Imperfectly Perfect

by A. E. Woodward

"Get out of bed Emma!" Rob commanded. "You wanted to come to Vegas to party, so let's party. This isn't your goddamn honeymoon!"

  I pulled the covers tightly around me, ensuring that my goods were covered and sat up. "I think you've partied enough for tonight Robbie Boy."

  Rob stared at me, "Well shit!" Then, as if coming to a sudden realization, he continued, "I feel left out. Now I know I'm the only one here that hasn't been with Emma." He fell back into the chair propped in the corner of the room.

  I shared a look with Tyler-who seemed to instantly sober up-and he shrugged in response. This was exactly the reason why we had decided to keep our fling secret. My mind immediately flashed back to few years ago, when both of us were lonely and bored. We did too many shots of tequila one night and things ended up going too far. I'd like to say that things stopped there, with one drunken indiscretion, but we found the convenience of our agreement exhilarating. We spent months sneaking into one another's room in an attempt to curb our thirst. It was strictly no strings attached and we were good at keeping feelings out of the equation, but we decided after six months that we were playing with fire. We put an end to it and never spoke of it again… until now. I was shocked, and I didn't know how Rob knew, but the biggest concern I had at that moment was Shane. I just prayed that he hadn't heard his comment, and if he did I hoped he would shrug it off as some drunken nonsense.

  "What did you say?" Shane's words ripped through my core, because I knew that tone of voice and he wasn't going to let it slide.

  "Now I'm the only one who hasn't had a shot at Emma."

  Shane looked puzzled as he tried to process what Rob was saying, "What do you mean you're the only one?"

  "Rob man, you should go to bed," Tyler quickly offered.

  "No, shut the hell up Tyler," Shane fumed, "let him finish. Go ahead Rob,"

  Rob hiccupped as he stood from the chair. He was hopelessly drunk and I knew he wouldn't remember any of this tomorrow. I just wished I could say the same for Shane.

  "You didn't honestly think you were the first of us to hit that," he put his hand on Shane's shoulder and smiled, "did you?"

  I cringed at his vulgar words; Rob was such a douche sometimes. Ashamed, I pulled my knees up to my chest. Shane directed his attention towards me.

  "What the hell is he talking about Emma?"

  I considered lying, but thought better of it. It would do no good. If anything it would only make the situation worse, if that was even possible.

  "It was years ago," I tried to downplay the magnitude of Rob's revelation.

  "It was only two years ago, you little minx you," Rob interjected. I wanted him to stop, but he didn't. He beat me to the punch and told the one story that haunted me. The one indiscretion in my past that I thought was a secret. It was the one thing that could be a deal breaker. "They thought they were being sneaky," he slurred, "but I was on to them. I knew something was going on between them. I could tell just by the tension in a room anytime they were together. I didn't have any proof though… well, until I showed up from work early one night. I knew they were both home because their key rings were on the holder and there were no signs of anyone else being there. I wanted to be sure so I checked Tyler's room, and lo and behold it was empty."

  Shane immediately directed his fury towards Tyler, "How long?" His face was red and full of hurt and hatred.

  "Don't do this man," Tyler pleaded.

  "Answer the question, how long were you fucking my girlfriend?"

  "She wasn't your girlfriend back then," Tyler argued.

  "Answer me damn it!" Shane screamed. I felt myself jump, startled by his anger.

  "Six months," Tyler gave in, staring at the floor, "we stopped just after I met Cheyenne."

  Shane chuckled, even though there was nothing about the situation that was funny. "So you only stopped because you met someone else. What if you hadn't? Would you have kept on sleeping with each other?"

  "No," I spoke now, softly, hoping to soothe him, "we would have stopped eventually anyway. We were questioning what it was doing to our friendship."

  "Or maybe you would have started dating."

  "No we wouldn't have. It wasn't like that, because there were no feelings at all. It was purely physical." I felt the lump in my throat grow, increasing in pressure with every word.

  He laughed again. "Even better!"

  "Ahhhh shit, I've really fucked things up," Rob slurred as he stalked past Shane, then Tyler. "I'll leave you guys to it. If you need me, I'll be sleeping."

  Shane collapsed onto the chair. His face was white and sullen. I had seen that look a lot recently; it was the tortured look that had been a permanent fixture whilst I was with Bradley. He was hurt again and I felt sick.

  "This is unbelievable," he muttered, throwing his head into his hands.

  "Shane, man, it was dumb," Tyler spoke quietly, never breaking his gaze from the floor, "It's in the past. Emma loves you, she needs you."

  "I don't know what's worse," he slowly lifted his head and made eye contact with me. "The fact that you did it," he then turned his gaze toward Tyler, "or the fact that my two best friends never thought to tell me about."

  "It wasn't a big deal Shane," I spoke while fighting back the tears. I sensed the urgency of the situation and I needed to do everything I could to remedy it. "It meant nothing."

  He stood from the chair, threw on a shirt, and grabbed his wallet. "Until now. It didn't mean anything until now," he said. "Now, it is a big deal."

  I watched helplessly as he pushed past Tyler.

  "Where are you going?" I called.

  "Out," he answered as the door slammed behind him.

  The slamming of the door opened the floodgates, and the tears began to stream down my face fast and furious.

  "He just needs some time Emma," Tyler offered, "he loves you too much to let this ruin him. I'll go try to talk some sense into him later. Let him cool off first."

  Unable to speak, I nodded.

  "If you need anything I'll be right down the hall."

  And just like that, I was alone again.

  I did nothing but pace and cry until lunchtime when Tyler and Rob finally rolled out of their bedroom.

  "Emma, I'm so sorry," Rob wrapped his arms around me. "I really thought he knew. It seemed so obvious."

  I broke away from his hug. "It's not your fault. Tyler and I did something stupid, and I have to face up to it."

  "Well if you ask me, he's overreacting," Rob added, tossing himself onto the couch. "You're not exactly a virgin and neither is he."

  I cringed because Rob was right. I'd had my fair share of partners over the years, but what he didn't know was that Shane was purer than his reputation would have led people to believe.

  For years I thought Shane was a charmer of the ladies, a Casanova of sorts. I always saw him bring girls home from bars, and just assumed where things went from there. I jokingly brought this up one night shortly after we got together, and he immediately set me straight. He informed me that his list of lovers stopped at three. There had been Christy, Ginger-which he claimed was a total moment of weakness-and me.

  He confessed that bringing home girls from bars was nothing more than a game for him. He liked to do it because it made him feel confident, but he also did it to protect them from doing something stupid with someone else. He said that he saw something of his mother in those girls. Poor doe-eyed, defenseless girls looking for love, and he wanted to prevent men like his father from preying on them. So he brought them back to the condo and let them sleep it off in his bed, while he slept on the floor.

  So to Shane, sex was a big deal. It wasn't something he took lightly. He didn't understand casual sex because, bar the mistake with Ginger, for him it didn't exist. To make matters worse, he had to walk around knowing that his two best friends had not only slept together, but that it had happened right under his nose.

  I felt my stomach lurch.

  "Oh my god, he's never going to get past this."
/>   "He will Em," Tyler put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed, "we've just got to find him and help him understand."

  I wanted to believe Tyler but I had my doubts. He didn't know Shane like I did. Nobody did.

  "He's not answering," Rob spoke calmly as he put Tyler's cell back down on the table, "It's ringing straight through to voicemail."

  I frantically looked at Tyler. I was beginning to worry. It was dinnertime and we still had no word from Shane. To make matters worse our time in Vegas was coming to a close. Tomorrow was going to be Sunday and we had a flight first thing in the morning.

  "I've looked everywhere I can think of Em," Tyler said, "I don't know where else he would go. At least we know he has his wallet."

  Tyler had a point. I remembered watching Shane as he grabbed his wallet from the dresser on his way out of the room. He wouldn't have done that if he planned on just going on a walk to clear his head. He knew damn well where he was going, and he would need money to get there.

  "I know where he is," I muttered, "he went back to Maine. He's with Ms. Strout."

  Before I could say anything else, Tyler tagged his phone and quickly tapped the screen. In seconds he was talking to Ms. Strout. They exchanged some pleasantries and then Tyler began to speak low and hushed.

  I wanted to know what he was saying, but I didn't really care at that moment. Instead I was hurt beyond belief. Not only had I been deserted by my boyfriend, I had been deserted by my best friend.

  "He's there," Tyler huffed, "she said he got there a few hours ago and that he won't talk to her."

  I started to cry, not because I was sad for myself but because I was hurting for Shane. I had done something so awful that he couldn't even talk to his own mother about it.

  As I lay in my twin bed, watching the sun come up through my bedroom window, I still wasn't sure why I had come here. I knew I needed to get away and in my haze, it was the only place I could think of.

  It's safe to say that Mom was shocked to see me. I told her I didn't want to talk about it and immediately locked myself in the comfort of my old room. That had been hours ago. I had hoped to have a little more clarity on the situation by now, but I still felt as betrayed as I did when I left Vegas.

  There was a soft knock on the door. "Shane honey, can I come in?"

  I contemplated for a moment and decided that I had been alone long enough. "It's open Ma."

  She smiled as she entered my room holding a tray full of food and a cup of coffee. "I thought you might be hungry so I made you some breakfast."

  I sat up, took the tray from her, and immediately popped some sausage into my mouth. "Thanks Ma."

  She sat next to me and watched me. My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten in about thirty-six hours.

  "Tyler called," Ma spoke softly, as if walking on eggshells, "they're worried about you."

  I mumbled and started to eat. I knew Emma would figure out where I had gone eventually. I was just glad it had taken her long enough for me to get on a plane.

  "Are you going to tell me what's going on here?"

  I shrugged. I hadn't decided what I was going to do yet. I had already called the firm and taken until Wednesday off, but beyond that I didn't know what my plan was.

  "Well you can't hide here forever Shane. You have people that love you, people that need you," my mother stood up and walked towards the door. "This is not the man I raised. You're acting like a child. Maybe you are more like your father than I thought you were after all."

  Her words cut through me like a knife, just as intended. She knew how I felt about my father. I had vowed never to be like him.

  "I am nothing like him," I seethed.

  "Oh but you are. Here you are hiding from something that could be great. You're risking it all, and why? Because things got a little tough? Like it or not, right now you are your father's son!"

  She slammed the door as she left, leaving her words to eat at me. As much as I hated to admit it, she was right. I was running from a tough situation instead of trying to work through it. Just like my dad had ran from me thirty years ago.

  Disgusted with myself, I threw my fork down and set my tray on the bed. I slowly walked out of my room and down the hallway to the living room to find my mother sitting in her rocking chair, looking rather smug.

  "So you want to talk now?" she chirped.

  I couldn't help but smile. My mother was a master, especially when it came to conniving people into doing what she wanted.

  I threw myself onto the couch. Ma had known that I loved Emma before I even knew myself. We had talked about my situation when I was home months ago, for Christmas. She had tried to convince me to just go ahead and lay it all out there, but I hadn't listened. I told myself that whatever advice she offered from now on, that I would take it. Mom loved Emma; in fact I sometimes questioned whether she would choose Emma over me if the situation ever arose.

  I didn't know where to start.

  "Well it's about Emma," I began.

  "Obviously," she quipped.

  "It turns out she's not exactly who I thought she was."

  This piqued my mother's interest and she sat forward in her chair. With a heavy heart, I recounted the incident in Vegas; leaving out the vulgarities I wished I could take back.

  I stopped talking and Mom sat back in her chair and sipped her tea. "Well, I can see why you're upset," she sighed.

  "Exactly," I was relieved that it wasn't just in my head and that I had good reason to feel like I did.

  "Now let me finish," she scolded, "I get it Shane, I really do. It's upsetting and shocking, but jealousy can be a terrible thing."

  "I'm not jealous."

  "Yes you are. You say you're upset because you were left out of the loop. They say they didn't tell anybody because it wasn't important, and to them it wasn't. But ask yourself this; would you be okay with it even if you knew when it was going on?"

  I thought about this. I tried to remember my life before I realized I loved Emma, but even then everything revolved around her. I remembered the twinges of envy when she would go out without me or bring a guy home. Even before I truly loved her, I wanted her to be mine.

  "No, I wouldn't have been okay with it."

  "You have to remember that you and Emma are two different people. You've always been guarded, and she has a few more skeletons in her closet than you do. If you can't love her skeletons, than you can't love her."

  Mom was right, again. I couldn't change the past and, no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn't rewrite history. The fact of the matter was that it took me twenty years to realize that Emma was the perfect girl for me. And in those twenty years she had done some things that I didn't care to think about, but that didn't change the way I felt about her.

  "So now that you realize that you've made a mistake," Ma spoke as she walked her teacup to the kitchen sink, "how long can I expect for you to be here?"

  This was her subtle way of giving me the boot. As lonely as it was sometimes, she loved the freedom of living alone.

  "I'll leave first thing in the morning."

  I ached, in more ways than one. Exhaustion had set in, but as tired as I was sleep was the last thing on my mind. I stared at the moon from the taxi. It was full and beautiful, but most importantly it was simple and simplicity was something my life had been lacking for a while now.

  "Here you are," the driver stated throwing the car into park.

  I rifled through my wallet and handed him some cash. "Keep the change."

  As the cab pulled away I was left alone in the dark. Standing on that familiar sidewalk I was filled with apprehension. I still hadn't heard from Shane, but I refused to let him slip through my fingers over something so trivial. The past was the past, and it couldn't be changed.

  I put one foot in front of another and walked down the street, like so many times before. The house was pitch black, just like the rest of the street. I bent down and grabbed a handful of pebbles. Rolling them in my hand,
I couldn't help but think of the irony of it all.

  All these years I had needed him for many different reasons, but tonight I needed him to forgive me and forget what I had done. I picked one of the pebbles from my hand and held it gingerly in between my thumb and forefinger before launching it towards the window. It took three more attempts before the light snapped on. I saw him wipe his eyes as he looked out the window. Confusion spread across his face as we made eye contact. I was so nervous that I waved.

  He pulled open the glass pane, "Emma? What are you doing here?"

  I ran to the side of the house and hurriedly climbed the lattice attached to the side of the house. Exhausted, I threw my arms onto the edge of his window in an attempt to support my weight.

  "I need you," I breathed.

  Without speaking, he grabbed my hands and pulled me through his window and into his arms.

  "You're crazy, you know that," he muttered.

  "Only for you," I kissed his neck. He responded by squeezing me tighter and I knew that everything was going to be all right.

  "I'm sorry I lost my head," he spoke slowly as he leaned away from me and looked down into my eyes. "Ma helped me see that I was just jealous."

  "I can't change what happened, but I am sorry we never told you."

  Shane put his hands on the back of my neck and pulled my lips to his. I felt my heart skip as he slowly guided me towards his bed. He broke the seal of our mouths and with his hands still behind my head, he laid me back onto the mattress. Releasing me briefly, I watched him stalk across the room and shut off the light. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, but with the help of the moon I was able to find him as he hovered above the bed and removed his shirt before joining me in his twin bed.

  I giggled.

  "What's so funny?" he asked.

  "It just seems so weird, doesn't it? Think about all those times I climbed to your room before. Yet here we are in the town where we grew up together, and all those years have passed us by."

  Shane seemed to understand what I was trying to say. "It is, but I feel like we've come full circle. I wouldn't change anything because this is how it's supposed to be," he pulled my shirt up over my head, and licked his lips. "This is perfect."