'Jack, don't be ridiculous. That's not what I meant. You took me by surprise here. What I meant was that I shouldn't be chasing after you when you needed time to grieve. It's disrespectful.'
'Disrespectful? To who?'
'Well, your wife. You're probably still mourning her, and I'm all over you. I'm so embarrassed. How could I not know any of this?'
'Believe me. My wife would be relieved to know I'm moving on. She certainly did. Long before the accident.' He said, bitterly.
'What do you mean, Jack? She was having an affair? The baby, it was yours?'
'Yes, it was mine. Considering she'd moved on with a woman from her Pilates class, I'm reasonably sure that it was. Unfortunately for her, we still had sex occasionally. At least twice or three times a year, if I was lucky.' He let go of her and ran both hands through his already messed up hair. It stood up on end and he edged away from her, expecting her to bolt.
Instead she reached out and palmed his cheek with one hand. The gesture was incredibly sweet, and he closed his eyes in reaction.
'Oh my God. Poor Jack. I'm so sorry.'
Hearing the awful pity in her voice he pulled away from her hand and leaned casually against the counter, doing up his belt while looking away from her. 'Sorry my wife was gay, or sorry that you just had sex with a guy with a pretty messed up past?'
Lacey pulled her dress around her shoulders, and used it to cover up her breasts as much as she could. 'Sorry that you've lost so much. Sorry that you've had so much pain to deal with. I swear, I didn't know anything about this. All Serena said was that your wife was out of the picture.'
'Wow. That's one way of putting it. Nice, Serena.'
'She probably thought it was something you should tell me, Jack.' Lacey said reproachfully.
'And when was I going to do that exactly? When we were making out in the truck? Or maybe when we were discussing eco-friendly toilets? When is the right time to tell someone you're interested in that you killed your wife? And worse yet, you're not really that sorry that she's gone.' He looked at her defiantly. If they were going to talk about this then she should know everything.
'Jack. You don't mean that.' Lacey shook her head in complete denial. In no way willing to believe Jack was capable of hurting anyone.
'I kind of do actually. Deborah was an unhappy woman. She never loved me and she certainly never wanted me.'
'That can't be true. How did you guys get together then?'
'We were sort of friends, at first. I thought she was different. Kind of aloof and unattainable. I was an idiot. I thought I could win her over eventually. But I never did. Even after we were married, she was distant. Every single day I disappointed her in some way. And every single night she rejected me. Not just in bed. Eventually, she made it very clear that she found everything about me distasteful. My job, my clothes, my sense of humor, my family. Nothing. I mean, nothing met with her approval. So, when she said she was leaving, I was actually relieved. There was going to an end to it. I wasn't going to have to feel unworthy forever. But when she said she was going to open a pilates studio with her girlfriend in San Francisco, and she was taking the baby with her. We argued. She said she didn't want to raise a child around a brute like me. It was raining, hard. And I lost control of the truck. Stupidest thing ever. I've driven that road a million times. And never had a problem. I just wasn't paying attention. That's all it took. Three seconds of distraction and my son was gone.'
Talking about this was a mistake. It brought it all back. The squeal of tires, Deborah's scream as the car crunched against the tree. The flying glass and sharp pain as the seat-bealt drove into his hips and chest. And then the awful silence in the truck. Silence and the scent of blood and gasoline.
Jack moved as far away from Lacey as possible and looked out her kitchen window at the neat, yet tiny backyard his buddy, Mark, had landscaped. He wondered if she could see his hands shaking. He put them in his pockets, hoping she wouldn't notice and feel sorry for him and his lack of control over his body.
'Oh Jack. That's just awful.'
'Yeah, well it doesn't help that the last thing I said to her was, 'Better a brute like me than a bitch like you.''
'I don't know what to say. I'm so, so sorry.'
'Don't be. I'm the one that should apologize. This must be the worst pillow talk ever.'
'Well, we don't exactly have pillows here. And I suppose it was long overdue to come out. But are you sure you're ready to be with someone? Even on a casual basis. It sounds like you still have a lot to deal with where Deborah is concerned.'
'I don't know. I thought I was ready. But I doubt I'm ever going to be completely over it. How do you feel about being with a guy who doesn't really know how to talk about anything serious unless it's being forced out of him?'
'I don't really know. This is a lot of information to process. Would it be awful if I asked for a little time?'
'Don't you think we've wasted enough time, as it is?'
'Jack, I'm not rejecting you. You're everything any woman could possibly want, despite how your wife made you feel. I do want to try. I really do. Right now I feel so bad for you that I'm almost willing to be the distraction you need. To make you feel better. But I want more than that from you. And I think I deserve more. Just give me a few days to absorb all of this, okay?'
He sighed. 'What's a few more days at this point? But Lacey, I'm not using you to bury my grief, or distract myself, or exorcise my demons. I have real feelings for you. And I hope you can forgive me for omitting all the ugly details of my life. It wasn't intentional. I just prefer not to talk about it. Or think about it. Or deal with it in any way.'
'I get it. Believe me. Communication isn't my strong suit either. I'd much rather keep things light, too. But being together isn't all about having fun and wild monkey sex. There has to be more to it than that.'
'Are you sure? Wild monkey sex and enjoying each other seems like enough to me. Can't we just try it like that for a while? Does it sound so terrible?'
'Actually that sounds pretty good, in theory. But you know it never works like that. I need more and I think you do too. I'm just not sure you're ready. And I'm really worried that I can't give you what you need. I've never suffered anything even close to what you've been through. In the last three years you've lost your dad, your wife and your unborn child. By comparison, I've had a pretty uneventful life. Maybe you need someone who can understand what it's like to lose so much.'
'So I need to be with someone as messed up as I am?'
'No, you're not messed up. Not at all. The fact that you're still capable of functioning and laughing and even contemplating moving on is just astounding. If it was me, I'd be catatonic.'
'But I was like that, before you. Not catatonic exactly. But barely hanging on. You woke me up. Made me see that life can be good again. Made me smile and made me so horny I could hardly see straight.'
'You have a way with words, Jack.'
'I know, one track mind. What can I say? I'm a guy. I know it's not terribly romantic, but that desire, that need for something as normal as sex was such a relief after not being able to feel anything but anger and grief. You have no idea how close I was to being lost forever. If you hadn't shown up when you did, I don't know if I would have recovered, ever.'
'I didn't do anything. I just stared at you and made a fool of myself.'
'That was part of it, for sure. Not the fool part, but the staring. You made me feel like a man again. People have been so fucking weird around me since the accident. They don't know what to say, or they're always asking me how I'm doing. Or they just look at me with pity. I can't stand that look. But to you, I wasn't some poor schmuck you felt sorry for. I was the guy you were hot for. And that was the best feeling in the world after being 'Poor Jack' to everyone else.'
'You can't tell me that I was the first woman to mentally undress you since the accident.'
'No, I can't say that. Serena started to play match-maker about a year after it happened. She was constantly throwing me and random women together.'
'Great. So I was just the latest woman she threw at you?'
'Kind of. But you were the first I wanted to catch.'
