by Allie Castro
What a scene.
All his friends were gathered around the fire. Three guys, three girls. They’d heard him unzip; no one looked up except Mickey. Mickey’s chin rose, their eyes met for a moment, and he looked down quickly.
The loud sex noises they made last night...
Last night he’d considered the sounds tomorrow’s problem—only now it was tomorrow. Shit. How much had they heard?...
But panning to the right, was the sight that washed away all of that worry. Dwarfed it. Crushed his heart.
Kyle stood at a grill propped up on a stand. He was cooking breakfast. He wore shorts, no shoes, no top. He was bare chested. Clung to his back was Heather, her cheek against his shoulder blade, her hands slipped inside his front pockets. His back was laced in red with Heather’s claw marks. Across the shoulder blades, his shoulders, and down his arms. The tattoos of a man who delivered an astounding fucking. A signal to all their friends of their river guide’s prowess.
All their friends had seen it. Those noises last night that they’d heard were propelled by what they all knew was Kyle’s extra-large penis. And it had been inside Heather. And Heather now looked smitten by the sex delivered to her by their manly river guide. All playing out for their friends to see.
His knees weakened, and he dipped, fell, embarrassed, making it look like he’d stumbled in the sand, getting up on one knee, then rising to stand again. He took two steps toward them, Heather’s face turned to the river, not seeing him. Kyle’s profile, face turned down, not looking his way. Oblivious to the pain they caused...
At the fire, Megan peeked up; she looked angry. She glowered, saw him, made a wriggling, pained look, lowered her face again, spooned granola into her mouth. Embarrassed for him. Ashamed for him.
Will turned, slunk back into the tent and hid out until it was time to board the canoes.
30
The morning got worse. Once breakfast was done, and the sounds of preparation for travel began, Will emerged from the tent. No one would look his way, and no one was talking to Heather. No one was talking to Kyle. Kyle worked wordlessly, getting the canoes prepped, and Heather helped him. The friends talked amongst themselves; Matt looked his way, gave a solemn nod, looked away.
He packed his things, brought them to the canoe he’d been using for the last three days. He tossed his stuff inside as his friends loaded their own canoes. As they began to board their canoes, pushing them out into the water, Heather stayed with Kyle.
Will made his way down the sandy beach, finally approaching them. He said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Heather said, looking down.
He said, “Can we get going now?”
Kyle said, “You okay this morning, buddy?”
“Fine,” he said. Then, hands in pockets, he looked out at the canoes nosing out to the calm water, their friends wanting to get on with it. “I guess everyone’s mad.”
Kyle looked out at the canoes in the water now, said, “I think we kept them up.”
Yeah, and Heather clinging to you all morning didn’t make things better. “Heather…?”
She wouldn’t look at him. Face turned down, she said, “I’m going to go with Kyle...”
He hadn’t heard correctly. “Can we go now?”
She looked up, but away. She said, “I’m just gonna go with Kyle today. Is that okay?”
Kyle grimaced but didn’t dissuade her.
Will stared at Heather’s profile, the face he’d known for so long, that long tendon that ran from her ear and disappeared down the collar of her shirt. He was stunned. Emptied. Someone had pulled that prank where they loaded his full drawer upside down into his desk, he pulled it out and everything just fell on the floor. He looked to Kyle; his eyes were compassionate, but he said nothing to help.
Heather said, “Just today.”
Will turned around, walked away. Got in his and Heather’s canoe, pushed it out by himself. Fuck her. Fuck her to fuck.
Kyle and Heather boarded the river guide’s canoe, he pushed it out, and they went off together. Will hung back. Total ruination, total torture. The shame he felt was enormous. Kyle had just stolen his girl in front of all their friends. And all their friends knew why. Knew everything that Kyle had to offer.
Four canoes filed behind Kyle’s as he headed down river. His friends saw Heather with Kyle and all exchanged shocked but grim glances.
Will hung back where no one could see his face…
31
When they stopped at lunch at a picturesque beach in the crook of a river bend, Will hung back in his canoe while the others paddled ashore. He’d loomed behind all morning. Matt had looked to him one time with forlorn sympathy, but no one had approached him to talk. They were mad about what they’d endured last night, mad at what they’d been made to hear. None of them knew how to deal with it. He fumed the whole way down the river; for hours he’d cursed Heather, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth and jaw and temples ached.
With this phone out he checked GPS, saw the bend in the river where they were, saw there was a hike out to a country road not far from the town of Greenwald. He pushed ashore, everyone disembarking, Heather helping to pull Kyle’s canoe onto drier shore.
He dragged his own canoe up, Matt coming to give him a hand but saying nothing. Then they stood there, hands on hips, everyone milling around, uncomfortable, Kyle unloading a cooler from his canoe. Heather watched, her lips sucked in her mouth, her face tight and worried.
Matt looked his way, down at the ground between their feet, waiting to hear what he had to say.
Will said, “There’s a path here goes out to the road. I’m gonna bail.”
Matt looked up. “Don’t do that, Will.”
“I just want to go. I can’t stay here another minute.”
“Fuck this, man. Just stay…”
“There’s no way,” he said.
Matt looked over his shoulder—his girlfriend Rachel giving him a questioning How’s it going? look. Heather knelt next to the open cooler helping Kyle unpack some lunch items.
“She can’t be serious,” Matt sighed, shaking his head, turning back. “This is fucking crazy, Will. What about what you were going to do?”
The proposal. “That’s off.”
Matt nodded, mouth set firm, looking at the sand again. “Want me to walk with you?”
“It’s not far. I can do it on my own. Say bye to everybody…” And he wheeled around and hiked before he got emotional. Matt called after him softly but he kept on, headed to the tree-line. Matt let him go. Rachel must have joined him, because he heard her say to Matt, “Where’s Will going?”
Rachel called after him once, but he waved over his shoulder and entered the bush.
He waited for Heather to come running up and join him, pull him back, apologize and say for him to stay. But a half-mile up the rocky bush trail he knew he was on his own.
32
It was a grim ride home. In the hamlet of Greenwald he was able to arrange a cab to come drive him out to the interstate where he could catch a bus.
When they’d arrived for the trip, two cars had parked at the trip’s endpoint in the town of Sudo, everybody loading into the remaining two cars and driving north to the starting point. An hourlong Greyhound took him north to where he’d parked his old Volvo. He’d checked his phone one last time. No messages. And he wouldn’t send one. Fuck her.
Even though it was a three-hour drive home to his and Heather’s apartment, it went by in a moment. Pulling onto his street, he couldn’t even remember making any of the turns; his mind had been empty the whole time.
Lost as he was, it was incredible he’d even managed to find his way home.
33
Two days later, he sent Heather the first text.
Will: where are u?
It went unanswered. Then he was regretful that he’d sent it. Why had he done that? Just let her go.
Later that day Mickey called him.
“Hey, budd
y. How you doing? You okay?”
Will’s voice in a dead monotone: “I’m great, how’s it going?”
Mickey exhaled long. It was hard for him to call, and Will had to respect that he’d done it. He tried to picture calling one of the guys if their girl had shamed them the way Heather had done. Mickey said, “Heather, man, I don’t know what to tell you...”
He asked, “Where are you?”
“Just got home. We bailed. Just like you. Yesterday, we hiked out, me and Emma. Fuck her, man.”
“Where’s Heather?”
“Still on the trip. Far as we know.”
“She’s with Kyle?”
“She’s a fucking cunt, Will.”
The word hurt him. “No, don’t say that.”
And from near Mickey, he could hear Emma’s voice. “Don’t call her that, Mickey.”
Will said, “Is that Emma?”
Now he could hear Emma say, “Hey, Will,” flowery soft and soothing, a singsong voice trying to quell what she knew must be the most horrible and humiliating thing for a person to endure.
“Hey, Emma,” he said quietly.
“Well, whatever,” Mickey said. “She’s a coldhearted bitch, I think I can say that all right...”
34
No more messages were sent to Heather, and he was glad his resolve stayed strong. Because despite his ability to manage discipline and not reach out to the person who would hurt him so deeply, his insides were roiling and churning, twisting with psychic pain like he’d never endured before. The third day without her was when he broke down finally.
He cried. He cried a lot. That emptiness that had enveloped him on the way home was a gift that he didn’t appreciate until the pain hit him so fucking hard. He cried for hours. He threw a framed picture of them together as a couple against the wall where it smashed all the glass. He vacuumed it up. Cried some more. Didn’t eat. Went thirty-two hours unable to put food in his mouth. He emptied her drawers, dragged her stuff out of the closet, looking to pack her things in trash bags, throw them out the window of their apartment. If she ever came home, she would see her rain-soaked belongings all over the front entrance. All their neighbors would know: Heather was a cheating bitch.
But instead, he gathered up her clothes and belongings into a bundle in their bedroom, fell against it and cried himself to sleep.
When he woke, it was two in the morning. He snatched up a pair of her panties, bundled them to his face and breathed deep. He missed her so much. He missed her so, so much. They were best friends. Lovers. How could she do this to him? Pants pulled off, he tugged on a pair of her panties, his dick managing to fit inside the small front triangle without peeping out. He lay in her pile of clothes, grew hard while he thought of what she looked like being fucked by Kyle. He jerked off. Did it slow, drawing out those awful sickly moments where another man did things to his girlfriend that he could never do. When he came, he did it inside her panties.
The next day, Sully sent him a text.
Sully: back home
Sully: hope you’re good Will
Will: u bail?
Sully: fuck that bitch
Will: where is she?
Sully: me and the girls and Matty bailed. took the last car out of Sudo I don’t even know how she’s going to get home
Will: she still with Kyle?
Sully: yeah that guy’s getting fucking fired Emma wrote a letter to the company
Will: they’re still on the river?
Sully: she stayed with him
He let the text hang, never responded.
Later, he put on a clean pair of Heather’s panties. He’d soiled three of them now. Went to their desktop computer and booted it up. He opened the joint bank account, went down to their shared credit card and opened their history.
An hour ago, Heather booked a single room with a king-size bed in the Sudo Motel. Booked it for three days.
35
On the fifth day after he’d abandoned the river trip, he headed out in public for the first time. Apartment keys in hand, proper clothes put on, clean things for once, he boarded the elevator and pressed L for lobby, waited for the doors to close. The elevator descended. He was headed to Mama Lucia’s, looking to get himself a real meal. He’d lost four pounds since he’d come back. He’d tightened to an extra notch on his belt. Not eating, and when he did eat, it was junk. He felt sallow, empty, sick and diseased. In his darkest moments, it was like he could still feel the head of Kyle’s cock in his mouth. Sometimes it would snap him out of sleep, bolting upright and gasping for breath. He shook his head, the images coming back, him putting his mouth on Kyle, trying to pluck one of the guy’s balls into his mouth as he rammed that thing inside Heather. Some threesome.
The elevator doors opened and Heather stood waiting.
He gasped an audible inward hissing of air; jolted where he stood, the sight so unexpected—hurtful and yet joyous, aggravating, bewildering, rage inducing...
In the second the electric tension zipped through him, a hundredfold responses to her visage lashed through him. Snatching her, embracing her, kicking her in the stomach, punching her in the face. Spitting on her, calling her a whore...
He did nothing. Stood there immobile. Heather’s eyes snapped open seeing him. The sight of her boyfriend as unexpected to her as she was to him. Her lips pursed, she squinted her eyes, tucked her chin down. Her knees dipped, and she almost fell forward. The elevator doors made to close, and he pushed out a forearm to keep them open. He looked at her. The girl he knew so well. Shorts and a fleece zip-up, hair pulled back. She’d showered. Of course she had. She’d been off the river for three days, fucking Kyle all over that king-size bed in the Sudo Motel. Of course the room would have a shower. A hot shower. She got herself all cleaned up. Kyle probably soaped her body all up and down...
The anger rolled up, somersaulted, faltered, fell flat.
His jaw trembled, and his eyes filled with tears. Heather’s chin dimpled, a tear fell down her cheek. Slowly her face turned up to meet his again. She hunched her shoulders up, flinching, expecting like she should be struck. He’d never harmed her in her life before this, and he never, ever, ever would.
When her eyes met his again, she collapsed. Her knees gave way, and she burst into sobs. She fell before him, clutched her face in her hands and bellowed deep woeful sobs in the lobby of their apartment building. He fell on his knees in front of her, took her in his arms, clutched her as tight to his body as he could.
36
The audacity was astounding—at least that’s what a cynical person would think. But he knew Heather for a long time. He wanted her to return. As bold as he’d been in the days without her, telling her to fuck herself to fuck forever, the truth was now that she was in his clutch he would never let her go again. It wasn’t audacity. It took strength for Heather to return to his door. No human being who did what she did could think that it was a good idea to return. The fact that she did showed she still cared. If she didn’t care, she would go home to her mom and dad, text him she would come by sometime when he wasn’t there, pick up her things if he wouldn’t mind arranging them in boxes and bags for her. Not audacity. She still cared.
He held her in his arms while the elevator ascended to their floor, her heavy travel bag clutched in his grip behind her back. She cried into his chest.
He had to help her to their apartment, walking her down the hall and holding her hand. She cried so much she couldn’t see. She stumbled the way she did blindfolded in the cook tent, the day he let another man put his penis in her hand.
Once in the apartment, she collapsed immediately. Fell to her knees on their foyer floor and cried into her hands. He tossed her bag aside, kneeled behind her and held her.
She sobbed, “How could I do that?”
He shushed her, soothed her.
“How could I do that to you, Will?”
“I know, I know...” He rubbed circles on her back.
“How could I do that and you
don’t hate me?”
“I hate you,” he said but still soothed her, arms holding her narrow body, his chin in the crook of her neck, smelling her hair.
“You should hate me, Will,” she spat. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“It’s okay. It’s okay…”
“It’s not okay,” she cried, her sobs accelerating suddenly, her stomach tightening, lurching forward out of his grip. She fell, put her forehead against the floor then collapsed on her side. He embraced her, spooned behind her and let her cry.
“I still love you,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
“I do,” he said. “I fucking hate you so much, but I’ll never stop loving you...”
37
Heather cried it out while he held her. When she was drained, her body weight leaning heavy against him, he rubbed her back again.
“You want to lay down?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice a sob, thick and sad.
“Come on,” he said, “come with me,” rising, taking her hands and helping her to stand.
Down the hall, he guided her, a hand on the small of her back, her staggering drunkenly next to him, breathing through her mouth because her crying had swelled her nostrils. Into the bedroom they went, and he guided her toward their bed. But he’d forgotten that he’d pulled everything she owned out of the drawers and out of the closet, threw them in a spark-joyless heap in the center of their room.
