Three Days

Three Days

I spent approximately three days holed up inside. It wasn’t like I was afraid to go out. It just seemed that there was nothing out there that I really needed. There was always food inside, there was always company inside. There was a shower and a bathroom inside. There were books I hadn’t read and there was a TV and there was never Molly.

And during those three days, Craig and I became acquainted. I saw his twin from time to time, and as I got to know them more and more, particularly Craig, it began to shock me that I hadn’t been able to tell them apart, initially. Craig had the wicked sense of humor, the sharp wit, the jokes always on his tongue. He had a good heart and a bright mind and knew what was going on around him. He was clever.



Hank, not so much. Hank was self-centered in an uninvolved sort of way. It wasn’t that he only cared about himself—much like my parents, he never really seemed to think to care about something else. He was a little blank and bland and was mildly apologetic about almost everything that he did. And he was shorter than Craig was.

I couldn’t help but hold a grudge against Hank, not that I could tell anyone. If stupid Hank hadn’t brought his stupid girlfriend home, neither of them would have seen anything, and then she wouldn’t have said anything, and then my life wouldn’t have been completely messed up at the moment. And so even though I knew it wasn’t really his fault, not really, I couldn’t help but sort of blame him. It was his fault that he had the idiocy to fall for such a stupid, stupid girl.

Because, like Hank, I didn’t think Molly had really intended to hurt me when she’d told Rae about Kyle. She was just one of those people—blandly interested in everything that went on around her. She wasn’t really very interesting. Or maybe that was me holding a grudge against her. After all, she had been part of this great scheme that had ruined my marriage. Which, of course, sucked.

“Do you have a five?” I asked. At the end of three days, my patience was starting to wear thin. I could only stay inside for so long. And I could only play Go Fish so many times. Now that I wanted to go out, I was utterly aware that I was afraid that I would see Ian on the outside.
But maybe he was hiding inside, too?

But Pete wasn’t. And Adnan wasn’t. And Mark wasn’t.

Kay, I wasn’t so concerned about. Kay, I could deal with. I had seen Kay once since the great happening. The second time wouldn’t be as tough. I could deal with seeing her again.
But I didn’t want to see Molly or Rae or Jenna or Ian or Pete or Adnan because if I saw any of them, I would probably explode. My heart would beat so hard that I would just drop dead. It just wasn’t going to work, me in the real world. I would just have to invest in some new card games.

“No,” Craig sighed. Out of all of my new roommates, Craig was the most understanding. Or, perhaps understanding wasn’t right—maybe he was just the most patient. He had, after all, managed to play approximately eight billion games of Go Fish. And spit. And, when we had four people, we played spoons. It was a mix of stupid, childish, petty games that officially got boring after the fourth time around. We were far past our fourth time around, let me tell you.
Perhaps it was a bit of an overreaction, but I threw down my cards. Craig merely arched a curious eyebrow at me. He had not been in confinement for the past three days. He had ventured into the terrifying outside world.

“Forget this,” I snapped, filled with an empowering sort of frustration. Right then, I wanted to go out. And that would probably wind up working to my advantage. Because if I waited for this energy to run out, I would lose the courage. “I’m hungry. I’m going to get something to eat. They’re still serving lunch.” I clambered to my feet and brushed myself off—as if that would help. I had been cycling between the jeans I’d been wearing the night I’d come and the sweatpants that Keeley had lent me and must have looked one hell of a sight, indeed.
And Craig, being Craig, merely blinked at me slowly. He was brimming with patience. Simply brimming. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked. Ha. I didn’t need his protection. I was eighteen, and I could take care of myself—that was what I thought, anyway. As if past events hadn’t been enough to show me that perhaps I wasn’t at my best when I was on my own. I tended to get into all kinds of small messes.

“No,” I snapped. “I don’t need a freaking babysitter.”

And Craig, being Craig, merely shrugged his shoulders slowly. He was brimming with patience. Simply brimming. “See you later, then.” And he promptly hauled himself up into his bunk, rolled over, and went to sleep.

For half a moment, I just stared at him, all my righteous indignation leaking out like helium from one of those shitty latex balloons—yeah, because nobody cared enough about you to even splurge for the Mylar ones. But then I puffed myself back up and crashed out the doors, even though I looked like hell rolled over.

And for a few minutes, it was great. Tomorrow everyone would pack up their stuff and move on, go to another place, another concert. There would be another batch of new fans, waiting to buy the tee shirts and the hot dogs and willing to wait in line for three hours to get the autographs of one famous member of one famous band. I could see how that could be appealing, I guessed.

But I mostly hated it. I really wasn’t a fan of the whole anonymous thing.

But I had to admit that I enjoyed the anonymity as I walked towards the food tent. Nobody knew who I was and so nobody noticed me and so nobody commented on how I had disappeared for three days because they’d never known I was gone. That was pretty damn cool, I had to say.
Then, of course, I wound up in the food tent. That wasn’t so cool. Because not too long after I entered the food tent, I was grabbed by Pete and dragged right back out. And then I was promptly dragged around the back and pushed up against a wall and trapped between Pete’s arms. And then he put his face very close to mine and said, “Don’t think I don’t expect some sort of explanation from you, Sloan.”

He didn’t seem too angry—that surprised me. But, then again, with Pete, you always had to be afraid of the cool, calculated rage he had. The kind of rage that made you wake up bald in the middle of a field in Iowa even though you’d fallen asleep (which you probably hadn’t done of your own accord) in Connecticut. I had no doubts that Pete could make it happen. There were definitely people who owed him favors.

I, being the eloquent coward that I was, said, “Okay.”

Luckily, it seemed as if Pete hadn’t really been looking for too much else. “But not here,” he continued, looking over his shoulder as if he expected someone to sneak up behind him.

“Because I’m pretty sure that Adnan and Mark want some kind of explanation, too, and we don’t want Ian to have to see you.” His choice of words nettled me. I mean, it was understandable that I might be some sort of plague to Ian at the moment, but that really wasn’t cool of Pete to point out. But then again, Pete probably wasn’t trying to be cool to me, at the moment.
Nor was I trying to be cool to him. “Sure,” I allowed generously, all the while thinking that I could pretty easily spend some more time holed up inside. Next time I went out, I would go with Kyle. Kyle wouldn’t let former friends attack me and drag me out back and threaten me. Yes, that was a good plan. A good plan indeed.

Pete, apparently, was one step ahead of the game. “Mark and Adnan are back at the trailer. We’ll go see them.” When he had said “not here” he clearly hadn’t meant “not now.” All my plans crumbled to dust. Adnan, particularly, was going to eat me alive. He was going to destroy me and then he would take the little bits of me that were left and grind them up, just for fun. It was going to be a nightmare. An absolute, physically agonizing nightmare.

But what was I supposed to do about it?

“Okay,” I mumbled listlessly. Pete wrapped his hand around my arm in a grasp that was perhaps a bit tighter than strictly necessary. He looked both ways before we emerged from behind the tent, as if making a tricky turn on the road—was he looking for Ian or for Kyle?—and then all but ran back towards the trailer. I had a hard time keeping up. He clearly wasn’t interested in seeing if I was okay. Pete had never liked me much, anyway, though.

I nearly stumbled twice. If I had fallen, he probably would have kept going. Pete was a bit of a bastard like that, sometimes.

Mark was fiddling around with his bass and Adnan was lying on his bunk listening to music when we came in—Pete banged open the door with force, and then shoved me inside. Both boys jumped and then stared at me like I was some foreign, unfathomable thing. Something they’d never seen before.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot nervously. This was absurd. Mark and Adnan didn’t make me nervous. Mark never made anyone under the sun nervous—he was a lot like Craig, in that way—and Adnan wouldn’t start making me nervous until he stood and got that look in his eye that said he was about to hit something. Or someone. Me. “Hey,” I ventured. They just sort of stared at me for a few moments more, then turned their attentions to Pete, who lounged nonchalantly against a bedpost.

“I’ve brought Sloan to have a little chat with us,” he drawled in his best imitation of not panting. I told you—sometimes Pete was a bit of a bastard like that. “Ian just started eating, so I figure we have a solid half hour at the least. After that we’d better get her out of here, just in case he comes back.”

“What are we supposed to say to her?” Mark asked. He wouldn’t even look at me, after that initial stare. Mark was like that with loyalty. He was the kind of guy who didn’t even look at another girl in a nonsexual way if he was with someone. And I had committed a crime on loyalty. Either he was just being very, very loyal to Ian or he thought I was a reprehensible sort of creature. Or maybe it was both.

Adnan sat up tentatively, so as not to hit his head. “I, for one,” he growled, looking straight at me—that was almost more upsetting than Mark’s avoidance, “would like to know why she did it. In a hundred words or less.”

Again, with this question. My real answer seemed terrible. But in a circle of these three boys—one threatening, one ignoring, and one passive-aggressively observing—I knew that offering an “I don’t know” wouldn’t work. They all loved Ian as much as I did, just in a different way. And if I didn’t want them to kick my ass, quite literally, I had to hope to make them understand, at least in some small way.

I really didn’t want to share my feelings with any of them.

“I—I didn’t know what to do,” I mumbled eventually, looking at my feet. It wasn’t the answer they had been looking for. From the corner of my eye, I saw Adnan shift his weight threateningly. “I was here, in here”—I held out my hand to indicate the narrow confines of the trailer—“all the time. And you were busy, always, and Kay wasn’t around, and I just felt really ignored, you know?”

Pete raised an eyebrow, perfectly sardonic. “So what you’re saying,” he drawled, “is that you fucked another guy behind my best friend’s back because you were bored?”

This explanation wasn’t exactly going the way I wanted it to. I looked Pete square in the face.

“Not bored,” I clarified. “Ignored. Like…” I tried to think of a good analogy, and my gaze settled on Mark, still fiddling around with the tightness of his strings. “Like the bassist. The guy in the back who keeps things going, helps out—but nobody ever knows his name. The bassist never has fan girls.” Mark tilted his head, interested, but still didn’t look at me. So I chose to keep looking at him. “And Mark, I know you’re fine with being in the background. And I’m fine with being the background, too. But not in my marriage.”

I was definitely winning some sort of points by citing the marriage thing—at least with Adnan. I had maybe won over part of Mark with my logic. Pete would always hate me. He always had. I had just given him a reason.

“That kind of makes sense.” Adnan shifted into a less threatening position, and Mark glared at him. The big boy held up his hands. “I’m not fucking defending her, man. I’m just saying that that shit kind of makes sense. And yeah, cheating on Ian makes her a faithless bitch, but at least it makes sense.”

Mark’s glare didn’t waver. “Thanks,” I muttered.

Adnan looked over at me with something of a disgusted look in his face. “Don’t, Sloan. Don’t fucking thank me. I still think you’re a heartless ice bitch. If you freaking had problems you should have freaking said something to Ian, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is with this whole sneaking around business? It’s just not cool, babe, let me tell you. It’s not fucking cool.”

But I couldn’t help but feel the littlest least bit relieved. It wasn’t a friend, maybe, but perhaps he didn’t totally hate me.

“She was just still bored,” Pete snapped, that cool façade gone. He wanted to see me fry for this. He had hoped that Adnan would kick my ass. He wanted to see me fried and then out of their lives. I was, and always had been, an irritation to him. I was a possible liability. And God, Pete wanted everyone to see that he was right. Don’t get me wrong—he didn’t want Ian to be hurt. He had never wanted Ian to get hurt. He just wanted to be right about me, because damn if Pete didn’t love to be right.

“Haven’t you ever felt unbearably lonely?” I challenged. Maybe, as a player of the first degree, he could sort of see that. Maybe—but no. My arguments weren’t holding much weight.
He snorted. “Sure, but I haven’t been married. There’s the difference, Sloan. If I get lonely, I go out, find some girl who really likes me. And it’s innocent. It’s okay like that, you stupid bitch. I don’t fucking up and leave my husband for the first poor bastard that comes along. There’s the difference between you and me. Don’t even try to compare us again.”

I had to admit, all of these accusations stung. And still they didn’t understand. Fuck them anyway. “Can I go now?” I asked, fighting to keep from staring at the ground. Staring at the ground wasn’t really in accordance with the whole “fuck them anyway” attitude. But I wanted to look down. They seriously made me feel terrible. And I hated them for that, the jerks.

Pete rolled his eyes and gave me that look that said that, once again, he had been right and I had been wrong, and wasn’t that just so typical of Sloan. Jesus Christ, but I hated him then. I had almost always been able to take Pete’s sniping and his taunting and his nasty comments but now—now I just couldn’t deal. I simply did not need that kind of crap.

But somehow I still needed his permission to leave.

“Go,” he muttered disgustedly.

With a final wistful glance at Mark and Adnan—maybe they would give me one second more of thought, but probably not; Mark still wouldn’t even look at me—I left. I walked back to the trailer as quickly as I could without running, without seeming odd for going too quickly. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself. The last thing I wanted was for attention to be drawn to me, and word to get back to Ian that I had been out and about. Things would just be so much easier for both of us if he simply didn’t have to think about me anymore.

Or maybe it would just be better for me if I didn’t have to think about him anymore.

Did this separation we were having mean we were going to get a divorce? I supposed that it did. I had never really thought of myself as a divorcee. Maybe the whole marriage thing hadn’t been a good idea. We hadn’t acted any differently before we were married than after we were married—except that we’d gone on a tour and hadn’t had to sneak around his parents on the whole sex issue. It would have been a much cleaner break if we had just stayed as boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe it would have been harder to convince his parents to let me come, and a good bit harder to convince my parents to let me decide against college (not that that hadn’t been hard anyway), but for whatever was happening now, it would have been easier. Much, much easier.

And that was depressing. I didn’t want to regret anything. I didn’t want there to be anything to regret.