This is Part Two of a story I’m working on for our Fiction Friday group. You can read Part One, The Visitor, here.
“I think Eric is cheating on me.”
Their neighborhood coffee shop was crowded, and Jason looked around, remembering there might be someone he knew within earshot. Not necessarily the ideal setting to discuss your partner’s infidelity, but Lynnie had to pick up her kids in half an hour.
“Let me guess — you checked his history and he’s been googling Hugh Jackman again. . .”
“No. . . I checked his history and he’s been googling his old boyfriend.” Jason ran the tip of his spoon through the caramel-brown heart that the barista had so meticulously applied to the top of his cappuccino.
“Well that’s no big deal. I do that kind of thing all the time. It’s like the 2012 version of driving by the guy’s house and seeing if he has someone over. Or going to the high school reunion. We all want to know who got bald and fat.”
“Yeah, but do you also book plane tickets to to the city where the guy just happens to live? And then tell your boyfriend of eleven years that you need to go to the mainland for business? And even though there’s no WAY you’d ever pass up a chance to turn a trip into a vacation at any other time in your life, on this particular occasion, do you, um, sorry, tell your boyfriend he can’t come because I’m going to be really, really busy…”
“Well, maybe he is going to be really, really busy…”
“Okay then. What if I told you the guy he’s been Googling isn’t just any guy. What if I told you he’s Peter.”
“Peter? As in ‘Way back when I was a crazy kid, I lived on the beach and dropped out of society’ Peter?”
“Yee-up.”
“He always made that sound so much like The Blue Lagoon to me.”
“Well, to me, he never talked about it that much. The story I heard was something about starting an outdoor adventure business. And how it all went south when Peter bailed. But I guess it doesn’t matter — apparently he’s always been Eric’s youthful fantasy,” Jason said, adding some jazz hands.
“Oh maaaan!” Lynnie hung her head. “You guys can’t do this to me. You’re supposed to be the stable couple. I’m the train wreck in this relationship, remember? I’m the one who can’t keep anything going for more than a year. Let’s not go switching roles so late in the game.”
Jason looked down and forced out a short laugh. He stirred more of the heart in his cappuccino foam.
“Look, let’s not start getting all stressed and freaked out before we know what’s really going on,” Lynnie said. “There may be a perfectly logical explanation.”
“Logical, yes. One I’d like to hear, maybe not.”
“Where exactly is he going?’
“Reno. Tahoe. Which I’m sure, you know, would totally suck for us with all of those crappy places to go mountain biking and kayaking.”
“Reno? Who lives in Reno? What does this guy do? Is he some Chippendales dancer or something?”
“I don’t know. Unlike your friend, Eric, I couldn’t bear to investigate.”
“Damn, you have some serious willpower. I mean, if my boyfriend were cheating on me, I’d be all over…”
Jason stopped stirring and raised and eyebrow.
“I mean,” Lynnie began again, in her best human resources voice, “I appreciate that you’re respecting his privacy in this manner. I’m confident that this misunderstanding will be rectified in due time with the delivery of a cogent explanation from all parties involved despite their current lack of communication.”
They burst out laughing.
********
Eric Ganin hadn’t slept a full eight hours in at least a month. So this, he thought, is officially middle age.
He was turning forty-five in just two weeks, and even though Christmas was over, he couldn’t get that John Lennon song out of his head: And so this is Christmas. And what have you done.
What have you done?
He knew what this was. Fine. He was having a mid-life crisis. It turns out he wasn’t special. He wasn’t immune. But what he couldn’t tolerate — what was keeping him up at night and googling all day — wasn’t disappointment over what he hadn’t accomplished or fear of death or desire for something new and sparkly.
It was guilt. Twenty-two years of abscessed, festering guilt. And he knew the only way to get rid of it was to cut it open and hit it with some air and sunlight.
Not. Pretty.
Peter. Oh god. Peter. Why had he done that to him? Why couldn’t he have just been a man and come clean? Why had he been such a coward?
He’d ruined his life.
1991. They were living on Kauai in a studio apartment. Ancient, moldy, and bug-infested. But it was right on the beach. They dreamed of opening up their own outdoor adventure business so they could mountain bike, kayak, and surf all day long. At least that’s what Peter thought was their dream.
For Eric, it was like being one of those frogs who ends up boiling. He sat there, soaking in the cool, never realizing — or never wanting to realize — that everything around him was heating up. Pretty soon, he was in a full-blown relationship with someone who he liked a whole lot. A whole, whole lot. But Peter was never going to be “The guy.”
The whole story was sad enough. But then Eric made it tragic. He discovered something deep and painful about himself that he couldn’t bring himself to overcome. He possessed something that no one ever likes to think could be part of their make-up.
He was a coward.
And that’s when he did something so spineless, so irresponsible, that more than 20 years later, it would send him to his computer at 4 o’clock in the morning to sort though Google searches and obsess over plane flights. He made a phone call that would alter the trajectory of multiple lives so he could step back, out of that uncomfortable position of telling someone, “I don’t love you.”
********
“Are you okay?”
Jason’s voice came from behind him, out of the dark.
“Yeah,” said Eric half turning from his slumped position on the couch. “I just couldn’t sleep.” He seemed tired most of the time lately, but the eerie light shining on him from the television made him look almost deathly ill.
“What are you watching?”
“Dangerous Liaisons.”
“Oh, I love this part,” Jason found a section of the couch, not to close, not to far. “It’s beyond my control. He’s such a shit.”
“Yeah. It’s brutal.”
They sat in silence, watching Michelle Pfifer beg for her sanity. Jason picked up a throw pillow and hugged it to his chest.
“Love’s a funny thing, isn’t it?” Eric said. “When you really love someone, you’d do just about anything for them. You’d find the strength or make any sacrifice to spare them pain. But when you need the strength — when you need the courage — to tell someone you don’t love them, it’s not there. If you don’t love them, there’s nothing inspiring you to be brave. It’s like the kindest thing is to let them go because you don’t love them. But you don’t love them enough to be brave and just break their heart.”
“Yeah, that. . . that’s cruel.”
Jason braced himself. They sat on the couch, watching the movie, not speaking. Finally, he stood up.
“I’m heading back to bed. Are you staying up for a while?”
“Yeah,” said Eric. “Just going to finish the movie.”
“Sounds good.” He leaned over an kissed him on the forehead and desperately tried to smile. Not that it mattered. Eric wasn’t even looking.
On the way back to their room, he broke down into silent sobs.
********
The prompt this week was, “Your character commits a crime. (What is the motive?) Your character’s husband/wife/SO, discovers your character changing dealing with the evidence, and wants to know what’s going on. Write the conversation. What happens next?” Then we sort of amended it to include “the discovery by the S.O. of a devastating, serious, implicating, dramatic secret.” Which is a good thing because I was almost going all World War II on y’all…
Be sure to check out my Fellow Fearless Fiction Femmes:
- ClearlyKristal
- BuLaMamaNi
- Susanne’s World
- It’s a Dome Life
- DeBie Hive
- Grass Oil by Molly Field
- Quirky Chrissy
- Near Genius
- The Suds Box
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.
oooooh, this is getting intense. cowards suck. i always feel for the jilted; it seems as though Eric is repeating a habit. bad Eric!
here’s what i love about this post, again: your timing, your pacing, your style is all in there; that’s the best part… when we divert from what we normally write, but we’re still in there; our personalities don’t change and that was my fear. i was afraid that if i started to write fiction, then all of a sudden i’d turn into some other writer, the voice… it hasn’t happened. you’re good at this! 🙂
You’re so nice to me.
And yes, cowards suck. Bad Eric!
I still can’t believe that you are the one who says that this challenge sucks hahaha because you are damn good at writing, there’s humour, tension, suspense. All flowing in your writing!
Hey, someone has to be the pain-in-the-ass. We can’t all be Miss Mary Sunshine. Then it’d be no fun.;)
And thank you. That’s really nice of you to say.
cowards. cheating cowards.
not my favorite people, but they make for one hell of a story.
admit it, you don’t completely hate me….
I know. Jackasses.
Okay. I don’t hate you completely…
Captured the tortured feelings perfectly….and I love the scene in the coffee shop with his friend. So real – so sad and funny….like life.
Nice work, friend!
It is…just like life.;)
Thanks my friend.
Wow! I don’t know who to sympathize with more. It sucks when you’re too scared to do something, but it also sucks when you’re the one on the receiving end. Oy!
Ha ha!!! You nailed it.
Oy!
I feel so heartbroken over this. You have made me emotionally invested in these characters. I am mad at this Peter guy!
I’m so glad you’re getting emotionally invested! That’s a huge compliment.
I love the ‘urbanary’ feel of this story and its main characters. You weaved it masterfully – this feeling of ‘the elephant in the room & no one wants to talk about it’ is thrilling. Can’t wait to see where it head!
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Thank you so much! I love that. Doesn’t the elephant in the room just kill you when you’re experiencing it? Easy to draw on that memory.
Cheating, lying son-of-a…sorry got so swept up in your story and its characters. The details, imagery, pain…well done, Tammy!
Here’s my favorite part: “When you really love someone, you’d do just about anything for them. You’d find the strength or make any sacrifice to spare them pain. But when you need the strength — when you need the courage — to tell someone you don’t love them, it’s not there. If you don’t love them, there’s nothing inspiring you to be brave? It’s like the kindest thing is to let them go because you don’t love them. But you don’t love them enough to be brave and just break their heart.”
Eric knows he is a coward.
Eric does know he’s a coward. We’ll see what he’s going to do with his pathetic self. I’m not sure.
I like that part too. It’s soooo messed up.