by Megan Walker
Gabby nudges my foot with her own. “Sounds like it’s going to be amazing.” I can tell she means it, and I smile back warmly.
“So,” I say, swirling the wine around in my glass. “Has Felix told you about him and Josh getting to be good friends?”
Gabby looks confused. “Felix and Josh? Really?” She pauses. “I mean, not that I think they wouldn’t get along, it’s just . . . huh.”
“Josh was kind of reluctant at first, I think,” I say, which was true even before the fight that led to Josh proclaiming that he wouldn’t ever make new friends, and then somehow doubting his very existence. “He called it incestuous, this weirdly entangled group of friends we’ve got forming.”
Gabby rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I can see that. Ben is at my house right now, complaining that Josh told him not to eat on his couch and that he needs to wear pants. He seemed especially pissy about the pants.”
“Oh my god, I just want to not have Ben’s balls be the first thing I see when I get home from work. I don’t feel like pants are an unreasonable request.” I can’t help, though, but feel a happy twinge at Josh sticking up for me with Ben, even if means that now Gabby and Will need to deal with Ben’s whining. “Josh and Felix are really talking a lot now, though. I think it’s been really good for Josh, especially with Ben having so much stuff of his own he’s going through. I think they both kind of needed someone to talk to about . . . stuff going on in their marriages.”
Gabby’s eyes widen, and her mouth opens and closes and opens again. “What’s going on in their marriages?”
I find myself leading with Felix and Jenna. “Well, I guess Jenna’s been struggling with stuff since having their baby. Like, some of the trauma stuff coming up again, I think?”
“Really? Oh, that sucks.” Gabby’s brow furrows, and now she’s the one who looks vaguely guilty. “Ugh, I knew I should have pestered Felix more. But I figured they’ve been super busy with the baby and that job of his, and he says things have been fine. But I should have known—”
“No, stop,” I chide. “I think they haven’t been telling anyone, you know? Except, I guess, Josh.” I twist my lips, and then drink the last little swig of my wine. “I think because Josh had stuff of his own he needed to commiserate about. Stuff we haven’t been super open about, either.”
“Like what?” I can see the hesitancy, the wondering whether she should press it—something that was never a part of Gabby’s and my relationship before. We’ve always been super blatant about feeling like we were owed every detail of the other’s life. Especially if it involved boy drama.
I miss that. I sigh, knowing I’m the one to blame.
“I’ll tell you,” I say. “But first—Gabby, I’m so sorry. I know things have been weird between us for a while now. This whole infertility thing has been brutal. And I should have been talking with you about it more, but I just sort of stopped doing that, and that was so stupid of me.”
Gabby gives me a gentle smile. “It’s okay. I thought maybe you wanted to think about the infertility thing as little as possible, so you didn’t want to talk about it.”
That’s definitely part of it, but not all, and this next part makes me feel far worse.
“I think—and this is super jerky, I know—but I think I still have some jealousy from last year, that you were able to get pregnant when I couldn’t.” I cringe, because god, that sounds awful, especially considering how that turned out. “And when you miscarried . . .” I trail off and shake my head. “I totally understood that you didn’t want kids, at least not yet, so I got it how on some level you could be relieved. And I’m glad it wasn’t a terrible thing for you. But it just—it feels like it made it extra hard to talk about it with you, and this reminder of this thing my body won’t do.”
“Oh, Anna,” she says, her expression soft.
“Super jerky. And I’m sorry. I should have been able to get over my shit and be there for you.”
“But you were!” She grabs my hand. “You were totally there for me, even though I could tell that in some ways the whole thing was harder on you than on me.”
“Okay, maybe I was there at the time, but I’ve been pulling away lately, and we both know it.” I don’t mention the Felix telling Josh telling me of it all—though I’m guessing we’ll get there eventually, now that we’re actually talking.
Gabby shrugs one shoulder. “Phones go two ways. I could have been better at bugging you. But I knew we’d be good. We always are.”
There’s something so reassuring in that simple statement. A weight on my chest I didn’t even know was there—or at least separate from the weight from the whole Josh situation—lifts.
“I should have just been talking to you all along, but—”
“Let’s start right now,” Gabby cuts in. “What is going on with you and Josh?”
I almost laugh at her insistence, but the topic isn’t exactly hilarious. “It’s been . . . not great,” I say, then sigh. “I’d even downgrade it to outright bad at times.”
“You guys aren’t splitting up, too?” Gabby looks horrified at the thought, but give n what’s going on with Wyatt and Ben, I can see how she doesn’t think it’s the most impossible thing in the world anymore.
“No,” I say quickly. “No, not bad like that. Bad like . . . I don’t know. Shit, I just need to start from the beginning.”
I consider refilling my glass first, but there’s still a bit left, and even though I know there’s no risk in having a second glass now, the force of habit is strong. I don’t bother refilling hers, either—she’s barely had half of her first glass, and probably won’t even finish that, since she’s going to be driving home later.
These girls’ nights in were a lot easier—and drunker—when we were roommates.
Between bites of chips and the last sips of my Cotes Du Rhone, I tell her about how stressful the infertility thing has been on us both, and then about the fight that led to Josh’s meltdown, to his not even knowing who he is anymore on some fundamental level. About our fights over Ben’s stupid question and over the snake, and how I don’t know how to help him. And worse, that even when I think I’m finally able to do something right, he seems to know there’s more coming, that he’s going to fall apart in some way I can’t even imagine and am so scared I won’t be able to help him through.
“And he wants me to tell him everything I’m feeling—like, that’s a thing with us that I’ve been working on from the beginning, you know? Being open, letting him know what I’m feeling. But I do that with this, and then I’m making it all about me, which is also bad, and I just don’t know if I’m going mess it all up. If I’m going to make it worse for him, you know?”
I draw my knees up to my chest. It at once feels so good to be talking to Gabby about this, and also just reminds me of how helpless I feel to make things better for Josh, or for us.
“Hey,” Gabby says, “Josh knows you love him. And he knows you’re there for him. And that counts way more in the long run. You guys will make it through this. Besides,” she says with a smile, “apparently now you have Felix to help with finding the right thing to say. It’s good for guys to have friends to talk to, too.”
“Seriously,” I say. The wine is starting to settle in and make me feel warm and less worried about everything. Or maybe it’s just talking like this with Gabby again. Or hell, maybe it’s the excess of carbohydrates.
Either way, I believe her. We will make it through this.
We will kick this’s ass with our awesome marital prowess. Speaking of which . . .
“Our sex life, though,” I say with a grin. “Now that’s been pretty damn good.”
“Yeah? Taking a break from the ovulation tracker and Josh’s super-romantic dates with the cup at the clinic been working for you guys?”
I laugh, though there’s a tiny twinge of sadness even in that. “It has. We’ve go
t big plans now to role-play as a slayer and sexy watcher. And have sex in a graveyard.”
Gabby’s look of horror comes back. “In a graveyard? For real? I mean, I can see the slayer—and Josh definitely could pull off the sexy watcher—”
“Hells yeah, he can.”
“—But in a graveyard? Like, on top of dead people?”
I shrug. “I mean, not like we’re going to exhume them and go at it on their corpses, no. There’s grass and a shit-ton of dirt and a coffin in between us and the bodies.” I don’t actually know that we’re planning on banging away on top of someone’s grave specifically, but it’s hilarious to see Gabby’s reaction to the idea.
“Oh my god, Anna-Marie, that is wrong.”
“Why? They’re dead. If I’m dead, I think I’d be cool with people having amazing vampire slayer sex on my grave.”
Gabby makes a face. “You’re like those people who want to have sex in a morgue. You would be amazed at how many people in the hospital talk about having morgue fantasies.”
“I don’t know about morgue fantasies, but I’d probably have morgue sex,” I say, and Gabby makes this mortified sound like I’m killing her with the details of my disgusting sexual appetites, and soon we’re both laughing our heads off—at morgue sex? At each other? Whatever, it’s awesome.
“Hold on, my ass is buzzing,” Gabby says. She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and frowns at it. “It’s Josh. Why is Josh calling me?”
“Probably not to make your ass buzz,” I say, and she laughs.
The truth is, I have no idea why Josh is calling her. But I guess we’re both about to find out.
Twenty-seven
Josh
Gabby answers the phone on the third ring. “Josh,” she says. “Anna-Marie and I were just having a discussion, and I have a question for you.”
I wasn’t expecting that, so it takes me a second to answer. “Yeah?”
“Would you or would you not have sex in a morgue?”
I can’t say I’ve ever been asked that before. “Um. Not with a body.”
“No!” Gabby says. “With Anna-Marie. Who is alive.”
I know I need to be telling Gabby about what’s going on with Felix, but I kind of want to give her this little reprieve before she has to start worrying with the rest of us. “Are we talking, like, on a body? On a surface where a body has been? Has it been sterilized?”
“Oh my god,” Gabby says. “Anywhere in a morgue. On a sterilized gurney, let’s say, which has at times had dead bodies on it, but does not at that moment.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, sure. Totally.”
“That is so wrong,” Gabby says. “But Anna-Marie agrees with you. I can’t believe you are going to do it in a graveyard.”
Ah. That’s what brought this on.
“But I’m guessing that’s not what you’re calling about,” Gabby says. “Because that would be super weird.” She has a kind of giggly-happy quality to her voice, that makes me think she and Anna-Marie are a glass or two into their Wine and Doritos Night—or maybe she’s just feeling really good about the two of them hanging out again.
I’m sure Anna-Marie is, too. I hate having to spoil this for them, but . . .
“No,” I tell her. “I’m calling on behalf of Felix, actually.”
“Is he okay?” Gabby asks.
“Not really. Jenna left him.”
There’s silence on the other end.
“She’s been having a hard time, lately,” I say. “And he thinks she has postpartum depression, but he didn’t catch it, and she ran off and left her ring.”
“Oh my god,” Gabby says, any trace of happiness in her voice gone, replaced by shock. “I didn’t know.”
“We talked about it for a while,” I tell her, “and he asked me to call you because he wanted you to know, but he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore tonight.”
“I’m a nurse. I should have known.”
I understand her guilt, and I guess it’s good for her to get that out talking to me instead of Felix. “I don’t think they were talking to very many people about what was going on. Felix thought it was just the trauma from her past coming up, and he asked her to go to a therapist, but she wouldn’t.”
“Yeah,” Gabby says in an almost angry tone, but I’m guessing that anger is directed more at herself for not catching this. “Of course she didn’t, because she was depressed, and depressed people do that. Where is she now?”
“He doesn’t know. I think he’s going to try tracking their credit card in case she uses it.”
“Can I go over there?” Gabby asks. “If I don’t make him talk about it? Just hug him and crash on his couch?”
“I think that would be a really good thing. He could probably use someone to help with the kids in the morning.” God, he has a newborn. “Or with Rachel in the middle of the night.”
“I’m on it,” Gabby says.
“Thank you. Tell Anna-Marie I’m on my way home.”
“Will do,” Gabby says, and we hang up.
I spend the rest of the drive home thinking about the kind of pain that Felix must be in. He seemed to be holding it together, but I can’t imagine that’s going to last. More like the calm before the storm, before it really hits him and starts to feel real. If it was my wife out there, sick and scared and confused and doing god knows what . . .
I’d be tearing my hair out. I’d be out on the street driving around, which would be stupid, because LA is a really big place. I’d be trying to break in to her Uber account to find out where she got a ride to. I’d be calling everyone we know.
Or maybe I’d be sitting in my house in shock, with no idea what to do.
Either way, all I want to do is go home and hug Anna-Marie and tell her that no matter what our problems are, we’re going to be okay.
When I get home, Gabby is already gone. Anna-Marie opens the interior garage door before I’ve even turned off my car. She walks down the steps and out into the garage in her bare feet and throws her arms around me. I hold her, the car door still standing open, and lift her off her feet.
“I love you,” she says, and I say it back, feeling like I’m clinging to her for dear life.
Anna-Marie lets go and lands on her feet again. “Come inside,” she says. “Tell me everything.”
We go into the den and I collapse on the couch, and I tell her about seeing Felix, and about what he thinks happened with Jenna. Anna-Marie looks properly horrified at my description of Felix’s fears for her.
“She might not have done any of that,” Anna-Marie says. “Maybe she just went to a hotel or a friend’s house or something to crash.”
“I hope so. But I think it was good for Felix to talk about all the things he’s afraid of.” I sigh. “I just wish there was more I could do.”
Anna-Marie wraps her arms around me, and I cling to her. “Don’t ever leave me,” I say. “I can’t lose you.”
“I won’t,” Anna-Marie says. “And you don’t leave me.”
“Never. I know things get hard sometimes, but I never, ever want to be without you.”
“Good,” Anna-Marie says, and for a minute, we just curl up there together. I breathe in the scent of her—her latest favorite citrusy perfume and a hint of wine—and press my face into her soft hair and just hold her against me.
“Did Ben come back?” I finally manage to ask.
She shakes her head. “He’s not here. Gabby says he was over at her house watching TV with Will.”
And complaining about me, no doubt. Good thing I don’t care that much if Will thinks I’m a pants Nazi.
“Are you still upset about the fight you guys had?” she asks, pulling away enough to look up at me.
“I’m pissed at him,” I say. “That he thinks I’m going to let someone into my life that would be awfu
l to him. I just want to yell at him.”
“Maybe you should. You know, letting people know what you’re feeling while you’re feeling it . . .”
I think about that. “Maybe I should. Maybe I should sit up and wait for him like I’m his dad and then yell at him.”
Anna-Marie cuddles closer. “I could wait up with you. Or you could come to bed and have sex first, and then wait up and yell at him later.”
“Definitely the second one.”
And I follow my wife back to our bedroom, and hold her like I’m never going to let go, because I won’t.
Twenty-eight
Josh
After Anna-Marie falls asleep, I put on a t-shirt and pajama pants and sit down on the couch in the front room with the lights off to wait up for Ben. It occurs to me that maybe he’s going to crash on the couch at Will and Gabby’s, but their couch is really more of a futon and not nearly as comfortable as our guest bed.
Besides, I already know I’m not going to fall asleep. My mind is full of too many thoughts, too many fears. I want to say that I can’t imagine how Felix feels, but the truth is, I can imagine it, and it’s bleak and terrifying. Felix is handling it better than I think I would, especially in the emotional state I’ve been in lately.
I’m glad he called me, though. He has a lot of other support, so it means something that I was his first call.
I still wish I’d been able to do anything for him.
Car lights flash across the driveway, and a moment later, the key scrapes in the lock, and my front door opens. A beam from a cell phone flashlight streams through the entryway, and the door clicks shut. Ben shuffles past the front room like he’s already half asleep.
“Hey!” I say.
Ben shouts and jumps out of his skin, and the light swivels wildly and then pivots around to blind me.
I hold up a hand. “Turn that off.”
Ben lowers it to the ground, at least. “Dude! Do not sneak up on me like that. Will and I just got done watching The Haunting of Hill House.”
