XVI

In late May, Eric took me out to dinner for our two month anniversary and my upcoming birthday. I don’t know why we felt the need to make a big deal of every little thing. It was probably because both of us realized how fragile our relationship was, right from the start. We didn’t want to rock the boat. Maybe neither of us really settled in, we just settled. We were both too afraid to get back out there, to have to date unfamiliar people, learn someone new. It takes a special kind of cowardice to settle into matrimonial dependence at age 21.
The relationship that Eric and I had was the type of relationship that 20 year old marriages became after the passion was gone and all that remained were the familiar nooks and crannies of the other person’s body next to yours. You forget why you’re together in the first place, but don’t know how to be apart. Eric and I went through those twenty years our first week in Paris. That night, on our dinner date, we realized that we’d forgotten the rapidly approaching return of our one common thread.
“I’m picking Adam up from the airport tomorrow.” Eric’s eyes remained fixed on his wine glass.
“Oh?” I tried to act disinterested. Instantly, though, part of my mind raced back to that night outside of Adam’s apartment, where he’d kissed me. Then I was at his apartment door, swinging it open to come face to face with Keira. I slammed it shut and met Eric’s eyes across the candlelit dinner table.
“Don’t play that game.”
“What game?” What he should have said was ‘don’t pretend that you’re not still in love with him. Don’t pretend that we’re only together because we both love Adam too much to be with anyone who doesn’t understand that.’
“Don’t pretend that you don’t care that he’s coming back.” Eric was tactful, much more subtle than me. “We’ve avoided this for two months, but he’s going to figure out that something’s going on.”
“Well what do you suggest that we do?”
“I think that you should come with me to the airport.” That was an awkward situation if ever I’d heard one. No thanks, count me out. I’ll just be locked up in my apartment with my DVD collection and my suicidal roommate. I decided it would be better if Adam stayed in London after all. Suddenly, I wasn’t so excited to see him. But I didn’t say any of that, I just nodded and chewed my food silently.
“Janie? Is that a yes?” I shook my head and swallowed. Hard.
“No. Eric, I can’t. Don’t you see how messy this is going to be? Especially right away. Can’t we let him settle in first?”
“So that he can try and come crawling back to you? Should you fuck him first and then tell him? Would that transition be easier for the two of you?” I hushed Eric with my hands, making a teacher like ‘inside voices’ sign with my open palms over the table.
“That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think you’re being a bit paranoid? Perhaps you’re forgetting that Adam and I are both with other people now, and that I happen to be with you. I’m here. Now.”
“He’s not with Keira anymore. He asked about you.” That hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. I hadn’t even contemplated this possibility. What would I do if Adam wanted me back? Was the way that my knee settled into the small of Eric’s back enough to keep me with him? Eric saw all of these thoughts racing through my head, and tactful as usual, ignored them. I recovered from my faltered step.
“Do you want me to tell him?”
“I want us to tell him.”
“Then it would seem like we’re ganging up on him. Do we really want to make this more dramatic than necessary?”
“Fine, you tell him. I’ll have him call you when he gets home.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Good.” After we left the restaurant, we took the T back to Cambridge, and got off at separate stops. I slept in my bed alone for the first time in over three weeks. The next night, I had new company.
My phone rang at almost exactly seven the next evening. Even if I didn’t have caller ID, I’d have been almost certain who was calling.
“Hey Adam.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Call it a wild guess.”
“A wild guess that costs about five ninety nine a month?”
“Option four on the phone bill, you got me.”
“Fair enough. So…”
“So…”
“Eric said you wanted to talk to me.” Way to back me into a corner. My mind was racing. I didn’t want it to come out wrong, and I shouldn’t tell him over the phone…
“Yeah…” I still hadn’t quite found the words I was looking for. “Um… I just kind of felt bad about running out the way I did, and was wondering if you wanted to go get a drink and talk about it.”
“You sure a drink’s a good idea for you?” The ice seemed to have been broken, and I laughed. We met down the street at the now familiar back booth and tossed back a couple of gin and tonics, which seemed to lighten the tension that was muddled between us when we took our seats across the small table from each other.
“So.” I asked the loaded question, not sure where my sudden sensitivity had come from, or if it had. Maybe I was just rubbing salt in an open wound. Maybe I knew that. “What happened between you and Keira?”
“Well,” he began, stirring the ice in his drink with his finger, “it just didn’t work. When you left that night, she asked about you, and I had to tell her. We tried keeping it going for a while, but she knew I wasn’t over you. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t lie to her and tell her I was. It wouldn’t have been fair.” That was exactly what he was supposed to say. In any of my fantasy confrontations on the topic, I couldn’t have thought of a better response. Of course, I hadn’t expected him to actually say any of that. I certainly wasn’t prepared for it. I forgot my original objective, and was taken back in by his dirty pretty eyes.
I remembered the first night in the cab in London, when I’d kissed Eric. I remember feeling like I was cheating on Adam, even though I wasn’t, and I wondered now how the tables had turned so quickly. Back in my apartment, with Carrie at home in Revere for the night I didn’t even think about Eric. I certainly didn’t consider his inevitable concern when Adam didn’t come home that night.
It’s not that I completely forgot about Eric, though in retrospect that’s what I’d like to believe. In actuality, I just didn’t care. I didn’t care what this did to me and Eric- especially Eric. All I knew was that I had Adam back in my bed, our bed, there in the dark, and nothing else mattered. When we woke up in the morning, and the sun came up, I realized what I’d done.
Adam was already in the kitchen, making himself a bowl of cereal. I poured myself a cup of the coffee that Adam had made and sat down across from him. I didn’t look him in the eye. It was clear now to me, in the daylight that I would have to tell him about me and Eric, and then what? Not only was I seeing his best friend behind his back, but also I had just cheated on him. I opened the paper that was in the middle of the table (how long had Adam been awake?) and reached for the sports section at the same time as Adam. He looked at me with the sudden realization that maybe he didn’t know me as well as he thought.
“Since when do you read the sport’s page?” I scowled at him. Unexpectedly, I was annoyed with his presumption that I had not changed at all in the four and a half months that he’d been gone. Did he think I was just sitting around waiting for him to come back? Pining like a crush-struck eighth grader with her first notion of any feeling that could be equated with the societal reinforced concept of “love?” Fuck him! Fuck him hard in every orifice of his pathetic self centered not quite legal drinking age body. I no longer cared about how much what I was about to say would hurt him. Somehow I now derived a strange pleasure from the gaping-mouth look on his saddened face.
“Adam, I should tell you something. I’m seeing someone else.” I waited for a reaction. There was none. “This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry I let you stay here last night. You should go home, Eric will be worried.” I didn’t mention that he would also be hurt, upset, and probably furious at me, inevitably already assuming what had truthfully happened.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I was dishonest. I should have told you already.” Why I hadn’t already told him seemed to be a more appropriate question.
“Who is he?” I was silent. “I know him.” Then the door opened, and I heard the familiar juggling act of Carrie balancing her bags and her keys while trying to shut the door.
“Hey, I hear voices. Eric, I saw something at the Wal-Mart and I had to buy it for you.” Carrie still hadn’t turned from the door. Her bags landed on the floor with a resounding thud when she turned and saw the two of us. I looked over at Adam: there was the gaping stare that I had been expecting. My silence confirmed his worst fears, and I could not meet his eyes.
“Hi Adam,” Carrie offered meekly.
“Hey. I was just leaving.” Adam got up and tossed the paper back in my direction before walking out of the apartment that we’d once shared. It seemed so long ago, and I wondered if we were even the same people. That was how my mind worked then; somehow the sports page had just given me leave to break Adam’s heart.
I hated myself. For two days I didn’t even leave my apartment. I didn’t have to. I wasn’t scheduled at work, and classes were done, so there didn’t seem to be anywhere that I needed to be other than my bed. I was sure I’d be there by myself a lot from now on. Eric called twice, but I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Carrie said he came over, but I didn’t want to see another pair of sad eyes.
I wouldn’t look in the mirror anymore either. I watched three movies a day and sometimes stared at the blue light of the rewinding and rewound movies for an hour at a time before getting up the ambition to change the tape. I slept until two thirty each day and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until I ran out of bread and then just used two different spoons to eat straight from the jars, mashing the mixture in my mouth to simulate my new favorite food.
I hated myself for hurting Eric, for hurting Adam. I also hated Adam. He was no innocent, this I knew. There was still a heavy weight somewhere between my stomach and my throat that had not gone away since the first time I heard the word ‘muffin,’ and it had only grown with the Halloween witch and Keira. I was sure that my relationship with Eric had contributed to Adam’s empty spot, but I still hated him. It’s difficult to harbor such intense feelings of hatred for someone that you don’t intensely love. I loved Adam so much that his name, his image, his scent was burned into the back of my head, and I couldn’t bear to live there anymore. Life went on like this for half of a week.
On the third day I rose again, like an emotionally crippled, self-involved female Jesus/Mary Magdalene hybrid. I decided to emerge to the porch and get some fresh air. My entire room stunk of the skin that I could no longer bear to live in. I hadn’t showered in three days, and the scent was less like the oppressive odor of physical activity and more like stagnation. Being in the space was forcing me further into my own depressing world, and I still had just enough of a tie to reality to pull myself out of it and try and freshen things a bit. It was dark and I really didn’t know what time it was, but judging by the noise from outside the bar, it was just after last call. I didn’t even bother to look down; there was no one that I wanted to talk to.
“Jane?” I ignored the anonymous caller. “Jane? Is that you?” I sighed, and leaned forward a bit to see the sidewalk below my apartment. The anonymous caller was a guy I knew from class the previous semester. We’d hung out a few times, but not enough to really call each other friends. He was a good acquaintance, though, and it was nice to see that he was staying in the city for the summer. I invited him up for a beer. Clearly, he’d already had enough, but he accepted.
We hung out and talked for about two hours. We flirted animatedly, and I realized that we always had. Now that I wasn’t with Eric, it was more apparent, and kind of nice to recognize attention from an attractive, interesting guy. We went through a six pack of raspberry flavored beer and moved quickly from the obvious topic of the class we’d both been in on to more interesting territory: music, movies, books, you know, the usual. He was also a big sports fan, but much more athletic than myself. He suggested I go to the gym with him sometime, and he’d show me the ropes. Around four, it seemed about time to cut the night off. I hugged Greg goodbye and told him I’d think about the gym.
The next morning I woke up feeling strangely refreshed and dug Greg’s number out of an old notebook where I’d collected it for a class project. A half an hour later, I was on an exercise bike for the first time since the short-lived fitness kick of my first semester at school. Despite the fact that we didn’t know each other too well, we found enough to fill our 10-mile bike trek without turning on our Discmans or resorting to the bad Cosmo-like magazines that the gym supplied for reading material. After three days of being gym-buddies, I asked Greg to join me for lunch. We went back to my place where I offered to cook a magnificent feast of tossed salad and all the peanut butter and jelly he could consume.
We talked about the summer’s music festivals, the uprising of adult top 40 as the new pop music, the Lilith Fair, Ozzfest, and the Warped Tour, and the kind of sensibility that it took to go to all three in the same month, at strangely enough, the same venue. In between bites he commented on the progress I’d made in the short time I’d been at the gym, jokingly congratulating me for my 12-mile record for today. I reached for the jug of water I’d placed on the table, and found my small hand overlapping his. I blushed and shrugged back. He smiled and filled both of our glasses. I sipped mine appreciatively, and smiled over the clear rim of the glass at him. He smiled back.
If my life were an episode of Sex and the City or maybe an elicit Danielle Steel movie of the week, the next cut would be to my bedroom, where Greg and I were still going at it after nearly an hour and a half. We’d cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, and I’d been walking him to the front door when my mind started to wander into dangerous territory. In my mind I’d pinned him against the wall of the living room right outside my room and begun to drag him toward my bed. In reality he hugged me goodbye as I opened the front door. Somehow my mind took over before I could catch up with it, and as we pulled away from our quick embrace I kissed him.
An innocent peck turned quickly to ferocious, searching lips moving from each other’s mouths to less charted areas, and my foot kicked the door closed with us both on the inside. We edged our way along the wall and into my room, tumbling into the bed, where we remained for the next two hours. When we’d both finished (multiple times), Greg pulled me close to him, wrapping a strong arm around my petite shoulders and burrowing his chin into the back of my neck. Then something unexpected happened: I missed Eric. I missed the way that our bodies just fit together right from the start. I wondered if I would ever have that again. The comfort that had seemed boring and overrated now seemed like the one thing that could quell the overwhelming emptiness that was creeping up on me again like water on a sandy beach at high tide. Each burst provided an even more powerful choking sensation, and finally I had to push Greg away.
“What’s wrong?”
“Um… I really need to shower. I’m exhausted, and I should probably take a nap.” I wasn’t lying. I’d definitely had my workout for the day, and my chronic fatigue was washing over me again.
“I’ll come with you,” he said flirtatiously. He wasn’t getting the hint.
“Listen, Greg… you’re a nice guy- a great guy, but I just don’t know about this.”
“Did I do something wrong? Come on, let me make it up to you.”
“No.” I sighed. My own neuroses was becoming tiring, and I wondered how many more one night, one day stands I’d have to let down gently. “It’s nothing you did. I just really would like to be alone right now.” He looked insulted.
“Ok…” He got out of bed and began dressing himself. I didn’t even wait for him to leave, just grabbed my robe and got into the shower. When I got out, I went downstairs to lock the door, and checked the mail while I was there. In the usually empty box, I found a hand-delivered card. Inside were two tickets to a small club show that Eric and I had been planning on going to the next night, and a short note that simply said ‘have fun. Love always, Eric.”
I watched a movie that night and went to bed early. The next morning in lieu of the gym, I jogged over to Eric’s house. Hoping that Adam wouldn’t answer the door, I rang the bell. I was still huffing when Eric opened the door. Seeing him didn’t make the emptiness go away, but it made it much lighter. Maybe he saw the grateful look in my eyes, because his own eyes softened when I turned to face him. I handed him a small envelope.
“I wanted to give you this.” He looked disappointed, sure that I was returning the tickets. He smiled awkwardly, shifting his weight.
“How are you?”
“Not great,” I said in between deep, panting breaths. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Now?”
“Well you can wait until tomorrow, but it won’t do you much good then.” He narrowed his eyes a bit, not sure whether his hunch was right. He opened the envelope and inside the blank ‘I’m sorry’ card I’d bought was a single ticket to the jazz club for that night. He looked at me cautiously, not wanting to draw too many conclusions from my storybook offering.
“Janie…”
“Meet me at six thirty?” My tone was as cautious as his stare.
That night the tension lifted quickly, but we didn’t address the issues at hand. I didn’t expect things to go back to normal, but I wasn’t sure what was expected of me. By the end of the night the friction between us had eased considerably, but he was still surprised when I reached for his hand outside of the club as we left. I looked up at him to make sure it was ok, and he tightened his grip, pulling me closer to him, and resting both of our hands on my hip so that his arm was around me. We walked back to my apartment like that to the stoop where we’d begun this sordid affair. I stood on the bottom step, so that our eyes were almost level. He leaned forward and kissed me softly on the forehead. I closed my eyes and savored the moment.
“I love you,” he whispered. I am still surprised at how my infidelities seem to bring out the best of the men I’m with.
“I love you too,” I said, and knew I wasn’t lying. He pulled me close, and leaned his head on my shoulder. We stood like that for at least a minute before he pulled away.
“We can talk tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, holding my hand until they separated on their own, my arm falling to my side. I never went to the gym again.