One Night Hand Stand

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Case

The next day

“I’m such a fool.”

Jared nods. “Yes.”

“Thanks for your support.”

“I am being supportive. I’m agreeing with you that you were a fool. I’m reinforcing reality for you.” He takes his beer and clinks the neck against mine, as if we’re toasting my foolishness.

“That’s not helpful.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“About Stacey? And the money to help you and the kids?”

He makes a face. “I hate when you say it that way.”

“Sorry.”

“Just because I hate it doesn’t mean I won’t accept the money. Molly and Corey deserve better than I can give them.”

“Good.” Haunted by the implications of that last part, I can’t let it go unchecked. “You give them more than enough of what really counts.”

His long, slow sigh makes me feel even more foolish.

Jared scrubs his face with his non-beer hand, then strokes his chin.

“I meant, why didn’t you tell her you knew who she was when you met her in the bar that first night, and why haven’t you told her about your financial reason for needing to cash out?”

“I did.”

“You did ? And?”

“She accused me of manipulating her. I couldn’t even convince Slot B!”

“Did you just call her a slut ?”

“What? God, no. Of course not.”

“You said the word slut. ”

“I said slot .” I go American and draw out the O.

“What’s a slot bee?” He makes a buzzing sound.

“Never mind.” Now I have the image of a bee hovering around Sarah’s delightful vulva and Jared’s ruined that .

“I thought if she understood your motivation, she’d be more likely to hold the story. You’re only asking for eighteen days now, right?”

“Right.”

“That doesn’t seem very long.”

“Tell her editor that. Some other story got killed and now Sarah’s big chance is here.”

“Except her career-maker is your deal-ender.”

“Exactly.”

“What a clusterfuck.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And you both lied to each other.”

“You know we did.”

“But the lies came out in the heat of the moment when your priorities collided.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s like me and Stacey and the Ziplock bags.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve never heard the story about the Ziplock bags that nearly ended our marriage?”

“How does a plastic bag destroy a relationship?”

“Get another beer. This is a two-beer story.”

I stand, reflexively following his orders as he casually says, “And get one for me, too.”

“You tricked me,” I call out from the kitchen, opening the fridge to find exactly two more beers in there. Jared’s fridge is filled with neatly stacked food storage containers with three different color lids. Red for Molly, blue for Corey, and green for Jared. Stacey had always been extraordinarily organized. In her later months before dying, she watched TikTok organization videos with the fervor of a Taylor Swift fan chasing concert tickets.

Every Sunday, Jared goes grocery shopping and gathers the kids in the kitchen. They meal prep all breakfasts and lunches for the week, each person with their own color for the lids to their storage containers.

Stacey’s was orange. All the orange lids sit in the drawer now, unused.

When I return to the couch, Jared gives me an odd look.

“You ever have something bothering you, but instead of facing it head on, you get irritable about tiny little things in life and they substitute for the big thing?” he starts.

“I believe that’s called sublimation.” I’m not entirely certain that’s the right word, but the beer is hitting me just so, and frankly, this isn’t a Psych 101 exam.

His shoulders slump. “I took music theory classes instead of psych. Now I help ninth graders find middle C all day and wish I’d studied more child development.”

“The Ziplock bags?”

He chuckles. “When we first got pregnant, Stacey worried we couldn’t afford for her to stay at home on just my salary. You weren’t rolling in it like you are now. Your parents had been generous enough, paying for her college. She never had a high-paying job. I have student loans. The budget was tight.”

I say nothing, just listening. As time passes and Stacey’s gone for longer and longer, Jared tells these little slice-of-life stories I’ve never heard before. I’m a witness to his memory. He needs to be heard, for someone else to say Yes, she was here. That happened. She was real .

“Remember her coupon phase?”

I groan. “Who could forget? She kept trying to get me to use those 2-for-1 dinner tickets when I dated. I tried to explain they were the paper version of a cock blocker, but she just claimed that any woman who judged me for being smart with my money wasn’t worth sleeping with.”

Jared’s smile broadens. “Sounds like her.”

“I told her that giving up good sex wasn’t worth fifty percent off. Priorities.” I smile wider, too. “She told me she was lucky, because she got both with you.”

His expression changes, the smile dropping, eyes wide and suddenly vacant. It’s a hollow look I see on him a lot. Grief has many disguises.

He clears his throat. “She found some deal where Ziplock bags,” he says, taking a breath as he pauses, “were on sale for a dollar a box. And she had fifty-five cent coupons.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Right. She probably hit you up for coupon inserts from your apartment building.”

“I’m quite certain that is the only reason she visited me on Mondays for coffee.”

His eyes cut sideways to me. “Not the only reason. She loved spending time with you.”

“Yeah.”

Stories like this have a way of sucking all the volition out of the air. We drink our beers and melt into the couch, the weight of memory flattening us. Molly and Corey are asleep in their bedrooms. The living room is covered with LEGO toys, art supplies on a small wooden kid-sized table, and random balled-up child’s socks dot the floor like little soft landmines.

An image of Sarah rips through me, her face in the moonlight on our date, the way she flirted at MoMoTaste, how she moaned with my face between her legs.

The sheer amount of hurt in her eyes when I confronted her at KoFigaro.

Hurt caused entirely by me .

“Those damn Ziplock bags. I knew we needed some, and I had to get some printable sheet music forms for work, so I hit up an office supply store on my way home one day. They had bulk Ziplock bags. Twenty bucks for one of those boxes that lasts for years.”

“Like the endless aluminium foil roll she bought from that restaurant supply store going out of business?”

Reflexively, he looks over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Yeah. That one. Still has plenty of life in it.”

Unlike Stacey.

The unspoken words hang between us.

“So,” he says, the word stretched out as he sighs, “I thought I was helping.”

“Dun-dun-DUN,” I mutter, the ominous tones making him laugh.

“Instead, I accidentally picked one of the biggest fights of our marriage.”

“Over Ziplock bags?”

“Yes and no.”

“Got it.”

“Molly would have been four months old, I think, so we were still completely fried from having a newborn. Stacey was worse off than me because her body was still healing from the birth. I was getting up at least once at night to bring her water so she could breastfeed, then I’d take Molly, change her, and help her settle down so Stacey could try to sleep. But she insisted on handling all the other feedings so I wouldn’t be a zombie at work.”

“You two really were a team.”

Raw pain radiates from his light brown eyes, thick brows above them tense with sorrow.

“We were.” Jared seems to force himself to drive the pain underground, rubbing his beard. “But not when it came to those damn Ziplock bags.”

“Let me guess. Stacey had a plan for the coupons and you ruined it.”

“Yep.”

“Seems simple. You just return the wrongly purchased bulk Ziplock bags and everything’s fine.”

“Sure. That would have worked if I hadn’t come straight home to an empty house and decided to start pre-packing a bunch of my lunches for the next few days.”

“Ah. The plot thickens.”

He chuckles. “We’re so ridiculous, aren’t we? Fighting over plastic. But that’s what happened. Stacey came home from her walk with Molly. Found me in the kitchen, putting carrots in baggies. Asked me where I got the bags and I told her. She went dead silent, then burst into tears.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I asked her if she was using the carrots for dinner, and said I could go get more, but instead she started crying about the damn baggies. Asked me why I would spend so much money when she could get the same amount for twenty dollars less.”

“She calculated it all out in the middle of crying,” I say with a grin. “Sounds like Stacey.”

“She sure did. ‘The sale starts tomorrow! I was waiting until it went on sale. I have twenty coupons for it! You knew that! I could get them for free with double coupons! Why would you do this, Jared?’” He shakes his head. “We fought over twenty fucking dollars, Case. Spent a week being pissed at each other. A week of cold shoulders and icy handoffs of the baby. I was so stupid.” A tear, plump and lonely, falls from his face onto the back of his hand.

Just like that, the real message here hits me.

I'm blowing it. This is me destroying something really, really good.

“You guys recovered from it, though.”

“We did. Laughed about it even, as the years went on. But man,” he says, using the back of his knuckle to wipe away more tears, “man, what I wouldn’t give to have that week with her back.”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“Neither did she. We just looked at the situation through different lenses and our viewpoints clashed. I thought I was solving a problem quickly and she thought she was contributing financially. My need to help and her need to feel safe came in conflict.”

“Conflicting priorities,” I mutter, hating how much his story hurts me.

“It happens. Can’t help it. But you can decide that the relationship matters more than the priorities if the relationship is a higher priority.”

“When did you become Dr. Phil?”

“Fuck off. I’m way better than Dr. Phil.”

“You’re saying don’t let the little things get in the way of love.”

“I’m saying don’t buy baggies without asking permission. Ever.”

“Truth,” I say as we clink bottle necks again, then drink in silence.

Truth.

Truth matters. I should have told her the truth long ago. Sarah should have told me the truth as well. We both lied.

But does that have to be the whole story here?

Can we rewrite our story? What if we start over, clear the air, accept the dual deception and decide we’re worth trying again?

What if I reach out, tell her I’m sorry, tell her I miss her, tell her I want more of what we had before our priorities clashed?

What if I’m missing out on the best woman I could ever have, all because my field of vision is so narrow I can only see the finish line in this long trek toward selling off and cashing out?

Are Sarah and I fighting over Ziplock bags and we don’t even know it?

“You’re a dumbass,” Jared says, out of the blue.

“I know.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you reached out to her?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“How bad does it hurt, Case?”

“Like someone ripped my heart out, threw it in a lake and let it drown, and now I just have a cold rock sitting in there instead.”

“Any woman ever made you feel that way before?”

“No.”

“See? Dumbass.”

“Okay, Mr. Has-All-the-Answers. Tell me what to do.”

He snorts. “No one tells you what to do. Drove Stacey nuts.”

“I’m asking you to give me advice here.”

“I thought I just did.”

“Spell it out to me like you’re teaching Corey how to subtract.”

“You need a pile of M&Ms to motivate you?”

“Minus the candy.”

“Call her. Text her. Be open with her. Give it another chance.”

“Her article is going to destroy everything.”

“I’ll bet she’s been struggling. Sarah sounds like a very ethical person. Hurting you and your deal is the last thing she wants to do. Her editor has her stuck on this one. Not her fault.”

“Why does this have to happen now?” I punch a pillow as if it’s at fault.

“Sorry, bud. It’s reality. You can’t wish the conflict away. Anger won’t make it end, either. You have to confront it head-on. Which means calling or texting Sarah and meeting with her.”

“She wants nothing to do with me.”

“I doubt that.”

“She told me to fuck off. Those were the last two words she said to me yesterday.”

“People say stuff in the heat of fury all the time. Stacey once told me she hoped my fingers and lips fell off.”

“WHAT?”

“She was upset I was working too much. Bringing instruments home and practicing parts. Said if my lips and fingers fell off, maybe I’d be forced to stay home and spend more time with the family. When I pointed out the impact of losing those parts of me on our sex life, she retracted the statement.”

“I do not want to hear anything about my sister’s sex life.”

“Sorry.”

“Sarah’s rightly pissed at me. I’m rightly pissed at her. All the leverage is in her hands. That article will destroy my deal with Prakash.”

“Sounds like she’ll be writing a different kind of article.” He makes a face. “Asshole abusing all those women.”

“I know. And now that I really do know, I need to make changes while I can.”

“Like what?”

“Discreetly collecting more info on Prakash and all his misdeeds. Helping the people he sexually harassed to make sure they’re okay. Meeting with lawyers to see how I can salvage this mess if it all goes public before I cash out.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, my head starting to hurt. “Preparing for a possibility that I won’t sell, and I’ll be stuck with seven yoga studios under a tarnished brand.”

“Your studios outperform his by a mile, right?”

“Yes. Much more profitable.”

“Then if the sale falls through, and I know you don’t want that to happen, but if it does, you’ll still have a profitable business to live off of.”

“Only if I’m not dragged down by the sinking ship of Prakash Shanti.”

“You’re smart. You can find a way to stop that from happening.”

“I don’t have much time.” Or faith , I think to myself but don’t say.

“What a bastard,” Jared says with a rueful look. “He’s hurting so many people.”

“The harassment is sickening,” I add. “No one should have to deal with that .”

“What are you going to do about it?”

I shrug. “Find a way to help the victims. No clue how, but I have to try.”

“Is there something in your franchise contract about all this?”

“About me lying to a one-night stand, dating her and falling for her, then having her turn out to be my second worst enemy after Prakash? No.”

“I mean about fraud. Scandal. Like in teaching contracts. You know. The moral turpitude clause.”

“The what ?”

“Moral turpitude.” His face scrunches up in a weirdly childlike way. “Bizarre term, but it basically means the school district can fire you for behaving immorally.”

“Sounds like a frighteningly gray area.”

“Parts of it are crystal clear. In teaching, it’s things like not dating a student.”

“Gross.”

“Right. Maybe there’s something like that in your contract with Prakash.”

“His sexual harassment has nothing to do with my franchises. Not legally, I mean.”

“But it might? Check with your lawyer. Pay a bulldog to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb.”

“Already doing it.”

“I’m sure you are. You’re a man of action.”

The unspoken part of that hangs in the air.

“And you think I need to act when it comes to Sarah.”

“Only if you really want to.”

I really want her.

The words slam through me, body filled with emotion as the memory of her touch, her kiss, her gaze, her smile making everything else feel fake and unreal. Throwing away this relationship because of conflict means losing something far more valuable than my business deal. No dollar signs are attached to what Sarah and I have together, but my connection to her is priceless.

“It’s too messy.”

“You’ve never been afraid to get your hands dirty.”

“Oh, my hands were dirty with her, all right.”

He stands suddenly, letting out a sound that makes me feel guilty. “I’m jealous.”

I definitely didn’t expect to hear that.

“What?”

“I miss Stacey. I miss sex. I miss having someone. You and Sarah could be someones for each other.”

“We didn’t even date for a week, Jared. How could we be - ”

“Time doesn’t matter. You know it when you know it. And I say this as your friend, Case: you know it. And if you don’t even try to fight for a chance at exploring what you have between you, you’ll regret it.”

“The beer is turning you into a philosophy professor.”

“Great. I’m one step away from being a monk.”

His words are seeping in, making me broaden my view of the whole situation. Pride is keeping me from approaching her. That’s it.

What’s a little pride between lovers?

If I let this get in the way, I’ll never know what we could be.

"You're right. I do know it. She's so smart, yet she doesn't need to put it out there. It's just who she is. Sexy as hell, too. Sorry," I add, but he shrugs. "She's so compelling. I can tell she feels more open with me. We open each other up, if that makes sense?"

"It does."

"She's deeply good . You know how rare that is in people these days?"

"I do."

"And she's playful. When was the last time I played?"

"I have no idea about your sex life, Case."

"Not just in bed. She has this innate curiosity about the world. That day in my yoga class she knew how to save this old man having a diabetic attack. The woman brought candy into a yoga studio."

"Call the cops!"

"You joke, but some of those yoga freaks... anyhow, Sarah just jumped into action. Didn't hesitate to help. It's who she is, and she's -- fuck," I mutter softly. "She's the whole package."

"Smart. Sexy. Playful. Curious. Kind. I see why you're avoiding her."

Jared yawns, stretching tall, fingertips grazing the ceiling. He’s big and, in Stacey’s words, “cuddly,” with a thick beard and warm eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

Occasionally, he’s hit on by guys looking for a bear.

Women, too.

But mostly men.

Holding his glasses by the stems, he reaches out for a bro hug. “Don’t be a dumbass,” he whispers in my ear.

“Quit saying that.”

“Until you stop, I have to.”

“Fine. I’ll reach out to her.”

He pretends to zip his lips.

Which makes me think of Ziplock bags.

And how we let ourselves fight over all the wrong things.