Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

“Yes,” he answers, then covers himself with: “No. No. No, that’s not what I meant.”

The room spins, and I press a palm against the wall to steady myself.

“Is this about Grape! ?” I whisper when I feel like I might not pass out.

“Grape?”

“ Grape!, yes, GRAPE! . The club you went to when you were supposed to be at basketball with your brainiac squad who worship you because you happen to have been blessed with better cheekbones but are still a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I pray that he doesn’t mock my stupid metaphors. Why did I choose such a stupid metaphor?

“How do you…” He doesn’t finish his sentence, and I realize that he thinks it doesn’t even matter.

“Are you cheating on me? Seriously? Are you fucking having an affair with some girl from Grape! who has, like, a fertile uterus and better boobs? ”

“What? No!” He stands now, but doesn’t move nearer. “I’m just…what?”

I ask him again, more quietly now, because I have finally said it, and I need to hear the honest answer, not the first denial.

“Shawn. Just tell me. Are you cheating on me? Am I not enough?”

“No!” he snaps, too loudly, setting me off again. “I’m just…ugh. Listen, Willa, this is hard.”

“What’s so hard? Your affair? Your stupid leather jacket? Your discovery of golf…or…or running on Sundays without me? What?”

He sits back down.

“Shit. I don’t know.”

We stay on pause for a few minutes, him staring at his hands, me pressed against the foyer wall, unable to find a way to say whatever it is to mend this. His phone buzzes — I can hear it in his pants pocket — but he doesn’t pick it up. When I can no longer bear it, I say:

“So…what? I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“I guess what I’m saying…” He cracks his knuckles. “Is that I’m trying to make life more interesting. I’m not cheating.” His voice breaks here, and I can’t help but feel something splinter inside of me too. “I went to Grape! because it was different, because, well…it was fun. The guys wanted to, and Jesus , I wanted to. Go out, do something new, try something new. I mean, I love you. I do. But I kind of feel like my life is one fucking Together To-Do! app.” He sighs. “I’m in a rut.”

“So get out of it.”

“I’m trying! Don’t you think that’s what I’m doing?”

A rut. It’s only that he’s in a rut.

“So what does Palo Alto have to do with this?”

He doesn’t answer right away. His phone beeps twice again in the silence. Then he says:

“I was just thinking, you know, maybe I could go by myself. Or take Nicky for a while.”

“Maybe you could go by yourself?” Bile rises up from my stomach, my easy gag reflex announcing itself at the first sign of trouble. I swallow deeply, but the wave of nausea doesn’t pass.

“You know…like…a break or something?”

“Like…a break or something? From…me?”

“From us. Not, like, anything legal. I mean, I love you.”

“I don’t…where is this coming from?” I slide to the floor and cross my legs, tucking my head down so the room stops spinning. Xanax. That’s what I need. I remind myself to call Raina, to start seeing her more regularly. “I can learn to play golf! I can, like, go to a Yankees game!”

I hear his footsteps, and then he’s above me.

“Do you really want to be Shilla forever?”

I look up at him.

“You know about Shilla?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”

“I hate baseball, but I mean, I’d go with you,” I start to cry now. I remember that he bought me a gift certificate to golf lessons a few months ago, but I tucked it into a drawer at work and promptly lost it. “I’ll learn how to golf.”

“But you don’t need to go with me; you don’t have to learn if you don’t want to,” he says. “That’s kind of the point. That I need to go without you, but that you don’t want me to go.”

I feel the snot running down my upper lip. “What the hell is wrong with Shilla anyway?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Shilla.” He’s quiet. “But maybe we need a little distance to start being Shawn and Willa again. I kind of liked us from before.”

I don’t reply, so he says:

“I reread your dad’s book, and the tenets of it make a lot of sense.” He rattles off the table of contents. “ Embrace the Master Universe Way. Accept inertia. Close your eyes and follow the map. Be what you already are. Set yourself free .”

“What the hell are you talking about? Those are words that wrap up his philosophies in neat little packages. They’re words. They don’t mean anything.” I’m surprised to give voice to this notion. “And you’re not, like, accepting inertia. You’re changing it! You’re screwing up our plan!”

“It’s like the epigraph in the book says,” Shawn continues as if he hasn’t even heard me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never meant to be.’”

I say nothing, so he suggests:

“Maybe it’s something like that. Maybe you and I are something like that.”

“So you’re setting me free?”

“Maybe not for forever.”

“Forever doesn’t matter. Now is the only thing that does.”

“Well, then for now,” he says.

And he sets me free.

*as agreed to on June 12 and to dissolve on agreed-upon date in August

1. Shawn and Willa will have no contact — barring an emergency such as death — during the designated time period.

2. If one party does contact the other, the contactee is under no obligation to return the engaging party’s email/phone call/text/Facebook message, etc.

3. Within the designated time period, the named parties can behave as if they are single.

3a. This means that should anything physical happen with a new party, there will be no repercussions in the union should the named parties decide to remain married.

3b. It is also understood that should sexual relations occur, the sexually active party must use protection.

4. While neither party can be prevented from googling/Facebook-ing the other party, this is highly discouraged.

4a. However, both parties agree not to change their Facebook status to “it’s complicated” without consulting the other party.

5. Should the need for communication arise but is non-urgent, for example, about Nicky’s whereabouts, each party can check a mutually agreed upon email account: shawnandwilla@gmail.com.

6. Have fun!

Shawn leaves on a Wednesday. An average Wednesday by anyone else’s standard but anything but average for me. We said our awkward goodbyes (“ Speak to you in August !” “ Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do — ha ha ha !”), and then he goes to kiss me, but I turn my head, so we sort of bump noses while our lips pass over each other.

Nicky stands in the living room and makes an explosion noise with his cheeks, then his hands follow — his fingers mimicking a grenade, and Shawn says:

“Come on, dude, don’t be like that. I’ll see you next week in Palo Alto. Wired2Go has the coolest office ever. You can zipline from one floor to the next. You’ll love it.”

“Sounds cool,” Nicky says, then heads to the guest room and locks himself inside.

“They also have Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in the common room!” Shawn calls after him. He rubs his forehead and says, “Shit. Like this is one more thing he needs.”