Chapter 7

Fritz

Being a man who respects nature, tonight I’ve been doing my best trying to play along with nature’s indelible rhythms in each moment. I know there’s a natural course to things, and turbulent as it might be, respecting the course of nature could only serve me well.

But now that I think about it, has that ever served me well?

I recall stepping out into the icy nighttime air for the first time this evening, overwhelmed by the sight of a thin, delicate sheet of fresh snow blanketing every surface as far as my vision could see.

That’s nature, undeniably, but so is that unwelcome feeling. Like a pebble in my shoe, only growing more insistent while walking towards that door, the door leading to the room I’m in now. This door leads to a brand-new stage of my story that I could never have imagined even in my wildest dreams.

Yet here I am. I’m standing in this reality that nature has decided to throw in my face.

It doesn’t make sense, and I still have trouble trying to fully accept the fact that Clara’s still with the Prince. Not that she left me. Far from that, we’re still together.

All three of us together.

Though I have to hand it to him, the Prince is stepping up tonight, displaying surprising courage and conviction. If he keeps it up, someday he just might earn his title rightfully.

He still has that look on his face—even after the fight and all the interpersonal spectacle of pleading, self-doubting, finding nothing inside of himself to stand on. After a decade’s worth of drama compressed into a small section of an evening, Prince still cannot summon the nerve to tell me plainly to fuck off.

“It’s just natural, what you ‘re proposing, right?” I ask the Prince, ready to knock him down with logic just as well as I could knock him down any other way.

“So, you’re agreeing to the idea?” Prince asks me with a gleam in his eye, a very strange look that I’ve never seen before.

I hold my answer. It all depends on Clara, after all. She’s pensive, but I can clearly spot the passionate interest she has boiling just under the surface.

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Princey. I’m just saying that nature is sometimes at odds with what is best.”

And who I am to jump to conclusions myself? Is this part of nature’s plans, this new concept which both Clara and Prince are so insistent on that I’m actually considering it?

If it weren’t for Prince, Clara would stay with me for eternity. Now that’s something nature surely intended. Well, if nature didn’t also have a twisted sense of humor that makes her forbidden in the first place.

Or is it just me who intended that? I can be selfish in my love sometimes and might insist on having my way, claiming it to be for the best...

“Fritz, I know how you like your words. But what I’m feeling right now, I feel like words can’t bring us any closer to figuring it out. For once, I can’t wait to see where the moment brings us—we don’t need to think too much about it, we just need to go with it to realize what it has to present to us.”

I’ve enjoyed going along with the moment for as long as I can remember. I discover my own tastes from all those things that life had to offer. I find ways to fill my own existence with my own happiness along with the happiness of others. I try to balance it with those more complex pleasures that can only come with sacrifice, with trying to share my life with others in a way that fulfills us both.

Both. Two of us.

No more than two. I never would have considered such a thing. Why would I? I’ve always known love to be like a dance for two: a man and a woman consumed by passion for each other. Just Clara and me.

“Maybe this is too soon, Clara. And besides, I believe that moment is far away from us by now.” And here’s Prince displaying an actual measure of wit and diplomacy.

I wonder if I’m in the midst of one of those drunken dreams right now, slumbering soundly, still in my normal life, clothes hanging from the bedpost and Clara’s heart still firmly committed to our undying love.

“This is real life now, spreading over all of us as suddenly as the first winter snow...”

“Jesus, Fritz,” Clara interrupts, “don’t over complicate this with your words. I can never truly be apart from you, even after all this. Don’t you see that?”

“Perhaps,” I begin, lumbering towards her as I lecture. “Your heart is too big for just one of us.”

“He finally understands,” utters Prince with more than a dash of bitterness. I just let it pass, as I feel the bitter jealousy in my heart eroding as I gaze upon Clara’s open-heartedness, at her divine beauty, at her unbelievable fucking sexiness.

“Clara, my heart forever belongs to you. I want to give you everything your heart desires.”

“Prince was right, you do understand it now.”

“Yes, Prince is fucking right, I admit it.”

I reel in that last sliver of anger, feeling privileged as always to share my love with Clara, but also attempting to steel myself for whatever could possibly be in store for us next. Sharing her is something I never entertained. But now that it’s in front of me, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy.