Love.com (27 page)

“How can you be so forgiving?
Why don’t you hate them as much as I do?”

Emily thought about those words long after Jenna collected her kids and left. How could she forgive Eddie for being secretly gay
? He denied them children because he didn’t feel right about bringing them into a marriage already based upon his own lies. She recalled her argument with Ian months ago when she admitted to herself she no longer loved her husband long before he died. Didn’t she share the blame here as well to a certain degree?

She played out the act that was their marriage
from the start, knowing she needed much more all along. Whether her husband was gay wasn’t the issue anymore. He wasn’t happy and fulfilled at home, regardless of the gender of who he sought to escape that sad reality. She realized that now. Man or woman, it didn’t matter. Her husband obviously knew her feelings changed for him too. At the end of the day, cheating was really just cheating, wasn’t it?

It saddened her to know Jay was the other man even though she felt no anger towards him. She wondered whether that cup of coffee
he offered was still on the table. It was time she learned the truth.

~
~ ~

Jay arrived home within the hour, looking pleased for once, and sober. He changed in the months since
they discovered Eddie’s horde of baseball cards. He became motivated to erect a new life for himself, one without Jenna.

He was unloading some stuff from the cab of his truck when she approached, smiling as he saw her.

“What’s up, Em?” He shifted the container he was moving, pulling it off the bed of the truck.

“Jenna came by while you were out,” Emily told him, her eyes meeting his deliberately. “I think we need to have that talk, Jay.”

Jay just looked at her and sighed, leaving the bin where it was. He didn’t say anything as he unlocked the side-door to his kitchen and let her inside. Emily looked around. All of Jenna’s womanly touches were gone. It was a bachelor’s kitchen now, complete with unmatched, chipped coffee cups and plastic butter containers taking the place of Tupperware. Jay didn’t seem to mind. Most men didn’t. At the end of the day, who really needed that stuff but women?

“Have a seat, don’t mind the mess,”
Jay said as he went to an old coffee maker on the counter littered with mail and set about making a pot. He avoided looking at Emily the whole time, a fact she attributed to his obvious guilt.

Emily shoved week-old newspapers off the chair, setting them aside as she waited. The awkward silence was unbearable
between them. Finally Jay turned and shrugged off his sweatshirt and tossed it into the chair opposite her, his eyes sad and slightly defensive.

“I see my ex-wife didn’t waste any time filling you in?”

“I’d rather here your version of it,” Emily said stiffly and could see Jay was struggling with his composure. He was furious Jenna told her, that much was obvious in the tense set of his jaw.

“Ah, but
just like her, would you even believe me, Em?” Jay shook his head as he leaned against the counter while the coffee maker chugged along. “I can hardly believe it myself.”

“Try me? I want to know what happened. I deserve that much. You were working up to telling me months ago and gave up. Why?”

“You seemed happy then,” Jay said and shrugged. “I don’t know why I gave up. I guess I wondered if telling you would be wrong. It isn’t like you made it easy for me back then, Em. Every time I went over to talk to you about this, you were leaving.”

“Was Eddie in love with you?” Emily startled Jay with the question. He straightened against the counter and looked at her with a pained expression before looking away.

“He said he was,” Jay said and shook his head. “I didn’t encourage him if that’s what you’re thinkin’, Em. I thought he was just confused. You know how some guys go through that? I thought he’d snap out of it.”

Emily could see this confession made Jay uncomfortable too. She pressed him for more. She needed to know everything. “Did you have a relationship with him?”

“You’re asking me if we ever had sex, am I right?” Jay laughed bitterly and shook his head, his eyes meeting hers directly. “Never. It wasn’t ever like that, at least not for me. We got drunk one night up at Skip’s. This was years ago. Eddie insisted on driving me home. Only we didn’t go right home. He drove into an alley. Before I knew it, he was kissing me. Things got carried away. Something happened I’m not proud of, but I caught myself and we stopped.” Jay paused and fixed them both a cup of black coffee. Emily declined sugar. “I realized what was happening and I hit him, pushed him away; told him to get the hell out of my truck. I left him there that night. I went home and passed out. I just wanted to forget about it. Pretend it never happened. Eddie wouldn’t. He thought I felt the same after that. That’s when he started writing the letters to me. I swear I never knew how he felt before that night, Emily. I never knew he was into men.”

“Why did you save the letters if you didn’t feel the same
way about him?” Emily took the cup he offered and shook her head. “Seems to me leaving them laying around cost you everything, didn’t it?”

Jay had a sad look on his face as he sipped his coffee. “I thought my wife would believe me
if she found out about Ed’s thing for me, Emily. Is that such a stretch? I know it was dumb to keep the letters. I guess because Eddie was my best friend, I was afraid to throw them away, like somebody would find them. It doesn’t matter. My wife never believed me. Eddie died after that. And now you think the worst.”

“I appreciate you telling me,” Emily allowed, unable to feel any anger at Jay for handling the situation as he had. She wondered what she would have done if she found out the same about Joan. Would she have stayed quiet? She knew the answer. She would have never told John his wife was gay and in love with her best friend
after her death. “This all must have been tough for you, losing Jenna over it too.”

“You know, for awhile I just drank to forget how miserable we were
after the business failed. I wasn’t happy for years,” Jay said quietly and shook his head. “I can’t blame Eddie that my wife lost faith in me long before then, can I? Jenna was so quick to believe the worst. She moved out and filed for divorce, just like that. She never gave me the chance to explain. I guess I thought she’d give me the benefit of the doubt, like she was my wife, and had to.”

“So what happened
after that night at Skip’s?” Emily knew that wasn’t the end by far. She wanted to know about those five years in between.

Jay looked at her and sighed
deeply. “He thought he could get me to change my mind after that night. We’d go out drinkin’. Same as we always did, with all the boys, and act like nothing changed. Whenever we were alone; he’d want to talk about it. I told him I didn’t feel that way for him. I told him I didn’t like men. He was convinced I was denying what I was. It became a joke between us. After that, I just looked the other way about what he was doing. I know it wasn’t right, Em, but he was my buddy.”

“Were there other men
too?” Emily didn’t know why she needed to know this. The hurt and sting Jay’s words caused was bad enough.

“Yeah
, he had relationships, but nothing ever came of them. He would make some calls up at the bar and disappear some nights,” Jay concluded sadly, his expression filled with riddled guilt. “He’d ask me to say I was with him if you ever asked. I knew what he was doing, Em. He was meeting men. It was no secret between us. He had to tell somebody.”

“So you covered for him all these years? Is that right?” Emily couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice now. It shook with the effort to not turn shrill with her outrage. “Why aren’t I surprised? Would
it be any different if he was stepping out with a woman? You guys all stick together!”

“Emily, I kn
ew it was wrong to go along with it,” Jay muttered and looked away, his guilt profound. “I think I paid for it. I lost my wife in the end. She thinks I was Eddie’s boyfriend all these years. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I was just his friend, even if he wanted more. He knew I was straight.”

“Why did he tell you
he was gay?” Emily wanted to understand why Eddie would expose himself to Jay and risk it getting out.

“I think he just wanted somebody to know,” Jay reflected and stared moodily into his coffee cup. “He said he’d been
livin’ a lie all his life. He said it felt good to know his best friend knew that about him. I never called him a faggot and treated him any different. It made him feel good to know I didn’t care.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Emily stared out the kitchen window. “This has all been such a shock.”

“Before he got sick, Eddie told me he was going to leave you,” Jay recalled with a grimace. “I knew he was scared of never being able to be free. I think that’s why he asked me to go away with him. I told him no, that I loved my wife. I never led him on, Emily. I swear to you we were always just friends. Then, Jenna found all the letters when she was cleaning up. She wouldn’t listen to me. I look back and can see how I screwed up by not confiding in her. At the time, I thought I was just being a good buddy. I didn’t see I was setting myself up.”

“So she left
you, and you blamed Eddie for it.” Jay nodded at her words solemnly. She could see he was still grieving both the loss of his wife and his best friend.

“I hated him for awhile for it,” Jay whispered and looked tortured in those minutes. “I hated him for being what he was. I hated myself more for keeping it quiet, and playing along. It wasn’t his fault. I realized that when he died. I felt like I was getting back at him by staying away when he was
sick at home. I think the hardest thing I ever did was let my best friend die without ever telling him that.”

“I appreciate you telling me the truth, Jay. I’m sorry it had to come out like this.”

“I’m just sorry Eddie never had the guts to be what he was, Em. I told him to fess up years ago. He was too afraid. He said his family would never accept it. Said his dad would disown him. I did try to get him to talk to you,” Jay concluded with a sad shake of his head. “He said you would never understand something like this; that he wasted your life.”

“I would have been angry, but I would have gotten over it eventually,” Emily said softly as she set down her coffee cup. “It explains so much now. I always wondered why he never wanted kids. All our friends were having them left and right. He kept saying it wasn’t the right time. Now I know he didn’t want to drag them into this.”

“He did love you, Em
, for whatever it’s worth. He said that was the worst of it. He felt like he let you down. He said it wasn’t your fault. He told me he knew he was gay in the seventh grade, just hid it from everyone.”

“Yeah, he got really good at hiding things,” Emily said without bitterness, trying to understand her husband’s reasons.
She tried to feel some sense of pity for Eddie now. She could imagine how difficult it was for him to hide such a thing his whole life.

“Don’t let this
hold you back anymore, Em. You’re better than that. I think that’s why I decided to let it go. You bounced right back after Ed passed, even started dating again. I guess I hoped I’d never have to tell you.”

“I needed to know,”
Emily whispered and closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears that began to burn there. “I had to understand what it was that made him that way…was it me? I had to know if I did something, didn’t do something. A woman tends to blame herself.”

“Eddie said he thought this thing would pass when you guys got married. He hoped it would. Don’t think he ever set out to deceive you from day one. He wanted to be straight, he just couldn’t. It wasn’t who he was, Em.”

Emily left Jay’s house feeling as if the weight of the world left her shoulders. Jay was relieved she wasn’t angry with him. She could see what a good friend he’d been to Eddie. He had been to Eddie what Joan was to her. She couldn’t hold it against him. His loyalty to Eddie cost him everything. It was time she put the past behind her.

Letting go of her anger and outrage
seemed simple enough, but it wasn’t. She still burned to know she was kept in the dark all those years, denied knowing who her husband really was. It hurt to know Eddie couldn’t tell her the truth. The only consolation she had now was to know that he must have regretted that in the last months of his life.

It was sad now
. She looked back at how naïve she was when they first got married. She was the easiest cover for a man like Eddie. She was so unassuming; saw things as she wished them to be so as not to rock the boat. When had she ever demanded anything for herself? Why did she accept what she had? She had tunnel vision when it came to her own life, unable to see where it was broken and needing repair. Those old beliefs were colored and distorted now, their real edges exposed like old wallpaper one peels back to see what’s underneath.

Emily
convinced herself of so many things over the years to avoid dealing with reality. Hadn’t she fixated upon Ian to avoid dealing with the ugly truth about Eddie? Wasn’t winning him supposed to exonerate her from feeling such desperate guilt and worthlessness that her husband turned to men? He was the trophy she would wave about to prove she wasn’t at fault. That would have made her mind accept her husband’s being gay throughout their marriage. Hadn’t she woven a ridiculous future with Ian despite his honesty when they slept together that night? All along she created what wasn’t there, saw it as real, and wondered why it fell apart. Like a house of vapor it disappeared, leaving her standing alone in an empty space.