Three's Company

“What’s wrong, baby?” Jessica asked, looking on cautiously.

With each strained breath, Robert seemed to shrink more.

“Nothing, nothing. Bad dream.”

Sweat dripped down his brow. She put her hand on his side and let it rise with his chest. Robert’s heart wheezed like a dusty accordion. Revealing nightmares were not uncommon; often dredging up messy stories and parts hidden away long ago.

The severity and frequency appeared to be decreasing with each passing month in his new life. Most nights took less than 30 minutes to drift off to sleep and there were no echoes when he woke up. This marked a seismic shift and a welcome pointer that he was crawling his way back into alignment.

Too many years he had deserted himself. Pain crept into the space between the compartments in his psychology and sank its hooks into Robert and used him to spread through world.

He felt "it" but he couldn’t put his finger on precisely what “it” was or why his life was coming apart at the seams.

He struggled to perform at work, his relationships were toxic, and he could count the number of family events he’d shown up to in the last 4 years sober on one hand. Sorrow turned into resentment into cold bitterness. His mindset began to shift from woe is me to this is me—a helpful framework to rationalize continuing the same behaviors—regardless of the drain they put on him and the people around him.

Robert ignored the call in his nightmares. Instead, he used them to accelerate his descent, feeding them to the spirit of condemnation that filled him.

Surely such a tortured man who cannot make it to sleep without a flood of drugs or drink and cannot rise without the dissonance of angels screaming must have arrived at this point for a reason.

A twisted smile wrapped across his face as he squeezed that logic in his hands like clay, stretching and kneading it until it began to resemble something useful to him.

What a shame nothing can be done about it now! Better pour another and trot on down to the bar! Call her... Someone... Anyone...!

It took time, but to his credit, Robert managed to shake loose from the desire to be trapped inside those memories. Better yet, he developed an adventurer’s joy in those unnerving wake ups. Darting looks around the room, tightened fits, testing his control. Then, he’d dive back into his mind as quickly as he could, determined to capture every fleeting memory from the journey. There were dragons to slay, and he needed all of the information he could gather.

But this morning he wasn’t the bad guy in the story dancing around the truth, he was the tight-lipped sap, hunched over in anticipation. Skin that he had shed a decade earlier and grown increasingly sickened by.

Three people in a nondescript room. Robert and Jessica sat pretzel-style on the floor, while the third laid out like an old bulldog. Conversation was pointy and brief, but pleasant. Robert knew it to be his first time meeting her ex. He wasn't sure why he was there, but he felt a strength in the way he carried himself. Polite and confident. His mind stayed in the present and he did not feel threatened.

The random bursts of jealousy that accompanied him through the early stages of his relationship with Jessica were noticeably absent. He wasn’t sure at what point those demons crept in, but he’d put considerable effort into fending them off and was pleased to have some space from them. It was never one story. His mind could spin up a wide variety. A deep connection with an ex, a passionate fling, a carnal desire. It searched far and wide for any minute detail it could find and twist until it was sharp enough to puncture him.

Time continued to pass. Robert felt himself coming to peace with her past, no one person or story in particular, but the irrational anger that his love had lived a life before him. This also pleased him. He was a logical man, who made decisions based off reason, and it troubled him to think so unreasonably.

He looked at his wrist and suggested they call it a night. His back turned for a moment as he lifted himself off the ground and in a flash, the other man leapt up, leaned in and kissed Jessica.

She looked stunned.

Robert was caught off guard himself but not shocked to see another man make an immoral move out of apparent desperation.

“What the hell?” Robert said sternly, “We were having a nice afternoon.”

They stared at one another.

“Are you going to say something?” Robert implored him.

The man smirked back and rolled his eyes.

Robert noticed Jessica’s pupils tracking back and forth strangely.

“She didn’t tell you?”

Her eyes widened and Robert’s stomach dropped. The air smelt stale.

“Jessica made a move on me first... A month ago!”

“Stop!” She exclaimed.

Robert vision tunneled on Jessica. The sadness he wanted to feel hardened into rage and his blood temperature hit a new high.

“This fat fuck?” He shouted, in a state of disgust and insult.

“I was stressed out!” She contested. “The move was a lot and...”

He wanted to hug her and tell her it was alright—that he forgave her and that he knew it was a mistake.

“Have a nice life,” Robert replied.

"Robert—please!"

The other man stayed quiet and laid back down on the carpet in the middle of the room. The afternoon had started off so harmlessly.

Robert thought back to high school, life on the wrong side of the emotional tracks. She came into his mind; the one that never got away because he never really had her. Her interest waned by the day. Sporadic waves of affection turned to ice without warning.

She pushed and pulled him until there was nothing left. Then humiliated him with the public affair.

It was in that nadir that he found his strength, his new identity. The man who did not care, could not care, and would not care. The man who used him emotions rather than let them use him. The man who would never need a woman. Though, he did seem to like to have them around still. And often. Robert got along well with them. He liked seeing the world through a woman’s eyes and he liked how they felt in his arms. But he could never have one. He shouldn’t. Why would he want that? Why open himself up to that kind of risk?

Robert learned to disguise his intense desire to be loved in detached practices and cold rules. Never send a second text. Don’t say what can be shown. Reserve direct speech for once the water has been properly muddied.

With time, the cycle accelerated, and the facade hardened into a corrupt belief system. His exploits were applauded by his peers and the behavior intensified. He pushed and pushed until he believed he could have anyone he wanted.

The crowd went wild. And so did he. Until he wanted everybody and nobody. Lovers repulsed him. Shameless skirt chasers were worse. There was no answer. He was disgusted by the world he saw and the relationships that colored it.

Jessica pleaded desperately with him, but he wouldn’t hear it. He couldn’t take the insult.

At this point, Robert felt his conscious mind start to take hold of the wheel. His eyes fluttered, then he sealed them shut and sat in the discomfort. The only way forward was in. The affair was a dream, but the fear was real, and he knew it. An infection in old wounds that were never treated.

Robert floated above the room and watched the characters of his quiet tragedy. Fragments of old stories flashed by and he saw that his private North Star not only did not point North, but there was no direction at all. It was fraudulent, a secretive attempt to craft a divine scenario in which his ego rested atop the pyramid, not just for him, but for everyone, and that no risk to it could ever be present. It was not a conscious goal, but all signs pointed there as the clear objective.

He woke up sick to his stomach and tried to shut his eyes again, but there was no sleep to escape to. He remembered Caroline disappearing at the house party on Bayview Ave. The helplessness as he scanned the crowd for her, knowing that the rumors were true. He thought about the humiliation and sadness he felt as she explained it away to him beneath the streetlights outside, and the knowing stupidity he felt walking back, hand-in-hand, somehow feeling at fault.

That didn’t stop him from all but begging her to commit months later before they went off to college. She told him she wanted her space and landed with a friend of his friend. News that was destined to get back to him.

Robert searched for his power, but it was not there. He did not have new arms to run into nor the desire to. There were no alluring legs off in greener pastures to slide between. All he had was himself and the reality that he was an exposed entity in the world and despite his best efforts, he was not able to control everything.

His eyes snapped open.

“Baby, you are sweating.”

“I am just hot...”

Jessica wrapped her arms around him, and he felt a small tear run down his cheek. He angled his face into the pillow to absorb it before she could see.

She pressed her lips to his neck and spread a flurry of kisses. It tickled him. He liked the sensation on his skin and feeling in his gut.

Robert felt strong, then stupid for allowing himself to feel real emotions as the victim of imaginary slights.

“I love you, Jess.”

“I love you back.”

“I’m sorry I get a little crazy sometimes.”

“You are a little crazy, but you are mine.”

“And I’m thankful for that.”

“I’m thankful for you too.”

“I mean it, baby... I know I get worked up, but truthfully, having you here and now... It is enough.”

“Enough how?”

“Every choice I made to keep moving forward in life has been justified—I”

“Come here.” She interjected, pulling him in.

He smiled, kissed her back, and fell further into her.

Robert’s body was rigid from his hip up into his back when he got out of bed. He pulled a pair of shorts up and went downstairs to fetch coffee.

“Thank you.” Jessica said as she pulled the cup close to her mouth and Robert’s attention toward her flushed cheeks.

“You know, Jessica...” Robert started slowly, “I never wanted to be rich before I met you.”

“And you know that I don’t need all that.”

“I want you to have what you want too.”

“I want you.”

“I’ve never wanted to spoil anyone before either...”

“You don’t need to spoil me, Robert.

“I want to, baby.”

Jessica curled up tighter, “Okay, baby.”

The steam coated his face and painted a grin.

“I never wanted to smile either.”

“Why not?”

“I never thought much about why.”

“That is hard to believe, Robert. All you do is wonder why. There’s no limit to what you’ll pull apart and question. Why didn’t you want to smile?”

“It never felt like my own.”

“And now?”

“I see through our eyes, breath with our heart, but the smile is mine.”

“That is lovely. And it almost makes sense.”

"Shoot, it is almost 6 o’ clock,” He replied, pointing at her watch. “I have to get to work.”

She wrapped her arms around him and whispered in his ear. Robert smiled freely, then shook his head to himself.

“What a life... This is my, wife.”

“Soon, baby.”

“I am a lucky man.”