The Other Side
Dane
The most beautiful morning greets me when I wake, but it’s easily overtaken by what I have to do next. I have to tell Wrigley not only can I not be in a relationship with her, but we’re going to have to stop seeing each other entirely.
Sure, we could stay friends, but I have a feeling she’s not going to be thrilled about that particular option.
I might have been able to enjoy the morning more completely if it didn’t mirror the morning that Wrigley and I spent right after I told her that I wanted to be in a relationship with her.
Yeah, I kind of bungled this one from the start.
Oh well.
Before anything else happens, I need to tell Wrigley what’s going on and that we can’t see each other anymore.
You know, even a few days ago, I would have just avoided the situation entirely: Wrigley being a little batshit crazy and all, but after the conversation we had over coffee yesterday—I don’t know. This might not be so bad.
My first instinct is to just give her a call and drop the news that way, but that seems like the coward’s way out. We’ve been whatever we’ve been long enough that she deserves to hear it face-to-face.
Besides, she was actually supportive when presented with the information that I have a thing for Leila. Supportive might not be the right word, but it’s close enough to feel somewhat confident.
I make the call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Dane,” I tell her.
“Hey,” she says. “Did you and your roommate have your little talk?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think we should probably discuss that face-to-face, though. What are you doing later?”
“It’s Sunday,” she says. “I have fuck-all planned. What about lunch?”
“Okay.”
The conversation is pretty short. I don’t know why, but it’s a bit unsettling to me how smoothly this is going.
Leila’s off planning her move with Mike. I don’t really like the guy, but as I’m going to lunch with Wrigley, I really can’t say anything about it.
I take a quick shower and get dressed.
Wrigley and I didn’t really set a time, she merely finished off her part of the conversation by saying, “We’ll go when you get here.”
I guess I’m picking her up, then.
When I get to Wrigley’s, she’s wearing a slinky peach-colored top with no bra, and I guess it’s a skirt.
“Ready to go?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Where are we going?”
“The roof,” she says. “I put out a picnic basket. Come on,” she says. “Let’s talk.”
Either she doesn’t know what’s coming and she’s about to get blindsided, or she knows exactly what’s coming and she’s trying to fuck her way out of it.
Either way, this is going to suck.
We get up on the roof, and I double-check to make sure the door is propped open, so just in case she tries something particularly savage, I can make some kind of escape.
“You had sex last night, didn’t you?” she asks.
I’m usually not one to be at a loss for words, but the bluntness of the question catches me off guard.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Now that’s got to be one of the oddest pronunciations of the word ‘yes’ I’ve ever heard,” she says.
She’s smiling, but I don’t trust that she’s this blasé about it.
“Yeah,” I tell her, finally.
“Your roommate?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say again, quietly.
I don’t know what it is, but Wrigley has a real knack of making me unsure of myself.
“How was it?”
The tension gets to be too much, so I do the only thing I can.
I laugh.
“You can’t honestly expect an answer to that question,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes.
“That’s all right,” she says. “I figured you’d be off getting your dick wet, so I made sure not to waste my night either.”
If Wrigley was someone else, I’d think she was making this up to try to make me jealous. Knowing her, though, I have no doubt she’s telling the truth.
“All right,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, trying to be nonchalant.
I’m not going to lie. I am a bit jealous.
That said, I’m much happier to be with Leila. At least she’s not going to go down on the cab driver if we get into an argument.
Wrigley’s laugh is an odd mix of lighthearted and flat out disturbing.
“Oh, calm down,” she says. “So, is that all you wanted to talk to me about? I’m starting to feel a little overdressed.”
“Overdressed?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “Obviously, we’re not going to be making it exclusive with each other, but I see no reason why we can’t keep fucking until we’re bored.”
“I don’t think you understand,” I start. “I love Leila.”
“I’m sure you do,” she says. “Sex has a way of tipping the scales in that direction—especially for people like you.”
I ignore the barb.
“You don’t understand,” I tell her. “I can’t see you anymore.”
That smile is back, but the lighthearted aspect to it is gone.
“Oh, you can’t tell me you’re that whipped already,” she says. “I’m very discreet. I’ll even meet you at the office for your lunch break or dinner break, or whatever the fuck chefs do. We’ve got too much sexual chemistry for either of us to just walk away from it now.”
She’s fucking with me. She has to be.
I smile.
She smiles back.
“Really,” I tell her. “I’d like to stay friends, but we can’t see each other that way. Not anymore.”
“Oh,” she says. “All right, I get it.”
“Riggs—”
“Do you really think now is the time to debut a pet name?” she snaps. “Just what happened to make you such a pussy anyway?”
And I actually, for a moment, believed that things were going to be idyllic from here on out: how naïve.
“I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I know you’re basking in the glowing warmth of strange, so I’m going to give you today, tomorrow and—what the hell?—I’ll throw in Tuesday. After that, though,” she says, “I’m expecting your call.”
“I’m sorry, Wrigley,” I tell her. “It’s just not going to happen. We can be friends, but—”
“Has anything ever given you the impression that I wanted to be your friend?” she asks.
“The other morning, you told me that I should figure out what my feelings for Leila were,” I rejoin. “I thought you were—”
“A bit freaked about settling down?” she asks. “Uh, fuck yeah. I was willing to give it a shot, though, ‘cause you seemed so into the idea and I figured that it might not be so bad. Sure, I’d go a little crazy being with someone who starts bitching when I pull out a simple riding crop—”
“It might not have been such a big deal if you let me know it was coming,” I interrupt, clearly focusing on the wrong part of the discussion.
“Whatever,” she says. “Take your little vacation and spend some time going balls-deep in Ms. Goody-No-Clit, but we’re not done here, and I’m sure as hell not going to let you forget that.”
It sounds like a threat.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“I have ways of burning your shit to the ground that you can’t even imagine,” she says. “Just think about it and tell me if I’m really the type of woman you want as an enemy.”
“I don’t want you as an enemy,” I tell her. “Really, though, I don’t want you as a friend, either. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“You know what they say about crazy chicks, though,” she says, licking her lips.
This conversation’s gone from surreal to disturbing to surreally disturbing, and I’ve had about all I can take.
“Give me a call sometime if you decide to get your head out of your ass,” I tell her.
“I am pretty bendy,” she says. “You’re going to miss that before the week is out. Trust me.”
“I think I’ll live,” I tell her as I move for the door.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” she calls from behind me.
I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to dive tackle me or something. Then again, violence is only really her thing if it’s in the bedroom.
What the fuck was I thinking coming here?
“Dane!” she yells behind me, and I turn around.
She’s sitting on the ledge of the building, her legs spread. She doesn’t have to move her skirt for it to be apparent that she’s not wearing any underwear.
“Your brain can tell you whatever it wants to, but you know your dick is going to miss me,” she says, playing with herself—I don’t know how else to describe it—aggressively.
The present moment is easily on my list of top five ridiculous things I’ve ever witnessed with my own two eyes. Even for that short a list, this is remarkably near the top.
“Get off the ledge,” I tell her as calmly as I can, witnessing someone actually going crazy before my very eyes. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“What? Do you think I’m going to jump?” she screams at me as I open the door to the roof.
I really want to kick the cinderblock she used to prop the door open, but I resist the urge.
“I have too much to fucking live for!” she screams.
It’s not until I hear the clatter of Wrigley’s stilettos on the hard ground of the roof that my resistance fails, and as soon as I’m completely inside the door, I knock the cinderblock over.
A second later, she’s pounding on the door, and I’m actually starting to feel sorry for her. It had been a terrifying, if somewhat silly, spectacle, but I haven’t exactly been treating her very well.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that if I were to open the door now, she’d come through with balled fists, and I have no illusion about which one of us would win a physical confrontation.
When it comes to betting on a fight, always, always, always put your money on the one who’s not going to pull any punches.
I may be a dick, but I’d never raise my hand to a woman. I’m a dick, not a coward.
That said, I’m also certain that Wrigley doesn’t have a no-assault rule, so to ease my conscience and keep my eyeballs and spleen from ending up in Wrigley’s shadow box, I find the burly maintenance guy and tell him, “I think someone’s stuck on the roof. I’ve been hearing all this pounding and scratching up there. You should probably check it out.”
The man knows me. He’s caught Wrigley and I having sex enough times in enough places around the building to know exactly who I am, exactly who’s on the roof, and exactly how I know.
“I might give it a minute to let her cool down,” he says.
Fortunately, he also seems to understand exactly why I’m not willing to go up there and let her in, myself.
This isn’t a shining moment for me.
All things considered, it really couldn’t have gone much worse.
I’ve added to the torment I’ve already levied on this woman, and no, it doesn’t matter if she was crazy when I got here, that doesn’t mean it’s magically okay for me to toy with her.
I feel bad about it, but I can’t deny my feelings either.
This is the first time in my life that I can actually say that I’m in love with someone and have no ulterior motive in mind. It’s not Wrigley.
If I’d ever told Wrigley that I loved her, she probably would have put a foot in my crotch.
Still, as I hear the woman screaming expletives as I step out onto the street, I can’t help but feel that I might have gone about this in a much healthier way.
Not much I can do about it now.
* * *
When I get back to the apartment, Leila’s already home. That’s the good news. The bad news is that that asshole who was trying to suck the lips off her face is sitting on the couch.
“Hey, you,” Leila says as I close the door behind me. “How’d it go?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
I never bothered telling her what my plans for the day were.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Isn’t that what people say when their significant other comes home?”
The phrase makes me a little uncomfortable. I glance over at the couch to make sure that the gangly idiot feels just as uncomfortable about it as I do, but he’s just sitting there without a care in the world, scrolling through pages of what looks like apartment listings on a laptop.
“What are you up to?” I ask.
“Oh nothin’,” Leila says cheerily, and gives me a quick peck on the lips. “Mike and I are looking to see if there’s any place we missed. I hope you don’t mind if we do that here. Mike’s roommate is back in town, and he’s not the friendliest guy on the planet.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “Sorry your roommate’s a dick,” I call to “Mike,” hoping to preempt any indication of just how little I like the asshat.
He shrugs, but doesn’t look up from the computer screen. “Hey, Lei,” he says, “how about this one?”
Leila leaves my side and goes over to look at the page.
I’m not that jealous a guy. After all, jealousy is just the admission that someone would make your partner happier than you do and the selfishness not to allow it.
With that said, it really wasn’t that long ago that Mike and Leila were sucking the spit out of each other’s mouths on that exact couch.
I really don’t know what to do with myself right now.
I don’t like the feeling.
“You two had anything to eat?” I ask. “I could whip something up.”
“Yeah, Dane’s the chef at l’Iris,” Leila tells the fuckwad.
“I’m not hungry,” he says. “Ooh, look at this one.”
So, what is a man in my position to do?
What I want to do is kick Mike out the window and take Leila to the nearest soft surface and make love to her until neither of us can keep our eyes open anymore, but the relationship is less than a day old.
If I start by kicking her friend out, she’s either going to think I’m a dick and it’ll ruin the relationship, or she’s going to be strangely aroused by that, which means she’s into weirder stuff than Wrigley is, and I really don’t know if I could handle that either right now.
I don’t have too much time to think it over, though, as Leila and Mike finish what they’re doing, and with a quick hug, Mike’s on his way.
“Sorry about that,” Leila says as soon as the door is closed, “but he’s been really great, helping me find places and all.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her.
Telling her that I don’t want her to go is another one of those things that probably isn’t the best idea in the first 24 of a relationship. It’s right up there, I would imagine, with telling her friend to move to a different state.
“You seem upset,” she says. “Is something wrong?”
“Nah,” I tell her. “Everything’s fine. I’m just kind of tired.”
“Well, in that case,” she says, moving close and putting her arms around me. She looks up at me with those gentle eyes. “How about we watch a movie or something? There’s plenty of room on the couch for both of us to lie down,” she adds. “That is, unless you’d rather keep your personal space.”
“I would not like to keep my personal space,” I tell her, bending down to kiss her on the lips. “Really, I’m kind of hoping for a blanket, few, if any, clothes, and absolutely no personal space for either of us.”
“Hmm…” she says, playfully tapping her chin with her finger. “We might miss a lot of the movie if we did that.”
“Damn. I was really excited to see whatever it was we’re going to watch,” I tease. “Oh well, I think I’ll live.”
“I think you’re right,” she answers, and makes her way to the couch.
She pulls the afghan from atop the ottoman and spreads it out on the couch. While I’m getting settled in—read that as undressing—she uses my preoccupation to seize full control over our movie-watching itinerary.
I really could not care less what we watch.
That’s what I honestly think, right before she turns around with When Harry Met Sally in her hands.
She’s actually suggesting a movie which is famous for, among other things, Meg Ryan demonstrating how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm. There are ways a person can tell if he’s not a complete idiot, but still, I’m not a fan of the pairing.
“I know you’re probably not into chick flicks, but this is my favorite movie ever,” she tells me.
Fuck.
Now I can’t possibly protest, and she’s going to be watching to see how I react to it.
“It’s been a little while since I’ve seen it,” I tell her.
It seems like my best play. We’ll still end up watching it, but if I don’t end up with some massive, life-altering epiphany which leads me to tears, it won’t be such a big deal. I’ve already seen it before, so it couldn’t possibly strike me that deeply, right?
Then again, maybe she’s expecting me to have a stronger reaction to the movie because I’m watching it with her.
This is a fucking minefield, and I’m actually dreading watching what I’ll admit to be a classic movie that I quite enjoy when not under these horrific conditions.
Don’t tell anyone I said that.
Any of it.
Thanks.
She puts the movie in, and I lie down on the couch. I lift the blanket as she comes close, and as she stops to get down to her bra and panties, I start thinking that maybe I’m thinking about this whole situation in the wrong way.
We don’t see very much of the movie.