Commitment (69 page)

For a good number of nights each week, s
he
slept
on the sofa
and her writing was suffering.
Hours spent watching music television to produce story ideas only resulted in her crying over Shawn’s music videos and obsessively looking for the dancer he’d slept with in fleeting s
hots.

There were
precious few other diversions
except for the occasional after-work drink with Chris Scaife who was turning
out to be a pretty decent guy.
He tried to
help her out with story
ideas and
gave her tips on
emerging
trends in the industry that few other people were perceptive
enough
to recognize
, and
best of all, he
discreetly—
to
the extent that C
hris was able to be discreet—
g
ave her updates o
n what Shawn was doing.

Apart from that, she had
little
information
about her husband’s life and whereabouts
except for the one time she’d seen
his picture in a
newspaper
attending
a post-awards show
event.
Shawn
was
holding a wineglass and had been caught in mid-conversation with so
meone who was
just
out of frame.
It hurt just to see him.
She knew that if she asked, Tracy would pump Brendan for
even more
information, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what
he
was really doing.
The news she might get may hurt even more than seeing him in a
newspaper
like a stranger.

g

Tracy was waiting for her after work at a b
ar and grill on Seventh Avenue.
They
sat at a table
in the rear, desultorily
eating the complimentary
Buffalo
wings and sipping three dollar drafts. 

“So you’re going to that
Arista
party for Shawn next weekend?” she asked.

“Sure. Why not?
I guess th
at’s my job or something right?
As The Wife?”

“You’re becoming really cynical about being m
arried to him,” Tracy observed.
“That can’t be a good thing.”

“It’s hard not to be cynical whe
n your husband cheats on you.”
Riley
wiped her hands on a napkin and reached for her
beer.

Across
the room
at the bar, a couple guys
were scoping her and Tracy out.
Only lately had she begun to notice the at
tention she got from men again.
It seemed like she’d been blocking all of out for such a long time.
Shawn hated it, so she’d gotten used to pretending it wasn’t happening. Now, she thought wryly, she had the all-clear to flirt again if she wanted to.
 

“Cheat
ed
.
There’s a difference,” Tracy pointed out.

“You know more than I do then.”

“So you’re saying you think he’s still cheating on you.”

“Who knows?”

“If you really thought that, I don’t think you’d be going to California,” Tracy shook her head.

“Maybe you’re right.
But now I know that the potential for him to cheat is there.”

“The potential for damn ne
ar anything to happen is there.
The potential for you to get hit by a train tonight on the way home is there
. . . doesn’t
mean it’s going to happen.
And you certainly can’t live the rest of your life on that basis.
”

“Whatever Tracy.
Cheating doesn’t
happen
. Someone does it.
”

“
Okay, but
Riley
, let’s not forget that your relationship with Shawn started with you cheating on Brian, so maybe it’s time to stop being so sanctimonious about this.
Be angry, be upset, but for heaven’s sake, don’t be
sanctimonious
.
”

“Don’t hold back, Tracy.
Tell me how you really feel.”

“I’m not trying to be mean but it’s b
een
three
months already.
If you want to divorce him, you should
get moving with that
.
But if you aren’t going
to, maybe you need to fi
nd a way to deal with this other than bitterness and
cynicism
.”

“Wow.
You’re really heaping it on today
,” Riley said dryly.

“And another thi
ng,” Tracy said, on a roll now.
“Your hand
s aren’t entirely clean either.
What about these little boyfriends
you always have hanging around
?
The way you strung Brian along even after you were married
?
All
that was
missing from
that
little affair
was
the sex.
And now Chris Scaife.
Really.”

“That’s not fair.”

Tracy rolled her eyes.
“Okay.
Fine.
Consider it food for thought, then.
I wonder if these romantic friendships would be just as acceptable if it was Shawn and some little chick who he claimed was ‘just a friend’.
”

“So have you thought about coming to California with me?”
Riley
asked
,
pointedly changing the subject
.
Brendan had invited
her as well
, and so far she was resisting the idea.

“Nope.
What would be the point?”

“To have a good time.
To keep me company.”

“I don’t want to have
a good time,” Tracy said dully.
“And you have Shawn to keep you company.”

“Okay, so you’ll keep Brendan company.”

Tra
cy tilted her head to one side.
“It’s not happening, okay? Me and Brendan?
Not happening.”

Riley
shook her head.
“I
don’t see how you can say that.
After all the calls, the . . .”

“Brendan is,
” Tracy paused and chose her words carefully. “. . . maybe the most decent guy I’ve met in, I don’t know how long.  He’s the best friend I’
ve made since, well, since you.
But it’s no more than that.”

Riley
’s first
instinct was to argue the point—
if they could be such good frie
nds, why couldn’t they be more?
But the fact of the matter was, she and Shawn were married but by no stretch of the imagination were they good friends, so what did
that
mean?
She was hardly in the position to question
someone else’s
relations
hip when her own was such a God-awful m
ess.

“I know
what it looked like for awhile.
” Tracy
shrugged. “
We liked talking on the phone together
.
That’s all.”

“That’s plenty.”

“Yeah, but don’t
try to make it more than it is.
I already thought it through and his lifestyle, my lifestyle, the things I want out of life . . . we’re just
headed in
different
directions
.
I’m not like you,
Riley
.
I can’t jump into the deep end and try to learn how to swim later.”

“Is that what I do?”

“
Yeah.” Tracy said almost sadly.
“It is.
And
it
’s
caught
up with you.
Big-time.
”

g

L
iving in the apartment alone was
more difficul
t than she thought it would be.
I
t seemed so
huge
a
nd so quiet
, especially at night
.
In the dark and silence,
Riley
couldn’t help but t
hink too much about everything.
Most es
pecially Tracy’s words tonight.
That
was
what she’d done—
j
ump in and
try to figure things out later.
She was marr
ied to someone she barely knew.
Tha
t was the long and short of it.
The things she loved about him we
re only the tip of the iceberg.
What did she actually know
about
his capacity for faithfulness?
Or his willingness to change, or compromise to
do what it took to make a
relationship work?

And without knowing any of these things she’d promised to love, honor and cherish him
for all the days of her life.
It seemed ridiculous now
that she hadn’t really absorbed the meaning of those words, even as she sai
d them.
Lorna
was
right; those had been head
y, mindless, intoxicating days.
Even the opposition to their marriage hadn’t swayed her
—
she was in a fog then, and couldn’
t see clearly to save her life.
But even
so
,
knowing what she now knew,
she couldn’t
let him go.

It should have been
getting easier to be without him, it was getting
steadily
worse.
Noticing other men, flirting a little with
random guys and increasingly with Chris Scaife
, none of that seemed to put a dent in what was the overwhelming reality of her life these day
s
—
she
missed her husband.

Meeting people for drinks and dinner was what she did to fill the
empty
time
.
Usually, if she arranged things
just
right, she would be out until sometime between eleven-thirty and
one
a.m.
so
when
she got home, it would be all she could do to get her
shoes
off and
collapse, exhausted
into bed.

She tried to rotate her social engagements, between Tracy, Chris and
Peter
or Walsh
so she
was hardly ever really alone.
She never
used to
mind being alone—
it was when her best ideas had come, when she’d written
her best
.
But now, alone just remi
nded her she was without Shawn.

But
as much as she wanted hi
m, she
couldn’t make herself forget that h
e’d hurt her in a way she
never believed she could hurt.
For t
he
first
couple of
weeks
after she found out about Keisha
, she awoke each morning mildly surprised that she had not expired during the night from the great, aching maw in her chest
.
For two weeks, there was not a waking moment that was not marred by the thought of Shawn with another woman.
She tormented herself with mental images of him naked and entwined in someone else’s legs, kissing someone else’s
mouth, touching her breasts.
And not just “someone else” but someone that Riley had seen, whose attract
iveness Riley could vouch for.

And w
hen
it became unbearable,
s
he
would resolve
to
pack all her things and leave for good
. But in the end, all she ever did was
cry
herself to sleep
because she knew she wouldn’t leave;
she couldn’t stand the tho
ught of never seeing him again.
So all in all, it was better not to be alone, better to be out with people as much as she could.