Love in the Corners by V.G. Anderson
Kentuckiana-Metroversity Writing Competition: 2nd Place Winner, 2010
Myra marches up to the cash register in the coffee shop where she’s worked as a barista for the past two years. She slaps her resignation down on the counter in front of her manager standing behind the cash register. He doesn’t move until Myra’s sweaty palm print disappears from the faded red countertop. The note isn’t typed or an official company form. She just scribbled I quit on a torn half-sheet of purple paper during her fifteen-minute break. But the act of giving it to him rather than stuffing it in her purse and going back to work (the way she usually does) feels official enough to celebrate the triumphant moment with a smirk and wrist flick that she hopes says something like just try and stop me.
Usually she’s content to read a book while hiding in the corner near the bathroom where no one likes to sit. But today she made the mistake of looking up at the bland menu written in a variety of pastel chalks on the blackboard hung crooked on the one green wall behind the front counter—the words Strawberry Cremosa in pink smeared almost completely away. The same chipped, dark-blue paint is on every other wall. The same faded, black chairs are scattered around the room in uneven numbers at tables where middle-aged businessmen with bad posture, hyper high school students, wannabe writers, and pregnant women with latte addictions—hoping their new belly pooch isn’t showing enough to elicit a scowl from health-conscious patrons—hide from their responsibility-laden homes.
Myra used to love this place for the same reasons. It was one of the first places she sang at open-mic night after moving to Portland, Oregon with her husband, Drew, two years ago. The energy of that night was transcendent. She knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She applied for a job—the intent being a temporary arrangement while she settled into a comfortable routine in a new city and got a band together.
Myra and Drew often move to new places under the guise of career goals and the quest for new experiences. But it’s really just boredom and dissatisfaction in never having developed strong enough ties to nurture a compulsion to stay anywhere longer than a year or two. Five minutes earlier, while glancing around the rundown café that never changes—the same way she fears she might—she became overwhelmed with a sort of panic that grew into an anywhere-but-here frenzy. And this time when she wrote I quit she pressed so hard it left an indention in the tabletop. Nothing would stop her from delivering it to the child standing behind the counter pretending to be a man by wearing a nametag that says Management.
His pale grey eyes stare blankly at her beneath a mop of dark blond hair. She wants to strangle him. He’s ten years younger than her and was hired months after her. He was, supposedly, given the manager title because he’d gone to college while she was busy coping with the afterburn of a miserable childhood that she—more quickly than he learned calculus—realized the world didn’t give a shit about. Fortunately for him, she muscled through the emotional chaos and somehow worked there long enough to train him on how to do his job. He now makes more than double what she does, tips included. Yet all those years of college hadn’t taught him how to notice that his girlfriend (hired a week after he took over as acting manager) is fucking one of the delivery drivers behind the dumpster once a week. Myra shouldn’t be shocked that he can’t read her body language, but she’s still disappointed.
“Are you gonna finish your shift?” he asks.
Myra groans. She pulls off her faded black apron, wads it up and throws it on the floor in front of the counter, then flips him off and stomps out. Pausing to slam the door, the hours sign attached to the glass with yellow sun-stained suction cups falls, scattering orange plastic letters and numbers across the entrance.
The late spring air is brisk, but the clear sky is a welcome change from last week’s concrete wall of rain. Knowing Drew is still asleep at home adds to her fury, so she wanders through some of the small, eclectic shops she’s wanted to browse since first moving to the city of roses but hadn’t because she's always with Drew and he complains about places that smell old. Myra loves these shops. She’s drawn to the residual energy on the second-hand merchandise. Most of the time it’s obvious that the item went out of style, but sometimes she finds things that must have been abandoned because of heartbreak or death. At least that’s what it would take for her to part with something that seems so precious. She loves small boxes: jewelry boxes, music boxes, metal boxes, wood boxes, anything with a lid and especially with a key. She likes imagining what had been kept inside. Today she finds a small pewter box with blue velvet lining so worn she can feel the weight of the secrets it held. She thinks about buying it to prevent a teenager from filling it with poorly rolled joints, but Myra doesn’t have any notes, pictures, or inherited treasures, and she never takes off her wedding ring. She wishes she had something special to keep inside it, but she knows the box will just sit empty. Closing it slowly, she walks away.
Sure enough, the apartment is silent as she walks in, so she sits down on the couch to watch television. Might as well enjoy the cable while we’ve got it, she thinks. But the longer it takes Drew to wake up, the angrier she gets, and after each commercial break she turns the sound up louder until he finally wanders out at two o’clock in his boxer-briefs, aggravated by the noise.
“Jesus, are you going deaf?” he says, snatching the remote off her lap.
“Sorry,” Myra says. “I was distracted.”
“What are you doing home, anyway? Weren’t you supposed to work until five?”
Myra drops her voice to imitate his agitated tone. “What are you doing asleep, weren’t you supposed to be out scheduling shows for the band?”
“Whatever, that’s Nick’s job now.”
Nick is the new drummer that Drew doesn’t like because he has a degree in advertising, which encroaches on Drew’s only role in the band. And Drew thinks Nick has a thing for Myra. She thinks Drew is crazy because Nick has an adorable girlfriend with curly blonde hair down to her perky little twenty-four-year-old ass. But Myra doesn’t want to convince Drew otherwise because it’s the first time in two years he’s shown any sign of still caring about her for longer than a few seconds when he pecks her goodnight or says he loves her because he sees someone on television say it and realizes it’s been weeks since he’d said it. She lets the jealousy drag on, but it will have to end soon because she fears it may result in the same outcome that caused the last good band to fall apart.
“No, that’s your job. Nick just offered to help.”
“I don’t need his kind of help.”
“He just wants to prove himself. Cut the guy some slack.”
“So why are you here? No wait, I already know! You dyed your hair bright-red last night because you finally murdered your twerp of a manager and now we’re running from the law.”
Myra wishes they were running from the law. It would be a distraction from watching Drew check out on life by smoking too much pot and playing video games for so long most people would compare it to a part-time job—on bad weeks, a full-time job. Neither of which he has. Everything is paid for by Myra’s paychecks, which barely cover anything. During a good month, she makes extra money singing at local clubs and café’s—including her own place of employment. Now she has no idea what they’re going to do. And the last person she can turn to for advice is Drew. He’ll just load a bowl and cheer her on for finally standing up to her manager, then disappear, feeling even less obligated to do anything productive. All the while safe in the knowledge that Myra will fix it, because hell, she always does. After, of course, cleaning the house because Drew doesn’t want to feel like the house-bitch, so even though Myra works full time, plus the band, she’s expected to contribute 50% to the house work, if not more, because he supposedly doesn’t want to screw up the things she likes done a particular way. And the last thing she wants to be is the “husband” who comes home from work every night saying, Bitch, why isn’t my house clean. But she can’t help admitting, to herself at least, as she looks around at the pile of laundry in the corner, one sock in the middle of the living room, the sink full of dishes, and the purple couch covered in white cat hair, that her foresisters quest for equality isn’t doing her much good.
“I thought you were gonna load the dishwasher before you came to bed last night?” Myra says.
“I thought about it.”
“Wow! Progress.”
“Whatever.” Drew rolls his eyes and turns the TV up louder than before.
She watches him shrink into the corner of the couch and wonders what happened to her husband and how she didn’t see the signs soon enough to have prevented it.
They met when she was twenty-five and in one of the best bands she’d ever sang in. As far as he knew, it was love at first sight. Even though he didn’t realize that you can’t see much from the stage with blinding spotlights in your eyes. It made him happy to think she’d spotted him in the crowd then sought him out to say hello—even though he’d actually migrated toward her. But she liked his perception of the night better; it was more magical in a way she needed, so she played along.
At the time, she was hooking up with Greg—one of the guitar players in her band. It wasn’t anything serious. Myra knew she wasn’t pretty enough to hold his attention for longer than the time between insertion and ejaculation. He was just gorgeous and studied classical guitar, so when he pulled out a pick, any girl within earshot got creamy—Myra was no exception. But she knew he knew it and she wasn’t attracted to the fact that what came out when he opened his mouth was not nearly as lovely as the music he created, so she kept him in a fuck-buddy corner and didn’t pay attention to his wandering exploits.
Drew was different. He had tunnel vision for Myra, almost obsessively. He made her nervous because she knew he was paying attention to every nuance of her personality and it excited her—even though he wasn’t really her type. He has blond hair. She prefers brown. He’s lanky. She prefers tall, but with some meat. He’s cynical. She prefers grounded with a dark sense of humor. He hates his mother, but he was great in bed and Myra attributed her multiple orgasms to the fact that he didn’t bring his mother to bed (metaphorically of course). She considered his disdain for his mother a pro, rather than a red flag like Cosmo prints every other month.
She loves to laugh, and she found it odd that he could sit through some of the funniest movies she’d ever seen and never crack a smile. But he thought Myra was one of the most amazing people he’d ever met, and how he saw her made her see him differently, so it became her mission to make him laugh. Then one day she realized he’d hung around longer than any other guy and somehow still liked her. He was a huge proponent of her pursuing her dream, and she his, even though his dream had never really been actualized. He tried to learn guitar, but his profession just sort of became being her biggest fan. He helped at all the shows, played body guard, and even started acting as band manager. Until he found out that she had slept with Greg, then it all fell apart.
She was drowning in devotion by then and couldn’t see anything but ways to make him happy. When she asked Greg to leave, the rest of the band felt betrayed by Drew—the new guy who put a spell on Myra, making them all so easily dispensable. Most of the band members followed Greg to his next band. Drew and Myra threw a dart at a map for a city where they could start over. Unfortunately, recreating the positive, productive relationship Myra had with her Seattle band, had been harder than she thought. Instead of just finding people she got along with, she had to find people she and Drew gelled with. Eight years, three cities, and four bands later, she thought maybe they’d finally done it—until hiring Nick—but she wasn’t going to let another talented musician get away because of Drew’s ever-increasing insecurities.
The clock was ticking on her chance for success and the only thing working in her favor was that she didn’t look thirty-one. She told the last recording company that she was twenty-six and they’d accepted it without question. After all, she doesn’t sing pop. She’s got an Indie-rock flavor and you have to have some life experience to pull that off, so some age is a prerequisite for success. But she knows the years of lying about her age are limited, and she’s on the verge of becoming a professional voice coach, so she spends most of her time praying for a miracle and the rest fighting with Drew. Who had somehow, without her noticing, become her biggest fan for all the wrong reasons—the kind that prevent him from doing anything other than refusing to kowtow to the man simply for the sake of doing so. Not because, like her, he feels he has a greater purpose as the servant to some form of art, but because nothing he ever wants to do will result in the accolades Myra gets when she walks off stage, so all his interests seem pointless.
Drew is drowning in the reasons he fell in love with Myra, and when she tries to reach out and give him a hand to come up for air, he views it as another of her victories and shrugs it off with a diffident fuck you. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t make him see that she also feels like a failure. She has to work at a coffee shop to pay the bills for god’s sake. She has no close family or long-term friendships, and the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with is checking out on her one long painful day at a time. And he doesn’t get it because he’s never awake early enough to see her crying into her bowl of Cheerios. Slowly, ever so slowly, the crack in their foundation has grown and now the iceberg of a relationship Myra thought she’d put her dreams in second place to build, is about to melt—taking her youth with it. All she wants is her biggest fan and husband back.
“Hey! You wanna go to the beach?” Myra says with exaggerated enthusiasm, hoping to shorten the usual amount of time it takes to convince him to do spontaneous things.
“What?” He looks annoyed.
“You don’t have to do the dishes if we go to the beach. Let’s just throw the tent in the truck, some food in a shopping bag, and hit the road.”
“Isn’t the band supposed to be here like all weekend?”
Myra thinks a moment.
“Let’s all go!”
Drew checks out and goes back to staring at the television.
“Seriously—c’mon. There’s a new guy—let’s go do some bonding stuff.”
“I doubt they’ll go, but if you can actually convince them all--then fine, I’ll go.”
Myra smiles. He’s forgotten about her powers of persuasion because he’s grown impervious to them, but she knows he’s about to “eat it” and she squeals. “You might as well just start packing now.”
“Whatever,” he mumbles.
An hour later, Myra does the victory dance.
Drew groans while digging the camping gear out of the closet.
The next morning, Ben, one of the guitar players—a tattoo artist with neck to ankle ink—shows up first thing with his wife, Gina (who occasionally plays violin in some of Myra’s more artful songs). Myra is excited they brought breakfast-bagels because no one ever washed the dishes. Drew has a hard time waking up after only a couple hours of sleep because he refused to go to bed early with Myra. Not that this is new, she just hoped he might at least try to get some sleep before the trip. Myra turns on music to coax him awake. Ben runs in and jumps on the bed. Gina giggles as Drew fights to pull the pillow over his head. Nick and his girlfriend, Lori, arrive just in time to see Ben rip the blanket off Drew, running through the living room wearing it like a cape. Seth, the other guitar player, is the last to arrive and everyone gawks at his new haircut. His light brown hair looks like a spiky cactus atop his head. Instead of falling over his shoulders in waves, the way it had just a few days ago. Myra almost laughs, but thinks better of it because Seth is the sensitive type, and eventually she decides it’s cute. The girls dig out extra sweaters from Myra’s closet while the guys load Seth’s orange cargo van with everyone’s gear.
“Wait!” Myra yells just before Drew locks the front door. She almost forgot her small brown stuffed monkey with a sun-bleached ass. It sits on the dash during all road trips. Myra makes it flip other drivers off when Drew starts road-raging. It makes him smile. For Myra, the monkey is a reminder of one of her best memories: the first time Drew took her to the beach. It was the middle of the night. His truck had a flat and her car couldn’t make it because the bolt attaching the alternator had busted earlier that week. Myra wanted to go so bad he used a flathead screwdriver and a clamp to work some “magic” so he could take her. Three hours later, they made it to the beach just in time to watch the sunrise, and even though he hadn’t said it yet, that’s when she knew he was in love with her. The monkey was dubbed a voyeur due to the hormonal explosion its beady little red eyes witnessed on the way to the beach. And all the jokes about it made Drew laugh, so Myra brought it on all road trips for good luck.
Ben yells for Myra to hustle and Drew waits impatiently at the door while she runs back to the bedroom for the monkey. She stops and gives Drew a quick kiss. “Are we gonna have fun?” she asks.
“I hope so,” he sighs—as if he’s already given up.
She hopes Drew won’t have a meltdown in front of their friends.
Myra had hoped for a Kumbaya type of ride to the beach, but the guys take the first two benches leaving all three girls in the back. Myra spends half the ride counseling Lori through a pregnancy scare that, based on the supply of test strips in her purse, is likely a weekly occurrence. The rest of the ride she gets a hushed update on the Hungarian Gina met at a tattoo convention in Boise. It was the closest she ever came to cheating on Ben, and she’s still struggling with confusion fueled by late night phone calls. Gina mumbles that she isn’t sure what she’s going to do while staring out the window with a vacant expression. Myra tries to offer some sort of helpful advice, but really just wants to blurt out, I’m so sorry that your perfect olive complexion, exotic features, and large breasts have resulted in so many men pining for your affection—get over yourself! Instead, she smiles and tells Gina they should have a coffee-date to talk more when the men aren’t around.
As Myra stares at the empty shoulder of road between the side of the van and wall of pine trees, she wishes she had men pursuing her, or at least just one. (The one who signed the piece of paper agreeing to do so for the rest of her life.) But he doesn’t seem to even like her anymore. The slow-growing awareness that she might be alone soon creeps up with a more powerful rush of emotion than she’s used to experiencing. She looks for road-kill because squished dead things give her perspective, but the road is clear and she fights to hold back tears.
“You okay?” Lori asks as she squeezes Myra’s hand.
“I’m fine,” Myra says. “Just a little car sick.”
“I hear ya.” Lori nods and pats her tummy. “Or at least I hope that’s it.” She winks.
“Screw road sick. I’m sick of Seth’s van,” Gina says. She picks up a paperback copy of Kerouac’s Big Sur lying on the floor next to her, flicks at the torn cover, then tosses it aside. “Why does it always smell like burned plastic and bean burritos in here?”
Myra’s reflection in the window is gaunt and pale. She’s never been sexy in a porn star sort of way like Gina or Lori. She’s just girl-next-door pretty. Nothing most guys will go out of their way for. Before Drew, Myra had always been the aggressor. If it weren’t for the microphone in front of her face every other weekend she’d probably never stand out. And her personal style choices don’t help. Her new hair color is bright and harsh, too youthful for her cheeks freckled with age. After her last birthday, the guys started joking that maybe they should put Gina on stage, lip-syncing Myra’s voice to build a bigger following. She took the razzing with stride, but she knew, single or not, men would never desire her the way they did Gina. The closest anyone had ever come was Drew. Now she wonders if he just has nowhere else to go.
Drew ignores her as they all work to set up the campsite. She needs space. The friends are a welcome buffer. And even though they’re putting the wrong poles in each tent, she doesn’t want to disrupt the rhythm with dissent. They won’t believe her until they’re done, anyway, and can see how lopsided the tents are—if they stand at all. Lori pretends the stuffed monkey is talking to her stomach, as if she’s actually pregnant. She looks happy. Myra doesn’t have the heart to tell her that her smoking and excessive drinking could easily be throwing off her monthly cycle. Gina keeps disappearing into the brush with her cell phone—probably talking to the Hungarian.
Myra catches Nick looking at her. Not a casual glance. It lasts too long, and seems apologetic. Myra thinks Drew may have said something to Nick about her, about them, and she feels sick. No one else knowing the magnitude of their misery is the only thing keeping her from completely unraveling. The thought that Drew may have confided their unhappiness in someone so connected to their inner circle, someone they don’t even really know yet or deem trustworthy of such intimate details is unnerving.
“I’m going to the bathroom!” she yells across the campsite.
Lori jumps and drops the monkey.
Drew looks stunned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!”
Ben looks at Gina. “What’s up with her?”
Gina shrugs.
Myra spends an hour alone while the sun is setting trying to convince herself that she read too much into Nick’s stare. Was it just an innocent glance? She feels like an idiot when she remembers that she was standing in front of the food cooler and he was probably just looking for the beer. She can hear everyone back at the campsite laughing, likely sitting around the fire-pit not noticing she’s gone, maybe even grateful. Myra’s strong, whatever it is, she’ll work it out. She can hear it buried in their muffled laughter that becomes more strained as she approaches. Just one of the many excuses they tell themselves not to get involved so they won’t have to care, she thinks. Now she needs someone to look at her apologetically. She wants someone to know and care and put everything on hold to help her, but no one will. She thinks about wandering back into the woods to initiate a manhunt, but she just plops down on a foldout chair and smiles as Gina hands her graham crackers, chocolate squares, and a marshmallow.
Nick is sitting directly across from Myra. She tries to make eye contact, but he stares down at the marshmallow dripping off his stick into the struggling fire. His clear complexion and soft features make him stand out from the other guys in the band. His wavy dark hair is longer on top than when they’d first met six weeks ago. One side is flopping over his left eye in a vulnerable-girl sort of way that makes him look sensitive. Myra wonders if he’s the type of guy that fucks, has sex, or makes love. Most guys just have sex. Drew had always been into fucking. She’d seen enough porn to match his vigor and they’d gone for hours rubbing each other raw, then walked away with sore muscles and scratched up backs. Myra’s elaborate hickey designs were legendary. But after she started developing real feelings for him, she wanted to slow down, take her time and absorb him. She wanted eye contact while holding the back of his head and to push up while he slowly slid inside her. But he really never did bring his mother to bed. For years, Myra had been on her knees facing the wall or hanging off the side of the bed upside down while he rammed his dick so hard inside her she thought he might split her open. After she became numb to the disappointment, she found solace in him being so far away during sex that he never noticed how much her mind wandered. She was upside down so often he never caught the tears that soaked the pillow lying on the floor below her. She gets lost in the hope that Nick likes to make love. She thinks about kissing his nose. She wants to kiss and lick his nose and all of those other strange things she’d done as a teenager while exploring the human body with a willing, equally curious partner. He finally looks up and smiles. Myra blushes and looks away.
A stick pops and embers fly out of the fire pit landing on Myra’s long, blue tie-dye skirt. Drew jumps forward and brushes them off.
Myra smiles and mumbles, “Thanks.”
He looks tired and pulls his chair closer to hers.
“Don’t want to go home with a disfigured wife?” she says.
“I just don’t want to listen to you complain about being disfigured.”
Lori bursts back to life after throwing her cigarette butt into the fire. “I brought a book of funny questions so we can all get to know each other better!”
Gina scoffs. “That shit’s only fun when you’re a teenager and have sexual tension with everyone in the room.”
Myra chokes on a mouth full of beer.
“I have a better idea.” Seth walks over to his van and pulls out a guitar. “I’ve been working on some new stuff I thought you might wanna hear.”
Gina protests with a groan, but Seth ignores her when Ben cheers him on.
Lori makes a pouty face and folds her arms.
Myra listens while Seth plays. She’ll be the one to write the accompanying lyrics, so she tries to concentrate as thick clouds of suffocating gray smoke rise into the darkest tree tops. Everything he plays is so beautiful she feels guilty for being in such a bad mood. By the time he’s finished she has ideas for two songs about suicide and one about cheating that ends with the girl getting to fall asleep and never wake up. Instead, she offers encouragement and assurance that she’ll enjoy coming up with the lyrics. He promises to get it all recorded so she can work with it alone, her preference. Then he climbs into his van to pass out.
“Will you walk with me to the bathroom?” Myra asks Drew.
“I’m exhausted. Just have one of the girls go.”
Gina is staring at her cell phone, thumbs racing around the buttons. Lori is asleep, drooling on the stuffed monkey.
“I’ll go,” Nick says, standing up slowly to stretch.
She feels anxious about being alone with Nick and looks to Drew for reassurance.
Drew looks at Nick and says, “Thanks, man.”
Myra rolls her eyes, grabs a flashlight, and heads down the trail. Nick is quiet most of the way until he says, “So what’s up with you and Drew?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, not wanting to answer the wrong question.
“Are you guys gonna implode and take the band down with you or does it stand alone?”
“Did Drew say something?”
“My parents got divorced—I know the drill.”
Myra feels like he punched her in the gut. She sucks it up. “Drew isn’t in the band, so as long as I’m not huddled in the corner slitting my wrists we’ll keep going.”
“Cool—but not about your marriage falling apart.” He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Shit, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Myra hides in the bathroom for as long as she can without feeling guilty for leaving him waiting.
“You wanna walk down to the beach before we head back?” Nick asks.
Myra shrugs. “Might as well. Not like anyone is waiting up for me.”
Nick asks a bunch of questions about Ben and Gina that Myra tries to answer without invading their privacy. Then he pauses for an uncomfortably long time and finally says, “I think you’re amazing on stage.”
“Thanks.”
“No really, you’re powerful on stage.”
Myra has never been good at responding to compliments and doesn’t say anything.
He pushes a branch blocking the path out of her way. “Sometimes I think I could chart your emotions by your pitch. It’s intense.” The trees break and the trail disappears onto the open beach. He switches off the flashlight.
Myra slips off her shoes and digs her toes into the cold sand, hoping to somehow cool her flushed cheeks as well. The water is black and there are no waves, just a slow tide rolling down the beach in foaming sheets, but the rumble of the ocean is intense and slowly climbs inside her. Suddenly she’s aware of the full moon and how well she can see all the sand dunes covered in night-black sea grass, the scattered driftwood and charred logs, and Nick, who is staring down at her, his face illuminated so well his pale-blue eyes have a supernatural glow. She breaks the gaze and steps back.
They walk closer to the water and he picks up a handful of stones. He sorts through them and holds up a smooth blue, two-inch oval with a perfect hole through the center. “You know what creates that?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Aliens.”
Myra laughs.
“No, really, some Native American tribes believed they could communicate with their ancestors from distant planets. When they were successful, small piles of stones with perfect little pinholes would be left by their “star ancestors” near boulders and at the base of trees as proof of their listening and watching over them. Do you believe someone or something is watching over us?”
“I’d like to.”
He smiles and hands her the stone. “I think it’s rock-boring mollusks.”
Myra laughs. “Next time I feel like shit, I’ll pray to those then.”
“Or you could call me.”
“I appreciate that, Nick. Thanks.”
“I’m serious, Myra.” He stops and steps in front of her. She holds her breath. She doesn’t want to overreact because she can’t imagine him actually wanting to kiss her. She assumes she’s only seeing what she wants to see and holds his gaze so she doesn’t seem like a silly girl the way she felt moments earlier stepping back.
He moves closer and her chest tightens from the realization that his interest in her might be more real than imagined. He leans in and she can see his lips shaking before they touch hers. She can’t imagine why. His girlfriend is barely legal and probably willing to do anything. Why would he want Myra? She’s afraid it’s because she’s so lonely she’d fall for anything right now. Maybe even a tree with a smiley face drawn on it. But she thinks Nick is attractive and she knows she hasn’t put much effort into hiding her attraction, so he probably just knows she’s a sure thing. That, or he’s trying to solidify his place in the band, but that could backfire in a big way, so maybe he really wants her the same way she wants him. In the no-commitment-possible way that leaves them feeling dirty in the morning, but a little less alone and craving more because it gives them something more exciting to think about than their insecurities and tired routines.
He slips his warm tongue into her mouth and one of her knees buckles. He tastes like graham crackers and Prozac. She falls away from the kiss in a jerking motion. He follows and pulls her down onto the sand. She thinks about jumping up, apologizing, and running back to the campsite. But her head is spinning from the rush of his touch. She doesn’t want to stop. This feeling is better than any drug she ever tried and the thought of going back to the tent to pass out in a puddle of silent tears next to Drew isn’t an inviting alternative. Drew will complain about her stealing the blanket. Nick could care less about being covered in itchy sand and prickly sticks, he just wants to be near her. She needs someone to want to be near her. Nick slides his hand up the front of her shirt, then around her back pulling her closer. Goosebumps freckle her stomach. Sinking into the sand, it finally swallows her, and she swallows him as he slides inside her. Nick is a bigger guy than Drew, but never having been weighted by her expectations, he feels lighter. He’s never seen her worst, and as he stares down at her she knows he’s seeing the best version of her and it gives her the confidence to reciprocate every thrust.
She stares up at his bright clear eyes not dulled by memories of fights that lasted all night ending in forced apologies. He seems more whole than Drew—less afraid. He goes slow and enjoys her. Somewhere in her mind—distracted by orgasm, she’s knows it’s all a lie, but her body fools her into believing he’s there for her, as much, if not more, than he’s there for himself. Just when she thinks she may hyperventilate from the long stint of short sharp breathes, she tells him to slow down. He buries his head in her hair and inhales deep, satisfying the last of his senses to enjoy her. Then, as her stomach tightens and her toes curl, she looks up at the clear night sky, and for the first time in months, if not years, life doesn’t seem so bad.
When they get back to camp, everyone has gone to bed and abandoned the smoldering fire. Nick kicks some ash up over the embers and whispers goodnight. Myra climbs into the tent with Drew, who is passed out. Had Drew been gone that long with Gina or Lori, Myra would have chewed off all of her fingernails. He grumbles as she pulls the blanket over her, lying as far away from him as possible without licking the side of the tent. She can still feel Nick—lying so close to Drew with Nick still inside her makes her heart race. She finally falls asleep as the morning sun glows green through the tent walls, straining her eyes, forcing them to close.
She wakes up alone and lingers in the glowing green bubble wondering what it will be like to wake up every morning alone. After an initial pang of sorrow, she realizes it stems from a need she hasn’t had fulfilled in years and lets it go. The same way she’s starting to let herself go. She feels freed from the constraint of spending every waking moment formulating a fantasy world where her marriage thrives while she lives in reality withering. The only time she sees a glimmer of the made-up world’s existence is through happy pretenses for the sake of others. The idea of ending the charade is freeing.
She steps out into the bright midday sun. Lori is sitting at the picnic table pretending to feed the monkey a banana after tying ribbons around its ears. Gina is buried in her cell phone the same way Myra left her the night before.
“Where is everybody?” Myra asks.
“Seth took them on a nature hike,” Lori says.
Myra opens a cold can of Spaghetti-O’s and digs in with a plastic spoon.
“That’s disgusting,” Gina says.
Myra takes a few bites, then tosses the can in the trash and steals the monkey’s banana, which doesn’t taste any better. She throws the last half in the trash. She’s taken solace for so long in butterscotch candy and her coffee addiction, she had forgotten what it feels like to be so aroused that food is unsatisfying.
Lori scoffs at the stolen, then wasted banana.
Myra rolls her eyes. “For god’s sake, Lori. The monkey’s not real and you’re not pregnant. Get over yourself!”
Lori gasps and hisses, “Bitch.” She stomps away from camp.
“It’s about time,” Gina says. “She was driving me crazy.”
Myra laughs.
“So you and Nick took forever getting back last night.” Gina glances up from her phone to scrutinize Myra’s reaction.
“We wandered down to the beach,” Myra says as steady as possible, trying to seem disinterested in her own response.
“Uh huh,” Gina says, then looks back down.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Myra asks.
“I don’t know, should it mean something?” Gina sets the phone down and locks her gaze on Myra.
Myra pauses. She’s terrified of coming unraveled. “No, you just said that weird.”
“I don’t think so. Maybe you heard it weird for a reason.”
“Whatever.”
“Look… I know he made a pass at you last night. You were gone way too long. He hit on me after you stormed off to the bathroom the first time, so when you both didn’t come back right away, I knew exactly what was going on.”
“What do you mean he hit on you?”
“I decided to go look for you and he followed. He gave me some stupid spiel about how amazing I play violin, then he tried to kiss me.”
Myra feels like she just wrapped a car going ninety miles an hour around the tree with the smiley face drawn on it and is about to lose consciousness.
“You’re turning green,” Gina says. “Are you okay? Shit!—did you fall for it?”
“No,” Myra says. “But I wanted to. I really really wanted to—”
“Yeah, he’s cute, but not worth risking Drew over.”
“My marriage is a pile of shit, Gina.”
“I know. But you two used to be amazing. I just figure that’s how marriage goes. Fuck good days and bad days. I’ve been with Ben long enough to know that success is wagered on striking the balance between the good years and the bad years. You’re just having a bad year.”
“We’ve had too many bad years then.”
“Well, all I know is that if Ben was as devoted to my goals as Drew is to yours I wouldn’t be so hung up on this damn Hungarian right now. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing violin for you, but I aspire for more. It’s hard to find time for me. We’re here for Ben and he has no qualms about that being his top priority. Just once I’d like to wake up and hear, So what do you want to do today, Gina?”
Myra never confides in Gina, so most of her comments feel empty because they’re uninformed. And she doubts Gina has ever been any guys consolation prize, so she doesn’t feel like she’ll ever understand. “I appreciate that, Gina, I really do, but I don’t feel well. I think I just need to take a walk and clear my head.”
“Whatever,” Gina says, obviously annoyed that Myra won’t confide in her.
But Myra can’t talk to anyone about this. She can barely make sense of it herself. Listening to someone else try to sort it out just makes her want to scream and rip all her hair out in large painful chunks.
Myra finds an empty stretch of beach and sits down on the wet compacted sand near the water. The buzzing in her head drowns out the sound of the wind and waves. She hopes someplace in the world there’s a massive earthquake happening that will cause a tsunami on this beach. Whether Nick used her or she used him, she feels to blame. She’s older, she should have known he’d stick his dick anywhere he could get it wet and he didn’t really want or need or see her. She wasn’t someone special that he admired. She was just Friday night’s fuck. Friday night’s ego boost. Friday night’s distraction from himself. She thinks about changing her name to Friday, opening the floodgate of a whole new wall of tears.
He may have gone slower, but the full force of him fucking her because he couldn’t get Gina hits Myra as hard as Drew’s cock every other Wednesday while he’s punishing her the only safe way he knows how—within a charade of intimacy she can never talk to him about, fearful of destroying his few remaining shards of pride. She sacrificed everything for a blink of affection from another person and is left, yet again, feeling like nothing but a hole, this time in someone else’s collection. Someone so unimportant she can’t believe she let him in. She wants to rinse the smell of him off her skin. She strips down to her peach cotton bra and panties then wades in. The water is so cold it pinches her spine, but it feels better than wallowing in the lonely cavern in her mind. Her eyes throb and eardrums ring from the stinging cold, uniting her mind and body, and she knows exactly what she has to do.
Myra walks straight back to camp. Everyone is eating. Nick is sitting next to Lori with his arm around her. She ignores him and pulls Seth aside. “I need a ride home,” she says.
He looks her up and down and seems worried. “Sure, yeah, no problem—I’ll get my keys.”
Myra grabs his arm. “Don’t tell anyone where we’re going.”
He nods in agreement.
Drew stares at her as she climbs in the van but doesn’t say a word and never asks Seth where they’re going. He just looks pissed and shakes his head as he takes down a hot dog in two bites. Myra wishes he’d run up to the van and demand that she talk to him. Instead, he just sits there. It reinforces her confidence that she’s making the right decision. She looks away and stares straight ahead at one of the lopsided tents.
Seth is quiet for most of the two-hour ride home. He’s generally quiet anyway, so she isn’t sure how much of it is due to her somber mood or if he’s just being Seth, but he usually turns the radio on and hasn’t, so she thinks he’s trying to give her some peace. “You okay?” he finally asks a few miles from home.
Myra smiles. “I think I am now—thanks.”
He pulls into her driveway, turns off the ignition, then takes a deep breath. “I’m afraid it may be a while until I see you again, so I want to tell you something.”
“Why would you not see me for a while?” she asks.
He looks back at her with a disappointed, knowing expression.
“Sorry,” Myra says.
“I just want you to know that I love you.” His cheeks flare up bright pink. “And I don’t mean that I’m in love with you. I just really care about you and Drew and I want you to know that you’re my family and I would do anything for you guys, so I hope you’d let me know if there is anything you need.”
Myra stares back at Seth. He blurs in a puddle of tears and starts to look like the rock she almost swam head first into earlier that day, but this time she lunges at it full force for a hug. “Thank you,” she says with as much conviction as she can muster.
He drives away and she wishes he’d stay longer, but she knows that Seth’s magic comes in powerful but small doses and will never generate the flood needed to pull her completely out of herself right now. Those few moments of genuine concern did more for her than he’ll ever know, though. She slowly walks inside and doesn’t feel as compelled to race around the apartment packing up all her possessions the way she had imagined herself doing for most of the ride home. Instead, she sits down and looks around, taking in the energy of her and Drew’s space. It’s a good space. A little messy, but there’s love in the corners. Love she hasn’t noticed or felt in a really long time. But love she can’t run away from. If she’s going to leave, she has to tell him why, and she has to walk away with a clear head. She packs a few important things then waits. For two days she waits, sorting through good and bad memories. And just when she thinks Drew may never come home, she hears his key in the door.
He’s startled to find her sitting on the couch by the door. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” He sits down next to her.
“I was hoping we could talk,” Myra says.
Before she can continue, he reaches down into his duffle bag. “I got you something,” he says quietly. “We stopped at one of those stores you like.” He hands her a large ball of pink tissue paper. She unravels it and finds a small pale wood box with a starfish etched in the lid. She opens it and runs her finger along the pink velvet inner lining.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save myself soon enough to save us,” he says with more emotion than she’d felt from him in years.
Myra is holding the small smooth blue oval stone with a perfect hole through the center that Nick handed her the night on the beach. She drops it inside the box and closes it.
“So, what do you want to do today, Drew?”
Usually she’s content to read a book while hiding in the corner near the bathroom where no one likes to sit. But today she made the mistake of looking up at the bland menu written in a variety of pastel chalks on the blackboard hung crooked on the one green wall behind the front counter—the words Strawberry Cremosa in pink smeared almost completely away. The same chipped, dark-blue paint is on every other wall. The same faded, black chairs are scattered around the room in uneven numbers at tables where middle-aged businessmen with bad posture, hyper high school students, wannabe writers, and pregnant women with latte addictions—hoping their new belly pooch isn’t showing enough to elicit a scowl from health-conscious patrons—hide from their responsibility-laden homes.
Myra used to love this place for the same reasons. It was one of the first places she sang at open-mic night after moving to Portland, Oregon with her husband, Drew, two years ago. The energy of that night was transcendent. She knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She applied for a job—the intent being a temporary arrangement while she settled into a comfortable routine in a new city and got a band together.
Myra and Drew often move to new places under the guise of career goals and the quest for new experiences. But it’s really just boredom and dissatisfaction in never having developed strong enough ties to nurture a compulsion to stay anywhere longer than a year or two. Five minutes earlier, while glancing around the rundown café that never changes—the same way she fears she might—she became overwhelmed with a sort of panic that grew into an anywhere-but-here frenzy. And this time when she wrote I quit she pressed so hard it left an indention in the tabletop. Nothing would stop her from delivering it to the child standing behind the counter pretending to be a man by wearing a nametag that says Management.
His pale grey eyes stare blankly at her beneath a mop of dark blond hair. She wants to strangle him. He’s ten years younger than her and was hired months after her. He was, supposedly, given the manager title because he’d gone to college while she was busy coping with the afterburn of a miserable childhood that she—more quickly than he learned calculus—realized the world didn’t give a shit about. Fortunately for him, she muscled through the emotional chaos and somehow worked there long enough to train him on how to do his job. He now makes more than double what she does, tips included. Yet all those years of college hadn’t taught him how to notice that his girlfriend (hired a week after he took over as acting manager) is fucking one of the delivery drivers behind the dumpster once a week. Myra shouldn’t be shocked that he can’t read her body language, but she’s still disappointed.
“Are you gonna finish your shift?” he asks.
Myra groans. She pulls off her faded black apron, wads it up and throws it on the floor in front of the counter, then flips him off and stomps out. Pausing to slam the door, the hours sign attached to the glass with yellow sun-stained suction cups falls, scattering orange plastic letters and numbers across the entrance.
The late spring air is brisk, but the clear sky is a welcome change from last week’s concrete wall of rain. Knowing Drew is still asleep at home adds to her fury, so she wanders through some of the small, eclectic shops she’s wanted to browse since first moving to the city of roses but hadn’t because she's always with Drew and he complains about places that smell old. Myra loves these shops. She’s drawn to the residual energy on the second-hand merchandise. Most of the time it’s obvious that the item went out of style, but sometimes she finds things that must have been abandoned because of heartbreak or death. At least that’s what it would take for her to part with something that seems so precious. She loves small boxes: jewelry boxes, music boxes, metal boxes, wood boxes, anything with a lid and especially with a key. She likes imagining what had been kept inside. Today she finds a small pewter box with blue velvet lining so worn she can feel the weight of the secrets it held. She thinks about buying it to prevent a teenager from filling it with poorly rolled joints, but Myra doesn’t have any notes, pictures, or inherited treasures, and she never takes off her wedding ring. She wishes she had something special to keep inside it, but she knows the box will just sit empty. Closing it slowly, she walks away.
Sure enough, the apartment is silent as she walks in, so she sits down on the couch to watch television. Might as well enjoy the cable while we’ve got it, she thinks. But the longer it takes Drew to wake up, the angrier she gets, and after each commercial break she turns the sound up louder until he finally wanders out at two o’clock in his boxer-briefs, aggravated by the noise.
“Jesus, are you going deaf?” he says, snatching the remote off her lap.
“Sorry,” Myra says. “I was distracted.”
“What are you doing home, anyway? Weren’t you supposed to work until five?”
Myra drops her voice to imitate his agitated tone. “What are you doing asleep, weren’t you supposed to be out scheduling shows for the band?”
“Whatever, that’s Nick’s job now.”
Nick is the new drummer that Drew doesn’t like because he has a degree in advertising, which encroaches on Drew’s only role in the band. And Drew thinks Nick has a thing for Myra. She thinks Drew is crazy because Nick has an adorable girlfriend with curly blonde hair down to her perky little twenty-four-year-old ass. But Myra doesn’t want to convince Drew otherwise because it’s the first time in two years he’s shown any sign of still caring about her for longer than a few seconds when he pecks her goodnight or says he loves her because he sees someone on television say it and realizes it’s been weeks since he’d said it. She lets the jealousy drag on, but it will have to end soon because she fears it may result in the same outcome that caused the last good band to fall apart.
“No, that’s your job. Nick just offered to help.”
“I don’t need his kind of help.”
“He just wants to prove himself. Cut the guy some slack.”
“So why are you here? No wait, I already know! You dyed your hair bright-red last night because you finally murdered your twerp of a manager and now we’re running from the law.”
Myra wishes they were running from the law. It would be a distraction from watching Drew check out on life by smoking too much pot and playing video games for so long most people would compare it to a part-time job—on bad weeks, a full-time job. Neither of which he has. Everything is paid for by Myra’s paychecks, which barely cover anything. During a good month, she makes extra money singing at local clubs and café’s—including her own place of employment. Now she has no idea what they’re going to do. And the last person she can turn to for advice is Drew. He’ll just load a bowl and cheer her on for finally standing up to her manager, then disappear, feeling even less obligated to do anything productive. All the while safe in the knowledge that Myra will fix it, because hell, she always does. After, of course, cleaning the house because Drew doesn’t want to feel like the house-bitch, so even though Myra works full time, plus the band, she’s expected to contribute 50% to the house work, if not more, because he supposedly doesn’t want to screw up the things she likes done a particular way. And the last thing she wants to be is the “husband” who comes home from work every night saying, Bitch, why isn’t my house clean. But she can’t help admitting, to herself at least, as she looks around at the pile of laundry in the corner, one sock in the middle of the living room, the sink full of dishes, and the purple couch covered in white cat hair, that her foresisters quest for equality isn’t doing her much good.
“I thought you were gonna load the dishwasher before you came to bed last night?” Myra says.
“I thought about it.”
“Wow! Progress.”
“Whatever.” Drew rolls his eyes and turns the TV up louder than before.
She watches him shrink into the corner of the couch and wonders what happened to her husband and how she didn’t see the signs soon enough to have prevented it.
They met when she was twenty-five and in one of the best bands she’d ever sang in. As far as he knew, it was love at first sight. Even though he didn’t realize that you can’t see much from the stage with blinding spotlights in your eyes. It made him happy to think she’d spotted him in the crowd then sought him out to say hello—even though he’d actually migrated toward her. But she liked his perception of the night better; it was more magical in a way she needed, so she played along.
At the time, she was hooking up with Greg—one of the guitar players in her band. It wasn’t anything serious. Myra knew she wasn’t pretty enough to hold his attention for longer than the time between insertion and ejaculation. He was just gorgeous and studied classical guitar, so when he pulled out a pick, any girl within earshot got creamy—Myra was no exception. But she knew he knew it and she wasn’t attracted to the fact that what came out when he opened his mouth was not nearly as lovely as the music he created, so she kept him in a fuck-buddy corner and didn’t pay attention to his wandering exploits.
Drew was different. He had tunnel vision for Myra, almost obsessively. He made her nervous because she knew he was paying attention to every nuance of her personality and it excited her—even though he wasn’t really her type. He has blond hair. She prefers brown. He’s lanky. She prefers tall, but with some meat. He’s cynical. She prefers grounded with a dark sense of humor. He hates his mother, but he was great in bed and Myra attributed her multiple orgasms to the fact that he didn’t bring his mother to bed (metaphorically of course). She considered his disdain for his mother a pro, rather than a red flag like Cosmo prints every other month.
She loves to laugh, and she found it odd that he could sit through some of the funniest movies she’d ever seen and never crack a smile. But he thought Myra was one of the most amazing people he’d ever met, and how he saw her made her see him differently, so it became her mission to make him laugh. Then one day she realized he’d hung around longer than any other guy and somehow still liked her. He was a huge proponent of her pursuing her dream, and she his, even though his dream had never really been actualized. He tried to learn guitar, but his profession just sort of became being her biggest fan. He helped at all the shows, played body guard, and even started acting as band manager. Until he found out that she had slept with Greg, then it all fell apart.
She was drowning in devotion by then and couldn’t see anything but ways to make him happy. When she asked Greg to leave, the rest of the band felt betrayed by Drew—the new guy who put a spell on Myra, making them all so easily dispensable. Most of the band members followed Greg to his next band. Drew and Myra threw a dart at a map for a city where they could start over. Unfortunately, recreating the positive, productive relationship Myra had with her Seattle band, had been harder than she thought. Instead of just finding people she got along with, she had to find people she and Drew gelled with. Eight years, three cities, and four bands later, she thought maybe they’d finally done it—until hiring Nick—but she wasn’t going to let another talented musician get away because of Drew’s ever-increasing insecurities.
The clock was ticking on her chance for success and the only thing working in her favor was that she didn’t look thirty-one. She told the last recording company that she was twenty-six and they’d accepted it without question. After all, she doesn’t sing pop. She’s got an Indie-rock flavor and you have to have some life experience to pull that off, so some age is a prerequisite for success. But she knows the years of lying about her age are limited, and she’s on the verge of becoming a professional voice coach, so she spends most of her time praying for a miracle and the rest fighting with Drew. Who had somehow, without her noticing, become her biggest fan for all the wrong reasons—the kind that prevent him from doing anything other than refusing to kowtow to the man simply for the sake of doing so. Not because, like her, he feels he has a greater purpose as the servant to some form of art, but because nothing he ever wants to do will result in the accolades Myra gets when she walks off stage, so all his interests seem pointless.
Drew is drowning in the reasons he fell in love with Myra, and when she tries to reach out and give him a hand to come up for air, he views it as another of her victories and shrugs it off with a diffident fuck you. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t make him see that she also feels like a failure. She has to work at a coffee shop to pay the bills for god’s sake. She has no close family or long-term friendships, and the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with is checking out on her one long painful day at a time. And he doesn’t get it because he’s never awake early enough to see her crying into her bowl of Cheerios. Slowly, ever so slowly, the crack in their foundation has grown and now the iceberg of a relationship Myra thought she’d put her dreams in second place to build, is about to melt—taking her youth with it. All she wants is her biggest fan and husband back.
“Hey! You wanna go to the beach?” Myra says with exaggerated enthusiasm, hoping to shorten the usual amount of time it takes to convince him to do spontaneous things.
“What?” He looks annoyed.
“You don’t have to do the dishes if we go to the beach. Let’s just throw the tent in the truck, some food in a shopping bag, and hit the road.”
“Isn’t the band supposed to be here like all weekend?”
Myra thinks a moment.
“Let’s all go!”
Drew checks out and goes back to staring at the television.
“Seriously—c’mon. There’s a new guy—let’s go do some bonding stuff.”
“I doubt they’ll go, but if you can actually convince them all--then fine, I’ll go.”
Myra smiles. He’s forgotten about her powers of persuasion because he’s grown impervious to them, but she knows he’s about to “eat it” and she squeals. “You might as well just start packing now.”
“Whatever,” he mumbles.
An hour later, Myra does the victory dance.
Drew groans while digging the camping gear out of the closet.
The next morning, Ben, one of the guitar players—a tattoo artist with neck to ankle ink—shows up first thing with his wife, Gina (who occasionally plays violin in some of Myra’s more artful songs). Myra is excited they brought breakfast-bagels because no one ever washed the dishes. Drew has a hard time waking up after only a couple hours of sleep because he refused to go to bed early with Myra. Not that this is new, she just hoped he might at least try to get some sleep before the trip. Myra turns on music to coax him awake. Ben runs in and jumps on the bed. Gina giggles as Drew fights to pull the pillow over his head. Nick and his girlfriend, Lori, arrive just in time to see Ben rip the blanket off Drew, running through the living room wearing it like a cape. Seth, the other guitar player, is the last to arrive and everyone gawks at his new haircut. His light brown hair looks like a spiky cactus atop his head. Instead of falling over his shoulders in waves, the way it had just a few days ago. Myra almost laughs, but thinks better of it because Seth is the sensitive type, and eventually she decides it’s cute. The girls dig out extra sweaters from Myra’s closet while the guys load Seth’s orange cargo van with everyone’s gear.
“Wait!” Myra yells just before Drew locks the front door. She almost forgot her small brown stuffed monkey with a sun-bleached ass. It sits on the dash during all road trips. Myra makes it flip other drivers off when Drew starts road-raging. It makes him smile. For Myra, the monkey is a reminder of one of her best memories: the first time Drew took her to the beach. It was the middle of the night. His truck had a flat and her car couldn’t make it because the bolt attaching the alternator had busted earlier that week. Myra wanted to go so bad he used a flathead screwdriver and a clamp to work some “magic” so he could take her. Three hours later, they made it to the beach just in time to watch the sunrise, and even though he hadn’t said it yet, that’s when she knew he was in love with her. The monkey was dubbed a voyeur due to the hormonal explosion its beady little red eyes witnessed on the way to the beach. And all the jokes about it made Drew laugh, so Myra brought it on all road trips for good luck.
Ben yells for Myra to hustle and Drew waits impatiently at the door while she runs back to the bedroom for the monkey. She stops and gives Drew a quick kiss. “Are we gonna have fun?” she asks.
“I hope so,” he sighs—as if he’s already given up.
She hopes Drew won’t have a meltdown in front of their friends.
Myra had hoped for a Kumbaya type of ride to the beach, but the guys take the first two benches leaving all three girls in the back. Myra spends half the ride counseling Lori through a pregnancy scare that, based on the supply of test strips in her purse, is likely a weekly occurrence. The rest of the ride she gets a hushed update on the Hungarian Gina met at a tattoo convention in Boise. It was the closest she ever came to cheating on Ben, and she’s still struggling with confusion fueled by late night phone calls. Gina mumbles that she isn’t sure what she’s going to do while staring out the window with a vacant expression. Myra tries to offer some sort of helpful advice, but really just wants to blurt out, I’m so sorry that your perfect olive complexion, exotic features, and large breasts have resulted in so many men pining for your affection—get over yourself! Instead, she smiles and tells Gina they should have a coffee-date to talk more when the men aren’t around.
As Myra stares at the empty shoulder of road between the side of the van and wall of pine trees, she wishes she had men pursuing her, or at least just one. (The one who signed the piece of paper agreeing to do so for the rest of her life.) But he doesn’t seem to even like her anymore. The slow-growing awareness that she might be alone soon creeps up with a more powerful rush of emotion than she’s used to experiencing. She looks for road-kill because squished dead things give her perspective, but the road is clear and she fights to hold back tears.
“You okay?” Lori asks as she squeezes Myra’s hand.
“I’m fine,” Myra says. “Just a little car sick.”
“I hear ya.” Lori nods and pats her tummy. “Or at least I hope that’s it.” She winks.
“Screw road sick. I’m sick of Seth’s van,” Gina says. She picks up a paperback copy of Kerouac’s Big Sur lying on the floor next to her, flicks at the torn cover, then tosses it aside. “Why does it always smell like burned plastic and bean burritos in here?”
Myra’s reflection in the window is gaunt and pale. She’s never been sexy in a porn star sort of way like Gina or Lori. She’s just girl-next-door pretty. Nothing most guys will go out of their way for. Before Drew, Myra had always been the aggressor. If it weren’t for the microphone in front of her face every other weekend she’d probably never stand out. And her personal style choices don’t help. Her new hair color is bright and harsh, too youthful for her cheeks freckled with age. After her last birthday, the guys started joking that maybe they should put Gina on stage, lip-syncing Myra’s voice to build a bigger following. She took the razzing with stride, but she knew, single or not, men would never desire her the way they did Gina. The closest anyone had ever come was Drew. Now she wonders if he just has nowhere else to go.
Drew ignores her as they all work to set up the campsite. She needs space. The friends are a welcome buffer. And even though they’re putting the wrong poles in each tent, she doesn’t want to disrupt the rhythm with dissent. They won’t believe her until they’re done, anyway, and can see how lopsided the tents are—if they stand at all. Lori pretends the stuffed monkey is talking to her stomach, as if she’s actually pregnant. She looks happy. Myra doesn’t have the heart to tell her that her smoking and excessive drinking could easily be throwing off her monthly cycle. Gina keeps disappearing into the brush with her cell phone—probably talking to the Hungarian.
Myra catches Nick looking at her. Not a casual glance. It lasts too long, and seems apologetic. Myra thinks Drew may have said something to Nick about her, about them, and she feels sick. No one else knowing the magnitude of their misery is the only thing keeping her from completely unraveling. The thought that Drew may have confided their unhappiness in someone so connected to their inner circle, someone they don’t even really know yet or deem trustworthy of such intimate details is unnerving.
“I’m going to the bathroom!” she yells across the campsite.
Lori jumps and drops the monkey.
Drew looks stunned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!”
Ben looks at Gina. “What’s up with her?”
Gina shrugs.
Myra spends an hour alone while the sun is setting trying to convince herself that she read too much into Nick’s stare. Was it just an innocent glance? She feels like an idiot when she remembers that she was standing in front of the food cooler and he was probably just looking for the beer. She can hear everyone back at the campsite laughing, likely sitting around the fire-pit not noticing she’s gone, maybe even grateful. Myra’s strong, whatever it is, she’ll work it out. She can hear it buried in their muffled laughter that becomes more strained as she approaches. Just one of the many excuses they tell themselves not to get involved so they won’t have to care, she thinks. Now she needs someone to look at her apologetically. She wants someone to know and care and put everything on hold to help her, but no one will. She thinks about wandering back into the woods to initiate a manhunt, but she just plops down on a foldout chair and smiles as Gina hands her graham crackers, chocolate squares, and a marshmallow.
Nick is sitting directly across from Myra. She tries to make eye contact, but he stares down at the marshmallow dripping off his stick into the struggling fire. His clear complexion and soft features make him stand out from the other guys in the band. His wavy dark hair is longer on top than when they’d first met six weeks ago. One side is flopping over his left eye in a vulnerable-girl sort of way that makes him look sensitive. Myra wonders if he’s the type of guy that fucks, has sex, or makes love. Most guys just have sex. Drew had always been into fucking. She’d seen enough porn to match his vigor and they’d gone for hours rubbing each other raw, then walked away with sore muscles and scratched up backs. Myra’s elaborate hickey designs were legendary. But after she started developing real feelings for him, she wanted to slow down, take her time and absorb him. She wanted eye contact while holding the back of his head and to push up while he slowly slid inside her. But he really never did bring his mother to bed. For years, Myra had been on her knees facing the wall or hanging off the side of the bed upside down while he rammed his dick so hard inside her she thought he might split her open. After she became numb to the disappointment, she found solace in him being so far away during sex that he never noticed how much her mind wandered. She was upside down so often he never caught the tears that soaked the pillow lying on the floor below her. She gets lost in the hope that Nick likes to make love. She thinks about kissing his nose. She wants to kiss and lick his nose and all of those other strange things she’d done as a teenager while exploring the human body with a willing, equally curious partner. He finally looks up and smiles. Myra blushes and looks away.
A stick pops and embers fly out of the fire pit landing on Myra’s long, blue tie-dye skirt. Drew jumps forward and brushes them off.
Myra smiles and mumbles, “Thanks.”
He looks tired and pulls his chair closer to hers.
“Don’t want to go home with a disfigured wife?” she says.
“I just don’t want to listen to you complain about being disfigured.”
Lori bursts back to life after throwing her cigarette butt into the fire. “I brought a book of funny questions so we can all get to know each other better!”
Gina scoffs. “That shit’s only fun when you’re a teenager and have sexual tension with everyone in the room.”
Myra chokes on a mouth full of beer.
“I have a better idea.” Seth walks over to his van and pulls out a guitar. “I’ve been working on some new stuff I thought you might wanna hear.”
Gina protests with a groan, but Seth ignores her when Ben cheers him on.
Lori makes a pouty face and folds her arms.
Myra listens while Seth plays. She’ll be the one to write the accompanying lyrics, so she tries to concentrate as thick clouds of suffocating gray smoke rise into the darkest tree tops. Everything he plays is so beautiful she feels guilty for being in such a bad mood. By the time he’s finished she has ideas for two songs about suicide and one about cheating that ends with the girl getting to fall asleep and never wake up. Instead, she offers encouragement and assurance that she’ll enjoy coming up with the lyrics. He promises to get it all recorded so she can work with it alone, her preference. Then he climbs into his van to pass out.
“Will you walk with me to the bathroom?” Myra asks Drew.
“I’m exhausted. Just have one of the girls go.”
Gina is staring at her cell phone, thumbs racing around the buttons. Lori is asleep, drooling on the stuffed monkey.
“I’ll go,” Nick says, standing up slowly to stretch.
She feels anxious about being alone with Nick and looks to Drew for reassurance.
Drew looks at Nick and says, “Thanks, man.”
Myra rolls her eyes, grabs a flashlight, and heads down the trail. Nick is quiet most of the way until he says, “So what’s up with you and Drew?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, not wanting to answer the wrong question.
“Are you guys gonna implode and take the band down with you or does it stand alone?”
“Did Drew say something?”
“My parents got divorced—I know the drill.”
Myra feels like he punched her in the gut. She sucks it up. “Drew isn’t in the band, so as long as I’m not huddled in the corner slitting my wrists we’ll keep going.”
“Cool—but not about your marriage falling apart.” He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Shit, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Myra hides in the bathroom for as long as she can without feeling guilty for leaving him waiting.
“You wanna walk down to the beach before we head back?” Nick asks.
Myra shrugs. “Might as well. Not like anyone is waiting up for me.”
Nick asks a bunch of questions about Ben and Gina that Myra tries to answer without invading their privacy. Then he pauses for an uncomfortably long time and finally says, “I think you’re amazing on stage.”
“Thanks.”
“No really, you’re powerful on stage.”
Myra has never been good at responding to compliments and doesn’t say anything.
He pushes a branch blocking the path out of her way. “Sometimes I think I could chart your emotions by your pitch. It’s intense.” The trees break and the trail disappears onto the open beach. He switches off the flashlight.
Myra slips off her shoes and digs her toes into the cold sand, hoping to somehow cool her flushed cheeks as well. The water is black and there are no waves, just a slow tide rolling down the beach in foaming sheets, but the rumble of the ocean is intense and slowly climbs inside her. Suddenly she’s aware of the full moon and how well she can see all the sand dunes covered in night-black sea grass, the scattered driftwood and charred logs, and Nick, who is staring down at her, his face illuminated so well his pale-blue eyes have a supernatural glow. She breaks the gaze and steps back.
They walk closer to the water and he picks up a handful of stones. He sorts through them and holds up a smooth blue, two-inch oval with a perfect hole through the center. “You know what creates that?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“Aliens.”
Myra laughs.
“No, really, some Native American tribes believed they could communicate with their ancestors from distant planets. When they were successful, small piles of stones with perfect little pinholes would be left by their “star ancestors” near boulders and at the base of trees as proof of their listening and watching over them. Do you believe someone or something is watching over us?”
“I’d like to.”
He smiles and hands her the stone. “I think it’s rock-boring mollusks.”
Myra laughs. “Next time I feel like shit, I’ll pray to those then.”
“Or you could call me.”
“I appreciate that, Nick. Thanks.”
“I’m serious, Myra.” He stops and steps in front of her. She holds her breath. She doesn’t want to overreact because she can’t imagine him actually wanting to kiss her. She assumes she’s only seeing what she wants to see and holds his gaze so she doesn’t seem like a silly girl the way she felt moments earlier stepping back.
He moves closer and her chest tightens from the realization that his interest in her might be more real than imagined. He leans in and she can see his lips shaking before they touch hers. She can’t imagine why. His girlfriend is barely legal and probably willing to do anything. Why would he want Myra? She’s afraid it’s because she’s so lonely she’d fall for anything right now. Maybe even a tree with a smiley face drawn on it. But she thinks Nick is attractive and she knows she hasn’t put much effort into hiding her attraction, so he probably just knows she’s a sure thing. That, or he’s trying to solidify his place in the band, but that could backfire in a big way, so maybe he really wants her the same way she wants him. In the no-commitment-possible way that leaves them feeling dirty in the morning, but a little less alone and craving more because it gives them something more exciting to think about than their insecurities and tired routines.
He slips his warm tongue into her mouth and one of her knees buckles. He tastes like graham crackers and Prozac. She falls away from the kiss in a jerking motion. He follows and pulls her down onto the sand. She thinks about jumping up, apologizing, and running back to the campsite. But her head is spinning from the rush of his touch. She doesn’t want to stop. This feeling is better than any drug she ever tried and the thought of going back to the tent to pass out in a puddle of silent tears next to Drew isn’t an inviting alternative. Drew will complain about her stealing the blanket. Nick could care less about being covered in itchy sand and prickly sticks, he just wants to be near her. She needs someone to want to be near her. Nick slides his hand up the front of her shirt, then around her back pulling her closer. Goosebumps freckle her stomach. Sinking into the sand, it finally swallows her, and she swallows him as he slides inside her. Nick is a bigger guy than Drew, but never having been weighted by her expectations, he feels lighter. He’s never seen her worst, and as he stares down at her she knows he’s seeing the best version of her and it gives her the confidence to reciprocate every thrust.
She stares up at his bright clear eyes not dulled by memories of fights that lasted all night ending in forced apologies. He seems more whole than Drew—less afraid. He goes slow and enjoys her. Somewhere in her mind—distracted by orgasm, she’s knows it’s all a lie, but her body fools her into believing he’s there for her, as much, if not more, than he’s there for himself. Just when she thinks she may hyperventilate from the long stint of short sharp breathes, she tells him to slow down. He buries his head in her hair and inhales deep, satisfying the last of his senses to enjoy her. Then, as her stomach tightens and her toes curl, she looks up at the clear night sky, and for the first time in months, if not years, life doesn’t seem so bad.
When they get back to camp, everyone has gone to bed and abandoned the smoldering fire. Nick kicks some ash up over the embers and whispers goodnight. Myra climbs into the tent with Drew, who is passed out. Had Drew been gone that long with Gina or Lori, Myra would have chewed off all of her fingernails. He grumbles as she pulls the blanket over her, lying as far away from him as possible without licking the side of the tent. She can still feel Nick—lying so close to Drew with Nick still inside her makes her heart race. She finally falls asleep as the morning sun glows green through the tent walls, straining her eyes, forcing them to close.
She wakes up alone and lingers in the glowing green bubble wondering what it will be like to wake up every morning alone. After an initial pang of sorrow, she realizes it stems from a need she hasn’t had fulfilled in years and lets it go. The same way she’s starting to let herself go. She feels freed from the constraint of spending every waking moment formulating a fantasy world where her marriage thrives while she lives in reality withering. The only time she sees a glimmer of the made-up world’s existence is through happy pretenses for the sake of others. The idea of ending the charade is freeing.
She steps out into the bright midday sun. Lori is sitting at the picnic table pretending to feed the monkey a banana after tying ribbons around its ears. Gina is buried in her cell phone the same way Myra left her the night before.
“Where is everybody?” Myra asks.
“Seth took them on a nature hike,” Lori says.
Myra opens a cold can of Spaghetti-O’s and digs in with a plastic spoon.
“That’s disgusting,” Gina says.
Myra takes a few bites, then tosses the can in the trash and steals the monkey’s banana, which doesn’t taste any better. She throws the last half in the trash. She’s taken solace for so long in butterscotch candy and her coffee addiction, she had forgotten what it feels like to be so aroused that food is unsatisfying.
Lori scoffs at the stolen, then wasted banana.
Myra rolls her eyes. “For god’s sake, Lori. The monkey’s not real and you’re not pregnant. Get over yourself!”
Lori gasps and hisses, “Bitch.” She stomps away from camp.
“It’s about time,” Gina says. “She was driving me crazy.”
Myra laughs.
“So you and Nick took forever getting back last night.” Gina glances up from her phone to scrutinize Myra’s reaction.
“We wandered down to the beach,” Myra says as steady as possible, trying to seem disinterested in her own response.
“Uh huh,” Gina says, then looks back down.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Myra asks.
“I don’t know, should it mean something?” Gina sets the phone down and locks her gaze on Myra.
Myra pauses. She’s terrified of coming unraveled. “No, you just said that weird.”
“I don’t think so. Maybe you heard it weird for a reason.”
“Whatever.”
“Look… I know he made a pass at you last night. You were gone way too long. He hit on me after you stormed off to the bathroom the first time, so when you both didn’t come back right away, I knew exactly what was going on.”
“What do you mean he hit on you?”
“I decided to go look for you and he followed. He gave me some stupid spiel about how amazing I play violin, then he tried to kiss me.”
Myra feels like she just wrapped a car going ninety miles an hour around the tree with the smiley face drawn on it and is about to lose consciousness.
“You’re turning green,” Gina says. “Are you okay? Shit!—did you fall for it?”
“No,” Myra says. “But I wanted to. I really really wanted to—”
“Yeah, he’s cute, but not worth risking Drew over.”
“My marriage is a pile of shit, Gina.”
“I know. But you two used to be amazing. I just figure that’s how marriage goes. Fuck good days and bad days. I’ve been with Ben long enough to know that success is wagered on striking the balance between the good years and the bad years. You’re just having a bad year.”
“We’ve had too many bad years then.”
“Well, all I know is that if Ben was as devoted to my goals as Drew is to yours I wouldn’t be so hung up on this damn Hungarian right now. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing violin for you, but I aspire for more. It’s hard to find time for me. We’re here for Ben and he has no qualms about that being his top priority. Just once I’d like to wake up and hear, So what do you want to do today, Gina?”
Myra never confides in Gina, so most of her comments feel empty because they’re uninformed. And she doubts Gina has ever been any guys consolation prize, so she doesn’t feel like she’ll ever understand. “I appreciate that, Gina, I really do, but I don’t feel well. I think I just need to take a walk and clear my head.”
“Whatever,” Gina says, obviously annoyed that Myra won’t confide in her.
But Myra can’t talk to anyone about this. She can barely make sense of it herself. Listening to someone else try to sort it out just makes her want to scream and rip all her hair out in large painful chunks.
Myra finds an empty stretch of beach and sits down on the wet compacted sand near the water. The buzzing in her head drowns out the sound of the wind and waves. She hopes someplace in the world there’s a massive earthquake happening that will cause a tsunami on this beach. Whether Nick used her or she used him, she feels to blame. She’s older, she should have known he’d stick his dick anywhere he could get it wet and he didn’t really want or need or see her. She wasn’t someone special that he admired. She was just Friday night’s fuck. Friday night’s ego boost. Friday night’s distraction from himself. She thinks about changing her name to Friday, opening the floodgate of a whole new wall of tears.
He may have gone slower, but the full force of him fucking her because he couldn’t get Gina hits Myra as hard as Drew’s cock every other Wednesday while he’s punishing her the only safe way he knows how—within a charade of intimacy she can never talk to him about, fearful of destroying his few remaining shards of pride. She sacrificed everything for a blink of affection from another person and is left, yet again, feeling like nothing but a hole, this time in someone else’s collection. Someone so unimportant she can’t believe she let him in. She wants to rinse the smell of him off her skin. She strips down to her peach cotton bra and panties then wades in. The water is so cold it pinches her spine, but it feels better than wallowing in the lonely cavern in her mind. Her eyes throb and eardrums ring from the stinging cold, uniting her mind and body, and she knows exactly what she has to do.
Myra walks straight back to camp. Everyone is eating. Nick is sitting next to Lori with his arm around her. She ignores him and pulls Seth aside. “I need a ride home,” she says.
He looks her up and down and seems worried. “Sure, yeah, no problem—I’ll get my keys.”
Myra grabs his arm. “Don’t tell anyone where we’re going.”
He nods in agreement.
Drew stares at her as she climbs in the van but doesn’t say a word and never asks Seth where they’re going. He just looks pissed and shakes his head as he takes down a hot dog in two bites. Myra wishes he’d run up to the van and demand that she talk to him. Instead, he just sits there. It reinforces her confidence that she’s making the right decision. She looks away and stares straight ahead at one of the lopsided tents.
Seth is quiet for most of the two-hour ride home. He’s generally quiet anyway, so she isn’t sure how much of it is due to her somber mood or if he’s just being Seth, but he usually turns the radio on and hasn’t, so she thinks he’s trying to give her some peace. “You okay?” he finally asks a few miles from home.
Myra smiles. “I think I am now—thanks.”
He pulls into her driveway, turns off the ignition, then takes a deep breath. “I’m afraid it may be a while until I see you again, so I want to tell you something.”
“Why would you not see me for a while?” she asks.
He looks back at her with a disappointed, knowing expression.
“Sorry,” Myra says.
“I just want you to know that I love you.” His cheeks flare up bright pink. “And I don’t mean that I’m in love with you. I just really care about you and Drew and I want you to know that you’re my family and I would do anything for you guys, so I hope you’d let me know if there is anything you need.”
Myra stares back at Seth. He blurs in a puddle of tears and starts to look like the rock she almost swam head first into earlier that day, but this time she lunges at it full force for a hug. “Thank you,” she says with as much conviction as she can muster.
He drives away and she wishes he’d stay longer, but she knows that Seth’s magic comes in powerful but small doses and will never generate the flood needed to pull her completely out of herself right now. Those few moments of genuine concern did more for her than he’ll ever know, though. She slowly walks inside and doesn’t feel as compelled to race around the apartment packing up all her possessions the way she had imagined herself doing for most of the ride home. Instead, she sits down and looks around, taking in the energy of her and Drew’s space. It’s a good space. A little messy, but there’s love in the corners. Love she hasn’t noticed or felt in a really long time. But love she can’t run away from. If she’s going to leave, she has to tell him why, and she has to walk away with a clear head. She packs a few important things then waits. For two days she waits, sorting through good and bad memories. And just when she thinks Drew may never come home, she hears his key in the door.
He’s startled to find her sitting on the couch by the door. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” He sits down next to her.
“I was hoping we could talk,” Myra says.
Before she can continue, he reaches down into his duffle bag. “I got you something,” he says quietly. “We stopped at one of those stores you like.” He hands her a large ball of pink tissue paper. She unravels it and finds a small pale wood box with a starfish etched in the lid. She opens it and runs her finger along the pink velvet inner lining.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save myself soon enough to save us,” he says with more emotion than she’d felt from him in years.
Myra is holding the small smooth blue oval stone with a perfect hole through the center that Nick handed her the night on the beach. She drops it inside the box and closes it.
“So, what do you want to do today, Drew?”
Copyright © 2010 by Vanessa Gonzales. All rights reserved.
No part of this story may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the author.
No part of this story may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the author.