Chapter 18
Ryan
I opened my mouth to answer Kim, then snapped it shut as I realized I didn’t have a fucking clue what to say.
Melanie gave an irritated huff and shook her head, and aggravation was stamped on every inch of her beautiful face.
“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I have a vague recollection of those things happening, but I didn’t mean any of it how it sounded. I was trying to be helpful and supportive, but it came out wrong, clearly.”
“That’s because I suspect most of it came out of Mitch’s mouth first.”
I whipped my head around to stare at Melanie warily. “What do you mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s not exactly subtle when he criticizes me, which he does all the damned time.
He’s usually smart enough to do it when you aren’t around to hear him, but believe me, he makes snide little comments every chance he gets.
Then within a day or two, imagine that…you spout off a slightly more polite version of his bullshit. ”
“Garrett said something similar to me yesterday. He said he told Mitch off for making a smartass comment about you at the cookout last summer. He also said they can tell when I’ve been hanging around Mitch too much, because I start to treat you like he does,” I revealed reluctantly.
When she just shrugged and didn’t deny it, I asked, “Do you truly believe that?
Melanie sighed, then said “I got home from going to the farmer’s market with Jen one Saturday, and you two were getting ready to leave to play golf.
I was wearing a loose, flowy sundress – the yellow one – and when you ran back upstairs to grab your wallet, he told me that my figure wasn’t bad enough that I had to try to hide it by dressing like a frumpy old lady.
Then the next evening you told me to go shopping with his barely legal girlfriend so I could dress more like her. ”
My eyebrows flew up to meet my hairline, and my mouth fell open in shock as I thought back to that day.
Mitch and his girlfriend had stopped by early one Sunday evening on their way to dinner and had invited us to go with them.
I could tell Mel wasn’t thrilled about going, but she didn’t object outright.
She just grumbled about finding something to wear and went upstairs to change.
Mitch had joked that if it was that hard to find something, maybe it was time Mel went shopping for some new clothes and suggested that his girlfriend could go with her.
“She loves to shop, and she’s got an eye for what looks good. I’m sure Mel would appreciate the help.”
“That son of a bitch,” I ground out. “He totally played me.”
Kim asked what I meant, so I recounted what had happened. “Your figure is fantastic and I loved that yellow sundress on you, by the way. Is that why you stopped wearing it?”
She nodded and I shook my head, as disgusted with Mitch and I was with myself for not seeing the pattern until now.
“That moisturizer I bought you? He suggested it. It was over two hundred dollars for that tiny little jar, so I told him he was crazy. He insisted that it was top of the line stuff, and that you deserved to pamper yourself a little, so I bought it.”
I didn’t tell them that Mitch’s exact words had been, “Women love to pamper themselves with this kind of shit. If you surprise her with this, she’ll be so happy she’ll drop to her knees and blow you right then and there.
It’s practically guaranteed to get you laid, man.
” Not that I bought it for that reason – I’m not quite that much of a pig.
I did figure that a little pampering would earn me some brownie points though, which I had needed because Mel had still been angry that I’d traded my truck in on the ‘Vette a few weeks earlier.
“He said the hairstylist he was going out with was having trouble growing her clientele when she changed salons. He asked me to refer her to you for a dye job,” I hesitated before admitting the rest of it, “unless you were letting your hair go gray on purpose.”
“Oof,” Kim muttered under her breath. Mel was so livid she apparently lost the power of coherent speech.
“He…You…What…Ughhhh!” Melanie threw her arms up in disgust as she sputtered, and I reached for one of her flailing hands. She yanked it from my grasp and gave me a look that warned me I’d better not try that again.
“You have more gray hair than I do,” she sniped, pointing at my light brown hair that was more than liberally sprinkled with silver at the temples.
“I know,” I tried to soothe. “He suggested that I go see her, too.” I’d refused, horrified at the thought.
Mitch got his roots touched up , along with highlights every three weeks, but that was my idea of hell on earth.
It seemed there were limits to my midlife crisis after all.
It’s too bad those limits hadn’t included my wife and sons.
My admission didn’t help, and Melanie crossed her arms over her chest, and her foot started tapping out a fast beat on the carpet as she stared straight ahead at the wall in front of us.
“Your friend sounds like he’s quite the manipulator, Ryan.”
“Ex-friend,” I corrected. “Officially, as of last night. I packed up his golf clubs and the other shit he had at our house and told him to come pick it all up, which he did. I also told him I’m selling my season tickets to the Colts and the Pacers.
I dropped out of our golf league for next year, too. ”
Melanie’s eyes widened in surprise, pausing her foot tapping to stare at me. I gave her a small smile.
“I told you that we got into it after the bullshit in Vegas. You can’t be that surprised.” I flexed my hand, which was feeling a little better now that the swelling was going down.
“I figured he’d weasel his way back into your good graces.”
“No way in hell, sweets. Not after what he did, and definitely not after what I know now. He’s out of my life, and he won’t be getting a second chance.”
“Melanie, how do you feel about that?” Kim asked, after Melanie hadn’t said anything for a full minute. Her arms were no longer crossed and her foot had stilled, so I hoped that we were no longer in danger of her exploding, although I couldn’t blame her if she did.
“I’d like to believe that you’ll stick with it, but so many times you’ve agreed to cut back on your time with him, but you were obviously just trying to placate me, because a few days later you’d be right back at it.”
”I’m done with him. Our friendship is over,” I insisted.
She just shrugged, and I started to get frustrated.
“Why is that so hard to believe, Mel?”
Kim cleared her throat, then pointed out that it’s not that cut and dried.
“From what you’ve both said today, Ryan, you’ve gone back on your word more than once when it comes to Mitch, and if she feels that you’ve chosen him repeatedly, you’re going to need to show Melanie, and maybe even your sons, why this time will be different. ”
She kept her expression and her tone neutral and encouraging, but I still felt that I’d been judged and found lacking, at least by my wife, if not by our therapist. The hell of it was, I was judging myself, so I couldn’t even fault them.
“Words alone aren’t enough. You have to give your words validity through your actions as well. Melanie will need to see consistent change over a sustained period of time to know that’s it’s going to stick this time.”
“I can do that,” I vowed, staring at Melanie so she could see the sincerity in my eyes. She held my gaze for a long moment before turning away.
“Now, both of you have mentioned the weekend in Las Vegas and it seems to have brought things to a head. Melanie, could you explain what happened?”
“It’s the stuff I told you about on Tuesday,” she told Kim, who nodded in understanding. “Ryan and I talked on Wednesday, and he explained everything.”
“And how do you feel after hearing his explanation?”
“I’m still hurt and angry, and I still have questions, but…I do believe that he didn’t cheat.”
Relief flooded through me at hearing her says those words, and for the first time in four long days, I felt as if I could breathe again.
“I do feel like he betrayed me though, not only by going to the strip club in the first place, but especially for not leaving right away. You broke your promise, Ryan. You knew how much it would hurt me, and you did it anyway. You chose to hurt me just so you could keep the peace with Mitch, and I don’t understand how you could do that. ”
I was swamped by a wave of guilt at the sight of the tears in her eyes, and the sound of the pain in her voice.
“Why?” She asked raggedly.
“I wish I had an answer that made sense, but I don’t. I did it because I was a selfish asshole. Because I didn’t think you’d ever find out,” I admitted softly.
“Would you ever have told me? If I hadn’t found the evidence, the shirt and the thong…would you have come clean on your own?”
Hoping I wasn’t putting the final nail in my own coffin, I answered her honestly.
“No. By the time I got home, I’d decided not to tell you.
Initially, I had every intention of telling you everything.
I told Mitch that I felt too guilty to face you, and I would have to confess as soon as I saw you.
He told me that it wasn’t fair of me to unburden my guilty conscience at your expense.
He told me that I’d be hurting you in order to make myself feel better.
He convinced me to keep my mouth shut. No, I allowed him to convince me,” I amended, knowing I had to take responsibility for my own choices.
“Yes, Mitch talked me into it, but I didn’t have to listen to him. That was on me.”
Melanie reached for a tissue to wipe her eyes, and Kim asked, “Do you think you were trying to protect Melanie, or yourself?”
It took me a moment to say, “I don’t know. Both, probably.”
Kim nodded at my quiet reply. “We often lie to ourselves to justify something that we feel deep down is indefensible. Do you feel that what you did – going to the strip club – was a betrayal? Was it indefensible?”
“Yes, absolutely.” I answered her without hesitation this time.
“I know it was. I’m the one who put that limit in place after I learned how horribly her ex-husband treated her.
I’m the one who said I would never go to a strip club.
Mel never put that boundary in place, I did, because I wanted her to know that she was safe with me, and that she never had to worry.
I wanted her to know that I would never do anything to trigger a reminder of all that she’d gone through with him. ”
“But I wasn’t safe, was I? I wish you’d never even made that promise at all, because you lulled me into such a false sense of security that I was totally blindsided when it happened.
How could you do that? How could you sit there surrounded by nearly naked women grinding on poles, and just listen to music and drink a beer and get a fucking lap dance as if I didn’t exist?
As if you hadn’t made promises to me that you told me you took just as seriously as our wedding vows. ”
When I didn’t answer, Melanie scoffed in disgust. “How would you feel if I did that?
If I went to a club and let a male stripper rub and grind himself all over me wearing nothing but a pair of tiny briefs that outlines every inch of his dick?
If I came home stinking of his cologne? Would that bother you?
I swallowed hard at the image she painted. “Yes,” I ground out. “I would hate it.”
“You would hate it,” she parroted. “And just think, Ryan, your ex-wife never cheated on you with a male stripper. She didn’t spend money you didn’t have going to a strip club every week while telling you she was hanging out at a sports bar.
She didn’t tell you that your dick was too small to do it for her or tell you that she wished you could have surgery to make it bigger.
She didn’t fixate on porn featuring actors with huge penises.
She didn’t stare at strange men in public who happened to have big bulges in their pants.
She didn’t film herself fucking another man in your bed, while moaning that she loved his nice, big cock. ”
She stopped, her chest heaving as tears streamed down her face.
“Just imagine, Ryan – if you lived through that kind of trauma like I did, that much of a blow to your self-esteem – imagine how much it would hurt if I went to a club with male strippers. If I got a lap dance, even if I stopped it after a few seconds. Imagine that I planned to come home and lie straight to your face about it. Imagine if I did that because I’d rather hurt you than piss off a friend. ”
Tears welled in my eyes, and I let them fall unchecked. I hated myself for what I’d done to her, and I told her so.
“I think I hate you for what you’ve done, too,” she replied, her voice nothing more than a broken whisper.
The room was silent for several long moments before Kim quietly asked if we wanted to call a halt to the session for today or keep going. “We have about twenty minutes left, but we can stop if either of you need a break.”
“I’ll…” my voice cracked and I cleared my throat. “I’ll leave that up to Melanie to decide. If she wants to continue, we will.”
Mel nodded, and I reached for a bottle of water and took a long swig.
“Melanie, you mentioned that you still have questions. Would you like to ask them now, or would you prefer to move on to something else.”
Melanie took a deep breath and said she would ask them now. “Well, it’s just one question at the moment.”
She turned to look at me, and I gave her a slight nod to encourage her. “Go ahead. Ask me whatever you need to.”
I wasn’t prepared for the question that fell from her lips.
“When we spoke on Wednesday, I got the feeling that you weren’t telling me everything.
I don’t think you lied about anything you said, but I could tell that you left something out.
When you were explaining how you’d jumped up when the stripper climbed onto your lap, you kept dropping your gaze, so you weren’t looking me in the eye, and that vein in your temple started to pulse…
kind of like it is now,” she pointed out.
She took a deep breath as if to brace herself before asking, “What haven’t you told me? ”
Fuck.
I knew exactly what she was talking about.