On My Pedestal

I was tall, and aching. His city reached up from the earth to meet me an hour before sunrise. What a perfect labyrinth of highways - the same city that raised my father, the city that taught me not to cry. My teeth were grinding.

I descended on the South like Persephone to Hades, on a crowded plane from a summer trip back down to my winter bond. My nerves shot arrows into my feet anticipating the lurching traffic, big talk, suffocating heat, and seeing him again. I scrolled through my phone's gallery of proof that I was a good girl, who had just helped a neighborhood of wrecked homes rebuild from a record-breaking storm.

He stood waiting outside baggage claim and the irony was not lost on me. He welcomed me in a steadying embrace, in which I willingly lingered to suck in the scents of his fraying jacket and humid dust. So I had missed him. We didn't kiss. We never kissed.

I had returned ahead of the team, but habit hustled us to load my bags into the trunk while shadows still served us. Dawn would crack through these streets any moment, as would my cued smiles.

I feigned fatigue to quiet his questions about the mission trip. Feigned is a strong word, since truthfully I was exhausted by our routine affair. Recent nightmares induced inescapable anxiety over the possibility of being caught by one of our mutual friends, or even worse, by his wife. The ruin which would inevitably follow consumed my thoughts. Time away in a disaster relief zone provided space to brood over our relationship, free from his five-star distractions.

He undoubtingly believed, and preferred, my tired symptoms were my condition flaring up again. An injured lamb for the shepherd to mend.

"Did you take your meds?" His tone betrayed his secret pleasure for knowing backstage details.

Of course I had. My smile was sweet and sleepy. "Oh, I don't remember."

"Let's get you some food and coffee. You'll feel better."

I miss the days I didn't lie to him. I miss the girl who met him. She was bubblegum music and aquamarine light, rocking thrifted grunge and winsome as rain. Nineteen, with as many close friends. Feathers in her hair and barefoot. She wanted to be a fine artisan, a Builder of Beautiful Things.

He was so strong then, and adored, before the curtain was pulled back on his crumbling kingdom at home. As a respected pillar in our community, his job was to curate the exact kind of place mothers encouraged daughters to "get plugged into" so they would meet a special someone with our common faith. With low expectations, I did try his community house, where I pleasantly discovered I belonged. My peers were eager to include me, while he inspired us to lead the world. His charismatic involvement won my naïve trust.

The girl who fell for him a year later was quietly dying. Paying for dollar menu items in spare change. Running away from Father's rage which increasingly clashed with her own. The sickness was setting in by this time, an echoing fog of mismatched memories, a forgetting how to get home, an inability to care. A bleeding. Her skin was peeling, her friends stopped texting, she slept often in her car. Mother kept urging her to get diagnosed.

He provided such charming escapes from bloodwork, and worried professors warning me of impending failure, and insipid boys asking me "to hang." Our private online correspondence sparked eighteen months ago when an administrative question turned intimate after I felt he needed to be asked how he was really doing, since there we were, still replying and carrying on days after the initial question was answered. Our friendship intensified as my involvement in the college house's community deepened.

He set his laptop on our table, in "our" café, outside an artsy district thirty minutes away from incriminating eyes. Crepes were ordered. We sat side by side, hand in hand, the usual inseparableness. I slouched a little to lay my head on his broad shoulder as he grabbed headphones and logged in to the streaming site. I did still take comfort in these small joys. How could I not relish public attention from a successful, handsome man twice my age? Guilt was bearable most days.

"Oh, hello," a burly server interrupted our normal with coffee. "It's been a while since I've seen you two!"

"Yes," my companion agreed vaguely. "But you're not our usual server."

"I'm normally at the bar. Well, nice to officially meet you. I'm Justin."

"Jack," my leader replied without missing a beat. "And this is Rose!"

He beamed at me, like he thought he was clever. I winced a playful grin back. The tactless cheesiness of the referenced names triggered my free hand into a fist.

"Jack and Rose?" Justin squinted hard at us with a toothy grin. His suspicions were obvious by the sharp glance he shot at me. "Alright, lovebirds, your food will be out soon."

My lovebird doctored his coffee, smirking at my wordless disapproval. I emphasized my feelings aloud, "Really?"

"Well? We're like them, yeah? Forbidden love? One of us is an artist. One of us is fleeing a loveless relationship." He offered the cream and sugar to me, but I waved it away.

"That would make you Rose. But you're the one showing me the world. All these restaurants and museums and hotels I never knew existed. So you see, it doesn't work. You can't be both characters." I kept my cadence as cute as possible.

He smiled softly and gave me an extra meaningful look. "I'd argue we've inspired each other to live again, saved from different ledges, so to speak."

I made sure he saw my irritation, even though I conceded with a flirtatious sigh. Whether my exasperation was at him or at the truth, I refused to dwell on it. I only wanted to drink coffee and watch our show. I wanted to forget our ship was doomed.

"He'll see your real name on the card when we close out." I couldn't stop clenching my jaw.

Unfazed, he pushed play and took another sip. How he could stand white coffee made my face twitch as I dove into my own preference of black acidity. It burned my tongue.

I couldn't focus on the show. It was about magic and fairytales, curses and breaking them. All I could see was his wedding band coiled around his mug reflecting a small glint of reminding light into the screen.

I needed a break. He kindly scooted off the booth so I could escape to the bathroom around the corner. Maybe I was bothered by the clichés more than our double life. Maybe this was fine, even if I couldn't share pictures of our crepes, and tag him, and get little heart notifications, and little supportive comments.

Love is enough, I consoled myself in the mirror. After all, we loved each other, as attractive best friends and co-conspirators do. No matter that our future was uncertain.

That server met me in the hallway on my way back. What did he say his name was? Joe? His demeanor was wholly changed from earlier, and his eyes bored through me with a disconcerting earnestness. Does he know? He pulled a little black notebook out from his apron pocket, tore a page off from the back, and stretched it out for me to grab.

Apprehensive, I read the scribbled note as he briskly returned to the kitchen, "If you need the police, order pecan pie."

My clammy hand crumpled it up. This wasn't the first time a stranger had reached out. I appreciated people were keeping watch for young girls in bad situations. However, I did not appreciate being taken for a minor, or really, being taken for the type of girl to get herself trapped in such a situation.

I huffed my way back to Jack.

"What's wrong?" He scooted back in after me.

"That guy, Jason." I showed him the note, crossing my arms to hide my armpits. The coffee was making me sweat.

He read the note before laying it on the table. He sighed, "It's Justin."

"I'm so tired of this, Jack," the new nickname drew a half-smile, but I knew he recognized the flatness in my tone. "I can't do this anymore."

"I know, love." He paused sadly.

This wasn't the first time I had quit. I heard it coming - a stale wave of patronizing excuses explaining why he needed me, why we had to hide, why our love was worth suffering for. Admittedly, that speech usually worked.

I rolled my eyes away from him, waiting. The laptop was still frozen on the villain's mid-sentence grimace. My eyes darted away before they could read the subtitle in case my brain related the script to the moment in some sort of cheap symbolism about "love coming at a price" or "hope despite all odds."

"Rose," he deliberated. The inside joke was wearing thin; neither of us smiled. "I've been thinking a lot about us while you were away. I have something to show you."

My ears piqued. He gingerly fingered through his wallet until he found a blue credit card covered in palm trees I didn't recognize. How endearing. He chose that theme. On purpose. Ugh.

"Remember when we used to daydream of running away to the Maldives?"

I nodded. My heart flapped like a hummingbird. Damn caffeine.

"I wasn't sure when or how I should tell you. I've got a secret bank account and-"

"You what? Does she know?"

"I manage the finances." His defensive tone hushed me.

"Anyway, I've slowly been putting aside this nest egg for fifteen years. I guess I always knew she'd never come around after that whole, you know, and well, I've got enough now to start over."

I gulped. "How much?"

"Twenty thousand." He paused for effect.

I hid my disappointment that it wasn't six figures. Still, the two digit balance in my account licked its lips. How he managed to swindle even a small sum away from his family on a minister's salary wasn't a detail I cared to stomach.

"We'll buy a house. I'll go back into the tech world. You'll never have to work. You'll graduate, be an artist, anything you want."

A familiar fog crept over my thoughts. "So, you'll divorce her."

"Yes."

"And I'll tell my family. And you your family. And our friends?"

"Yes. They'll forgive us if they love us. Baby, this-"

He talked on. The fog thickened. My heart sank before I understood why. Our food appeared in front of us.

"Anything else for ya?" Justin asked, looking solely at me. "Dessert?"

"No, thank you," Jack's voice was cold, dismissing him. We would have joked about that for weeks, but now …

I dug into the crepes ravenously. I tried holding back sudden hot tears. I don't know what I'd hoped for. His marriage to heal? Her to leave him?

"Dearest, we can have everything we want now," he stated confidently, romantically.

The mush inside my mouth turned to ash. More sweat. Teeth grinding. Did he think this was a happy cry? This full exposure of his failure to be the hero I originally trusted awakened a mad, unnamable fear. That little blue card was the tip of our iceberg - a life he asked me to give everything to without care that we'd lose everyone in the process, our reputations, and my faith in him to make it work.

The end began. No more back and forth from righteous spring to shaded lusts. No more sneaking around for free on a dreamer's ship. I'd have to pay for my own ticket. I'd have to face winter alone.

Trading uncertainty for uncertainty, I let him drive me to the end of my parents' street in silence. I wondered how long the freezing would take.