I can’t wait to leave this place and become a dad full time—though now I wonder if it will always be a little tainted after last night. This was supposed to be a positive experience for my family, and now Bennett and I have ruined it.
That night, we eat quietly around the table. Jack suggests I come back to bed, but I don’t feel like cuddling, so I sleep on the couch again. I’m still too angry and too miserable to lie next to him.
I don’t remove Bree’s number from my phone. I think about texting her, asking how she’s doing, but if Jack found out, it would ruin everything already hanging in precarious balance.
Over the next week, the tone in our home remains sour. Bennett and I don’t talk about her, even when we’re alone, as if her name is a curse hanging over us. Over the weekend, Jack invites us out to dinner and a movie. I think it’s intended as a peace offering, but I have nothing to say to him. Dinner is awkward and quiet as he tries to make conversation. Even Bennett has shut down, but in a more resigned way. He has curled in on himself and withdrawn.
I’m the one who’s angry. I’m the one who feels like a part of myself has been cut out and thrown away. I know Bennett feels it too after his confession at the dinner. We found something in Bree that filled our hearts, and now it’s gone.
The ache of the rut is almost unbearable, but I have no conscious interest in sex. Instead, I sit alone when I get home from work and jack off until the pressure eases, and then again in the bathroom before bed.
What a pathetic existence.
Eventually, I return to our bed, but I keep to myself. How can you have intimacy with someone who’s hurt you so deeply? I don’t know how to get past it.
Then, at long last, rutting season comes to an end. The cherry blossoms have fallen and the crocuses have bloomed. Now it’s May, and the world around us is preparing for summer.
Not that it matters. School will be out soon, which leaves me at home all day with nothing to do. Maybe I should fix up the house to sell it. Maybe a change like that would be good for all of us.
We desperately need a reset.
Time drags by. Soon it’s been an entire month since I heard from Bree.
I still haven’t been intimate with Jack or Bennett. The hurt is too fresh and my heart aches. Jack tries to bring me back into the fold, to kiss me and stroke my hair when we sleep, but it feels tainted now.
“You know,” Jack says one night over dinner, “I’m the one who should be angry, Arthur. Not you.”
“I’m not angry,” I say, picking at my food.
“Sure you’re not.” Jack’s ears droop. “I thought you’d be over it by now.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is that I’ll never be over it. I’ll never forget the part of myself I uncovered, or what I felt about Bree. All I can think about is how she’s doing alone, no one there for her as she carries our fawn.
Instead of gratifying him with an answer, I keep my mouth shut and finish eating. Jack searches my face, then sighs and returns to his dinner, too.
Bree
It was frigid cold when I went back to my car that night, tears streaming down my face. I’d held them in until I got outside the satyrs’ house, when I finally let them free.
But I deserve what happened. I was a part of this, too, and as much as it hurt me, Jack had the right to do it. I don’t like him, but I have to respect his boundaries. If I learned anything about him at that dinner, it’s that he protects his herd with whatever force he deems necessary.
Life returns to… something like normal after that. As normal as it was before Mangelli and Bennett. Which, now that I’m here again, is kind of lonely. I had hookups before, Tinder dates that turned into nothing. It’s always just been me against the world, and I’m back to where I started.
The roulette of online dating holds no interest for me now. When I’m on the stream, I fantasize about my two satyrs. A lot of people were disappointed when “Rick” and “Todd” never came back, and my viewership dropped, but that’s all right. I made good money while I could, and now things are back to the way they were—not to mention that now I’ve got my monthly stipend from DreamTogether.
Still, I accept when GingerWatchman requests a private session, even though I got weird vibes from him last time. I’m shoring up my savings for that vacation I’m planning.
For a while, we make idle chitchat, though my mind is elsewhere. Eventually, though, he changes the topic.
where are the satyrs? he asks. finally gave them the boot?
I shake my head. “I don’t really feel like talking about that.”
I’m paying for this.
It takes some effort for me to school my expression and keep it friendly.
“Well, something came up, and they have other obligations.”
