Chapter Three Knights and Ladies
When dawn comes up, I’m left staring at a stone figure clawing the air, looking fierce and deadly—with his tail frozen in mid-threatening lash. In the middle of the garden.
Next to the azalea bush he just knocked down.
It was a long, miserable night.
Duncan, AKA Sir Duncan, AKA the Protector of Pine Ridge, is a nice hallucination, don’t get me wrong.
He’s outraged at Daniel for buying the family castle to turn it into a money-making operation, and for leaving me, and apparently for not ensuring I at least had a maid, cook, gardener, and a full wardrobe.
He wields a mean broom, but he tried to punch the big screen television when he stepped on the remote, and NASCAR reruns roared and blared into the lodge.
He doesn’t understand women’s fashion, and a “Visit Florida” commercial with girls living it up in bikinis almost gave him an aneurysm.
I pat his stone body gently and then slap myself much harder.
He’s still there. Not in the same position he was when I unpacked him... I think.
“Just a bad, weird, heartbreak dream. Probably. But thank you for listening, statue friend,” I murmur, and slog back into the lodge for sleep and a shower, in reverse order.
When I’m just stepping out, my phone rings with the James Bond theme song.
Daniel.
Maybe that was all a rotten dream, too.
“Hello?” I answer cautiously.
“Junie, darling. I was so worried about you. I’m sorry about last night. I don’t have long to talk now, but I have a few minutes before a lunch meeting.”
I flop on the bed in a towel and open my laptop, idly scrolling, part of me wondering what I would show Duncan to educate him about the world if he were actually real, not the side effect of my love life—and maybe my future—crashing down.
The banking website is still open, and my password autocompletes the login when I tap the tab. I hit the keys to access the accounts again, hoping I’ll find proof that it was all a bad dream. Nothing from Kitten’s Lounge or Aphrodite’s Dungeon, or whatever it was.
Nope.
Still there.
“Junie?”
“Hi. Sorry. I... I guess it’s good to call and talk,” I say, not sure if I believe it. I sure as hell don’t want to. Last night was terrible. Like meeting two monsters, not one.
I wince, thinking about how Daniel suddenly turned harsh. And so selfish.
“I hope you’ll realize that it’s just like...
avant-garde theater, sweetheart. A show of an adult variety, with some minor audience participation.
You know, things are much freer in the UK than they are in America, and don’t even get me started on Europe!
You know, topless pictures appear in newspapers and on the television.
I think you overreacted. I just like going to a show when I’m on my own.
All right, love? A little me time at the theater, that’s all. ”
“If it’s so harmless, why can’t I watch, too?” I ask. “Maybe I’d like it.”
Daniel is silent for a second, but when he speaks, his voice isn’t warm and kind like it was moments ago. “You wouldn’t like this. That’s not the girl you are.”
“Maybe it is the girl I am. You don’t want someone to explore all your desires with you?”
“No. This is pure recreation. This is my treat for myself, and if you’re too selfish to understand that, then it’s you who needs to reconsider our relationship.”
I feel like he just smacked me, and reactively, my fingers flex, scrolling on the trackpad.
Seeing new charges on his unfrozen account.
Another charge. A big one. From F. L. Accommodations.
Okay, he was in London last night. He needed a room.
The rate seems awfully high, even for some luxury resort, and you’d think some luxury resort would be booked up months in advance. Daniel claims he only got this deal to buy Castle Mackintosh a few weeks ago, which is why our summer in the mountains is starting with me here alone.
I don’t breathe as my fingers open a new tab, and I look for F.L. Accommodations, asking the search engine what business is associated with that name.
If you see the term F.L. Accommodations on your billing statement, it may reference Fantasy Lovers Hotels, a chain of erotic fantasy hotels, where rooms are tailored to various themes. Or, it may reference Fort Lauderdale HOA. Or...
I don’t keep reading. I’m typing again.
Fantasy Lovers Hotels, London area.
“Darling, don’t you have any little secrets? Little vices?”
“Yeah. I will absolutely smuggle my own candy into the theater. I’m not supposed to use my phone at work, but I’ll play music on it to calm down raging kids, even though that’s ‘against protocol.’ I don’t go to sex clubs.” I clutch my head.
Can’t bear to push enter and see if it’s true, even though I know it’s true.
“Theater! Think of it as theater. It’s just a show. A show about sex, fine, but there are lots of those,” he chuckles and waves my feelings away.
“But it bothers me. It bothers me that you hid it from me. It bothers me that you’re looking at other women, or men, or couples, without telling me, sharing something that gives you sexual pleasure when I thought that was just the two of us.
Why doesn’t that bother you? If you love someone, when they’re upset, shouldn’t you be upset, too? ”
“Not necessarily,” Daniel says, tone sweet and patient.
I’m getting fucking whiplash from this guy.
And that should be enough of a red flag to wipe out any rationalizations, any green flags I saw before. No, not that I saw, that he allowed me to see.
“It’s just that I don’t think your emotions should bother me, darling, as they’re not valid.
I didn’t mean that. I mean, they’re not valid in this case.
You’re only upset because I have a hobby you don’t like.
You think I’m doing something horrible, like cheating on you, and I’m not, Junie.
I’m just enjoying a night of unusual theatrics, on my own. Some me time.”
“You keep saying that like we’re two separate entities. When you’re a couple, you’re more than just yourself.”
“But couples are still two individuals, and both deserve their—”
I cut him off before he can say “me time” one more time. Because that is now a phrase I hate with a passion. “Does your ‘me time’ include a night at Fantasy Lovers Hotel?”
Daniel goes silent.
“Daniel?”
“Of course not. I...”
“Before you lie to me, you should know that your account is open in front of me. I never closed the tab last night. Too upset.” That’s true. I leave out the seven-foot-tall gray guy with horns and wings, though.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” I sniff in hard. I’ve had half a dozen breakups in twenty-six years. I’ve been cheated on before.
But I was never with someone like Daniel before. I was never engaged before.
It never hurt like this before.
“No. Not usually. Look, I was just a bit upset because of our little lovers’ tiff. I thought... I thought, well... We’re not married yet. I was stupid, love, out of my head, and a little drunk, and I—”
“So you did cheat on me?”
“No! I mean, no, it really doesn’t count.”
“What??”
“We’re not married!”
“We are engaged!” Were. It’s gone now. I know it already, but the rage and the sadness are fighting it out inside of me.
“No, but I won’t be doing that in the future, and I never have in the past. Last night I was just realizing that if... If I ever did consider compromising, I wouldn’t be able to do certain things anymore, and so I—”
My heart snaps in half, but it’s a clean break. It’s not jagged. It’s not even bittersweet. There are so many things I can deal with. Struggle through. A guy with limitations in his wallet, in the bedroom, in his own body or health? I would be willing to deal with that stuff.
To find out that the guy I’m engaged to gaslit me? That he did cheat on me while claiming it was all “theater”... To hear how lies, secrets, and different versions of a man I thought I knew keep piling up...
“We’re done, Daniel. I’m not going to tolerate cheating.”
“But I won’t! I mean, I never have before, and last night was as much your fault as mine!” Daniel cries.
“Nope. I can be gaslit on a lot of things. I mean, wow. I really didn’t know you, did I?
But I do now. I do now,” I whisper, repeating it as the truth sinks in.
“And I don’t like you. I don’t love you.
I loved some version of you that you keep on the surface.
The inside? You can call it what you want, but you lie, you’re selfish, and you were never planning on telling me about something that involves sexual relationships—and no, Danny, I don’t care if the relationship isn’t physical.
It’s the trust and the communication that matter.
You shut me out. Get yourself another ‘perfect wife’ to keep in the family-friendly version of your world.
I want a man who can love me with every bit of himself, even the dark, secret, selfish parts. That’s real love.”
“June, listen—”
“I did listen. For months. We were together all the time. I thought this was it. We were that cute couple, rich boy and city girl, and we meshed. We were awesome. But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t all the way real. Just parts of it.”
There’s a pause, and part of me hopes for a mega grovel.
A bigger part of me hopes he just hangs up.
It’s a clean break, like I said, like something snapped off inside of me.
The sweet part, the Daniel I was allowed to see?
He would beg and make grand gestures. The selfish Daniel with secret hobbies?
He’d be glad I wasn’t there to intrude on his “me time.”
I meet the third Daniel, and I hate his guts at once.
“You’re being so incredibly shortsighted, June!
Have you thought about the life you’re passing up?
And for what? Something that hurts no one.
And don’t flatter yourself into thinking that you’re everyone’s cup of tea.
No, all the ‘just rolled out of bed cutie pie with baby fat’ look will get you is some pizza delivery boy. I only picked you because—”