaced you? You fucked this up even worse than you thought.

  "This is his husband," I said. "Well, ex-husband... Is Adam available?"

  "He's in the shower right now. I'll let him know you called," he said. And then the line went dead.

  In the shower? Yikes. You might as well crawl back in your hole and die.

  "No, don't go there. I'm sure it's nothing. I've made new friends; I'm sure he has too. No big deal," I told myself, unsure.

  Keep telling yourself that, and it's just going to hurt worse when he confirms it's his new boyfriend. And you’ll be all alone, forever.

  I tried to put it out of my mind. Whoever that was had said he'd tell Adam I called. Surely Adam would want to call and explain. Again, my hope proved unfounded.

  The rest of October passed without a peep from Adam. On Halloween night, Grayson asked if I'd planned to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. He suggested it would be a good exercise in conquering my fears of germs and strangers. After much debate with myself, I agreed on the condition that he helped.

  He showed up at my house dressed as Superman and brought Dolly, dressed in a dog's Wonder Woman costume, with him and I had a great time watching the two of them interact with the children. I was struck by how similar their personalities were. Dolly easily matched Grayson's happy-go-lucky demeanor and friendliness. It made it easy for me to overcome the things that were running through my mind regarding strangers coming to my door.

  It was getting dark, and the trick-or-treaters were starting to wind down, but I was thinking that this had been the best night I'd had in a long time when I heard my phone ring from upstairs. I went to retrieve it and was surprised to see that it was Adam.

  "Seriously?" I asked myself indignantly. I should have been happy. I'd been waiting almost a month for him to call me back, and it had been just over two months total since the last time I saw him. So why wasn’t I over the moon that he was calling? I supposed it was because I expected to have a difficult conversation, and I was having a great night and didn't want to end it with a fight.

  I knew I had no right to be upset if Adam was seeing someone. We'd both agreed to the separation, however reluctant it may have been on my part. It didn't matter that all of the progress I'd made was out of the hope that I could win him over again. He was free to do whatever he wanted. But I wasn't ready to hear it yet. I silenced the call, turned off my phone, and went back downstairs.

  "Everything okay?"
Grayson asked, re-entering the house from having been handing out candy on the porch.

  "Nothing that can't wait for another day," I said. If only I'd known then what was waiting for me, I might have changed that answer.

  Chapter Five | Adam

  Despite my best efforts to keep my head down and focus on my work, I remained a topic of discussion in the university’s rumor mill for the first several weeks of the semester. Balancing the new classes I’d taken over with my original set proved much more difficult than I'd expected. I went to bed late and woke up early most nights, but I still felt like I was drowning. It didn't help that I felt unbearably lonely.

  On top of not being able to turn to Mark like I was used to, being around Amy was awkward because of the situation with Wes. Any time he saw Amy and me together, he'd later find her to complain about me to her. She did her best to stay out of it, but after a while I just felt bad for her and started avoiding them both just to save her the trouble.

  By the time summer began to give way to fall, I felt completely and utterly alone. I considered reaching out to my family back home, but I didn't have a great relationship with anyone there. I found myself spending more and more time at Sofia’s bar. I'd never been much more than a social drinker before, but I couldn't deny that a few glasses of whiskey or wine made it a lot easier to deal with my new reality.

  I'd become such a regular fixture at the bar by the end of September that Sofia was probably my closest friend. I suspected she'd figured out how lonely I was when she asked to have a drink with me on a gray evening in early October.

  "Think you might be my new best customer, blue-eyes. Should I be worried or should I call you my new drinking partner and pull up a chair?" Sofia's raspy voice called out as she entered from the kitchen.

  I threw back the shot in my hand and pulled out the chair next to me.

  "Good answer, darlin'," she said. She pulled a bottle out from underneath the bar and wiped dust off it. "You're better off with me anyhow. Aaron here wouldn't know good liquor if it jumped up and bit 'im in the ass," she said waving her hand dismissively at the bartender who had been serving me as he wandered into the back of the bar. "This here is the good stuff."

  "Hold on. If you think he doesn't know liquor, why'd you hire him to tend the bar?" I whispered with a laugh.

  "Well, look at him, mijo," she said as she sat down and lit up a cigarette. "I was all set to hire somebody else then his fine ass walked in. I may be older'n dirt but my eyesight's 20/20."

  "Oh my god, you are not even that old, Sofia," I laughed, making a mental note to look more closely at Aaron and evaluate Sofia's opinion of him when he returned.

  "You have a point, blue-eyes. I reckon I could still drink your skinny butt under the table at least," she retorted, pouring two shots for each of us.

  "Is that so?" I asked.

  "I'll tell you what darlin' - you outlast me and you drink free here for a week. I beat you, you clean out my storage room this weekend," she said.

  "You're on," I replied.

  There's no way I can lose, I thought.

  I was dead wrong. An hour and a half later I was slumped over the bar, watching Sofia drink tequila straight out of the bottle without so much as blinking.

  "You win," I said, barely coherent.

  "Givin' in so soon, darlin'?" she asked before finishing off the bottle and sucking on a lime wedge.

  "I think I'm done drinking for the rest of my life," I said, closing my eyes tightly to avoid watching the room spin around me.

  "Good, I won't have to worry about ya stealin' nothin' when you come to work this weekend," she said, patting me on the back. "Sit tight, I'll have Aaron drop you at your place."

  I heard her walk off and almost dozed off before Aaron laid his hand on my shoulder.

  "Miss Sofia says you need a ride home? I can take you on my way," he said.

  I started to decline his offer, but I looked up at him and immediately understood what Sofia was talking about. He had dark red hair and a jaw line that could cut glass, softened only by the light stubble forming on his face. His shirt clung to his body in a way that left little to the imagination. He was smiling at me with a giant, blindingly-white smile that would have made me weak in the knees – if I could feel my knees.

  And then I blacked out.

  I woke up the next morning face down, head throbbing, stomach in knots, with a terrible taste in my mouth – not-so-subtle reminders from my body that I was no longer the appropriate age to be slamming tequila shots on a weeknight. But those quickly became the least of my worries.

  A weeknight. Shit. Work, I thought, assessing just how badly I had screwed myself over. I had a huge stack of midterm papers to start grading. I didn't remember how I had even gotten into bed, much less where I might have left my phone to check the time. I felt blindly around and found something else entirely.

  Please don't let that be Wes, I thought, realizing that my hand was touching someone else's arm.

  I slowly opened my eyes and turned to face my latest screw up. I thanked every deity I could think of in my hung-over stupor that instead of Wes, I found Aaron, who was somehow even more attractive through sober eyes. That brief second of relief gave way to panic over what he was doing there. Despite being afraid to know, I carefully lifted the blankets, trying not to wake him.

  Surprisingly, I found us both to be fully clothed. I hoped we had stayed that way all night. Even more surprising was that in place of immediate guilt over possibly having slept with Aaron, I had instead found myself feeling a bit disappointed to have been blackout drunk when it happened.

  I guess I'm just leaning into this single thing then, I thought. Amy would be proud... I think... maybe not. I remembered somewhat hazily how good the shirt he was wearing had looked on him the night before. Yeah, she'd definitely be proud. I should have felt more guilty. I knew that. But it had been almost two months since I'd moved out, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't nice to not wake up alone for a change, regardless of what had actually happened the night before.

  I finally found my phone –no, his phone - under my pillow and checked the time. 6:08 a.m. – I had a solid two hours before I needed to head out for my first class. I slowly slid out of bed, trying my best not to disturb the unreasonably attractive sleeping man in my bed.

  I regretted standing up pretty much instantly. You're too old for this shit, I reminded myself. I stumbled to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee to brew while I drank as much water as I could handle. I pulled the first paper off of the top of my stack to start grading. Three attempts at reading the opening paragraph yielded no discernible thesis statement, so I knew the rest of it would be a waste.

  Just pass them, I told myself. I marked a big red "C" on the paper and set it aside. The next paper started off stronger, and in fact was so well researched that my hung-over brain was having a hard time. I should have been able to at least minimally comprehend what I was looking at, but with my head throbbing and my eyes burning, it was hard to even get through one line of the text.

  I decided to try to wake myself up a bit first. So, I drank a cup of coffee as quickly as I could without burning myself, and ran a shower. I closed my eyes and let the hot water run down my body, breathing in slowly. I almost started to think about Mark, but I heard movement in the bedroom and snapped out of it. I quickly finished up my shower, dressed, and went into the kitchen to find Aaron rummaging around in a cabinet.

  "Morning," he said. "Thought I'd make some breakfast."

  "Oh, well, I don't mean to be rude, but I've gotta get going," I said.

  "Aw, already?" he asked, playfully pouting. "I'm never up this early since I work so late. I was hoping you could show me what exactly it is that mornings have to offer." I laughed and he smiled that overwhelming smile again. "I'm serious, bro. The term 'morning person' has always seemed like a fucking oxymoron to me."

  "Look I'm sorry, I feel like I need to address the big drunk elephant in the room," I said
, bracing myself for the answer. "Did we, um, you, know..."

  "Fuck?" he asked nonchalantly. "Nah, dude. I helped you get settled and then realized the game was in overtime and you offered to let me watch it. I guess I passed out after it was over. That's a great mattress."

  "Oh, thank god," I said, relived of the guilt I had just barely even been feeling.

  "Damn," he said, freezing with a frying pan in his hand. "Am I that ugly?"

  "No," I practically shouted. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just-"

  "Dude, I'm just fucking with you. You told me a little about your situation last night. Sounds pretty fucked," he said.

  "Yeah... Something like that," I admitted.

  "Well, then you need a day off. Come on, what would normal people do with an entire day where they woke up this early and didn't have any responsibilities?" he asked, coming around the bar to stand right in front of me.

  "Well, if we were a straight couple in a romantic comedy, we probably would have actually slept together. So now we'd lie in bed with the sheets strategically covering our more intimate body parts and I'd be drawing circles in your chest hair like a lovesick teenager; and we'd both be thinking about how perfect the other one is even though we've literally known each other for five minutes and you were trying to close down my cute independent book shop, or writing an article about me without asking, or whatever the convoluted set up was," I said, trying to be funny.

  "Dude, I can't honestly say I understand all of that, but parts of it sound kind of nice," he said, moving in close. "Come on, man. When's the last time you just took a day – the whole day – and had some fun?"

  I considered his question and legitimately couldn't answer. For at least the last year all of my free time had been spent on trying to care for Mark, until I left him. Then it had been spent trying to clean up my messes. I hadn't missed a single day of work in my entire career. What harm could it do?