Hey, all. Life has been kicking my ass the last year and more, including the loss of a considerable number of my files--among that number being, alas, everything pertaining to Rob Andrews and his story. I have a general sense of where I was going, but I no longer
know
anything more than you do; I'll have to recreate/replace the work I'd done before I can move forward with that particular story. In the meantime, as proof of my continued existence, here's a quickie. It is at least tangentially connected to Rob, so maybe we'll see these characters again at some point.
I stared down at my phone and struggled hard to wrestle down my temper. The message from my roommate read:
I won't be home tonight--working late ;) with Nissa. Maybe u can use the space to get laid for once
.
Fuming, I put my phone away and managed not to scream.
I could strangle Ted right now...
I tried to derail my revenge fantasy by telling myself he wasn't worth going to jail for, but myself had an unanswerable rejoinder:
No jury in the world would convict me
.
Ted shared my apartment, but not because I'd planned it that way. When my fiancée and I finished our respective grad programs, we both had job offers from various places around the country. The best one for me was from a counseling practice back in Clarksburg, where we had done our undergrad; she had a strong offer in Clarksburg as well from an environmental engineering firm there, and we made the decision together to accept those offers and move back.
--At least, I thought we did. I went ahead to go apartment-hunting, and found one I liked well enough that she encouraged me to go ahead and sign a lease. I signed the lease, started work, and waited for her to join me... and got a letter breaking off our engagement. Apparently she'd started having second thoughts after accepting my proposal, but instead of facing me with them, she decided to wait until I was locked in place somewhere and just--not go with me.
I was stunned and hurting, but I was also in trouble. I was indeed locked in, having signed a two-year lease to keep the rent down, but it was still a lot more than I could manage on my income. Plus, I really liked that apartment. Not only was I unable to give it up, I didn't want to. I didn't want that to be one last thing my ex had taken away from me.
(It's an interesting building. The bottom two floors are a rectangle, which includes the lobby for the apartment complex but is mostly given over to shops and offices; an underground parking garage has a keycard-secured section for the apartments, with the rest providing parking for the businesses in the building. The apartment tower is diamond-shaped, with a large bank of elevators near the northwestern tip--where, as a side note, my apartment is. There are apartments around the outside of each floor, of course, but there's also a circle of apartments on the inside which surround a central atrium--an atrium which goes all the way down to greenspace on the ground floor of the building. I'm not sure exactly how they keep it thriving, but the Opryland Hotel has been doing something on a much larger scale for a long time now, so it's not a new accomplishment.)
I asked my new colleagues, and one of them had a friend who had a friend who had money and was looking for a place. I met with Ted Vavros, he seemed fine, so we came to an agreement. It was under the table, I didn't go to all the trouble of adding him to the lease, but I knew the landlords wouldn't mind as long as they got their money.
After a while, though, I was regretting the bargain. I gradually realized--well, if you're familiar with the enneagram, Ted is a classic Three, and not one of the admirable examples of the type. He's almost preternatually good at reading a person or a room and being whoever he needs to be to get the results he wants; unfortunately, he's not unduly burdened by scruples or any perceived need for authenticity. Equally unfortunately, alas, I
was
unduly burdened by financial realities, at least when it came to the possibility of kicking him out. Legally, I could do it--especially since he was usually behind on his share of the rent--but I needed the money, even if he
was
laggard in providing it.
While I didn't like Ted, that's not the biggest reason I regretted living with him--that would be his girlfriend Shayna Reeves. That's not because I didn't like Shay, though... it's because I was smitten with her from about the first moment I saw her, and my feelings for her only deepened over time. Part of that was physical, as she's a tall, beautiful redhead with curves that could stop traffic, but there was far, far more to it than that. Shay is intelligent and funny--she's kind and gentle, but has a caustic sense of humor and an unsparing way of going right to the point. Her field is financial analysis, and I don't understand half of what she says, but when she says something is going to happen, it usually does. More importantly (to me, at least), she's one of the most loving people I've ever met. It physically
hurt
to see her with Ted.
I could understand why she was, as he's an impressive physical specimen himself. He's a few inches above six feet and built like a basketball player, with olive skin and Greek-god features. I knew I couldn't compete; I'm pale and bespectacled, and while I'm in good shape, I'm built like the rower I am: slender in the arms and torso, thick through my hips and thighs. Strong back, good power in the legs, good core strength to hold me through the stroke, but not the classic trapezoid or whatever it is. Why would Shay look twice at me when she could look at Ted? All the same, I wished desperately that she would.
Shay had her own place, but she spent a lot of time at ours (I think because it was nicer). I loved having her around, but I also hated it. I wanted all the time with her I could get, and at the same time it was torture. It's a very good thing for me that I didn't have to listen to them fucking. I don't know if
Ted
would have been considerate enough to confine that to his room, but
she
was, and the apartment is V-shaped; though the bedrooms are obviously connected, on a straight line, they're separated by two hallways and part of the bank of elevators.
No, I didn't have to listen to them fucking... but I
did
have to live with the knowledge that Ted was fucking around on Shay. He hadn't said so explicitly, but I knew, and he'd figured out that I wasn't going to tell on him. I doubt he had any idea why I hadn't, and couldn't bring myself to do so, but he was clear on the fact, at any rate. If I'd had proof he was cheating on her, it would have been another matter, but I didn't; and if I told Shay I
knew
he was cheating when I had no solid basis for saying so, the logical question would be, why was I telling her? And at least part of the reason would be that I wanted her to be with me instead. It would have been self-serving, and I couldn't do it.
That sense of honor was probably stupid. My friends would have laughed at me if I'd ever tried to articulate it to any of them, and they would have had reason. They would have told me I should do what our friend Amy did when she declared, "All's fair in love and war, and this is war!" She was right that the girl Geoff had just asked to marry him was really bad for him, and she was definitely right that he and Amy made a far better couple; Geoff and Amy married about a month after we graduated, and they have the strongest, truest marriage I know. I was certainly right that Ted was bad for Shay, and I thought I could fairly say that I would be much better for her--but I wanted that to be true so badly, I couldn't trust it, and I couldn't upend her life for my own selfish desires.
With all that, there were two things about Ted's text that completely infuriated me. One was his evident assumption that I wasn't getting laid regularly because I couldn't find anyone willing.
No, you idiot
, I wanted to say,
I'm not getting laid because the only girl I want to fuck is dating
your
