Chapter 15 #2
Over the next few minutes, she found somewhere quiet enough to tell me everything.
Monday, when she and Samuel had gotten back from their short honeymoon, she’d gone to the clinic for the routine blood draw for her sixteen-week quad screen.
Then earlier today the results had arrived, her OB had immediately called to break the bad news that the screening indicated an increased risk of Down syndrome.
Understandably, this had thrown my wife’s bestie into free fall, a total meltdown as she started jumping to all kinds of conclusions.
At least she’d had the good sense to reach out Sasha, who’d always been a stabilizing influence on her more temperamental friend.
Hearing all of this, my heart went out to the woman who’d been so concerned for me—even on her own wedding day! I really wished I could do something for her and Samuel… but I knew the most important thing I could do was just support Sasha while she supported her friend.
That was the second major event to hit us during the third month of our newly established Throuple. (Throuple—how could we call it anything else, given how much time Sasha and Thomas were spending together!) Thankfully, the third event was altogether much happier in nature.
Just a week after Sasha had dashed over to be there for her Lisa, it was another Thursday night when I came home to an empty house again. At least this time, there was a note. ‘Round at Lisa’s – not sure what time I’ll be home.’
Lisa finally arrived home just before midnight, gave me a huge hug and preceded to update on all the Lisa news.
Long story short, they’d arranged urgent ultrasound and amniocentesis, then put a rush on the results, which meant earlier today Lisa and Samuel had been sat nervously in front of the genetic counsellor as she’d decoded the results into plain English.
That they’d run some final tests in two weeks time, but for now, they were pretty sure the quad tests had just been a false-positive.
To Lisa and Samuel, and to a lesser extent Sasha, a huge and frightening few days… to the OB and genetic counsellor, something they dealt with all the time.
Great news for them… and on a much, much smaller scale, great news for me. As—however emotional rung out she was—I had my beloved Sasha back.
When we were done talking Lisa, Samuel and little baby no-name, we talked about my work and then as we pivoted to Sasha, she suddenly remembered she had something she wanted to ask me.
“Sorry, hun… what, with everything with Lisa, I clean forget to tell you… well, to ask you… if I change my pairings so Thomas and me can go to his nieces first communion and spend a few days with his Dad to see how he is… would that be okay with you?”
“Wow… that’s kinda sudden,” I blurted, my words exactly matching my thoughts. No filter.
“Sorry, babe… like it said, it’s been so crazy round here… I just clean forgot…”
“Okay, but how long would you be gone for?”
“The schedule’s a deadhead on one of the Friday afternoon flights down to Atlanta, then work the Atlanta–Joburg red-eye. Touch down Saturday evening, just in time to rest up and be there for his niece’s First Communion on Sunday…”
“Wow… it all seems to slot into place perfectly.” I grimaced, my throat tightening. Funny how someone who’d clean forgotten to tell me had still managed to plan every detail so precisely. The faint flush coloring Sasha’s cheeks told me I hadn’t needed to say the rest out loud.
There was an awkward silence, the two of us just looking at each other, aware of all the things being thought and not said. Sasha being the one to take the bull by the horns, mumbling the answer to the actual question I’d asked and that she’d still not answered.
“Then we’d back spend a few days with Thomas’s Dad, then do the return red-eye next Sunday, and I’d be back home by Monday lunchtime…
“Now you’re the big boss, baby… maybe you could take the afternoon off?” she nervously suggested, the humor failing to dent the the awkwardness.
“Look, Sash… I really want to say yes, but honestly, we’ve seen so little of each other recently… I know partly that’s the game we agreed to play… but it’s beginning to feel out of control… a little too real, not like a game anymore…
“Look,” I said insistently, pulling her over to the color-coded calendar we’d stuck on the front of the fridge.
“We’re here, mid-October, look back and ask yourself how much time we’ve managed to spend together…
last weekend you were away in Seoul, then hand-holding with Lisa when you got back…
the weekend before that I got a bit of you…
but then there was also the Sunday night fuck date with Thomas and Monday round at Lisa hearing all about her honeymoon…
“And the weekend before that was the wedding… which, in case you’ve forgotten was you blowing me off so you could spend Saturday night at Thomas’s swanky apartment… then coming home for precisely one whole hour before you needed to head to the airport…
“Are you beginning to get the picture, Sash!” I sighed loudly… my exasperation and frustration finally coming to a head.
I’d not planned this outburst. Us low EQ guys rarely do… poor at self-monitoring we just let things build and build until finally they explode.
And in truth, until that moment I hadn’t even realized myself just how frustrated and lonely I’d become.
Yes, I’d signed up for the whole Incheon game.
But now we were three months in, the way the game and unplanned calls on Sasha’s time were combining meant the early excitement had morphed into something totally different.
Taking a step back—feeling calmer now I’d finally vented—I looked at Sash.
Her look half hurt and half confusion. A look that said, I don’t get it…
we both signed up for this… I thought we were both having fun.
A look that said, I love you… I never meant to hurt you… but now I’m as confused as fuck…
“Look, Sash,” I sighed, “I get how important this is for you and Thomas, but you have to see what I’m saying about you and me hardly seeing each other is right…
“So, I have a suggestion… if I say ‘yes,’ which means it’ll be another week before I see you again, and even then only for a few hours before I have to fly to Texas…
“If I do say yes, do you agree that when you come back we’ll talk and put things on a more sensible footing…”
If I’m honest, the fact Sasha didn’t bite my hand off surprised me, making me a little confused. After all, I was basically agreeing, just with the addition of a small and sensible condition.
Finally a quiet, firm ‘Okay’ came from her lips.
But the way she said it seemed to hint at a deeper meaning as well.
But maybe I was imaging it, maybe seeing so little of Sasha these last weeks and the prospect of losing her for another one to two weeks had me seeing things that weren’t there.
“You do know how much I love you, don’t you honey…”
Her words made me feel a million times better.
“And I’m sorry that me spending so much time with Thomas squeezes out time for me and you… I know it excites you, I just wish there were two of me so we could get the best of both worlds,” she joked gently, kissing me softly and looking deep into my eyes.
“Love you, babe… I’ll always love you,” she whispered.
“Love you too…”
I’d miss her like hell this next week, but at least things felt stronger between us, and when she returned I could look forward to our discussion about changing how Sasha carved up her time.