In It For The Long Run Ch. 03

CHAPTER 3: CHRIS

The bedroom still looked like a mess, but it was more than ready for me to renovate. New paint, new furniture, new décor, I checked each item off of the list. "Now that I've got the items," I said, "I just have to install them. And Amber isn't here. Great."

It had been almost a week since the night I fucked up. I still couldn't believe how badly I felt about the whole deal, it wasn't like I hadn't cheated on her before. But this time, seeing her expression and being the cause of her tears, it made me feel like the worst person on earth.

I don't really blame her, to be honest. Alice probably told her what I did and she likely hates my guts for doing that to Alice. Hell, I hate my guts for doing that to Alice.

I heard a knock at the front door, and so I went to go check it out. "It couldn't be Amber, could it?" And much to my surprise, there she was. The petit brunette was standing there in her throwaway working clothes, hair tied up into a messy bun and rocking a no-makeup look which only showed off her unmatched facial structure. She was holding a box of what I assumed to be tools, evidenced by the fact that she was holding a toolbox.

She glared daggers at me. "I don't like your face," she said, and raised a hand to cut me off before I could retort. "If I could be anywhere but here right now, I would. But I made you a promise to help out with the room." She shoved me aside and walked through the door. "And unlike you, I keep my promises."

Ouch, I thought. Yeah, she definitely told her.

"The bedroom is—," I started to say, but Amber cut me off.

"I know where it is." It wasn't spoken, but from the way she stomped, I could tell she was genuinely pissed off at me. And even though I had known her for a long while now, I'd never seen this side of her. She'd always been the same old bright, bubbly, cheerful little brunette with a bad taste in guys. But hey, I've got no room to judge.

Nearly an hour later, we had finished repainting the rest of the room. An 'eggshell' white, as Alice had requested. Not that it really mattered right now, since she was crashing at Amber's place until we were ready to fix things. After we finished the paint job, we started to move the new furniture in. New bedframe, new bedside table, the whole damn room was gonna look fresh out of the box.

We placed the bedframe down in the middle of the room, where the last one was, and simultaneously wiped the sweat off our brows. "Thanks again for your help, Amber," I said. "Not that I really deserve it after what I did."

"Why'd you do it?" Amber asked, not looking me in the eye.

The bluntness of her question kind of took me by surprise. "It- it was a mistake." She turned to me and glared. "I swear! I was drunk, horny, and she was just there so I... again, I made a mistake. But I love Alice, that's never changed."

"A mistake, Chris?" She placed a hand on her left hip and cocked to one side. "And just how many of those 'mistakes' have you made over the years?" Scoffing, she started to head out of the room to get the next piece of furniture. We only had a couple more items left to go and they could be handled by one person, so her 'promise' here was almost finished, which I'm sure she was very happy with.

"Come on, Amber, you know me." I whined, going after her. She didn't even bother acknowledging my whining. "Why don't you let me handle these last few items and you can go on home, your promise fulfilled." I had wrongly assumed that that was part of why she was angry.

She turned around quickly and got up close to point one manicured fingernail at my chest. "Now you listen here, Chris." Amber's nose scrunched up and her brows furrowed angrily. "I'm gonna see this through to the end because that house is where my very best friend lives. My best friend who cried in my arms almost every night of the past week and who you cheated on with some blonde bimbo whore at the bar!" Her yelling echoed through the halls of the quiet, empty house.

"Amber I—," I started to say, but she cut me off once again, not wanting to listen to my excuses.

"Get out of here before I wring your ass in her place. You're lucky Alice still loves you or else you'd be mincemeat right now." The look in her eyes told me she wasn't kidding. "I'll handle the rest of the items, you... I don't care where you go but I don't want to see your face anymore."

And with that, I hung my head and walked out the front door. Where should I even go? I thought to myself, sitting in the driver's seat of my car. I turned the key, unsure of my destination, and just drove. I drove, and drove, and drove, until my gas tank icon started to flash and I took that as the cue to start heading back. And to get some gas, of course. The sun was setting, and it was about time for me to hit the hay. Not that I wouldn't go the bar this time of the week, but bars at this moment seemed like a bad idea, considering how my last visit went.

Arriving home, I saw that Amber's car was gone. Nobody was home, except me of course. The paint had dried in the bedroom, but it still had a bit of a stench to it. Regardless, I was determined to sleep in that new room to see how comfortable the new mattress was.

I pulled up the covers and turned to the new nightstand to turn off the lights. The damn thing was a fancy electronic device that integrated with some wi-fi mumbo jumbo that I didn't fully understand. But from what I could guess, it functioned as some sort of speaker for your wireless devices. Alice loved the idea of this thing, couldn't wait to get it in fact, shame she's not here to enjoy it. I pressed one of the buttons on the lamp's base, causing it to change color. Nifty. Soon enough, though, I fell into a deep... sleep.............

3:00 a.m. East Pacific Time, Chris's Bedroom:

My sleeping face was one of pure and unadulterated relaxation, the likes of which I had never experienced before in my lifetime. This new special expensive mattress really did quite a good job, and I was glad Alice pressured me into buying it for us. Not that it was my money we were spending, Alice had gotten quite the hefty sum from her parents' life insurance after their car accident, and we were still coasting off of it at the time. It's how we bought the house, in fact.

Throughout my slumber, I could've sworn that I had heard these...whispers, or voices in the nighttime air. I couldn't quite make out what they were saying, but I wasn't too worried about it at the time. The bed was just so comfy, and those new sheets were heavenly to the point that those voices I was hearing faded into the background as white noise.

This sleeping process reoccurred for the next whole week, a week of trying every trick in the book to get Alice to sit down in a room with me to talk. And finally, I got through to her. We sat in the newly furnished bedroom, Alice finally getting to enjoy the bed she so desperately wanted. I pulled up a chair, not wanting to push my luck by sitting close to Alice. Amber did the same.

"Now, Chris," Amber said, acting as the moderator for today's debate, "Alice only agreed to hear you out if you also agreed to tell her the whole truth and nothing but the truth about your misdeeds." She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly.

"Oh!" I said, realizing what I should be doing. "I'll get right to it. But first, Alice, please just- I need you to know that I love you more than anything else in the world and that none of this has changed that. You're still the love of my life, and whatever you choose to do from here on out, I'll accept it. I just want you to be happy again." I stared deep into Alice's eyes and put on my best 'sincere and genuine' face.

Alice didn't budge an inch. "All of your misdeeds, Chris, now. I want a list." And that's when I knew Alice wasn't messing around here; she really wanted a detailed list of every girl I cheated on her with.

"I don't remember all of them, I'm sorry! I can tell you about the ones I do know about, but there's nothing I can do about the rest of them!" I pleaded my case.

"The rest of them?!?!" Alice stood up, about to walk out of the room.

"Alice, please, just hold on!" I begged. "I'm trying to tell you the truth here, I want to try and work past this." She gave me a cold look, but slowly nodded and sat back down. After that, I went meticulously through every girl I could remember banging during our relationship. From Kaylee, a couple weeks into our relationship, to Bambi, the slut who fucked me over. Amber sat there the entire time, writing down everything I said onto a notepad. I wasn't likely to forget those girls anytime soon, and I feared what they were going to do with the information they choked out of me.

"Is that all of them, Chris?" Amber said, the bright intonation in her voice betraying the malicious intent flickering in her eyes.

"Yes, that's all of them. I swear. If there are more, I don't remember them. Alice, please," I said, taking her hands in mine. She jerked her hands back away from mine in response.

"I don't know if I'll ever forgive you for this," Alice said, her voice quivering. She looked me in straight into my eyes for the first time in weeks, and I recognized the look she had. Pain. She had a similar look in her eyes when she got that call from the hospital about her parents. This time, however, she looked more conflicted than simply hurt. "Amber, can you leave us alone for a minute?" Alice's words came as a surprise to both me and Amber.

"Are you sure, Alice?" Amber said, placing her hand gently on Alice's shoulder and looking into her eyes for confirmation. "Okay, then. I'll be right outside that door if the bastard tries anything." I scoffed at her little jab, but I knew better than to open my mouth for a rebuttal in that moment.

The door to the bedroom closed, and she looked at me with an oddly unfamiliar gaze that I didn't even know her face could make. If I had to guess in that moment, it was a mix of pain, love, and a cold scientific inquisitiveness.

"So," I chuckled awkwardly, "where do we even go from here?"

Alice smiled slightly and flopped onto the bed. After taking a deep breath, she started laughing. "Holy shit, Chris, you've been getting to sleep on this lovely piece of heaven whilst I crashed on Amber's couch?"

I jumped onto the bed with her, and we both started to laugh together uncontrollably. We both rolled over onto the bed holding our guts laughing, only to see each other at the same time and start laughing even harder. By the end of it, we were both in tears and getting out our last chuckles. I didn't even know what was so funny, but it felt good to laugh like that with her one last time. We both lied back on the bed, side-by-side, looking up at the ceiling.

The smile faded from Alice's face. "I still love you, Chris."

A piece of hope nuzzled its way into my mind, the idea that our relationship could still be salvaged. "Alice, I never stopped loving you. I'm just- I'm... weak." The words tumbled out of my mouth, more honest than I've ever been in my entire life. "I didn't think that- that someone as beautiful as you could ever truly love me. It's why I started this whole 'cheating' thing in the first place. I assumed you were going to dump me in 3 weeks and be done with it, so I thought it justified my actions. I was wrong, and you've proved your loyalty to me in more ways than I can count over these past years, but I just couldn't stop myself. It became a habit, especially when you started to stay in late at work and we stopped having sex. I'm truly sorry, Alice, I really am. I betrayed your trust, and you still haven't given up on us. That's more than anyone in my life has ever done for me." The tears welled up in my eyes, but I was determined to keep them from falling.

Alice looked over at me with tears streaming down her face. Grabbing my shirt to pull me into her embrace, she cried for both of us into my shoulder. We stayed like that for so long that I lost track of time.

Amber jumped up as the door opened. Alice and I came out to the hallway and stood in front of her, still sniffling a bit after our laugh-cry-fest. "So," she said, "what's the verdict?"

Alice looked over at me, and took the initiative to respond. "We're staying together."

Amber looked surprised, but nodded understandingly and shrugged. "Does this mean you're gonna leave Casa De Amber soon?" She said, expectantly.

Alice smiled. "Yes, Amber, but there's going to be some changes around here. Firstly, Chris has agreed to my conditions for moving back in to fix the damage he's done to our relationship. All of my conditions," she said, nodding at Amber. I was too busy counting this scenario as a win in my playbook to notice their fairly obvious scheming, I was much too happy with what had just happened. "Secondly, according to said conditions he will no longer be allowed to go out drinking until he either finds a job or makes up his indiscretions to me. Lastly, the best condition in my opinion, he's (unenthusiastically) agreed to please me with his mouth whenever I ask, without complaint, until I feel that he's paid his debt."

Amber handed both of us a copy of a very long contractual agreement that I didn't read, as I assumed it was just a legalese version of what I just agreed to verbally. We both signed, and Amber smiled wide. "Thank you both for your cooperation. I'll get on home to grab your things and bring them over," she said, and practically sped out of the driveway.