31 #3
“No, bro. It’s not like that. We’re there for each other. We’ve been buildin’ each other up. You just can’t see it because you’re upset and jealous—”
“I don’t wanna see it!” I screamed, tears streaming down my face.
“Why do we need to go back to being miserable for her?! Let her be unhappy. I’m so tired of being unhappy for other people, Rome.
I just want you, alright? It’s all I want.
” I bit my lip, searing all over with agony.
“For fucking once, I want you to myself. Please just be fucking straight with her and tell her you're done. Tell her you’re with me now, please. Say you’re with me. Say you’re with me, I’m begging you…"
"Baby…it's not that simple.”
I despaired, cleaning my face with the end of my shirt.
“She said that if I left...she'd tell everyone the type of guy I am…and the shit I got up to."
That stopped me cold. We sat in silence, suddenly faced with the hideous certainty of our predicament. The worst of our apprehensions made manifest. I knew the extortion would come, and now we had confirmation she was exactly who I’d pegged her to be. I could sense it the moment I laid eyes on her.
“I’m so sorry, Rafe,” he whispered. He pressed the heel of the hand that held the cigarette to his temple and looked so quintessentially stressed that I marveled.
It was like an advert for anti-depressants.
"She said if I ever saw you again...she'd hurt herself.
Whatever that means. That's what she implied... in so many words."
"That's blackmail. Textbook extortion. That's so fucking low, mate. I knew she'd go there...they all fucking do—"
I threw the mug against a far wall and it shattered. Coffee flew everywhere. Rome flinched, then looked at me in disbelief, wiping hot coffee from his arm.
"Babe, chill," he breathed. I balled my hands into fists and planted them on either side of my face. "Rafe...Rafe? You gotta chill, baby—"
"Don't call me that. Don't call us both the same thing."
"Babe..."
“Do you even realize what you're doing to my head?" I wept. "Do you have any fucking clue?"
"None of this is good for us, babe. That’s my entire point.
Even when we’re together or makin’ love.
It’s sick and addictive and shameful. We feel terrible afterwards.
It makes us paranoid—desperate. It’s unhealthy, Rafe…
and deep down, you know it too. We were past this.
We saw how everythin’ happened before. The pain, the violence… long before Mila."
"It could be different now…" Fuck’s sake, was it really over? Again? Was he really choosing her over me? I couldn’t catch my breath.
"If we keep tellin' ourselves that—pretending it could be different, even though it never is…how can we ever be honest? And besides…I can't just do that to her. Just cast her aside. It wouldn’t be right."
We were already fighting. He got up and went into the lounge and messed around with his phone.
To avoid having to call the cleaning crew back out, I cleaned up as much of the sloshed coffee as I could, and picked up the broken bits of ceramic.
God, I was sick of the back and forth. Sick of not knowing where we stood.
At this point, I wanted the bullshit to end more than I wanted he and I to continue.
I didn't want to go back down this path with him, because it was clear that like last time, I would become roadkill.
I needed to focus on myself, my music, my career—the Spielberg thing.
Why was I sitting here going through all this shit all over again?
What did he have to offer that was any different from before?
Always a whopping nothing. Zero assurances.
Just a new way of sneaking around behind someone else’s back.
For as much as I loved him, I fucking despised his impotence and everything we’d become.
Time to give this thing one swift merciful blow to the temple and have done with it.
We mutually concluded he needed to go back to her, at least for now.
Allow tensions to cool. This tug of war would only serve to damage the three of us.
For now, for him, I would stomach the loss.
Again, I would be the sacrificial lamb, suffering in silence so that he could live in peace.
At least in this scenario, only one of the three got hurt.
In an excruciating bout of deja vu, I conceded, allowing him to walk out of my life for a second time.
He fought me on it for a while, then came to his senses and realized I was offering him an out.
Before I knew it, he was out the door. There was no emotional goodbye. No plans for the future. We would take everything in stride, accepting reality as it came. No forethought because it never did us any good anyway. No strings for the exact same reason.
My only consolation was that we were no longer estranged. I could pick up the phone and dial him anytime, and that made all the difference. As his car headed down the driveway, the shutting gate offered a strange sense of closure.