Drowning Erin

by Elizabeth O'Roark

  42

  Brendan

  Three Years Earlier

  At the end of June, Gabi arrives at my apartment with her suitcases, crying. She tells me her roommate kicked her out and asks if she can stay with me for a while.

  It gives me pause. Things are great with us just as they are, and I’d rather not mess with a winning formula. I already see Gabi nearly every day, and I spend every night with her when we’re on a tour. I’m not sure I’m ready to hand over my remaining moments of freedom, but what am I supposed to say? She’s got less than two months left, and she really has no place else to go. I tell her it’s okay, but even as I say it, I feel as if there’s slightly less air in the room than there was before she arrived.

  At first, having Gabi as a roommate works out pretty well for me. I seriously can’t believe there’s a female alive who wants to get laid more often than I do, but I’ve got no complaints. It’s all pretty perfect—until suddenly it isn’t.

  “Your friend Rob,” she ventures one afternoon, looking up from my iPad. “He’s the one dating that girl you liked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So her name is Erin?” she asks.

  My jaw drops. “Are you reading my email?”

  “It was just open when I picked it up,” she says with a shrug.

  But this is bullshit. I haven’t heard from Rob in at least a week.

  “So…Erin,” she continues. “That’s her, right?”

  “Yes. And please get out of my email.”

  “Do you have a picture of her?” she asks. Her voice is neutral, but I catch a glimpse of something in there, something needy and fearful.

  “No.” I do, of course, but if she’s jealous, seeing a picture of Erin sure won’t help.

  “What’s her last name?” asks Gabi.

  “What are you doing?” I sigh. “I never even dated the girl. Why does this matter?”

  “It doesn’t. I was just curious.”

  The conversation ends, but it also remains. It is wedged between us all night, Gabi’s discontentment almost palpable. I’d like to end it, reassure her that it’s over for me. I just don’t think I can do it convincingly.

  43

  Erin

  Present

  When I get home I struggle to fall back asleep. Instead I lay there, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything in my head. Until tonight, Saturday was the most amazing sex I’ve ever had, but I was able to rationalize it—there’d been so much build up between me and Brendan, and I’d gone without it for so very, very long. But none of those factors were in play this time, so how is it even possible that it improved?

  In spite of my exhaustion, I arrive at work feeling absolutely wired. I want to stand on my desk and announce my discovery to the world. “I finally get it now! I understand why sex is such a big deal to you people!”

  But as the afternoon winds down and the office begins to empty, reality sets in as well. Just because what happened with Brendan was amazing for me doesn’t mean it was amazing for us both. Tonight, in fact, he’ll probably be experiencing a repeat of it, only with some other girl.

  By the time I get home, my joy has ebbed away completely. What did I think was going to happen? Did I really think one good blow job and a little intercourse was going to make him infatuated with me? If so, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It didn’t even make him want to do it again.

  And I shouldn’t be thinking about him anyway. I’m moving out of here once Harper’s back from vacation at the end of the week, which means this is one of my last nights in the home I’ve lived in for the past four years, the home I thought I’d raise children in. There is no universe in which a series of orgasms should trump that.

  The next morning I get in a good, long run before Pilates. Operation Forget Brendan has begun, and working out is really the only strategy I’ve got so far. I return so exhausted I’m certain I don’t have the energy for either lust or obsession, but by the time I’m standing under the showerhead, he’s already taking over my brain. I imagine him behind me, wet and soap-slick, sliding into me with ease. I add shower sex to the never-ending list of things we didn’t get to do.

  My phone is silent all day. I pretend I’m not watching it, reminding myself that it doesn’t matter if he contacts me because nothing I want can happen again anyway. What we did was wrong, and it has to stop.

  I forget all these things, of course, when he finally texts.

  He asks if I’ll help him paint. He does not in any way reference Saturday night, Tuesday night, or a desire to repeat either. Maybe he legitimately wants help. Maybe suggesting a friendly activity is his way of reinstating our friendship, making things normal again.

  Or maybe he wants more, the way I do. So much that it feels like I might explode even as I sit here in my cubicle on the synthetic-fiber cushion of my chair, staring at a memo someone has taped to the wall about labeling food in the break room.

  Operation Forget Brendan, I’ve got to say, is sort of a bust.

  I change clothes after work and head to him, clad in running shorts, T-shirt, and ponytail. No matter how I feel, I don't want to look like a girl who's spent the last 36 hours obsessing over the things he can do with his tongue.

  I bring over some of the cupcakes I made the night before, because that's the kind of thing Friend-Erin-Who-Doesn't-Necessarily-Want-To-Sleep-With-You would do, but when I walk into his apartment I completely abandon who I was pretending to be. He looks the way he always does: frayed khaki shorts, gray T-shirt, muscular thighs, hard jaw, and clear blue eyes. The problem is that’s enough. It's too much, actually. The sight of him alone is hormonal overload.

  I inhale and thrust the cupcakes toward him. "I brought snacks."

  Fuck. My voice sounds all breathy, like I just ran ten flights of stairs.

  He hears it and holds my eye for a second, calm as ever. I wish I were calm the way he is. Right now I'm a chaotic mess of worry and lust, and he's as still, as cool and impenetrable, as a steel beam.

  He takes the box from me, his fingers brushing my hands, staying there a moment too long. Acting normal is almost impossible. I stare at his unshaved jaw and remember how it felt against my lips, the delicious scrape of it against my skin.

  "What's going on, Erin?" he asks, setting the box on the counter behind him. His voice is low, smooth, leading.

  "Nothing,” I reply.

  “You bite your lip when you’re nervous,” he says. He pulls me against him. Slowly his lips trail down my neck, tugging at the soft skin just beneath my jaw, and for a single, delicious moment I let myself have it—his size and his smell of soap and coffee, the feel of his smooth skin under my hands, the prickle of shaved hair at the back of his neck, how ridiculously muscular he is. If I wanted to push him away, it would be like pushing a brick wall.

  His hands are sliding inside my T-shirt when I come to my senses. "We can't do this," I say. But even I hear the pleading note in my voice saying Brendan, convince me, convince me.

  His hands spread over my rib cage. "If you want me to stop,” he whispers, his breath next to my ear, “say so now. Because otherwise I’ve got about 15 things I plan to do to you."

  I know there is a logical and well-reasoned argument against this somewhere inside me, but mostly I want to know what 15 things he has in mind, and I want him to have already gotten them underway.

  "Condom," I demand.

  "Not yet," he says. He slides my shorts past my hips and lifts me, depositing my bare ass on his counter. “And by the way,” he adds, pulling me to the very edge and pushing my legs apart, “I’m in charge tonight.”

  It’s late when I finally climb from the bed. He watches as I start hunting for my clothes. “Why did you try to stop me when you came over tonight?” he asks.

  “You know why.” My throat feels closed over with guilt. Sleeping with Brendan one time was an anomaly. One time was the kind of thing we could forgive ourselves for. But three times is something else entirely. It’s intentional.r />
  He sits up. “You’re seriously worried about being loyal to Rob after what he did?”

  “Not exactly. I just don’t see how you and Rob are going to get past this. And if Rob and I get back together, we’d never be able to hang out, the three of us. You’d be his best man—” I trail off, swallowing hard. Just envisioning it makes me sick.

  "Erin, I’m not going to be his best man, and you and me and Rob are never going to be hanging out. I’m not going to tell him about it, obviously, but I’m also not going to spend the rest of my life lying.”

  I sit at the end of his bed, clutching my shirt and bra to my chest. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

  “I made a choice when I slept with you. I can’t continue pretending to be his friend after that.”

  My stomach drops. What I’ve done is bad enough, but for me to be the cause of their friendship’s demise is worse. “Brendan, he’s been your best friend for years. You can’t do that.”

  He shakes his head. “I like Rob, or at least I did until he cheated on you, but we haven’t lived in the same place for over a decade, and we’ve both changed. You saw how it was when I got back—we have nothing in common anymore. He’s obsessed with making money. Status matters more to him than anything else. And any respect I still had for him was lost when I heard what he did with Christina.”

  I understand his answer, but I don’t like it, for many reasons.

  “I don’t know that anything happened with her,” I argue.

  His mouth flattens. “You want to believe he’s innocent so badly you won’t even look at the facts.”

  I keep my disagreement to myself, though in fact I think the opposite is true. At this point I hope Rob cheated on me. Because if he didn’t, it makes what I’ve done with Brendan ten times worse.

  “Come here,” he says softly. He cups my chin and kisses me. He kisses me until I forget what we were discussing entirely.

  I even forget that I’d planned to leave.

  Hours later I stumble into my own bed. This time I sleep late, missing my get-over-Brendan run and my get-over-Brendan Pilates. They didn’t seem to be doing me much good anyway.

  I wake feeling banged up and rejuvenated at the same time, as if I just went on the best hike of my life and capped it off with 15 cups of coffee, or ran a marathon and came in first. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know all this should be tempered by guilt, but I ignore it. Instead I put on my highest heels, my favorite dress and practically skip into the office.

  Nothing can touch me. Not traffic, not Timothy’s snide comment about my arrival time, even though I wasn’t late. I didn’t know orgasms could make me invincible, but it appears they have.

  I sit at my desk and reread all the texts Brendan’s sent me. None of them are even vaguely romantic, but my heart still does this ridiculous fluttery thing, the way it did when I was in sixth grade and Bradley Peterson passed me a note asking if I liked him. But of course, my ridiculous fluttering heart would probably send Brendan running. He likes me precisely because he believes my heart is too busy fluttering for Rob to flutter for him too.

  I'm still reading them when Harper pops into my cubicle and comes to a dead stop.

  “Hey,” I say, dropping the phone as if it’s burned me. “How was your trip?"

  She doesn’t even answer. Just stands there staring at me, tapping her lip. “Something's different," she says, eyes narrowing. "What did you do?"

  "Nothing," I chirp, running my fingers through my hair, feigning innocence. I'm quite sure I look completely normal, although I’m so relaxed I feel entirely liquid right now.

  "Bullshit," she says. Her eyes widen and a smile flashes across her face. "You little slut!" she cries gleefully. "You got laid!"

  I blink. "What?"

  "Oh my God, we both know you can't lie for shit, Erin. Don't even try. Who was it? You didn’t get back together with Rob…” she says, mumbling to herself. “No, no, you'd have texted me if... Oh. My. God. Brendan. You slept with Brendan? Oh, don't open your lying mouth to me again. You totally slept with Brendan."

  I slump in my chair, exhausted by the mental gymnastics she performed entirely on her own. "You need a psychic hotline or something."

  "Wow," she mouths, sitting on my desk. “Tell me everything. Was it amazing?"

  I smile. “It was okay.”

  “Like I said before, you’re a terrible liar. There’s not a chance sex with him was merely okay. So what now? Are you a thing? Have you talked about it?"

  "No, of course not,” I say. “There's nothing to discuss because obviously we are not a thing, and we will never be a thing. He doesn't want a girlfriend, and I have a boyfriend."

  "Had," she emphasizes. "Had. You're a free agent now, my friend."

  "Rob's coming back, Harper. It’s not like we could keep this going even if we wanted to, and Brendan isn’t the sort to want to.”

  “Whatever. Until Rob gets here, I want you to tag him as much as humanly possible."

  "I'm pretty sure we already did that. My vagina is broken."

  "Well, go let him break it some more. Or if you're done with him, send him my way."

  I feel an odd little flare of jealousy, which is beyond ridiculous. I don’t even know if I’ll see him again.

  "He's all yours," I tell her.

  Just not yet.

  44

  Erin

  Present

  Over the weekend, Mr. Tibbles and I move to Harper’s place. The finality of leaving Rob’s house—with the possibility that I might not return—hits me harder than I expected. For the three years I lived here, I assumed it was my future. I’d even chosen a room for the nursery. So it’s not just my home I’m losing; it’s all the potential lives that might have been led here. They’d have been good lives. Maybe not transcendent. Maybe not sex-til-2 AM, floating-into-work-ebullient-each-morning kind of lives, but also not anything to complain about.

  And for most of my years, I’ve believed living a life I couldn’t complain about was enough. If Rob and I don’t get back together, I have to wonder if the day will come that a life I can’t complain about sounds like a dream, if I’ll look back on what I had here and be stunned by the stupidity of letting it go. I lock my engagement ring up in Rob’s safe, wondering if I’ll ever see it again.

  On Sunday I go to Littleton to take my brother to lunch. So many times in my life it’s been painful to see Sean, but today it is not: he looks healthy for once. He’s put on a little weight, and he’s excited about everything. About his last semester of school, which begins in a week, and about working to become a counselor after he graduates. It was worth every penny I’ve spent if it helped get him where he is at the moment.

  I tentatively mention that I’ve been spending time with Brendan. It’s juvenile, but I just like saying his name, as if it will somehow make what is happening feel more real. Which hurts a little, because I know that it’s not.

  Sean frowns. “You mean as friends, right? Isn’t Rob due back soon?” he asks.

  “Oh,” I reply, staring at my flatware, carefully aligning each piece as if I’m Martha Stewart. “No. Actually, he’s staying until August, I think.”

  “August?” His tone demands eye contact, which I reluctantly provide.

  “Yeah. We sort of broke up. I mean, we may get back together when he’s home, but I just couldn’t do it any more, and there was other stuff.”

  “It was about the money, wasn’t it?” he asks. “He didn’t want you to pay my tuition.”

  “No, of course it wasn’t that. There were a lot of issues. The money had nothing to do with it.”

  “But he was pissed,” Sean says, looking dejected. “I could tell when I spoke to him.”

  I wave my hand. “He wasn’t thrilled at the time, but he got over it. Honestly, Sean, money is pretty much the only thing we don’t have a problem with.”

  “You’re going to need that money back if Rob isn’t supporting you,” he insists.

  “I
can always earn more,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t appear to believe me, and given the increasing likelihood that Tim’s going to push me out of my job, perhaps he’s right.

  I spend the entire weekend surreptitiously checking my phone, looking for a text from Brendan that never arrives. I crave him, crave everything about him—his smooth skin, his smell. The way he laughs, the sight of his name. It’s not until Tuesday, when I’ve begun to despair, that he texts. It almost feels intentional, the way he’s waited until I’m about to give up, before he makes contact.

  Brendan: I woke up feeling like my walls could use some more work.

  Me: The walls? Are we still calling it that?

  Brendan: Fine. My dick. My dick could use some more work. I was trying to be subtle.

  I know I should refuse. Anything that can cause me this much grief, this early on, is clearly something to be avoided. But apparently my brother and father aren’t the only members of my family with an addictive personality. Every time I get a little of Brendan, I need even more. No matter how bad it is for me.

  It’s just after midnight when we’re startled awake by a ringing phone. I bolt upright, certain it’s my father, only to find it’s not my phone at all. It’s Brendan’s. He grabs it, fast, and hurries into the other room.

  For a moment I’m merely puzzled.

  And then I’m pissed.

  The only calls a single guy receives in the middle of the night are booty calls, and of course he gets booty calls—he has a whole host of girls he can and does sleep with. Which prompts the question yet again: Why am I even here? I’ve never settled for being one of many to any guy, and I’m sure as shit not doing this with a guy who takes the call while I’m in his bed.

  Beneath my rage, my chest feels like it’s been split in half, and if I were alone I would dissolve into tears. No matter how strong I feel, Brendan has the power to make all my threads unravel. He always has.