Jake’s phone lights up at 8:12 a.m., face down, like a guilty dog caught eating his mother’s tampon out of the bathroom trash.
Veronica: U up?
An ambitious question for eight in the morning, but then Veronica has never been particularly respectful of boundaries, biological or otherwise.
Jake: I am now.
Veronica: I was thinking about your mouth.
Jake: Which part?
Veronica: The part that gets you into trouble.
Jake smiles. Amanda, his girlfriend of three years, is in the bathroom brushing her teeth, blissfully unaware that the man she hopes to marry is conducting a second relationship with the enthusiasm of a teenager and the operational security of a Soviet double agent.
Amanda is twenty-two, beautiful, intelligent, and possessed of the unfortunate conviction that people are basically good. Jake is twenty-four and basically isn’t.
“Babe, have you seen my black underwear?” Amanda calls from the bathroom.
“Which ones?”
“The ones you like.”
Jake considers the question. It’s a surprisingly crowded category.
“Check the dryer.”
He returns to his phone.
Jake: I can’t stop thinking about Wednesday.
Veronica: Neither can I. My thighs are still filing complaints.
Jake: Tell them to take it up with management.
Veronica: Management wants a repeat performance.
There are men who cheat because they’re unhappy. Others because they’re insecure. Some because their fathers were emotionally unavailable, their mothers were overbearing, or their therapists needed something to discuss besides their inability to commit to Pilates.
Jake cheats because he enjoys it. A refreshingly uncomplicated pathology, if you overlook the pathology.
Amanda emerges from the bathroom wearing the aforementioned underwear.
“Friday’s still good, right? Dinner at Veronica and Richard’s?”
“Absolutely.”
“I love them. They’re so cute together.”
Jake nearly chokes on his coffee.
“Cute?”
“Yeah. I mean, the age difference is a little crazy, but they’re happy.”
“Ecstatic,” Jake says.
Amanda kisses him goodbye. He watches her leave, feeling the faintest flicker of guilt, which he extinguishes before it can develop into a personality.
By lunchtime, Veronica has sent him seventeen messages, two photographs, and a GIF of a woman licking an ice cream cone in a manner that would have gotten the ice cream arrested in no less than seven Southern states.
Veronica: What are you wearing?
Jake: Jeans.
Veronica: Underneath?
Jake: A deep and abiding sense of shame.
Veronica: Hot.
Jake: And boxer briefs.
Veronica: Hotter.
Theirs is a relationship of remarkable emotional range, encompassing lust, tenderness, scheduling conflicts, and occasional reminders to pick up oat milk. They share everything except the burden of honesty, which neither finds particularly erotic.
On Wednesday, Jake suggests they meet Thursday afternoon.
Jake: Amanda works until six.
Veronica: Richard has golf.
Jake: So we’re good?
Veronica: We’re terrible.
Jake: I know.
Veronica: God, I love that about us.
There is something almost touching about two people who have found such profound acceptance in one another. It’s the kind of love poets have celebrated for centuries, although historically the poets tended to leave out the part about betraying everyone in the immediate vicinity.
Thursday proves impossible. Richard cancels golf because of a sore shoulder, a development Jake considers both inconsiderate and suspiciously paternal.
Veronica: He’s home.
Jake: Fuck.
Veronica: Don’t be dramatic.
Jake: I’m sexually frustrated.
Veronica: Try growing up.
Jake: That’s rich coming from you.
Veronica: Watch your mouth.
Jake: You first.
Friday arrives. Amanda spends forty minutes choosing a dress, while Jake spends forty seconds deleting messages that, if discovered, would require either a very good lawyer or a very bad psychiatrist.
“You think this is too revealing?” Amanda asks, turning in front of the mirror.
“No.”
“Really?”
“You look beautiful.”
And she does. Jake loves Amanda. This is important. Not because it excuses anything, but because it makes everything so much worse. He loves her in the comfortable, uncomplicated way a man loves a woman who has absolutely no idea what he’s doing with his afternoons.
At 7:03, they pull into the driveway of a handsome colonial house in an affluent neighborhood where the lawns are immaculate, the marriages are respectable, and the family secrets could finance a modest psychiatric hospital.
Amanda rings the doorbell.
Veronica answers.
She’s thirty-nine, stunning, effortlessly elegant, and wearing a silk blouse that Jake recognizes from a photograph he deleted approximately forty minutes earlier.
“Amanda! Sweetheart!”
They embrace.
“You look gorgeous,” Veronica says.
“So do you!”
“Thank you. It’s amazing what a little self-care can do.”
Jake nearly swallows his tongue.
Veronica turns to him.
“Hello, handsome.”
“Hey, you.”
Amanda smiles. “God, you two are adorable.”
There are moments in life when the universe offers a man one final opportunity to reconsider his choices. This is not one of them.
Richard appears from the dining room carrying a bottle of Cabernet. At sixty-three, he’s distinguished, silver-haired, and possessed of the cheerful confidence of a man who has spent his entire adult life assuming that the people he loves are not actively fucking him over.
“Amanda!” he exclaims, wrapping her in a bear hug. “Look at you! More beautiful every time I see you.”
“You’re sweet, Richard.”
“Don’t tell my wife.”
If irony were a combustible substance, the house would have been reduced to ashes.
Richard turns to Jake, feigning disappointment.
“Oh. Nice to see you too, son.”
He pulls Jake into a hug, kisses him on the cheek, and gives him an affectionate slap on the back.
“Come on, Amanda,” Richard says, taking her hand. “I want to hear all about that new job of yours.”
He leads her into the house.
And there it is.
Son.
Not a term of endearment. Not an expression of masculine camaraderie. Not the casual linguistic affection of an older gentleman addressing a younger one.
His actual son.
Richard is Jake’s father.
Veronica is Richard’s wife.
Jake’s stepmother.
For those keeping score at home, Freud has just ejaculated in his grave.
Veronica and Jake remain in the doorway, momentarily alone. She smiles at him with the tender affection of a woman who has helped raise absolutely none of his children and has no intention of starting now.
“Shall we?” she asks, extending her hand.
Jake takes it.
Their fingers interlock with the practiced intimacy of lovers, which, regrettably for everyone involved, is precisely what they are.
They gaze into each other’s eyes.
Somewhere inside, Richard is opening a bottle of wine. Amanda is laughing. Dinner is almost ready. Four people are about to sit down together and enjoy a perfectly lovely evening, provided nobody asks a follow-up question.
Veronica leans close to Jake’s ear.
“Your father made your favorite.”
Jake smiles.
“Which one?”
“Pot roast.”
“Oh.”
She squeezes his hand.
“Pervert.”
They step inside.
The door closes.
And so, dear reader, we arrive at the moral of our little story: You can choose your friends. You can choose your lovers. You can even choose to ignore the centuries of psychological literature explicitly warning you against this sort of thing.
But you can’t choose your family.
Unless, apparently, your father already has.
The End.
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