The Long and Winding Road

by TJ Klune

  She sighs. “We had it good the first time. With JJ, we were so damn young that I think it was fear that kept us going. But with AJ, both during and after, I think we… drifted. A little. Away from who we used to be to each other. There was a little while when I didn’t think we were going to make it.”

  “What?” I ask, incredulous. “Why am I just hearing about this now? Creed didn’t say anything!”

  “I don’t know why he didn’t. He—”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “You were going through your own thing. Last summer was a little rough, what with coming home and the Kid and deciding to start your own family. I thought you guys had enough to worry about.”

  I reach out and put my hand on top of hers. “You know you can come to me with anything, right?”

  She smiles quietly. “I know. But we’re good, Bear. I promise. We decided to start couples counseling, and we’re getting back to each other the way we’re supposed to be. I know we’ll be fine. We just had to do a little work on ourselves. Which is why I’m bringing it up to you. It’s easy to get distracted by everything. You can’t let yourself forget about him. And I know that sounds weird, because you’re married to him, but—just take my word for it, okay? It might seem cheesy to have scheduled dates or scheduled sex, but trust me. You’ll start to look forward to it, because it’ll be something just for the two of you.”

  “I’m glad you and Creed are good,” I tell her. “But now I’m about to freak out that Otter and I are going to get divorced because I haven’t gone down on him in three months.”

  She sprays tea all over the table this time.

  “You’re very classy,” I say solemnly, getting up to get a paper towel.

  “You did that on purpose,” she says, tea dripping down her chin.

  “You’ll never be able to prove it.”

  She takes the paper towel from me and wipes off her face and the table. “See if I give you advice ever again.”

  I roll my eyes. “Please. I can just go online to find out how to put the spark back in my marriage. It’s not going to be that hard.”

  “Yeah, okay. Let me know how that works for you. And record it, just so I can see what happens.”

  “I’m telling Creed you want to watch a sex tape with me and Otter.”

  She grins. “Fuck yeah, I would. That’d be hot. Does he have a big dick?”

  “Anna!”

  “What?”

  “That’s not—I’m not going to tell you that.”

  She waits.

  “Pretty big,” I admit, because I’m weak and feel the need to extoll my husband’s virtues. “He’s also got those hairy, chunky thighs that I like to ride when I—”

  “Yep,” she says. “That’s enough for the ol’ spank bank.”

  We really do need to set boundaries.

  I’M NOT worried.

  I’m not.

  I mean, so what if Anna and Creed had marital troubles that none of us knew about.

  They’re fine now.

  Many couples go to counseling.

  They’re fine.

  Otter and I are fine.

  “How was your day?”

  He grunts at me.

  “Really?” I say. “That sounds lovely. Tell me more.”

  He grunts again.

  “Great. What else did you and Creed do?”

  “Bear?”

  “Yes, Otter.”

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, Bear.”

  “Oh. Well. Go to sleep.”

  He does exactly that.

  Our marriage is doomed.

  AND SINCE I’m not willing to let him go without a fight, I’m sitting in the dark in the kitchen, the bright screen of my laptop hurting my eyes as I scour the internet for ways to put the spark back into my marriage.

  I’ve found myself on some ridiculous website that apparently offers advice that I can’t tell if is real or if is satire. It’s hurting my brain, but I can’t look away. It has thousands of self-help topics from HOW TO BE NORMAL and HOW TO EXFOLIATE YOUR LIPS and HOW TO TREAT BOTULISM IN DUCKS. I almost get distracted by that last—because how do you treat botulism in ducks?—but I’m on a mission.

  I click on the search bar and type in: HOW TO REKINDLE YOUR ROMANCE.

  YOU’VE BEEN married for a long time. You wake up with your significant other, you go about your lives, and then come home to each other. You stare at each other from across the dinner table, conversation stifled and awkward, and you notice things that maybe you hadn’t noticed before, like the way your SO slurps their soup obnoxiously or chews with their mouth open. You begin to resent them, and soon it spirals down into a murder-for-hire plot that explodes out of control and ends with either one or both of you dead on a pier in the pouring rain.

  But what if there was a way to avoid that?

  What if there was a way to bring back the spark that drew you together before it ends in a murder/suicide?

  By following these easy steps, you and your SO will be more in love than you ever were before, and you will be able to avoid becoming a killer!

  Have a three-way! Look, most people believe that the lovemaking is the first thing to go when a marriage is choking itself to death. By bringing in a third party, it could bring a different form of excitement to a relationship. Fellas, don’t you want to see your lady love with another woman? Ladies, don’t you want to see your fella getting plowed with his face in the mattress? Whether it be a onetime thing or if it evolves into a polyamorous relationship, one out of sixty-four marriage counselors agree that bringing in another party to the bedroom is the perfect way to solve those doldrums.

  Do the little things! Honestly, folks, we sometimes forget that not everyone needs a major event to prove your love. Send a text message that says you just saw a dirty city pigeon and it reminded your SO of them. That way, it lets your SO know you were thinking about them, even when apart. Send flowers! Or, if your SO loves treats, send them a tin of cheesy popcorn, because nothing says I love you like orange-stained fingers.

  Go on dates! We get tired, don’t we? We work long hours, we have to come home and take care of the kids. We make dinner, help with homework, get everyone ready for bed. And by the time we’re finished, we’re exhausted. But it helps to step away for a little while. To go back to when it was just the two of you, when you didn’t have those little bloodsuckers that want nothing more than to tear your sanity down piece by piece until you wonder what would happen if you left them at a fire station and then moved to Nebraska and lived under an assumed name while working in a cornfield. Dates are a good way to avoid having to do all of that. Go to the movies, or go to a quiet dinner. Or better yet, spice it up with a little role-playing! Pretend to be strangers who meet in a hotel bar and are cheating on their spouses with this person they just met. Trust me, you won’t regret it when you can’t keep your hands off your “one-night stand” while riding the elevator up to your hotel room.

  ***DON’T ACCIDENTALLY get so caught up in the role-play that you end up going up to the hotel room with the wrong person. Because that would be actually cheating, and cheating is a terrible thing, and anybody who actually cheats deserves to fall into a live volcano and melt in magma.

  I slam the laptop shut.

  “I’m not doing any of that,” I growl in the dark.

  11. Where Bear and Otter Role-Play at a Hotel Bar

  THIS IS the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

  No. I’m being serious.

  This is the fucking stupidest thing we’ve ever done.

  And yet, for some reason, I’m more turned on than I’ve been in a long time.

  And we haven’t even done anything yet. He’s not even here.

  I’m sitting at a bar in a fancy hotel on the boardwalk in Seafare. It’s only been a few days since Anna had basically told me that my marriage was falling apart, and I blame her entirely for the situation I’ve found myself in.<
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  It probably hadn’t helped that when I’d told Otter about what I wanted to do, he’d stared at me for a long time without speaking. Then he’d leaned up, kissed me on the forehead, and told me that I really should stop listening to other people talking about our relationship. But then he’d given me a really fucking sloppy blowjob in the kitchen, and when I came on his neck after he jacked me off, he said he was going to role-play the shit out of this. I had stood there, knees weak, slumped against the wall, mind mostly mush, agreeing to whatever he wanted.

  Which is why I’m sitting in a dimly lit bar, nursing a glass of wine, nervously waiting for my husband to show up after he’d told me earlier in the day to “Just leave it all up to me, Bear, and play along when I get there.”

  I’m wearing a crisp pair of gray slacks and a blue button-down shirt, open at the collar, Otter having picked out my outfit. He whispered in my ear that the dress pants made my ass look good, so I put up no argument. When Otter Thompson growls in your ear that he wants to rub his hands over your ass while wearing gray dress pants, you can sure as shit bet you’ll put those on as quickly as possible.

  It’s going on eight o’clock, and I realize we actually need this when I think about how late that is, and that by now, I’m usually at home in my pajamas. I’m only thirty-three years old. Otter is forty-one. We should be out having the times of our lives and—

  Okay, that sounds exhausting, and I really would rather be wearing pajamas right now, but Otter started really getting into this idea, so I figure I’m doing it for him. It has nothing to do with my own insecurities.

  Or so I tell myself.

  Izzie’s with Dom and Ty and Ben, and they’re supposed to be out getting pizza. Ty and Izzie had made fun of the “old guys” having a date night. I threatened to put them both up for adoption, only to have Izzie’s bottom lip start to tremble, her eyes wide, hands shaking. Immediately feeling like shit, I’d started to apologize before she burst out laughing, saying, “You’re so gullible, Bear, how embarrassing.”

  I know the absolute worst people.

  “Get you another glass of Riesling?” the bartender asks me as he comes back my way.

  “No,” I say. “I’m meeting my husband here, and we’re going to pretend we don’t know each other because of sex reasons, and I want to be sober for that.”

  He walks away without another word.

  “This is why I don’t go out more,” I mutter.

  And then my eyes are covered with a pair of hands.

  “Surprise,” a voice whispers in my ear, deep and husky.

  Oh. So it looks like we’ve started. I don’t know where he’s going with this, but since he’s willing to play, I’m all in.

  “Who is it?” I say, my voice sultry and seductive. Or at least that’s what I’m going for. In actuality, I probably sound like a seventy-year-old four-pack-a-day smoker, but I figure this is my first time role-playing, so I’ve got some room to grow.

  “Guess.”

  Well, shit. I don’t know what to say. I’m a middle-school English teacher. I don’t necessarily have the greatest imagination. Am I supposed to make up a name? Sure. Why the fuck not? “Is it… Edgar Hoosen?”

  The voice laughs. “What? No. Who the hell is Edgar Hoosen?”

  The hands fall away, and I turn to see—

  “Isaiah?”

  Isaiah Serna grins at me. I haven’t seen him in years, not since my community college days. He’s older (hell, we all are now) but still looks good. His dark hair is shorter now, almost buzzed close to the scalp. He’s still got those ridiculously thick eyebrows, and his dark eyes flash at me. His smile has a hint of teeth behind it.

  He’s dressed nicely, a suit coat over an expensive dress shirt, his skinny tie a little loose at the throat. He’s bigger than I remember him being, his arms nicely defined even through the sleeves.

  This is not what I was expecting to happen.

  “You know,” he says, “I was just thinking about you the other day when I came back into Seafare. I wondered what Derrick McKenna could possibly be up to these days. And then I get here tonight, and I see this man sitting at the bar, and he’s hot, right? And maybe I’m thinking that I should get myself a drink, maybe cruise this guy a little, scope out the situation. See what was what. Imagine my surprise that I see it’s the guy I’d been thinking about only a few days before. Funny how that works out, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I say, thrown a little off-kilter. “Like, funny ha ha.”

  “Sure,” he says, taking a step forward so our knees bump together. I’m still seated on the stool, and he’s standing in front of me. We’re almost eye to eye. “Like, funny ha ha.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, curious. “Last I heard, you’d moved to Seattle.”

  His smile widens a little bit. “Checking up on me?” he teases.

  I roll my eyes. “Good to know nothing’s changed.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. A friend’s wedding is this weekend. In town for that.” He glances down at my hands for some reason, his smile curving slightly before he looks back up at me. “And what about you? What brings you out on this fine summer evening?”

  How do you tell the guy that used to hit on you quite ferociously that you are role-playing stranger danger with your husband because you didn’t want to have a three-way like the internet told you to?

  Truth is, you don’t.

  So I say, “Um.”

  “That right,” he says. “Buy you a drink?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Maker’s Mark,” he tells the bartender, who has appeared again as if by magic. “No ice. And whatever my friend here is having.”

  “Look, I’m here to meet—”

  “Fate is a fickle thing,” Isaiah says, obviously posing against the bar, flexing his arms like I’m going to drop trou right then and there and hold my asscheeks apart. “Can bring two people back together after all this time. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “Wow,” I say. “That was pretty damn smooth. Good job.”

  He winks at me. “Thanks. So glad to know it’s working.”

  “It’s really not, though,” I reassure him. “But it’s nice to know you’re trying.”

  His smile fades a little. “Huh. That’s… disheartening. Do I need to up my game a little? Because I can do that.”

  “You can? Jesus, that’s impressive.”

  “Is it now?” he says as the bartender sets his drink before him. He lifts the tumbler and takes a long, slow sip, never taking his eyes off of me. “Good to know you think I’m impressive.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “It’s what you were thinking.”

  I wince. “Okay, now it’s a little creepy.”

  He laughs. “Oh, man. I forgot how you could be. It’s good to know some things don’t change.”

  I don’t know if that’s a compliment or if I’m being insulted. There’s an equal chance for both. I need to change the subject as quickly as possible. Or even better, get him to leave before Otter gets here and sees him standing so close to me and possibly decides that it’s okay to commit murder. I don’t want to be a single father. “So, how’s life?”

  “Good, good,” he says, a devilish smirk on his face. “I work in advertising up in Seattle.”

  “How appropriately vague. What do you advertise?”

  “This and that,” he says, running his finger over the rim of his drink. “I love small talk.”

  “Great,” I say. “I’m a teacher, since you were rude and didn’t ask.”

  He gapes at me a little. “You? You’re a teacher?”

  I frown. “Ye-es?”

  “That is not something I would have expected.”

  “Why?”

  He cocks his head at me. “Because of your whole… being.”

  “I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.”

  “As you should,” he says, reaching over and patting the top
of my hand, lingering far longer than was proper. “Oh hey, would you look at that. We’re in a hotel. And I just happen to have a hotel room. Isn’t that ironic?”

  “Well, no, that’s not what irony means, so.”

  “God,” Isaiah says. “That’s hot.”

  I squint at him. “What.”

  “I like it when you talk. I always did.”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  He grins. “Why? Are you trying to get me drunk, Bear? So you can have your way with me?”

  I laugh.

  He looks at me pointedly.

  “Oh my god,” I say. “You’re being—”

  “I’m only in town for a few days,” he says, taking a step closer. “And I can’t make promises for anything beyond that. But if you say yes, I can promise you these few days will be the best of your life. I hope you don’t like wearing clothes.”

  “Wow,” I say faintly. “That… doesn’t do a thing for me.”

  His brow furrows. “I’m serious.”

  And because my life is terrible, I say, “Hi, Serious, I’m Bear.”

  He takes a step back. “Did you just… did you just make a dad joke?”

  I bang my head on the top of the bar. “I am going to fucking kill him.”

  “I have to be honest, that made you a little less attractive to me right now. And who are you going to kill? I’ve got a really good lawyer, just in case. Say the word, and I’ll—”

  “Otter,” I say, lifting my head from the bar. “Otter’s going to kill me.”

  “Otter,” Isaiah says slowly, eyes widening. “That guy you were dating that absolutely hated me all those years ago?”

  “He didn’t hate you,” I say. “He just didn’t like the fact that you were alive.”

  He looks a little shocked. “Are you two still together?”

  “Well, yeah. We’re married. And you know what? Maybe I should get the name of your lawyer, because all the lawyers I know are jerks who get all up in our business. And when you’re called to testify, you have to really sell how sad you were when I made a dad joke, because that is the only way that I’ll be found innocent. Like, really sell it. Tears, maybe. And then I’ll cry too, telling the jury that my husband just changed after he found out we were having twins, and started telling inadvertent dad jokes, and you know what else? I caught him the other day wearing tube socks. With shorts.” I pause for a moment, considering. “Okay, and maybe that says something bad about me that I found it to be really fucking hot, but Jesus Christ. What’s next? A fanny pack? Is that what’s really in our future? It’s like he was made for this. He’s going to dad all over the place, and why do I find that so attractive? There has to be something wrong with me, right? I mean, what if he goes to PTA meetings and just takes charge? Because we all know that Mrs. Kennington is a bitch who thinks her shit don’t stink, and maybe Otter would come in and put her in her place and—whoa. I would totally sex him up in the janitor’s closet after that. God, it has to be the hormones, right? I mean, I know I’m not pregnant, but there has to be some kind of transference. Because tube socks and PTA meetings should not be making me feel like this. We’re supposed to be role-playing stranger danger tonight, anyway. He’s going to be some businessman from out of town, and I’m going to be—well, I said I was going to be the small-town lounge singer, but he said I can’t sing, then I said I wanted a divorce, and then he said there was no way in hell I would ever get away from him, then I said that was creepy and you’re still wearing tube socks, you big, sexy freak. I mean, you know?”