by Rebecca Kate
The strangest thing happened that night. I became an obvious third wheel.
It was uncomfortable, to say the least. The sexual tension could be cut with a knife between the two of them. I walked out on the dance floor with Leah, only to realize not ten minutes later that she was making lusty eyes at Sebastian from across the room.
Sebastian looked amused, but not uninterested. They hadn’t said a handful of words to each other since we’d arrived, yet they were all but eye-fucking right in front of me. Sebastian eventually made his way over and asked if he could cut in, taking Leah’s hand and leading her away from me.
I wanted to be irritated. I wanted to be angry, or jealous even. But the overwhelming emotion I felt looking at them, was love. I loved them both, and I loved that he was showing her the attention she deserved. She was beautiful and perfect, and in that moment, he looked at her like he saw those things too.
I also felt a little lonely. Seeing everyone so happy in the room, while my boyfriend was out of town just made me long for him. So I made my way outside where others were gathering around smoking cigarettes and called Fredrick. “I was just thinking about you,” he answered.
His tone was gravelly, and I pictured him like some of the men I saw next to me, smoking a cigarette and leaning against a brick wall in a leather jacket and motorcycle boots. The perpetual bad boy. The rock star. “No, you weren’t,” I teased.
“Okay, you’re right, I wasn’t. But I sure am now.” We both chuckled.
We had grown so much closer together. I found it so strange to think of him as the boy I dated for so long but never really got to know. The man on the other end of the phone was layers upon layers of human being. He would call me to talk about work, and I would marvel at all the ins and outs of making music.
We also talked a lot about our families. Both only children, we had similar upbringings in that sense. In all other ways, we were completely different, though. He never knew his real father. His mother told him his father that ran from her the second two lines popped up on a tiny plastic test. It was no secret his mother and stepfather hated that he was a musician.
They seemed strict like my parents, but unlike my parents, they weren’t okay with Fredrick eventually taking control of his own life. My parents were controlling, but backed off as best they could once they saw that I had a plan and did not want their help. Fredrick’s parents pushed harder, and that was the reason Fredrick worked so hard to be the very best.
It’s why he refused to stand still in his career. He soared and excelled at everything in the industry, and I listened and cheered him on the entire way. I told him about my predicament of being the third wheel with Leah and Sebastian, and he sounded a little relieved. I suppose he was happy Sebastian had taken interest in Leah because that meant he had no more interest in me.
He told me he was in his home studio working on a new song and asked if I wanted to hear it. Of course I said I did. The moment he began to sing, I grabbed the nearest chair to steady myself and closed my eyes. His voice brought out every emotion in me.
His music was deep, about a love so tragic and beautiful it was almost an addiction. It reminded me of my stories instantly. We had that inner tragic artist in common. Though the smooth, whiskey-filled voice on the other end did not match the vision of the face those lyrics brought to mind, though. No, a love so tragic, beautiful, and addicting only had one look in my mind. Mason. Years later, that tie to him was still so strong, so potent in my mind, if he were there then, I’d relapse.
I listened as he crooned away, and I told him how beautiful the song was. He didn’t need my approval though. He also didn’t need me to tell him how talented he was. He was the best of the best, and he knew it. He sang and the world melted, just as I melted that night, even if the lyrics had brought up feelings of a forbidden, past lover.
I retreated to the bar immediately when I went back inside. I needed a drink. This night was too much. I felt like maybe I should have stayed home that night. But alas, I went out to be with my two best friends as they fell for one another and left me stranded and alone. After having two vodka cranberries, I went home.
My brain was all fuzzy from the alcohol, and the song came back to haunt me as I tucked myself into bed. I imagined a life I knew I’d never have. What would it even be like, I tortured myself thinking. Thoughts turned into dreams and dreams turned into nightmares. In that very moment, I knew I had made the right choice by being with Fredrick. He was of my level, and far less complicated. He was my happy medium.
Ten
Our life together, as casual as it may be, was beautiful and normal enough to satisfy my romantic heart. I woke up the next morning to sweet words in the form of a text from Fredrick. I found this was a habit of his. Most mornings it was, “Morning, Bunny,” or “Have a great day today.” But once or twice a week, he elaborated and stretched out those sweet words, making me truly feel as though I had woken up beside him.
Things like that were enough to make me feel as though our long-distance relationship did not lack essential qualities as those of a normal relationship. He spent many a moment making me feel special and making me feel like I was living my life right beside him. And then when I was just about to get frustrated and want him close to me, he’d pay me a visit and give me all his attention.
Sure, he had conference calls and Skype meetings with other people that worked at the recording studio, but for the most part, his time was all mine when he was in town. I didn’t need much in life. These qualities made me happy. But I worried it was not the same on his end. It was a very real fear that I did not bestow the same feelings to him that he did to me. I wondered if I was enough to keep him. I guess I always found that little voice in the back of my head that Mason had created years back.
“He looks like the type that is never satisfied and doesn’t know a good thing when he’s got it. Those are the types that wander,” he said that dreadful night. It had been a long time, and yet, that voice always played with my insecurities when it came to my relationship. I tried to ignore it, to put it out of my mind. But it was always waiting to pop back up at a moment’s notice.
Sure, I tried. I really did. I sent him text after text just as he did with me, and I gave him my complete attention when he was in front of me. But call it intuition; I could see it in the spark of his mischievous eyes that he was searching for happy places I was not.
I never found any evidence to support my assumptions when it came to women, but I did find other things. Pictures of him doing drugs and being fucked up surfaced on social media more than once, and in each picture, I noted two very important things, 1.) he looked happy and comfortable in that lifestyle, and 2.) he had women hanging off of him in every single shot.
He swore to me the drugs were a temporary, partying thing he was experimenting with. He swore to me that he did not touch any of those women in the pictures, even though the pictures themselves all but incriminated him. And he swore each and every single time that that would, in fact, be the last time he put himself in those situations.
I believed him, and we moved on. Why wouldn’t I when he was a perfect boyfriend other than that one little area? “You are my life, Bunny. I wish you could just move to California with me so I could spend the rest of my days gazing into your perfect, angelic face. I don’t deserve you, but I’m sure as hell am keeping you,” he’d say, curled up next to me on my couch. And I melted each and every time. That’s the thing with a lyricist, they string beautiful words together at the drop of a hat. How are you supposed to be able to decipher the truth from the beautiful bullshit?
I have beautiful memories of Los Angeles too, and those would never have been possible without him. He tried on more than one occasion to get me to move in with him in California. But I refused every time. I didn’t want to be the girl that moved halfway across the US just to settle in a home bought with someone else’s dreams. I had my own dreams. I wanted to buy my own house with money from my own hard work pa
ying off. I told him I would consider moving in together if we ever got serious, but so far, we were enjoying our relationship how it was. He wasn’t naïve. He knew if I ever agreed to move in together that he would have to leave California in the past and move here because Colorado was my home and I had no interest in living elsewhere. This is where I was born and raised, and this is where I would die.
The other forty-nine states were for vacation. California was a vacation. And boy did I enjoy vacationing there with him. Just as much as I loved coming home to my real life afterward. Fredrick showed me a world I was blind to without him. For a man that hated pools and swimming, he sure knew how to highlight the beauty of a beach day. That was something I didn’t get to experience in my hometown.
My senses were alive as we walked along the sand on the beach that led from his condo to the ocean. The California sun seemed more for visual effect rather than blazing, sunburn inducing side we experienced at our home in Colorado. We watched the birds do a synchronized routine out in the distance over the ocean, and then he pulled me close and kissed me, as he lowered me down to the sand.
We stayed like that for what felt like forever. The world around us seemed to disappear as we made out like teenagers between large rocks in the sand. Never reaching a point where it was past romantic and hinting on indecent for our very public display, but just enough so that I really felt how passionate he was for me.
Time, as she does, moved on. The earth rotated, and we threw ourselves into a routine year after year. We got a cat and named him Lady. But in our defense, he was more of a lady than I’d ever been. That is until he picked up this habit of humping items we left out on the couch.
Sorry, not sorry though, because yelling, “Lady, stop humping that pillow!” is still to this day the funniest thing I’ve ever yelled, especially that one time it happened when we had company over. I thought my mother was going to pass out, she was using so much force to suppress her giggles.
Lady was like a child to Fredrick and I. He was our furbaby. When Fredrick called, he’d often ask me how my day went, and then he’d tell me to put him on speaker phone so he could do the same with Lady. I rolled my eyes but did it with every single request.
Fredrick left more and more things at my house each time he came to visit. Leah and I joked that he was slowly moving in, and would one day just up and sell his apartment and drive down with nothing left to move. I didn’t mind though. We were happy.
Leah was happy too. She and Sebastian got engaged, and the moment they did, it was like I truly saw them for the first time. Sure, I knew them both better than anyone, maybe even better than they knew each other, but the way they both lit up around the other, it was as if they had been reborn to the people they were always meant to be.
Their personalities were in full force and technicolor, and I enjoyed seeing them in all the brilliance they brought out in one another. I wish I could say Fredrick and I had that effect on each other. Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d ever experience that kind of love though. I loved him in my own way, and he loved me. Great and epic love, we were not though.
Eleven
Freddy had been out of town for almost a week, which is exactly how long it took me to figure out what the awful smell was in my home. His jacket reeked of stale cigarettes and whiskey. The smell had carried all through the house, forcing me into a scavenger hunt. I had to find it.
Picking up his jacket, I crossed the room looking for other things I could toss in the wash with it. I hated wasting water on one item. I reached for my sweatshirt from the chair at the dinner table, and the jacket slipped out of my arms.
I bent to pick it up and a small bag caught my eye as it dropped from the inside jacket pocket to the floor. A small bag of white powder that unfortunately I knew all too well. Cocaine. Cocaine. Drugs. Drugs again after having conversations time and time again about quitting the hard lifestyle the music industry had seduced him into. He had agreed. He had begged and pleaded and told me he was never going to touch the stuff again. Heat rose to my face, and a chill ran up my spine, being this close to something that had been a dark cloud over my head for a long time.
I found out he was doing cocaine years ago and told him I’d leave him if he kept doing drugs. I wasn’t naïve. I knew drugs were easy to get in Los Angeles, especially around the people he spent most of his time with. He latched onto my arm like a small child that day and pleaded with me to stay. He assured me that it was just something he did on occasion at parties where everyone was doing it.
I was torn looking down at the baggy of expensive, white drugs. Would he ever quit? Probably not. Perhaps I was stupid for staying as long as I had. Perhaps this was what I got for staying with a man that I knew couldn't say no to temptation like that. One thing was certain, it was going to get much worse before it got better.
The day Freddy came back from California, I was sitting in the dining room chair right where I had made the ugly discovery a few days prior. His keys dropped to the table by the front door, alerting me to his presence. It was time. He sauntered in, a lazy smile on his handsome face.
“Well, you sure are a pretty sight to come home to. That was a successful two weeks if I do say so myself.” He always did know how to boast about his work. I usually found that comforting, as I knew if he was happy, we were usually happy.
I could only nod this time. “What's wrong, Bunny?” Had I usually found it cute when he called me that? In that moment, it sounded childish. He bent closer to me, boring into my eyes for my truth. I knew I needed to leave him, but words failed me. Growing up, I had always hoped to be a strong woman one day.
You never know how weak you really are until you are faced with a decision you know you need to make, and zero drive to actually do it. I needed to speak, but I couldn’t. Instead, I held up the baggy. His face paled immediately.
“Scarlet—”
I cut him off with a hand up and a shake of my head. The inner strength I had found its way up.
“I can’t do this again. I won’t do it, actually.” There was no use denying it. We both knew he fucked up. He didn’t try to escape this, there were no excuses, no pawning it off on a friend or the past. He fucked up, and now he would pay by losing everything. I saw his fear as clear as day.
“Scarlet, no. You can’t leave me. You can’t. Look, it was a moment of weakness. I promise I’m not doing it again regularly. That’s old stuff anyway. It was just a party. One party, bunny. I promise!” Perhaps he did have excuses. Just not good ones.
“It doesn’t matter, Freddy.”
“Like hell it does! You can’t leave me. We’re a team. I need you.”
“We can’t keep doing this back and forth thing. You either stop, or we stop, and obviously you can’t keep away from the partying lifestyle California has given you. This proves it!” I put the baggy in his face for emphasis.
He grabbed it out of my hands with lightning speed. “Stop touching it! You’re too good, too clean to touch ugly shit like this. This is why I need you. You’re my angel. Too good for me and my life. You keep me sane and grounded. I can do this, I swear I can. Please. Don't let a moment of weakness break us. We’re too good for this!”
“I’ve heard this before, Fredrick. I have to be done with this.”
“No! No, no, no, no, no.” He shook his head over and over as he repeated the mantra. I could feel my resolve desiccating. He looked so scared and so sweet. My rock star. Beautiful on the outside and tortured on the inside. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep this hardened image up. I had to get to the point. I drove the nail into the coffin to remind myself why I had to leave, not just for myself but for the innocent life that didn't do anything to deserve this.
"I'm pregnant." I maintained eye contact though my lip quivered and I longed to look away and break down. This is not how I wanted this part of my life to go. I needed everything in a neat and organized order, and this was getting messier by the second. He looked so shocked. A second surprise in as man
y minutes.
"Pregnant? Really? Is it mine?"
My mouth dropped open as I swatted his chest. "Yes, really! And yes, it's yours! God!" His arms wrapped around me, but I fought to break free.
"Stop it. You know what I meant. It's just, this is so unexpected." Despite the state of mess our lives seemed to be in, he was smiling, and he was beautiful in that moment.
"It was a shock to me too. This isn't exactly how I wanted to become a mother," I admitted. Fredrick flinched at my words, taking them as an insult.
"You didn't think you'd have kids with me?" His hurt expression made me feel instantly guilty. I sighed and made a face.
"I didn't think I'd have kids unmarried and unsettled and with a man addicted to drugs," I corrected. It took him a full minute to wrap his head around my words. He didn’t like them, I could tell in the twitch of his eye, and the lines forming between his brows.
He wanted so badly for those words to not be true. He wanted to be a different man for me, for our child. “I’ll go to rehab. I’ll quit right now. I promise. I won’t fuck this up. Not again. Just give me another chance. Please, Scar.” Then he stood, still holding the tiny baggy, and moved to the kitchen. Without hesitation, Freddy opened the bag and proceeded to dump the contents down the drain. He tossed the empty bag into the trash and began thoroughly washing out the sink, making sure no traces of his ugly habit remained.
“There, it’s gone. No more. Just like that. I wasn't addicted, I promise. I was just having a little fun. I need you more than I need that nasty shit in my life. I’ll go to rehab. I’ll prove to you I’m not addicted.” He paused when I made no move to speak. “Scarlet. Let’s move on from this. Please. We were happy. Are happy. Don’t let this little thing ruin us.”
“You were letting it ruin us, Fredrick! I didn’t do shit!”
He moved to curl up against my slim body. I didn't miss the way his lips met my stomach with love as he shushed me and tried to get me to calm down. My body was still its willowy size four. I didn't look pregnant yet. But the way he instinctively wanted to be near my belly, our growing child, made me melt.
