Lose Yourself

Curtains

Em had been warned that he couldn't stay long after he'd shown up on Sam's doorstep unannounced after school. The conversation with Paul had lit a fire within him. He wanted to tell Sam about it. He wanted to celebrate together or cry or whatever emotions normal people were supposed to have. But Sam seemed guarded and irritated. He'd given the excuse of having hockey practice at 6 but Em knew there was something else going on.

His suspicions were confirmed when they sat down on the couch that Em now thought of as their own. He couldn't believe that a day ago, they had been tearing at each other's clothes on this couch. As they settled in, Sam's phone pinged repeatedly. He shrugged as an apology. "Josie has been messaging all afternoon."

A catalog of obscenities were on the tip of Em's tongue. "What's going on? Is this about her stupid boxes?"

Sam exhaled shakily. "No. I mean, it started out about the boxes but it turned into how I'm a totally dysfunctional, shitty person."

"You're not a shitty person." Em answered quickly.

"Yeah, right." Sam's eyes were sad and rimmed in red.

Em was close to launching into a tirade against Josie. How could anyone tear Sam down like this? He caught himself before speaking and took a moment to listen to what Sam was saying. "What – what really happened with your wife?"

Sam looked at him blankly. "Jesus Christ, you really want to hear this?"

Em nodded even though he definitely didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to imagine Sam with a woman. Or anyone who wasn't him.

Sam clutched a pillow protectively to his chest. "It was about 5 years ago, right before school started. I was getting my classroom ready and all that beginning of the year shit. Josie wanted to take me out for dinner. Date Night." He laughed at himself. "This is how detached I was from reality: I thought she was going to tell me that she was pregnant."

"You guys had sex a lot?" Em asked, not wanting to know the answer.

"Yes and no. We were still having it but not a lot — sex was something that we could still do together that felt intimate. It was always me initiating it but it felt like the one part of our relationship that I could still control. That probably sounds bad."

"Nooooo." Em was pretty sure that Sam being in control during sex was the best thing he'd ever experienced in his entire life.

"I was excited and nervous cuz my daughter Daphne had just turned 14. And I was thinking about how we could handle having another kid but then she told me she'd fallen in love with this bastard named Kevin. He lived right around the corner from us. They were in a bookclub together. He was her true love."

Em nodded. "Kim cheated on me pretty much through our entire relationship. But I cheated on her first so you know: karma."

Em hated that he had broken his vows. At the time, Kim had forgiven him and said it didn't matter. She said their relationship was strong enough to withstand anything but he knew it wasn't true. Their relationship was fractured and his infidelity broke down whatever bond was there. Bailey was the only thing keeping them together. And the money, of course.

For a fleeting moment, Em allowed himself to imagine what his life would have been like if he had met Sam when he was younger. It was almost too painful to imagine the heartache they could have avoided. He stared into Sam's eyes and wanted to wipe away the crease between his eyes, the touch of sadness that was permanently etched into his beautiful face.

"Josie is this big romantic person. Love is this transcendent thing for her and us falling in love was part of that big magical whatever . Our marriage wasn't quite up to her ideal vision of love but it was good for a while. But for me, marriage was like a promise to be best friends. It was a promise to help each other do normal shit and be OK seeing each other naked."