After the Future is Gone Pt. 01

This story could have easily been in Romance, but the prime mover for a lot of it is the end of the main character's marriage due to infidelity. There are no Navy Seals in this, no bastards are burned, there is no reconciliation that leads the ex-wife back to her husband. It's just a story of a normal guy trying to pick up the pieces, improve himself, and find love again with someone else who's been broken both by the circumstances of her life and her bad choices. It's a bit flowery at the beginning and a bit talky throughout. For the folks looking for sex, it starts about 2/3 of the way through this first part, then continues throughout off and on. Flavors are in the tags.

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"So, this is how it ends."

I speak to myself, a few quiet words muttered in the front room of a small, sparsely decorated flat that only I occupy. The rest of the mail that I brought in, all of it junk, has tumbled to the floor, leaving me holding only a legal size envelope. I know what it is. It's what I've spent nearly the last year both hoping for and dreading. It's the final declaration of my divorce from Lisa.

The envelope is from my lawyer. Its contents record the final disposition of all of our worldly goods and properties. The details don't matter. I got this, she got that, our accounts are split so and so. We have... We had no children, no pets, nothing living to split between us. At least not at the end. There had been a love that lived between us, that once thrived, but it had withered away as I stopped tending it. Our love finally died as she turned to another, first for the comfort that friendship brings, then for the comfort that a man and a woman give to each other.

I could have stopped it. She could have stopped it. But neither of us did.

Ten months ago, I was rushing home to surprise my wife. Finally, finally, my hard work and long hours had paid off. I had received word that my promotion was assured and took the day off to celebrate. My drive for this promotion had put a strain on our marriage, but now it would all work out. Our future was secured. We could finally buy a home and start our family.

First, though, that which had been damaged must be mended. I stopped off at the store to buy flowers and the ingredients for Lisa's favorite meal. It was not enough, not nearly enough, to bridge the distance between us lately, but it was a place to start, a good faith effort to begin repairs on that most central pillar of my happiness.

Arriving just after lunch, I saw her car in the parking lot of our apartment complex. I had hoped to surprise her after work, but perhaps this was better. A day spent together, ending with a meal prepared side by side in our tiny kitchen might be exactly what we needed to strengthen our bond. I smiled at memories of the beginning of our eight year marriage, when we had just moved into our first apartment together. It was too small and too crowded for two people, but we weren't two people: we were a couple, a single unit tightly woven together with love.

We hadn't been that for far too long. I, no, we would rectify that. Together.

I took the stairs two at a time, out of breath as I reached the door. Even a few years back, I would have barely felt this exertion, but the closeness of my wife was not all that I had sacrificed for our future. Long hours at work must mean shorter hours elsewhere, and I had stopped treating my body as anything more than a machine to create money. I fueled it with the standard American diet of fast food, spending my health to save time. I stopped working out, pretending that merely taking the stairs and parking further away in the lot would let me keep the physique that I had created when I was a distance runner in school. Then, when that pretense failed, when ten pounds gained became twenty, then forty, I stopped making even that small effort.

As I closed the door behind me, I heard the shower shut off. It had been too long since I had seen my wife's beautiful body fully naked in daylight. When I had seen it recently, it had been only glimpses as we made love under covers in the dark. Calling it "making love" is, to be honest, too grand a term for what our sex life had been in the last six months. We had slowly turned to treating it as a biological function rather than the all-consuming obsession it had been when we met in college nearly eleven years ago. It wasn't even the simple, familiar shared pleasure it had become by the beginning of the last year, before my drive to create our future destroyed our present. It was just a thing we did because we needed to release tension so that I could focus at work.

From our bedroom came laughter like a crystal bell, high and sweet. I smiled and rushed forward, hoping perhaps to find her in our room, wet and naked, and to take her in my arms. A day together, yes, but how better to start than to reignite our passion with a session of lovemaking in the middle of the day, as we had done when we were younger? Something to remind her, to remind us both, that our passion had only been delayed by the realities of the cost of housing, by the cost of raising a child, and not denied by it.

Then I heard another laugh. A deeper rumble, like the distant sound of thunder in an approaching storm.

My heart sank. The door to our bedroom was slightly ajar, and I felt a fear welling up in me. I was the victim in a horror movie now, and I knew that I shouldn't open the door. I could almost hear the audience begging me to not go in there. But, as the doomed protagonists of those films do, I didn't listen to that sense of foreboding. And, like them, I was punished for it.

Lisa, my wife, my college sweetheart, was looking into the eyes of Pete, my best friend since childhood. His muscular arms encircled her as they stood in profile to me, and, had it not been for her nakedness and the towel around his waist, one could have mistaken them for a wedding portrait. Her chestnut hair was made almost black by the water still dripping from it. She looked at him with a love and adoration I had not seen in some time, and it was reflected and magnified in his face. Behind them, I could see our bed had been stripped. The soiled sheets lay heaped in the corner. The smell of sex lingered in the air. She stroked his chest and opened her mouth to speak just as he saw me.

He spoke, but I did not hear. The bag of groceries that I had absentmindedly carried in my hand fell to the ground, the glass jars inside shattering. Lisa's face ran through a range of emotions in a moment: shock, guilt, regret, then finally resolve. Never in the array of feelings on display did I see love. Never did I see fear. They had been found out, and there was nothing to be done but to come clean. I knew then that she was gone. We were done.

Pete came towards me with his calloused hands raised, palms outward, as one would approach a wounded animal that needed to be granted mercy. "Don't worry, soon it will be all over. You're hurting, but it's going to be okay. It's almost done." From somewhere, a roar of anger sounded. I closed the distance between us and slammed my fist into the side of his face. I took another swing, and then another, but he easily dodged them both. Where I was a distance runner, Pete had been a wrestler and a boxer. I knew then that he had let me land the first hit, that the black eye already starting to form was a last token of loyalty at the end of a twenty year friendship. His eyes showed so much more anguish for what was gone than my wife's had.

I had never felt more lost in my life.

They both spoke then, but I couldn't hear, wouldn't listen. Just as I couldn't register that the roar of rage had come from me, I couldn't make sense of the words coming from their mouths. My head spun. My hand ached. I felt bile rise into my throat. With tears in my eyes and an empty heart, I fled from our room. From our apartment. From our life.

The past blurs here. I was in shock. The next I remember, I was in a hotel room staring at the ceiling. My phone was incessantly buzzing in my pocket, and I was as reluctant to take it into my hand as I would be if it had been a wasp's nest. When I finally overcame my dread, I saw a string of text messages from Pete and Lisa, alternating apologies, concern, fear, anger. Begging me to call. Imploring me to not do anything rash, to not harm myself. As though I could do more harm to myself than they already had.

I hurled the phone across the room, a thousand dollars of silicon and glass shattering into a pile of refuse. Then I laid on the bed, weeping for the future that I'd never see, with the children I'd never have, in the home I'd never live in. My body, abused by the last year of neglect and the sharp shock of grief, ached and shook as sobs wracked it. I finally fell into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.

It was still dark outside when I woke the next morning, confused and lost. I looked about for Lisa before I remembered the reality of my situation, and I mourned what I had lost again. My tears were exhausted for now, but they had been replaced with a deep fatigue. I knew I needed to get up and move, but I couldn't find the strength to face the world. Finally, however, I began to assess my situation more rationally. The biological need to survive temporarily drowned out the emotional wounds that made me want to die.

In my animal terror of the day before, I had fled with nothing but the clothes on my back and contents of my pockets. I had to rectify that. I called my work and left a message that I was sick and would be away for a few days, along with the number at my hotel where they could temporarily reach me. I knew that I couldn't face Lisa (and Pete? Together? God, why did they... no. I couldn't think about that now. Survival first.), but I also knew that I needed to visit the apartment, if only to retrieve enough clothes and essentials to pretend that I was still alive.

Mind still numb, I drove to our apartment complex. We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and I knew that Lisa left the complex by the same gate every morning. It was just a matter of waiting until I saw her car pass through on its way to work. So I waited. And then I waited some more. By eleven, I realized that she either wasn't at our apartment or she wasn't going to leave today. I don't know which one made me more despondent: had she decided to stay overnight at Pete's, or would I have to face one or both of them if I wanted to get my things?

It didn't matter. I needed fresh clothes and toiletries, I needed my laptop, I needed... I needed my life back, but I wasn't going to get that. So I would have to scavenge what remnants I could to try to start some grotesque semblance of a new one. The things I needed to retrieve were all in the place where I had experienced the greatest pain of my life, and I was going to have to face that.

I finally got up the courage to drive into the complex, park, and go up the stairs to our... to her apartment. This was the last time I would ever set foot in it. We could wrangle about the lease later, but it was never going to be my apartment again, never going to be ours. So that made it hers. I felt a new wave of sadness, but tamped it down. There were things that I needed to do.

The apartment was quiet and clean, cleaner than it had been when I fled the day before. Empty. Sterile.

From our... her little kitchen table, I collected my laptop and bag. I remembered many a long night sitting there after Lisa had gone to bed. In the beginning, she had asked me to come with her, trying to entice me by hinting at the pleasures she'd show me if I'd just quit at a normal hour that night. But I was too focused on building a future for us to see that I was destroying "us." Finally, she gave up. We became roommates that shared a past and sometimes a bed, not a husband and wife.

I had started with my laptop because I had hoped to think of other things I needed to collect in the living room or the kitchen, but there were none. I didn't want to go to the bedroom but could find no reason to delay the inevitable any further. Everything in my life that mattered had died there yesterday. But I still needed what lay inside, needed the things that would let me pretend to still be among the living.

I stole down the hall to our room. I realized halfway there that I was sneaking, as if I were going to open the door again and find them together. Shaking my head, I stood up straight and walked with purpose. The worst thing that could have happened here already had.

Inside, I found the bedroom that we had shared. It was as if nothing had happened. The room was clean. The bed was made. It looked like it did when we left for work every morning. There was no sign my best friend had fucked my wife in it, fucked her in my home, IN MY BED the day before.

The feeling of rage urged me on, as much as the fear that they might return. Moving quickly, I grabbed as many of my clothes as possible and threw them into my overnight bag. My suit bag was still hanging in the closet from my last trip, full of the clothes I had worn when I last neglected my wife for a long week. The clothes that didn't fit in the overnight bag were dumped into a few garbage bags. There were a few personal items that I wanted to keep, and those went into the garbage bags, too. I didn't want any photos of us, nor souvenirs of our time together. I couldn't imagine surrounding myself with those painful reminders of a decade wasted. She could keep the TV and the furniture; I had no idea where I was going to be in a week and couldn't see coming back to this place for a handful of easily replaceable items. But then, I guess it turned out that I was pretty easy to replace, too.

Once I braved the bathroom to retrieve my toiletries, I was ready to leave. I looked at the trash bags heaped on the bed and felt hollowed out. Eleven years together. Eight married. And all that remained was a pile of expensive garbage.

I loaded the items into my car, huffing and puffing by the second trip up and down, having to stop and rest midway through the third. After the last trip, I left a note on our entryway table.

Lisa,

I don't know how you could betray me like this, and I don't think you could ever explain in a way that would satisfy me. Please do not contact me. My lawyer will be in touch. I will make sure the settlement is fair; at least one of us should try to be fair in all of this.

Mike

I took off my ring, left it on top of the note, then locked the door as I left.

Of course, it was never going to be that cut and dried. I replaced my destroyed phone later in the day, and it started blowing up almost immediately. I received texts and voicemails all day. To the lead roles of Lisa and Pete were added a Greek chorus of friends, parents, siblings, in-laws, and others contributing their own proclamations and exhortations.

"I just heard! What happened?"

"You need to call her!"

"Try to work it out!"

"Dude, I'm so sorry."

"Dump that fucking bitch."

"What the fuck did you do to my sister?"

"Are you okay?"

"No one's heard from you. We're scared. Please call."

"Bro, let's go get drunk."

"What a cunt. If you were my man..."

"I love you, Mike. I'm so sorry."

I ignored these as well. I messaged one close friend to let them know that I was alive, unharmed, and wished to be left alone for a while, and asked them to convey it to our friend group.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? It was "our" friend group. Pete and I had been friends for twenty years. Lisa and I had been together for eleven. We all went to college together. My friends were Lisa and Pete's friends. Lisa's friends were mine and Pete's friends. And Pete's friends were mine and Lisa's friends. Outside of some people from work and a few friends from hobbies that I didn't share with Pete or Lisa, and which I hadn't had time to engage with since my mad dash to "the future" began, all of our friends were shared. Which meant there would have to be a reckoning. Lisa and Pete had thoroughly fucked me over, and people were going to pick sides whether I forced them to or not. It's just in the nature of how shared friend groups work when there's a falling out.

When the dust settled, they ended up with the lion's share of our mutuals. It was simple, brutal calculus. There were three of us. Two of us were still together. One of us had been drifting away because of work for a year, and the other two had stuck around. Everyone felt a little more distant from me than they did from Lisa and Pete. People thought that I had been wronged, but when it came down to it, Lisa and Pete were together now. That just made things easier for everyone involved; everyone involved except me, that is. The people that would have naturally sided with Lisa sided with Lisa and Pete. The people that would have naturally sided with Pete sided with Pete and Lisa.

And the people that would have naturally sided with me? Some of them did. A very few, the ones that had higher ethical standards or were only part of our shared group because they were in my orbit. But not as many as I would have hoped. Siding against Lisa and Pete meant siding against their other friends, too. And that meant that, even if they felt I had been wronged, it was less difficult to simply go with the flow.

Within a week, the number of people that messaged me dropped to almost nil. Within a month, the only people I ever talked to were my family and the folks at work.

I hated work. I had sacrificed everything, and for what? A little more money. A little more prestige. A better life that would never come. Every day, before I went in, I considered calling and quitting, but then what? I would have absolutely nothing to show for my suffering.

I stopped going on social media. I had blocked Lisa and Pete, of course, as well as a few of their most vocal defenders. But that still left a legion of people who had not entirely picked sides. Within a few weeks, I was seeing pictures of the happy couple out and about, my "friends" taking cheerful group pictures as they toasted, or danced, or went to game nights. It was too much. I deleted all of my social media apps, leaving me even more isolated. It felt like another retreat, but this war had already been lost. What did one more rout matter?

To their credit, I wasn't contacted by Lisa or Pete again until after I had her served with papers. I felt I was very fair. Not because I wanted to be; if I could, I would have burned her and Pete's life to the ground and salted the earth afterwards. But then I would have had them in my life that much longer. Too much effort and too much pain for too little return. Too much more of my soul gone and my life wasted on people that I would never be able to adequately repay for the pain they had caused me.

I moved into a small one-bedroom flat. I didn't need much more. I had no friends to speak of. I had no one to love me. My hobbies were either solitary or took place outside of the house. I didn't even bother with a TV; after all, if there's no one to sit on the couch and cuddle with, why not just watch on my laptop? It was easier to just lay in my bed and binge watch Netflix until I passed out and then get up in the morning, go to work, and do it all over again, day after day. So that's what I did.

For almost two months, I went through this ghostly existence, a shade that went out into the world but could never be seen, never feel its touch. I tried to go out occasionally to a bar, but much like my former friends, all of my old haunts were Lisa and Pete's, too. Restaurants, coffeeshops, bars, clubs, any place where I might try to go and be social, I would run into former friends or, worse, the happy couple themselves. I tried one time to go to a bar that we only infrequently visited, and ended up turning the corner just as I saw Lisa and Pete walk in, laughing, hand in hand, a couple in love with each other and their life. That was a bullet dodged, but I didn't feel like trying my luck again, so I just kept to myself at home.