Mistakes Were Made
I’m in my office staring at Holly when she gets up from her desk and walks into my office with a pouty look on her face. She says, “I’ve been texting you all day and you haven’t texted me back. I even went to the bathroom and sent you some, you know, naughty stuff.”
I say, “Fuck. I left my phone at home.” I had searched for it this morning before giving up, but only now do I realize that it’s still under the chair in my living room where I left it last night. I say, “I’ll look at them when I get home, though. I’m looking forward to that.”
Holly says, “When’s the next time we can hang out?”
I say, “I don’t know. Probably next week I can get away for a night.”
She walks over close to me and leans in and whispers in my ear, “I want your fucking cock in my ass again,” then licks my ear and walks out. I look over through my window to see Dan Persons staring at me from his desk. The surprised look on his face betrays the fact that he must have seen the entire exchange between me and Holly. I’m sure I’m caught. This is bad on several levels. I imagine a scenario in which Dan tells Lonnie that I’m fucking the intern, Lonnie fires me, and then I have to go home and tell Alyna I got fired, and when she asks me why, I’ll have to come up with some story about the economy and cutbacks and hope the real story never gets back to her. Then Dan smiles at me and gives me a thumbs-up. Everything’s fine.
I get through the rest of the day and head home. When I get there, Alyna answers the door crying.
I say, “What’s wrong?”
She holds up my phone with a picture of Holly’s ass on it along with a text that reads, “Your cock needs to be in this.”
Alyna says, “What in the fuck is this?”
My brain is fucked. It’s like pouring water on a computer. Nothing works right. I can’t get to the second step of any thought. First words of potential sentences I could say next keep replacing themselves in my head. Roland flashes through my cycle of stuttering thoughts for a brief second. Roland could get out of this situation. He’d have some fucking incredible thing to say that would calm Alyna down and make her realize that this is a necessary part of building an individual identity. But I’m not Roland. I say, “Is that my phone?”
Alyna says, “Uh . . . yes it’s your fucking phone, asshole. It was buzzing under your chair every five minutes.”
I say, “How’d you get my password?”
Alyna says, “Your password for everything is your birthday, you dipshit.”
That’s a mistake I’ll never make again. If this is going to happen, I don’t want the kids to be around. I say, “Where are the kids?”
Alyna says, “Fuck you. They’re with Isabelle. You think I want them in the same house with you, you disgusting fucking pig?”
I say, “Just calm down. What are you talking about? That thing is just a joke from one of the guys at work.” It’s a terrible lie, but the best one I can come up with as I can feel the blood draining from my face and my heart beating in my asshole.
Alyna says, “Really?”
I say, “Yeah, they text around pictures of naked chicks from the Internet. It’s like a little interoffice guy thing.”
Alyna says, “That’s some joke, because whatever guy from work this is has really been sending you a lot of these texts, and not just today but for the past few weeks. And look at this one.” She scrolls through Holly’s texts until she comes to one of my responses. “You even replied to a few of them. ‘I want you to suck my cock and then ride it until you cum on it.’ That’s a pretty funny joke. He must have laughed his ass off when he got this one.”
I take the phone out of her hand so she can’t wield it like a murder weapon at a trial and say, “Alyna, it’s just text messages. It’s nothing.”
Alyna says, “Shut up. Just shut up and stop lying. I’ve read every text message you’ve sent to this person. I know that when you said you were at Todd’s, you were with her. You were . . . fucking her. How could you do this?”
This is immediately recognizable as the worst moment in my life even as it’s happening. I don’t regret fucking Holly, but I never wanted Alyna to have to go through any of what’s happening right now. Even if there were ever a time when I would have wanted her to know about Holly, I wouldn’t have wanted her to find out like this. She’s sobbing and angry, and more than that, she’s hurt. She’s devastated. I’ve ripped out the heart of the woman who is the mother of my children and I’m watching her bleed in front of me.
It tears me apart to see Alyna like this. She might not want to fuck me, but in that moment I know that I love her as much as I ever have and I hate the fact that I’ve caused her this much pain. Her face and her tears are enough for me to say, “Alyna, I’m so sorry. I didn’t . . . it was just a stupid thing to do. I love you and I . . . It’s over between me and her. I mean, it was never really anything anyway, but it’s done.”
I move in to hug her as she sobs. She steps back from me and says, “Get the fuck out of this house.”
I say, “Alyna, come on. Let’s talk about this.”
Alyna says, “No. There’s nothing to talk about here. You’re a fucking piece of shit and you can’t sleep under the same roof as me and the kids. Not tonight. I’ll give you five minutes to pack some shit and get out.”
I look at her. She won’t look back at me. She just leans against the wall sobbing. There’s no way I’m talking myself back into the house tonight.
I go upstairs and throw some shit in a Lakers duffel bag that I use to carry my gym shit. I get a few work shirts, some pants, underwear, socks, whatever my numb brain can conjure up. This is the worst I have ever felt in my life. I have potentially destroyed my family. Holly is the best piece of ass I’ve ever had, but still, it doesn’t seem worth this.
I think back to what Todd said about his dad and Maria Reynaldi. It’s easy to look back from your deathbed and regret the girls you didn’t fuck when you had the chance. But what if he had fucked her and it had ripped his family apart? Would he even remember what it was like to have fucked her? Or would he just remember the look on his wife’s face when she found out?
I convince myself that there’s a chance to make things right here and to repair what I’ve done. I convince myself that Alyna just needs some time away from me, and then a heartfelt apology, and that doing everything she asks of me, including more therapy sessions, will get me back in the house. As uncertain as I am about everything in the immediate future, I am certain that Roland will no longer be on my side, but I’m prepared to eat as much shit as necessary in order to fix this.
I toss my toothbrush in the bag and head back to the front door, where Alyna is still crying. I say, “Okay, I’m leaving. But I want to talk to you when you’re ready, okay?”
Alyna says, “I don’t know.”
I say, “I love you.”
Alyna says, “Just go.”
I say, “Tell the kids I love them,” and she breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably. I want to hug her, to make even the smallest piece of this whole thing be slightly less shitty for her, but I can’t. I just walk back out to my car and start it. I can’t feel anything except the air conditioner blowing on my face as I drive to the Warner Center Marriott in a daze.