Jon
Lydia talked a big game about Patrick and I being bed hogs, but the truth of the matter was lying face down beside me spread out like a starfish. Usually, one of us would hold her hostage while spooning so that she couldn’t take over half the bed, but we didn’t get to it fast enough tonight. That was alright with me; after her dropping so far into subspace that she couldn’t talk, I knew she’d need to sleep. Fuck, I needed to sleep – but my need was more stress induced.
“It was the one thing I asked you to keep to yourself,” I said quietly. I was trying not to sound angry, but it was hard; I wanted to scream, I wanted to leave, more than anything I just wanted to hit him again.
“I’m not apologizing,” Patrick snapped from across the room. “She needed to know, and after what Aleksy said, I couldn’t just let it slide.”
“This isn’t just about you.” I jumped off the bed and stalked toward him in the ensuite. “There are three people involved here, that means we need to know how to compromise.”
Patrick rolled his eyes in the mirror and turned to face me; his beard was half-shaved, one side a hell of a lot shorter than the other. “If you had your way you would have never told her.”
“That’s not true.” I grabbed the razor out of his hand and threw it down on the counter so he would actually face me without a distraction. “I wanted to wait, it wasn’t going to be forever, it would have been a few more weeks at most.”
He groaned and started to pace in the confined room. “What the fuck do you want from me, Jon? You told her about Christine—”
“She didn’t know half of what happened between me and Christine,” I interrupted angrily. “I wasn’t ready, Patrick. I’m trying to stop Chris from taking everything, Maritza and I are finally back on speaking terms, I’m losing my fucking career – all I wanted was more time before I had to talk about this with Lydia.”
I grew up with the AIDs crisis. My parents had been extremely conservative, and my education came from private religious institutions. When Christine and I had gotten together I had never strayed from my rigid definition of straight; it wasn’t until our baby shower when I got shitfaced and kissed her male friend that I opened up to her about my desire to explore. Afterward, I left for a week on the least necessary business trip in the world because I thought she would leave me. She didn’t and we ended up exploring our sexualities together. Christine had never told a soul, and I would always be grateful for that, but I was terrified to go through that again. It had been twenty-six years since I had to worry about it. I just needed some more time.
I was pulled out of my reverie by Patrick touching my arm. I looked up to see him frowning at me with his brows drawn together. “We can talk to her later, she isn’t worried about it right now. I can’t keep holding secrets for your sake, because all I’m going to be left with is a girlfriend that doesn’t feel like she can trust me.”
I hated that he had a point. Why couldn’t I just feel sorry for myself for five minutes? I grabbed my phone off the vanity and left the bathroom, heading back out to the living room. The curtains were open and off in the distance I could see the Vistula River glimmering under the stars. In the opposite direction was St Mary’s Basilica and the rest of the square, which at this time of night would be lit up with thousands of lights, the glow radiated around the city. I dropped down onto the loveseat and continued staring out the window. Krakow was beautiful, pretty much all of eastern Europe was, I just wished I could do some sightseeing without it being so tone-deaf considering the circumstances.
“Can I talk about my problems now?” Pat asked as he came to sit beside me.
I shrugged and lounged against the arm of the couch. “That’s why I came here, and why I brought her.”
“I get that,” he said irritably. “And thank you, as much as you hate me right now it still feels good to have you guys here.” Patrick paused and fiddled with his laptop before finally just thrusting it into my hands. “Look at all of this.”
All of what? I didn’t say anything as I opened the device and stared in confusion at a badly translated document. It took a few minutes before I registered that what he was telling me was he was being included in his father’s will. A sizable portion of that will too. Jesus Christ, Patrick was taking home multiple million-dollar estates. I came from the middle-class, I was used to some wealth – my parents had a decent house in Brooklynn and my education was private, but Christine and her family still called me ‘new money’. I had never felt like that more than right now, sitting here trying to wrap my brain around leaving only one child this much and still having more for the rest. Fuck, I couldn’t even imagine how much Mari would get once Chris and I were gone.
“What are you even going to do with this many houses?” The upkeep cost would be atrocious, and that was coming from a man who paid nearly two million just to get a family to move. That didn’t even cover what I paid for Chrissy to have a fulltime staff. “Fuck, just imagine the landscaping bills…”
Patrick scoffed and snatched the laptop back. “You paid to have the jet bring girls from the Club back and forth from New York and Washington, you have no room to judge on what someone else wastes money on.”
I smirked and looked away. He was right but bringing my own little harem to me seemed a lot more rewarding than a house you’d visit maybe once a year. “I’d rather waste money on seeing Eloise or Corrine than a mansion in a country I don’t care much about.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he continued, setting the computer down on the floor and relaxing back in his seat. “I met Bianka yesterday, I thought she might warm up a bit but it got worse. Today she and her older sister Halina told me I can’t come back to the house…”
“What about Aleksy and AJ?” I asked cautiously. “What did they say?”
“AJ won’t speak to me and Aleksy hasn’t contacted me since. I don’t know if they’re keeping him from getting a hold of me or if he changed his mind.”
He sounded so heartbroken and it made me hurt for him. “Patrick—”
“They told me to leave Poland,” he interrupted, his voice cracking and I realized he was about to cry. “I came here and met him once, now they won’t let me see him—” he broke off and held his head in his hands, elbows on his knees and back heaving.
I moved closer to him and rubbed circles on his back reassuringly. My parents were dead nearly a decade now and I was estranged from my siblings, I had gone through a lot of what he was feeling, but not completely. “You’ll see him again,” I soothed. “He wanted you to come here, he’ll find a way to get a hold of you.”
He sat up shakily and leaned into me, before I knew it his mouth was on mine and the tear tracks making my own cheeks damp. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I needed to talk to her, I just—I couldn’t anymore.”
“I know.” I laid my hand over his as it came up to my face.
We sat there for a long time. He cried and I just comforted him in the best way I knew how; being quiet but being there. He would talk more when he was ready, and I knew that he would see Aleksy again – there was no way that he would let his son leave without seeing him again. Patrick had to get his confrontational genes from somewhere, and it wasn’t Lucy, so it had to be Aleksy.
I walked him to bed an hour later and watched as flopped down next to Lydia, carefully rearranging her limbs so there was room for him. All women were bed hogs, it was a universal fact. I still wasn’t tired though, if anything I was more wired than ever after having to cope with being outed so suddenly.
I must have sat in the living room for hours before finally moving, only doing so when my phone rang and I tiptoed to the French doors off the bedroom.
“What time is it?” I asked quietly while stepping out onto the balcony. “It’s almost four here.”
“It’s about ten,” she replied softly, her voice was just a little sleepy. “You haven’t returned any of my calls or texts, Jonny.”
“What’s wrong, Chris?” I sat down on the tile floor and pulled my smokes out of my pocket. “You sound upset.” Christine always called when she was upset.
“Do you think Peter really loves me?” she whispered. This time I could hear the slur in her voice and knew that she had been drinking. “Everyone else says he doesn’t…”
Oh, Chrissy… “I think you’re getting the jitters,” I told her honestly. “I saw you guys were picking out venues, it’s probably just started to sink in now.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” she demanded sharply. “I can’t do this a second time—”
“You won’t.”
“I need you here,” she pleaded. “I need someone to keep me sane and Mari ran off again, she won’t answer me either.”
“Lydia needs me more,” I replied coldly. “So does Patrick, I can’t leave them because you’re getting cold feet.”
“When are you coming home?”
“I’m not, Chris.”
“Jonny—”
“Don’t, please don’t do this now. Not after eleven years.”
“I miss you, sweetheart.”
My eyes started to water, and I hit the mute button on my phone quickly to take a few deep breaths. “I don’t miss you.” I said it and muted the phone again just fast enough to start crying. It hurt, it hurt so badly to say it out loud because it meant it was finally true. Twenty-six years of marriage, eleven years of separation, and every day I just wished I was enough for her. I wanted her to tell me she missed me every single day for eleven years, I waited. Maritza waited too, she told me constantly that she ‘knew we’d get back together’.
Wiping my face, I hit the button again. “I’m going to sign my papers when I get back to New York,” I told her finally. “You can have whatever you want, take it all, I just can’t drag this out anymore.”
I hung up without waiting for her and stared down at my phone as it started to vibrate again. Setting it beside me I pounded on the screen with my beer bottle until both of them broke. Shards of glass were scattered around and my hand was slightly bloody now. I felt numb now; from the cool night breeze and way she had gutted me and everything that was piling on like a crushing weight.
My second chance was waiting inside, sleeping blissfully in bed. Lydia and Patrick were the first leap I had taken in over five years now since Nadine. She was the only other woman I dated after officially separating from Chrissy. Looking back, I realized now that Chris had wedged us apart, and she was trying to do it again. Only this time she couldn’t get to Lydia to do it, so she was trying to go directly through me.
I pushed myself off the floor and went back into the suite to clean up. I had to pull a few tiny shards from my hand before wrapping it up in some gauze I found in the drawer. It took longer to get rid of the red puffy circles under my eyes from crying. I was so fucking sick of seeing tears from everyone around me, I hated it even more for myself. I knew I had to make a plan for myself now, which just added more stress. There needed to be something for me to fall back on when I didn’t have money, I needed to protect myself and Lydia – Patrick would be more than fine, but I couldn’t cope with the idea of living off him for the rest of my life.
When I got back into the bedroom, I stopped and stared at both of them on the bed; Lydia still face down, now clutching a pillow like her life depended on it, Patrick with one leg hanging off the bed and snoring loudly. My second chances.
I quickly stripped and slipped in beside her, pulling the pillow away and letting her cuddle up to me instead. She nuzzled against my shoulder and started to stir.
“You were smoking,” she mumbled, pulling back enough that I could see the disapproving look. “Bad, Jon.”
“Am I your dog now?” I teased, pushing the hair away from her face. “I guess that would explain why I’m wrapped around your finger.”
She giggled sleepily and pulled herself closer to me. “I’m glad you’re here…” she whispered. She was falling back asleep, I could hear it in her voice.
“I’m glad I am too, I’m happy that I didn’t leave.”
“Don’t be scarred to talk to me,” she continued. “Love you…”
I kissed her hair and just held her to me. She dozed back off and a while later Patrick rolled over and cuddled up behind her. I wished we could just go back to the Bahamas and pretend the world didn’t exist. I wished that if we ran off that it wouldn’t create more problems. I wished I could start over again with them. Maybe I could, if I just let myself have it, maybe we could have everything we wanted.