“You can learn the hard way, pick up the bruises and read them like runes to get a little closer to the truth. You can let yourself be swayed by all the gurus, conmen, and sleazeballs out there who claim to have the answer…”
I let out a little snort at the irony, and Lorelei shoots me a quick, placating look. I turn back to the video, the sense of unease growing despite the ridiculousness of what he’s saying.
“You wanna figure out what the opposite sex wants? You already know. Listen to your body, your feelings, your primal urges. Get rid of all that surface bullshit, and learn to be an animal again. A creature of emotions and sensations and—”
“Stop the video,” I say suddenly.
“What? He’s just getting to the good part!”
“Stop it!”
Lorelei obliges and pulls back a little to look at me dubiously.
The hand I bring to my mouth is shaking, and I’m struggling to breathe properly. I feel my body go deathly cold.
“Jessie? What’s wrong?”
I look at her, and even though she’s right next to me on the couch, I feel like I’m calling at her from a thousand miles underground, the shock of realization pounding my consciousness into its deepest recess.
“It’s Nate,” I say, my voice trembling so much it turns the words into drawled moans with multiple syllables.
“What?” Lorelei says. “Forget about Nate, Jessie. Jesus. I thought you were having—”
“No,” I cry desperately, jabbing my finger at the phone for a few seconds before I can bring the next words to my lips. “Him. The ‘Bad Boy.’”
Lorelei gazes at me in confusion.
“It’s Nate. That’s him,” I add, the words tumbling out of my mouth almost involuntarily.
Lorelei’s eyes widen and she glances at her phone, then back at me.
“Are you sure?” she asks, her own voice full of shock now, too.
I take the phone from her and stare the image, surprise and incomprehension giving way to a rapidly boiling anger.
“Shit…” I whisper softly at the image.
“It might not be him,” Lorelei says, almost as if she’s pleading for it not to be so. “I mean, one six-pack looks a lot like another.”
“You see that mark there?” I say, my voice going from quavering mess to heated hiss. “That’s a scar he got when he was a kid, doing a dumb bike jump off a tool shed roof with my brother. I’ve spent months sleeping against that scar. Believe me, it’s him.”
“But the voice? It doesn’t sound like—”
“It’s him. That’s the voice he uses in…” I let out a spurt of air, still struggling to find my feet in this new reality. “In bed. That’s his fucking bed voice.”
I stare at the paused image, shaking my head as the cold chill down my spine turns into a fiery anger rising in my chest.
“Maybe it’s not so bad,” Lorelei says, taking the phone slowly from my hands like it’s a weapon she’s afraid of. “Maybe there’s more to it.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say, jumping from the couch and pacing quickly up and down the room. “How can there be more to that than that?! He’s a pig!”
“Jessie, calm down, please,” Lorelei says, perched timidly on the edge of the couch as she watches me stride from one side of the room to the other.
“No. I’m not calming down. I just found out that the guy I’m pregnant by – one of my closest friends – is also an internet-sex-pervert-guru-philosopher-asshole. Calming down is not a viable option. Anger is.”
I stride so vehemently I almost get dizzy, my heartbeat and my breathing quickening to match my steps. I feel full of heat and frustration, a balloon ready to burst violently.
“Jessie,” Lorelei says, sounding almost frightened, “just…try to think about it rationally. You always knew he was a player, didn’t you? That he liked to screw around, have a lot of one-night stands. This is who he was, sure. But maybe not anymore? It’s not like—”
“What was that thing you said a few weeks ago?” I say, stopping suddenly and pointing at Lorelei. “We were in the kitchen, Nate was here. You said he stopped.”
Lorelei pauses for a second and screws her face up a little as she tries to remember. “’Bad Boy’? Yeah. He did.”
“And then he came back…” I say, feeling a whole new rush of turbulence shake through me.
“Yeah,” Lorelei says, seeing where I’m going.
“He came back,” I say, in a hushed whisper, before gritting my teeth. “While he was with me…the fucking…he was in the kitchen with us even and…”
The murky image comes into focus, pieces falling into place, and the facts are so clear, so stupidly, annoyingly clear that I feel like an idiot for missing them.
It’s too much. Too ridiculous. Fury, exasperation, and lucidity overwhelm me. I consider slamming the table over, throwing myself out of the window, and allowing myself to crumple to the floor all in the space of a split second, and in the end, all I can do is laugh. The laughter of someone giving up, despairing and hopeless.
20
Jessie