Page 10 of Single-Minded
Jesus, I need a cheeseburger.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, looking out the side window to avoid eye contact. Wuss. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I can’t apologize any more than I already have. It’s done! I can’t go back. You’re still my best friend. I can’t change who I am,” he says defiantly. I hate that excuse. It’s already done so there’s no point in apologizing or even having a discussion about the thing you’re upset about.
“No one was asking you to change who you were. You want me to be all cool about it—well, too late for that, buddy,” I yell.
“You know what’s really shitty about all this?” I ask. “All our friends are going to rally around and support you, of course, because not one of them wants to be seen as homophobic. But what’s really shitty is that I have to support you too, or everyone is going to see me as some bitch. They probably will anyway. Everyone will hate me like I’m the next Kris Jenner or something, becauseImust have known, orImust have chained you up in the freaking closet. You come out, and somehow it’s my fault. You decimate my life, and yetyoudeserve all the love and support.”
I can barely breathe. “If you just decided after five years of marriage that you wanted to screw around with other women, nobody would be calling you brave or patting you on your stupid back. They’d call you what you are, a lying, selfish, cheating bastard. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation. And what if I were the one who came out as a lesbian? Once again, everyone would support you!” I say bitterly. “They’d say I’d emasculated you, or ruined your life, and poor you. But once again, I’d somehow be the villain and you’d be the poor little victim. You know what? Can you even think of a single word that means the female equivalent to emasculate? I’ll bet you can’t. I had to look it up on my phone because I couldn’t think of one. You know what it is? It’sdefeminize, a word that hasn’t been used since 1907, when some misogynist wrote a newspaper article about the reasons why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote,” I scream. “That’s just fucking wrong!”
“Alex—”
“I’m not done,” I shriek, completely out of control. “You know what, I’m going to bring back that word, and use it every time some troll says a female comic isn’t funny because she doesn’t also look like a supermodel, or calls a woman a bitch or a dyke just because she’s powerful.”
“I love you,” he says, his eyes spilling over with tears, his face red and blotchy.
“Don’t try to screw with me by telling me how much you love me. This is about you being an asshole. Your whole stupid ego depends on your airtime. You were willing to hide who you are, ruin my life, lie to everybody we know, all just to keep your face on TV and your little ego intact. If you had told me when we were fifteen or twenty or twenty-four, I would have still loved you, we could have lived out this fantasy you seem to have about us being best friends. But now…”
“You are my best friend,” he whimpers.
“You have to be freaking kidding me,” I say. “Why would I be friends with someone who is a total liar, someone who placed his career ahead of my entire life?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says. “It was never my intention…”
I fight back my tears, determined to say what I need to say. “You have taken everything from me. I thought I was going to have children, I thought I was going to have a life, to have a home; now I’m just the pathetic woman married to that gay guy on ESPN. Put on a dress, dance around a campfire for all I care, but don’t you dare think that the reason I hate you is because you’re gay. I hate you because you’re a liar, a chickenshit liar who ruined my life.”
“You have no idea how hard it is to be a gay man,” he whines.
“Neither do you, you fucking coward.”
8
He keeps trying to get me to talk to him for the rest of the drive, but I just ignore him and stare out the window while I figure out what I’m going to do once we get there. One white lie keeps Michael at the job he loves, and makes the whole torrid affair slightly less scandalous for the born-again basketball player. I hate myself for being so weak, but I actually feel a little sorry for Bobby Cavale; at the age when we’re all just trying to figure out who we are, and he gets to do it in front of the entire U.S. sports media.
It’s almost four o’clock by the time we arrive in Bristol. The parking lot is packed, and I’m just about to get out of the car when Michael reaches for my arm.
“Wait, please,” he says. “It was wrong, selfish, of me to ask you to do this. Especially after everything you’ve been through today. I’m sorry. I’ll handle this by myself.” He hands me the keys to the rental car. “I’m not sure how long this meeting will last. There are some decent places to eat up the street. I’ll call you when I’m done, and then we can head back to New York.”
“Are you serious?” I ask. Great, he drags my butt all the way to ESPN and now he wants me to wait in the car or something.
“I am. I’ve hurt you and lied to you, and you don’t deserve this. You are my best friend, and more than anything, I want to be yours again. So I’ll do this on my own.”
We sit in the car for several minutes while I try to figure out how to respond.
I remember what Darcy said. About getting stuck in this moment, unable to move forward.
And then I think about the thirty grand in alimony. Every year. Maybe forever.
“You don’t have to go in there alone,” I say benevolently. “I’ll go with you.” I’ll probably regret it, but I sure didn’t trek all the way to Bristol to sit at some T.G.I. Friday’s drowning my sorrows in onion rings, mainlining Barbados rum punch while Michael gets fired. Cosmically speaking, can’t I save myself by saving Michael? And if I can’t save myself, at least can’t I save myself the thirty grand?
We exit the car and cross the parking lot to the entrance of the ESPN campus. I trail behind Michael wondering how the hell I got here.
As we enter the building, I pull him close and whisper in his ear, “You aresof-ing lucky I’m doing this for you.”
“I know,” he says solemnly.
Michael texts his bosses as soon as we arrive, and they’re waiting for us in a large conference room. There are sandwiches and baskets of cookies, bottles of water and soda, on a table just inside the door of the conference room—enough food to keep us holed up in here for a week. Who knew Armageddon would be catered?
There are four men already in the room, and one woman, and the man at the head of the table introduces himself as Tank Turner, which seems like a good name for G.I. Joe’s Republican cousin. I select a bottle of sparkling water, and wonder nervously if death row inmates actually eat the T-bone steaks and fried okra and shrimp cocktails and MoonPies and banana pudding they request for their last meals, or if they’re just too stressed to enjoy them. The executives look nice enough, and I try not to obsess about the fact that they will soon be asking me about my sex life, and worse, Michael’s. Pleasantries are exchanged awkwardly. “Did you have a nice flight?” Uh, no. It’s not a vacation, it’s the worst day of my life and I’m spending it at ESPN. It’s like making small talk at a funeral: you’re trying to make things less awkward, and the family of the deceased just wishes they could be alone at home under the covers with a fork and an entire Bundt cake.
