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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cris
“Do you want me to kick his ass?” Dennis asks.
I was able to convince all three of my brothers to come home for a late Sunday dinner. I blamed my sadness on living alone. While cooking and baking in preparation for their arrival, I convinced myself that when the house was once again filled with their raucous, youthful energy, my sadness would magically vanish. It didn’t work out that way.
Somewhere between saying “pass the salmon salad” and announcing we have a chocolate cream pie for dessert, the sadness hit me tenfold. I sobbed over my empty plate. Full-on ugly cry.
Six hands lifted me out of the chair and corralled me into the living room. Now I’m sitting on the sofa, Dennis on my left, Timothy on my right. Manuel, arms folded over his chest, is taking up a stuffed chair in the corner. His frown hints at the battle scene taking place in his imagination.
“Remember when I said I was happy for you?” he growls. “I take it back. I’ll go with Dennis to kick Benji’s ass.”
Their rallying to my defense is sweet, but there is no one to blame. Benji was being Benji, and I was being myself. My own delusion made me believe I could have sex with a man I was already half in love with and not fall the rest of the way. Maybe I’m the one to blame.
I swipe my eyes with a tissue and give my brothers a watery smile. “Nobody’s ass needs kicked.”
“Needs kicking,” Timothy corrects with a smile. He places a supportive hand on my knee.
“That too.” I sniff. “I still love my job. He’s still my friend. My heart was confused when we went back to the way we used to be. I just…have to sort it out. In my head.” God knows sorting it out with my heart hasn’t done any good. “I haven’t sorted it out yet.”
Understatement of the millennium.
At work I am plagued with memories of my orgasm on the couch or kissing Benji in the kitchen. I have to wind my hand into a fist to keep from reaching for him or blurting out that I made a giant mistake by telling him I didn’t want to continue our relationship. Maybe we could keep our sexual affair and I could give up the idea of marriage altogether. Most marriages don’t last anyway, right? I’m so damn miserable. I’m beginning to believe part of Benji would be better than none of him.
But I don’t have “none” of him, either. I have him as a boss, as a friend. We work out, though I refuse to step foot in the downstairs gym. I fear my own volatile reaction if I even catch a glimpse of the stone shower. What happened in it will forever live in my memory as one of the best moments of my life. I keep telling myself the addition of sex into our stable relationship made us unstable. Like too much water in an overflowing stockpot, doomed to spill over and steam away on the cooktop.
Only the pot has nearly boiled dry. I’ve lost the intimacy we had when we were sleeping together, and I’ve lost the ease we had as friends. We can’t seem to find the comfortable middle we so effortlessly carved out over the last year and a half. But I’m not going to stop trying. I treasure his friendship. Losing it is unacceptable. We shared things over the last two months we never shared before. We told stories from our pasts we never told before. We were different. We were good. Really good. Which is why this hurts so much.
I touch the compass necklace at my throat. I shouldn’t be wearing it. It was Benji who reminded me I was my own true north. To trust my own judgment. I’m not sure I can. Look where my judgment landed me.
“What is there to sort out?” Manuel shakes his head. “You’re clearly in love with him. And he broke your heart.”
“He didn’t break my heart,” I say in my defense, the words etching my throat as if they’re fighting being spoken. “Anyway, you don’t know him. He doesn’t have the same plans I have. Staying with him means relegating myself to dating without the promise of a future. I can’t do that to myself. Or you guys.”
In unison, Dennis and Timothy both say, “Us?”
Manuel chimes in with, “What does this have to do with us?”
“Everything has to do with you three. You’re my brothers and I love you. I would die before setting a bad example for you guys. I want you to know what’s possible in the world.”
“That’s a shit reason to get married,” Timothy blurts.
“Hey—” But before I can remind him not to swear, Manuel cuts me off.
“What if one of us decides not to get married?”
“Or what if one of us ends up divorcing, or marrying two or three different people over a lifetime?” Dennis says.
“Are you going to disown us? Write us off because we’re like Mom?” Timothy asks.
“Of course not!” My head swivels to each of them. Surely they don’t think I’d disown them over something so trivial. “I love you too much. And that’s hardly the same thing.”
“It’s exactly the same thing,” Manuel argues. “You don’t have to try to live a mistake-free life because Mom has made seven of them.”
“And you wouldn’t ask us to be perfect,” Timothy says.
“You never expected us to be perfect,” Dennis adds.
