Page 15 of Vicarious

“Is that how the two of you got past…”

I wait on her to finish expectantly. Finally she says, “Past you and her… you know.”

“Trying to kill each other.”

Phae laughs. Of all things. “You know, she said it just like that when I asked her earlier. So casually. Like it was no big deal, and it was an everyday occurrence.”

It is an everyday occurrence as far as I’m concerned. Even now, Dele has a standing expectation to kill me if I become more of a liability to the twins’ safety than a boon. But not something to tell Phae.

“We’re past that,” I say instead.

“Do you think maybe we can get past it too?”

She doesn’t have to explain what. She means the fact that I almost killed her even being that killing her wasn’t my intentions that night.

“It wasn’t just that,” I find myself saying. Because I want her to know everything. I want he to know what she’s dealing with. It wasn’t just that one thing. “Phae. The things I did before then. The things I did after. The things I still do now. I’m a monster, Phae.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Phae…”

She turns to me, stubborn determination in her eyes as she says, “Adrian, you are not the monster that you’ve been made to be. You’re not the monster you think you are. You’re not the attack dog you’ve been forced to be. You’renotViper.”

Hearing her say that, with so much conviction and knowing takes me back to the reason I fell in love with her and wanted to marry her in the first place. She was one of few people who didn’t think I was a monster. Who thought I was capable of being more than a monster who kills and tortures and maims without losing any sleep at night. Who though I was capable of having a place in this world without having to be that.

It was nice. To be around and with someone who simply ignored that part of me and settled on the good. It was nice to be able to be the nice, good guy when I was with her.

“Maybe,” I say.

“You are,” she says simply before turning back to the box and going through it.

As she’s sorting through her files, a velvet pouch falls from amidst the pile. She doesn’t ask what it is. Simply opens it and gasps.

“You kept it.”

I peer at what she’s found and see it’s her wedding ring. A cheap, inexpensive thing that still took me months to save up for her with a respectable sized diamond in the middle. Nothing dazzling. Simple. But something Phae was grateful for and cherished anyway, and, apparently, still cherishes now.

“Why wouldn’t I have?”

“I just…” she trails off, takes a deep breath and then looks at me. “It’s been a while. You thought I was dead. And I wasn’t sure if you’d moved on from me.”

I had in a way. I had no choice. She was dead. What was I supposed to do? Live my life like I still owed something to a dead woman? Live my life like she was still living and in the way of the other woman I craved when she wasn’t and I could finally have her without guilt or wondering what kind of monster that made me?

Of course, I moved on… in a way. Because all this. Taking Pray’s empire from him right beneath his nose because that’s the only thing that will make him hurt. Not it’s destruction. But seeing someone else take the helm of everything he’s built while he can only watch helpless? That was all inspired as a way to get revenge for taking Phae from me. For almost taking my children away from me.

But Pray didn’t. He tried. But he didn’t manage. And now Phae is alive and it begs the question am I really done with her.

I know what I told Dele. And I stand by what I told Dele. I didn’t lie to her. I wouldn’t have called her my love if I didn’t mean that. If I didn’t know that. But also… Phae was once my love too. She was my love back when I figured out that Dele was my love too. The question is whether she still is and if she is, what the fuck do I do about that? Because neither of them would ever settle for being second to the other. And maintaining some semblance of a relationship with both is something I know I could never maintain.

For all that Dele constantly thinks she needs to remind me, I am aware of my flaws. Aware of the way I obsess and fixate on things. When Wyan forced me into therapy as a teenager, the woman said it was my way of coping with all the loss and abandonment in my life. Never knowing who the hell my dad was. Being traumatically separated from my mother. Shuffled around in foster homes for a year before the Soles found me. That narrow, single-minded focus and fixation on things and people stems from all that.

The therapist had tried to give me exercises to help me overcome those fixations. And while they helped enough that I could function as a relatively normal human being when I needed to, I never overcame the habit. I still hyper fixate on things. Work. A mark. My cars. The women that enthrall me.

That kind of fixation doesn’t leave room for any kind of relationship except a monogamous one. Between Phae and Dele, someone is eventually going to get more of my attention. Someone is going to be forgotten and discarded. Someone is going to end up heartbroken about this.

That in mind, I give Phae one of the non-answers that Dele tends to give when she doesn’t want to outright lie but doesn’t want to be honest either. The type of answers that my more straight-forward personality and way with people doesn’t typically allow for me to do.

“It’s not an easy thing. Moving on from you.”

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