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Tightening the dock lines around the deck cleat, I reflected back on our night at Josephine’s.
“How about we play for truths?”Leland had suggested.
I had every intention of letting him win. I was too jaded, or maybe too old to take pleasure in beating him. With Leland I wanted to have fun, not win, and besides, I owed it to him after how I’d been behaving.
Buttruths?I couldn’t turn that down. Not that I believed he had many, or that he wouldn’t share them if asked, but I wasn’t sure I had the stomach to ask him the things Ireallywanted to know otherwise. Not without the game—and the rules he’d come up with—to hide behind.
I wasn’t afraid, but Iwasconfused, and to be honest, it was easy to forget how new we were to each other, and that there were things I didn’t have the right yet to know. Either way, the prize was too good to pass up.
I’d taken the coward’s way out after winning, choosing to save my questions, instead of asking if I’d been imagining things when I’d heard him hoarsely moan my name as he got himself off in the shower that day in his apartment. My gut wasn’t ready for that conversation.
I thought about asking him to leave, but then remembered how feral I became when he asked if we were taking my car or his tonight. I couldn’t risk him not having a reason to return home with me if we’d driven Betty. If I’d taken a moment to think reasonably, I would’ve concluded that he had to come back, or else I would’ve been stranded. No, him leaving wasn’t the answer.
The cool air nipped at my arms as I searched the ocean for answers. Answers to questions like why our conversations went well beyond the line that should’ve been drawn with us. Leland was here to do a job, not listen to my confessions. And yes, he’d extended his friendship to me, but it didn’t explain why talking to him had felt easy from the start, and why our silences felt even easier. Was that normal? Did that just happen? Did two people meet and click that instantaneously?
It happened with you and Selene,I reminded myself. We’d met and married quickly, but I hadn’t been this conflicted about it then, so why now? Maybe because there were other reasons at play, then, because marrying Selene had been just as much about wanting her for Cole as it had been about wanting her for me. Maybe because the reasons why I shouldn’t feel the way I do now hadn’t applied to my situation with Selene. I was available when I met her, and I was unavailable now.
I rubbed at my forehead until it hurt, purposely redirecting my thoughts to the pain there so that I wouldn’t have to face the answer to my question.
“You still love her,”he’d said to me one night. I cursed the voice in my head for taking me back there.
“Yes,” I hissed to myself, dropping my head into my hands. It was the same answer I’d given Leland that night, but I needed to hear myself say it again.
I loved Selene. But did I love my life with her? Was it enough? Why couldn’t it be enough?
I was successful, I wanted for nothing materialistically, I had a loving, beautiful wife who had breathed fresh air into my life and my home at a time when I was still sinking from the loss of Cole’s mother and my inability—or refusal—to be there for my child. A child Selene loved as if he were her own, right from the start. Why couldn’t I be grateful for the life I had instead of wishing for something…else.
You’re being selfish, I internally scolded myself. Plenty of people felt unfulfilled, had imperfect marriages, and hated their jobs. They didn’t destroy everything and everyone around them just for a taste of something new. A taste of something they couldn’t even name, something they weren’t sure they would even want once they had it.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, Franklin,I reminded myself.
And my kids… I’d promised Jasper I would protect him and his mother, that I wouldn’t hurt either of them the way his father had hurt them. And Cole and I already had an unaddressed, awkward relationship because of all the past mistakes I’d made. The things I didn’t get right. I’d been distant the first half of his life. I put the growth of Nexcom first and turned a blind-eye to the guilt he harbored behind his mother dying so that he could live.
Things had only gotten marginally better between us these last twelve years thanks to Selene, but truth be told, I’d never stopped making mistakes with Cole. Jasper either. I still didn’t believe I was a good parent, and I didn’t have the courage to ask if they held anything against me, because if the answer was yes, it would need to be dealt with, and I wouldn’t know where to start.
Selene symbolized the one good thing I ever did for Cole. Was I really contemplating destroying that?
I stopped those thoughts before they had time to stretch their arms and get comfortable. It was the fear talking, and I’d already decided to use this predetermined amount of time to sort out what I wanted. To decide if what I wanted included saving my marriage. To decide if the happiness of one man was worth the destruction of countless others.
“You have a right to change your mind about who you want to be in this world, Franky. To decide you’ve had enough of living a lie.”Leland had said those words to me on our ride to Josephine’s. Maybe if I repeated them enough I’d start to actually believe them.
My bones were suddenly too heavy for me to hold up, so I shuffled to the house, my bed calling my name.
In the living room, the box of old junk my notebook had been in peeked out from the corner of the sofa, and I padded over to it, catching my yawn in my hand.
Nostalgia trumping my exhaustion, I settled onto the couch, placing the box on the coffee table. I hadn’t gotten the chance to inspect everything buried inside of it. I’d been too preoccupied with digging up my old notes.
Reaching in, I withdrew my high school yearbook, flipping to the dog-eared page and huffing a tired laugh at the state of my hair back then. I remembered the photographer telling me to brush it back from my eyes, but it was my protective barrier. I was hiding, even back then.
I waded through the mementos that no longer made sense to me until my fingers brushed up against the photo with Gloria and her family. The one that included an unsuspecting Theo.
I hadn’t seen the picture since I was a teen, and now I found myself musing over it twice in a matter of weeks.
Theo hated taking pictures and had opted out of this one. I couldn’t recall who took the photo, maybe a groundsman, but Theo ended up making an appearance in it anyway.
Memories of my friendship with him were pretty crisp when I let myself think about it. I’d been less fond of his brother, Clark. He was too young, and while he wanted to play with toys, Theo and I had wanted to build things.
My father blamed my disinterest in the family business on Gloria and her family, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth. I came alive when with the Palmeros. Much like the way I came awake with Leland.
