In It For The Long Run Ch. 01

In It for the Long Run

CHAPTER 1: CHRIS

"Chris! Get the fuck up, you lazy sack of shit!" Alice tapped her foot impatiently, the pillow she'd just thrown at my head being enough motivation for me to at least drag myself out of bed. I knocked the pillow off of my face and onto the floor beside me and took a cursory glance at the alarm clock on the bedside table. 2:00 p.m.

Shit, I thought. She is gonna lay into me over last night's debacle. Can I just not have this conversation right now? I nervously raised my eyes to meet hers, and boy was I disappointed at what greeted me. Alice is gorgeous, of course, but in this moment her hyper-feminine features were too contorted out of anger for me to admire them. I'm too hung-over for her crap right now.

"Uh, hey babe." In my hazy and groggy state, I ignored the severity of the situation, instead opting to flop back onto my bed, pulling the covers above my head in the process. "Just a couple more minutes, I promise..."

The blanket was ripped away from my half-naked body quickly after that. "Get. Up." Her tone shifted, dropping the temperature of the room drastically. I sobered up pretty quickly after that.

My head throbbed painfully as Alice flicked on the lights, the bright florescent bulbs beaming themselves directly into my hung-over eyes. With no blanket left to cover myself, I conceded.

"Alright, alright, I'm up." I held my hands up as a sign of surrender. "Is this about last night?"

In response, her expression changed to an even angrier distortion of her makeup-laden face, but that 'cold bitch' aura she had earlier was thankfully gone. "It's 2:00 p.m. Chris, and instead of job-hunting or helping out around the house, the house YOU pressured us to move into, you're fucking hung-over and," she picks up a stray couple of wrappers and a plate with last Tuesday's dinner, "you can't even fucking clean up after yourself. You're 28, for Chrisssake, you should learn to take better care of yourself." She and I were close enough to touch noses after she was done ranting into my face.

Her breath was heavy, likely because she just blew out a lung to tell me all of the things I already didn't like about my current situation. She had just named off a bunch of reasons I went out to get drunk every Friday night. But it wasn't why she was actually mad. I gave her face a once-over, since it was so close to mine in proximity. She had flawless skin, which glowed and shone like a model's. She had on her signature winged liner, and the look was topped off with her glossy baby-pink lips.

I stuck my face forward a few inches and gave her an Eskimo kiss with our noses. "Boop!" I said, tapping her nose with my index finger and putting on a cheeky smile.

The tension and anger drained from her face, successfully defusing the whole scenario. She pecked me on the lips and backed up a few steps before taking a second to recompose herself.

Deep breath. "But seriously, Chris, get up." She said. "And we will be talking about last night when I get back from work. I can assure you of that." I believed her when she said that one, and I was not looking forward to it. I reached for one of the pairs of pants

"Alright then, have fun at the salon. Oh and say hi to Amber for me, will ya? I still owe her a favor for promising to help me with the bedroom renovations next week." I raised my hand to wave her goodbye as she backed away towards the door. She smirked knowingly and mouthed 'I love you' before turning towards the door and making her way out of the house.

Okay then, I thought, how exactly am I going to lie my way out of this one? My options were limited; it wasn't exactly the prettiest situation. But I must say we do love each other dearly; whatever excuse I come up with I'm sure she'll accept it. I smirked, remembering the other times I had told her that I'd been 'at an interview' or 'out drinking with Mark' and she had happily gobbled up every word without a hint of distrust. I had been at an interview, but it wasn't for a job. Rather, it was an interview for how many times a guy has to cheat on his girlfriend before he starts to feel guilty about it.

But this time, something was different. I could feel the tension seeping back into the room through the walls. This incident wouldn't go away with a simple excuse, rather, I felt bad about what I'd done last night. It crossed a line that I wasn't ready to cross.

I stared blankly at the empty space where Alice stood previously. "Oh hey, Alice, last night was really weird, right? Well I totally have a plausible explanation as for why my nails and toenails were painted pink when I stumbled into our bedroom at 12:00 a.m." I gave my best forced smile, then flopped back onto the bed and looked up at the popcorn ceiling. "I just have to think of one."

9 Hours Later

The door could be heard being slammed shut and I immediately scrambled to pull up my sweatpants, shooting a glare at the clock on the wall for moving faster than I thought.

"Chris? I'm home!" Alice announces. "Did you save me a plate?"

"It's in the fridge!" I said, furiously closing out of the porn windows decorating my monitor with images of busty blonde bimbos. "I'll be out in a minute, just finishing up this application!" For the record, I hadn't applied to a single job today. I was too busy fixing up the house and (ahem) choking the chicken to find time to make a concerted effort. Not to mention the pounding headache, possible fever, and the ever-growing stress of having to explain the pretty pink nails decorating my slim hands.

Alice opened the fridge and grabbed the cellophane-wrapped plate. After grabbing a cup of milk, she walked over to the kitchen counter and started in on her champion dinner of cold chicken and white rice. After taking a couple bites, she placed her fork down and slowly finished swallowing the food in her mouth, her eyebrows furrowing and her left hand coming up to start twirling her long blonde hair. She wove her long, decorated acrylics through her loose strands of hair and played with them softly for a few moments before placing her hand back down on the counter. After she decided that her thoughts were in order, her expression went back to normal as she shrugged and returned to her food.

I slid into the kitchen on my socks, taking full advantage of the polished hardwood flooring and channeling my inner Bob Seger music video vibe as well as I could. The swagger was a bit dulled, however, mostly due to the pink on the ends of my hands being fairly noticeable and kind of ruining the aesthetic.

"Hey babe," I said, moving in towards Alice for a quick kiss. "Anything interesting happen at work today?" I gave her a peck on the lips and sat down at the kitchen counter next to her.

"No, not really," she said, and then smiled. "Amber is doing well, though. She did complain to me that she's giving up her weekend date with that one architect guy in order to help us out, so she's probably expecting you to be grateful for her presence next week."

"Well that certainly won't be obnoxious," I said, rolling my eyes at the prospect of that dainty 5'4" brunette babble on about how she's spending her time with little ol' me instead of scamming some poor guy out of a couple years of his life and possibly tens of thousands of dollars in gifts to her. That girl is the definition of high-maintenance in every way imaginable.

A moment of silence passed between us, and Alice caught notice of my nails. She swallowed another bite of her chicken, and then said, "So I see you didn't remove the nail polish." Her voice was calm and casual, but I felt a small bit of an accusatory tone in there as well. I'd spent too much time with her to not know her little tells; whenever she was hiding the true intentions in her words she'd start to blink fast, as if she was trying to blink something out of her eyes. Of course, this time it wasn't without warrant, because it was certainly weird that I still had it on.

"We didn't have any remover," I said, "and it's not like it was a big deal anyways. I barely even noticed it was still on, to be honest."

Downplay it, Chris, downplay is the name of the game today, I thought. You can do this; this is what you practiced for.

Alice raised an eyebrow at this and looked over in faint confusion, "So we didn't have any remover? I could've sworn that I had some leftover from years ago, but now that I think about it I do get my nails done at the salon for the most part so I haven't really needed any until now. But it should have been in the bottom left cabinet." She shrugged and filled her mouth with a forkful of rice. "Hm. Peculiar."

"Well if we did," I said cautiously, "I certainly couldn't find it." Don't check for it, don't check for it, don't check for it, don't check for it...

She looked over at my nails again and frowned, putting down her plate to take my hand in hers. "Amateur work, too." Alice said, shaking her head and examining my nails thoroughly as a professional in the industry. Her brows furrowed once again and her expression turned inquisitive instead of critical. "So. How exactly did this happen exactly in the first place?"

That was not what I wanted to hear, I thought. Just remember your script, Christ, remember the script. What was the story again? Shit, shit, shit...

"Hello?" Alice said, snapping her fingers in my face. "Chris? I'm listening to what you have to say here like a good girlfriend instead of getting irrationally upset; shouldn't you be singing my praises instead of trying to mimic a Medusa victim?"

"Oh yeah, of course," I said, trying to regain my composure, "you're being great, babe. It really wasn't all that big of a deal, just a prank, you know?" My words came out with a slight stutter, but she probably didn't notice, right?

"You got pranked. Weren't you out with Marvin and John last night, though? Those two are as straight-laced as it gets, I didn't think they had it in them to prank a guy like you. I mean, come on, Marvin literally only wears polos and won't shut up about his 401k, it's just weird that he decided to prank you like this." She squinted her eyes and took a swig from her milk, pursing her lips and pondering the situation. "Did they at least get a good laugh out of it? And why'd they think that you'd care about having your nails painted?" A small smile returned to her face.

"Well, I mean, Marvin is a pretty wild guy once you get her- him, sorry, once you get him going." I chuckled and inwardly cursed Freud for inventing the Freudian slip. "And what do you mean that I wouldn't care if my nails were painted?" I pointed to my hand. "This isn't exactly the most dignifying and manly color for a man to have, is it?" Alice's eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't be caught dead with my nails like this. It's part of why I didn't just go out and buy more remover at the store."

Alice's expression softened and she swallowed the last bite of her food. "Well alright, then, I believe you." I breathed a sigh of great relief. "But next time your friends decide to give you pretty pink tips, tell them I'd be more than happy to give you some-" she clacks her long acrylics in my face, "cute acrylics."

She's messing with me, I thought. "Yeah, yeah, keep teasing. It won't happen again, I assure you. I'm done getting dead drunk with people, too many bad experiences," I said, with full intention of keeping that promise.

"Okay, let me put these away, then." Alice got up to put the plate and cup into the sink. "Just give me a quick second."

The second she got up, I felt that the conversation was finally over. We did it, Chris, we succeeded in not losing her forever over that dumb bimbo slut, I thought. I still couldn't believe that crazy bitch decided to paint my nails whilst I slept off the last couple drinks of the night. What even was her name? Barbie? Brenda? No. Shit, it's right on the top of my head, I just can't remember for the life of me. Fuck me, what was it? I know it starts with a 'B', for bimbo; there are only so many stripper names that start with that letter. Let's name them off, then. Becky, Barbie, Brenda, Berry, Blondie, Brandy, Brittany, Bunny...

Alice looked over at Chris while she put her dishes in the sink and noticed her husband's satisfied, triumphant, distracted expression. One that she'd seen all too often, one that she'd had just more than enough of.

"So," Alice said in a conversational, casual tone, prompting an inquisitive yet distracted grunt from Chris, "what was her name?"

"Bambi." The word left my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. My face fell and I immediately got up to apologize to her and pledge my undying loyalty til' the end of time; whatever it took to regain her trust in that moment and stop her from crying, I would have done it. "Babe—"

"Don't." Her voice cracked. She raised her hand to point an accusatory finger my way. "Just—" tears formed at the corners of her eyes, "don't."

I stood there, frozen in fear and guilt. The tears began to stream down her face, taking her mascara with and desecrating the makeup holy ground she called a face. She looked up from the ground to look me in the eyes. Her eyes were reddening from the tears and her makeup was smeared from her wiping the tears away, but she couldn't stop the tears from reforming and rolling down her face. I couldn't bear to look her in the eyes any longer than a few seconds; the guilt of what I'd done was too much, so I turned my gaze to the ground.

Alice noticed Chris pull away from her eyes and bit her lip in both sadness and anger, perhaps a mix of both. She grabbed his chin and lifted it up, forcing him to look her in the eyes. Then, she wound up her arm. *SLAP*

She stormed off, heartbroken, presumably. I, on the other hand, sat on the cold kitchen floor and let the tears of my own flow down my cheeks like waterfalls. The dams had broken, and even though I didn't want to cry in front of Alice, I couldn't hold it in forever. That was the love of your life, Chris, the love of your goddamn pathetic life. And you blew it all for some fucking bimbo whore. Some two-bit blonde stripper that decided it would be funny or cute to paint my nails after we fucked in order to fuck up my life. Fuck me, I'm one stupid sonuvabitch. I did the only thing that felt right in such a miserable situation, the only thing that could make me feel even remotely better: I popped open a bottle of cheap wine, and then proceeded to cry and drink myself to sleep.