Page 103 of The Cruiser
He looks at me sideways. “Is he your new boyfriend?”
“More like a man-stake,” I joke, and immediately feel the discord. How it’s not the right way to describe Morgan. What I want to ask is does it feel strange for Derek to say the word boyfriend, now that it’s taken on a different meaning.
“You looked pretty cozy for a mistake,” he says.
“Don’t tell me you looked.”
He sighs, examines the floor before finding my eyes. “You always had an amazing body, V. Still do.”
It hurts, hearing that. Knowing that whatever forces brought us together are no longer. Walking through the house yesterday, nothing felt the same. When love leaves, all the things surrounding us, and the passage of time they mark, take on different meanings. It’s not the sofa we bought together in Chicago and the snowstorm story that goes along with it. It’s not me hammering a nail with a jar of mayo until Derek came to help. It’s not the dinner party where everyone got drunk and stayed over, the living room a makeshift Bedouin community, talked about for weeks after.
It’s just a sofa, a nail in the wall, and a dinner.
The coffee machine beeps and I get up to pour myself a mug. “You want one?” I ask.
“Sure.”
I fix his coffee the right way, adding the sugar. A silence opens up and we sit on the edges of it, coffee mugs wrapped in our hands, unsure what to say next.
Derek finally clears his throat. “I’m sorry, V,” he says. “I really am. I could’ve handled this way better.”
I find his eyes, guilty and dark. Feel darkness gathering in me. “It’s okay.”
He sets down his mug and shifts closer. The cologne we fought about two weeks ago is light on his skin. “It’s not okay. The email I sent was super shitty. I don’t want it to be ugly, V. I’m putting you through enough shit as it is. If you want to stay in the house, we can figure all that out.”
“It’s your house too,” I note.
“You made the down payment.” He looks away, emotion clotting his voice. For the first time, I consider all the shit he’s waded through. All the negative talk from my mother. Me dropping hints to dress better. Stryker’s high maintenance personality running him ragged. The constant pressure to be more.
“I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?” I say.
This is what I do. Keep it all in. It’s so damn tiring and I’m exhausted with myself. With everything. I bite my quivering lip.
“No one’s perfect, Vandana,” Derek says, more softness in his voice than I can bear. “Not me and not even you. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Is that what killed us?” He’s blurry, my vision washing with tears. “Me wanting everything to be perfect?”
“Oh, babe,” he says. “C’mere.”
He takes me in his arms, and being in the embrace of the man I married with the best intentions finally breaks me. There are things you share with girlfriends and co-workers, but husbands and boyfriends know us at our intimate worst and best. They know our bad moods, the days we forget to shave, how we haven’t forgiven ourselves for silly things done or said. I tell Derek I’m gutted, embarrassed, and scared. I voice all the things I’ve admitted to no one else and he holds me the entire time, stroking my hair, knowing it calms me.
“You always told me this stuff blows over eventually, V. You’re in the worst of it right now. Chin up.”
I look out the window over his shoulder as light starts to seep into the morning sky. I think back to the night we met, at a club in West Hollywood called Concorde. How the sexual electricity between us was so intense. That after slow dancing, his dick hot and hard, we’d slipped outside and didn’t make it more than half a block. We got down and dirty against the courtyard wall of an unsuspecting apartment building, and just before coming, I remember the landscaping lights, how they made the night sky look dreamy and surreal, like it is now.
It’s a great memory and a reminder of what needs to change. I used to believe sex held a relationship together, but long-term happiness is a combination of things. I never found the courage to leave Derek because it’s easier to pretend life is perfect then it is to face your mistakes.
Coming out of our embrace, I sniffle and wipe my nose. Derek rips off a piece of paper towel for me and says nothing when I honk loudly into it, disposing of a half-ton of snot. I apologize and he laughs.
“Don’t ever be sorry for being you, V. And fuck ‘em if they can’t take you for who you are.”
I dab at my eyes, swollen and wet. “I’ll get through it. One day at a time, right?”
He finishes his coffee and puts the mug in the dishwasher instead of the sink, something I always asked him to do but he never did. “I had my own hell day telling my parents last week,” he admits. “All sorts of fun.”
His parents, both sets, are the kind of Happy Americans who never question what goes into a hot dog. They don’t want to know all the ugliness. How we can be put together in different ways. Judging from the mainly hostile answers on any question I asked that interfered with their vision of God and humanity, I doubt Alistair will suffer through a similar Christmas fate.
“I’m just waiting for the phone call from your mother,” he adds with a rueful smile. “It’s gonna be epic.”
