After the close call at my house, Dani and I reluctantly decided to stay away from each other until our confession. Four days without her touch sounded like hell, but we couldn't risk being caught before then.
My dreams became windows into a multitude of distant futures. Some nights, I killed Mike. I strangled him; I shot him; I stabbed him again and again until I was coated in my brother's blood. Sometimes he killed me. And on other, more restless nights, I watched him hover over Dani's lifeless body, the swollen bowl of her stomach destined to deflate and take the life inside with it.
The first few days, I spent more time masturbating than doing anything else, accomplishing a bit of work between each session. I memorized the details of Dani's flesh in every photo, zooming in on every birthmark and imperfection that made her so perfect. But stroking myself to an artificial reflection of her wasn't enough--it was a drop of water in a desert, enough to keep me alive but never strong enough to thrive--and by the third day, I was deep into a bottle of Jameson by noon.
I stared at myself in the mirror, my eyes sagged by the weight of the liquor and my unquenched obsession. My face ebbed and flowed subtly. Me. Mike?
Disgusting...
Asshole.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!
On the fourth day, I was saved by a lack of alcohol and a hangover too terrible to leave the house to buy more. I slept. I dreamt. And I waited to see her again.
Saturday morning, finally. My fingers hovered over Dani's name in my phone. She'd asked me not to text her--Mike was suspicious of something, what if he went through her phone?--but I couldn't resist.
We're nearly free
I figured it was an ambiguous enough message to not register in my brother's mind if he saw it first. She'd delete it once she read it, to be sure, but she'd get the message and smile.
There was so much for the two of us to discuss. Where would we go? Would we leave everyone and everything behind to start a new life together?
It sounded perfect to me. I'd miss my family, but we could find my parents again when the pain and anger had been put behind enough time to heal. Dani had no family--she'd been orphaned as a child and was never fond of her foster family.
No. She had me. Her real family.
I'd go anywhere for her; I'd work any soul-sucking job and live in the most desolate wasteland so long as I came home to her every day.
I stared at the message until the bottom text changed from delivered to read. That was enough for me.
Just as I was leaving my house, I headed back to my office and opened the drawer beneath my desk, grabbing an old pocket knife that blended wood beautifully with steel. My father had given it to me when I was thirteen, and I ran my finger over the A.M. etched into the handle.
The knife fit snuggly into the back pocket of my jeans. I'd never been backed into a corner hopeless enough to warrant using it, and I hoped that tonight would be no different.
But I had to be safe...
It was a small gathering at my parents' house, the typical Saturday night get-together that they liked to have a few times a month. They always said that the best way to keep a family close was to eat and drink merrily together as often as possible, and I felt the shame of what I was about to do weigh me down like chains around my ankles as I walked through the front door.
My mother was there to greet me. She always smiled when she saw me--as if she was about to cry because it had been too long--but she smiled even brighter when she had both of her boys at home.
"How have you been, Alex?" she asked, taking the bottle of wine from my hands and ushering me inside. "I haven't heard from you all week."
"Good, mom," I croaked, realizing that those were the first words I had said in four days.
For a moment, I felt like she saw right through me, but her suspicion was easily defeated by her jubilance, and she led me towards the kitchen with that familiar pep in her step. "Your brother and Dani are already here, and the newlyweds are here too!"
Martin and Jessica...
For whatever reason, coming clean in front of my cousin and his wife--still in the first month of their marriage--felt even more perverse. But Martin was a good man. He'd understand... Wouldn't he?
Fear crept in on me as I walked through the house. It felt like every portrait and family photo was coming to life just to shame me from their frames.
Would any of them forgive us? My father would, but he was a different sort of man. He'd made difficult decisions in his life--he'd lied to the ones he loved--and I think that his intense love for my mother helped him to understand me in a way that most people couldn't.
But would my mother, who loved her boys more than anything, ever be able to forgive me after watching me stick a knife in Mike's back?
And could I handle losing my mother for Dani?
I turned the corner into the dining room, greeted by smiling faces and a table full of food. Their hellos and salutations drifted past me like leaves on a breezy fall day. Unimportant. Unnoticed. Because there she was, and all of my senses had surrendered themselves to the sight of her.
I could hear nothing.
I felt nothing--in the physical sense.
I simply saw her.
And the fear was gone. The family photos returned to the still life, shut their traps, and trapped the shame with them. Whatever happened, I was five feet away from the girl of my dreams, and that's all that mattered.
She glanced up at me with a coy smile as I made my way around the table for hugs and pats on the back. Martin and Jessica were still glowing, of course, and it gave me a brief vision of my future with Dani. My dad hugged me like he was trying to break my back and the disappointment that had been present in his eyes the last time I saw him had vanished completely. I wondered how much of that was forgiveness and how much was his ability to choke down his feelings.
Mike seemed naively happy, flashing me a huge smile and jerking my wrist around as he gave me an exaggerated handshake. The fool had no idea what was about to happen.
Finally, I came to Dani. She wore a white flowing dress that stopped just above her knees. It was modest compared to most outfits I'd seen her in, but it somehow helped her beauty shine even brighter. Rather than having my vision tethered to her legs or cleavage, I was able to sink my sights in her blue eyes, and she turned in her chair to hug me. I wanted to kneel down and smell her shining black hair but I refrained, settling for the lovely feeling of her head against my abs.
She broke the embrace quickly, which was good because I might have lost myself in it and blown our cover before we even had a chance to explain ourselves.
Unfortunately, no chair had been set up next to Dani, so I was forced to sit in the last available seat directly across from her. I was farther away, but I had the perfect view of perfection. We hadn't discussed how we were going to do this, but that really didn't matter to me once I sat down. I was prepared to just go another night living in our secret. That was the circular poison of our affair. It was just too damn good to risk giving it up. I figured Dani and I would find a moment alone after dinner, run through our plan, kiss in secret one last time, then ruin everybody's night.
Halfway through dinner, I slid my foot across and found her legs. She was wearing boots that stopped high on her shins, and I toyed with them as I stared at my plate. But she pulled back, angling herself in the chair to better face my father--who was in the middle of a story--and depriving me of her touch.
She's nervous,
I told myself, but I had no idea what was about to happen.
When everyone's plates had been licked clean and another bottle of wine had been opened, Mike filled the void of a brief silence by clumsily clinking his glass with a spoon and rising from his chair. "Excuse me, my dear family, but my wife and I have an announcement."
My heart exploded as Mike took Dani by the hand, the two standing side by side as my brother smiled dumbly, letting the tension hang in the air until the room felt suffocatingly small.
"Dani is pregnant!" he proudly proclaimed. "We're having a fucking baby!"
The room erupted. The table shook. My mother was a messy mix of tears and screaming at my brother to watch his mouth.
Congratulations.
Congratulations!
Son of a bitch....
"Alex!" Martin pulled me from the fires of hell. "Did you hear him? They're pregnant! You're gonna be an uncle, man!"
