We Weren't Exclusive

This is a follow up on my story, "How Did I Become Rachel." It repeats some of the original story, but covers much more. I hope you enjoy it.

[*]

This was the weekend. I was so excited. I'd found the ring (THE RING) in his drawer when I was putting away the socks that had ended up in my laundry. He was finally going to ask me.

Suddenly, it all made sense. My friend Reggie had invited us up to his parents' vacation home for an end of semester party, and when I told Davie what a great weekend it would be, he'd said, "Yes, a very special weekend." At the time, I had thought he was just saying what a relief it would be from school, exams, and his never-ending thesis. That damned paper; he'd say he just needed a minute to fix some part of it and we'd end up having to stay in for the night because he - never -- can - finish the damned thing. Once he starts working on it, he forgets about everything else.

For the last few months, I felt like a hostage to that thesis. Davie was an easy going guy, but the few times I've tried to interrupt him and drag him away to a movie or a party we'd planned to go to, his temper would flare at me. "Don't fucking interrupt me! I am trying to hold my logic together here. You're making me lose track of it!" He'd never raised his voice to me before, not even when I'd pulled a nasty trick on him. I'd taken his truck once and left him stranded out on Highway 36 one night for several hours, and that made him a little testy, but he'd hardly raised his voice that night.

But now he was so stressed out over his thesis, he was always on edge. "Evie, my whole future depends on this. Don't you understand?" So, I was expected to sit patiently and miss out on everything.

And I did. Not necessarily quietly; I did bitch about what we, I, was missing. My friends kept telling me to come without him, but I thought, especially after finding that ring, that I should stick by his side. But I had to let him know that I wasn't happy about it.

But finally, finally! He was going to finally ask me. This weekend, while surrounded by my friends. I could just picture it. Maybe he'd do it when we were all outside, around the campfire. He'd get down on one kneel, take my hand, and while everyone got quiet and focused on us, on me, he'd ask. The only sound would be the crackling of the fire as they all held their breath waiting for my answer.

And I would hesitate. A minute. Maybe two, or even three, until the confidence left his face and uncertainty showed in his eyes. Then, and only then, would I yell, "YES!" and throw myself into his arms. All my friends would laugh and applaud. I could hear it; I could feel it. It would be wonderful.

So, when it was already Wednesday, and we were scheduled to leave on Thursday, and he was still, STILL, messing with that thesis, I was ready to scream. All he had to do was finish the damn thing and turn it in. Yet he could not help himself, pulling it up and tinkering with it.

When he closed the program and sat back, announcing that he was finally ready to submit it to his professor, I was so relieved I dragged him to bed and did my best to drain him completely. He rose to the occasion, twice, and I was drifting off to sleep, dreaming of that ring on my finger, when I heard him say, "Very funny! Now how do I get to my paper?" I managed to ask, "What?" before succumbing to pleasures of Hypnos.

I woke up in the morning, exhilarated by the knowledge of what the day would bring. I couldn't wait, dragging Davie out of bed, telling him, "We have to hit the road, Jack!" I was finally getting engaged.

Then he got cold feet. "I can't go, my computer crashed. I didn't get a chance to back it up last night before you dragged me to bed," he claimed.

"But you'd turned off your computer! You didn't even try to back it up." He wasn't going to put the blame on me.

"I was tired. I was going to get something to eat, then back it up and submit it for review. You grabbed me before I could..."

"You didn't seem to mind last night. You didn't seem to mind twice, as I recall." I was pissed. I could see that my wonderful weekend was circling the drain. Frustrated, I began hitting him on his arms.

When I stopped, I stood there glaring at him. Then I went and showered and dressed.

When I came out with my bag, he was munching away on a bowl of cereal. He wasn't even upset. That really pissed me off.

Then he noticed my bag. I smirked at him. "Well, just because you can't go..."

"You're not serious. You wouldn't go without me. Maybe I can finish the paper quickly, I mean, I know now what corrections need to be made, so it should be easy!" He actually smiled when he said that.

"No, I know you. You'll be fiddling with it for days now." No way was I going to sit there all weekend. I might not be engaged, but fuck him, I was going to party this weekend, if only to spite him. I left him there, slurping the milk in his bowl.

The whole drive up, I kept waiting for him to call and ask me, beg me, to come back. If he really loved me, really wanted to ask me to marry him, he'd call, wouldn't he? He wasn't going to be working on his damn paper unless he called me, since my laptop was with me. Good luck fixing his piece-of-crap computer.

But he never called. I kept wiping tears from my face as I realized he wasn't going to ask me to marry him. He probably just pretended his paper was lost, so he'd not have to spend the weekend with me.

He didn't want me. That's what this was all about. That's why he was so very calmly eating his cereal, instead of immediately fixing his paper. That's why he wasn't calling me. He just didn't care. He had finished his thesis, his time at university done, and he was finished too with his college girlfriend. I was just a piece of ass to him. I pounded the steering wheel and screamed.

I had loved the bastard. I had given up almost every event the last few months so he could keep working endlessly on his paper, and this was my reward. I was being dumped.

I stopped at a gas station before I got to Reggie's to wash my face and gather myself together. I'd put on a brave face, and I would enjoy this weekend. When I got back, I would pack up my stuff from the apartment and head home, leaving Davie in my rearview mirror.

When I got to the cabin, Reggie asked where my boyfriend was. "We're through," I said. "He had more important things to do." Reggie knew me well enough to see I was hurting, and handed me my first drink of the night. It was far from my last.

I was sitting on the second-floor deck, alone with a bottle of Old No. 7, laughing to myself that I didn't know Jack, but with over half the bottle gone, I was getting there.

That's when one of Reggie's friends pulled up a chair next to me. "Mind if I join you?"

The world seemed to shift on it's axis wildly as I tried to turn and look at him. I gave up and clutched my bottle as things settled back down. "Fine, as long as you don't want Jack."

"Jack?" he asked.

"Jack!" I held up the bottle.

"Oh," he said. Then, "I heard you tell Reggie that you just broke up with your boyfriend."

"Fiance!" I insisted but corrected myself. "Almost, fiancé." I added sadly.

"You know, I've always kind of been in love with you." He blurted out.

"What? You don't even know me." At least, I didn't know him at all.

"No, but I've seen you with Reggie. You are one fine looking woman." He reached out and held my hand. It felt good. David might not want me, but what's-his-name here did.

Things got a little blurry. He was charming while massaging my hand. There was a threat of vomit, so he helped me out of my chair and over to the railing. That passed, but I was in his arms as his hands explored. There was kissing, lots of kissing, with tongue. It all felt good.

Somehow, there was sex. I might have passed out during it. I think I came around for the second round, or maybe it was still the first, when I saw him in the doorway.

"DAVIE!" I yelled as I shoved, what was his name? off of me.

The look on his face. I knew then that whatever I thought, he had the ring, he was going to ask me, HE LOVED ME!

But his face! The shock, the sadness, the anger, all competing in his features. I pulled the covers up to my waist, trying to clear my head, trying to find a way to explain this...

"We never said we were exclusive!" It just popped out. That was the best I could come up with.

He shook his head, disbelieving. "But we live together. We've lived together for four months! We've talked about marriage!"

"Yeah, but you've never asked me, and we never talked about exclusivity!" My alcohol addled brain thought that was a decent counter.

"Well, I didn't think we had to." He said sadly. "But luckily, now, we will never have to." He turned and headed down the stairs.

I struggled to get out of bed and staggered to the door, calling "Davie!"

"Don't go! We have to talk about this." I begged.

"No, we don't. They can all have you," He said, adding, "I don't care."

"What are you saying?" I stepped out on the landing and stamped my foot. "I'm not a slut!"

He stared at me until I realized I was naked with what's-his-name's potential progeny running down my leg. Reggie and his friends were all staring at me. I jumped back into the room, running to get my clothing.

It was a mistake. I could hardly walk straight, let alone run. I tripped over my own feet and slammed my head into the bedpost.

[*]

My head hurt in the morning when I woke up in my bed. I couldn't tell which hurt my head more -- the bump on the top or the hangover inside. Even together, they weren't a match for the hurt in my heart.

I knew I had blown it. The hurt in Davie's eyes, the anger in the things he said to me. The horror of him seeing me with... what is his damned name? I don't even care anymore. I don't want to see him, to know him, or even to think of him again. I only wanted to think about my Davie.

My Davie. No longer. He left me, basically saying I should screw all the people there. That's how little he thought of me now.

I saw the half empty bottle of Jack on the nightstand. When Reggie came in later to check on me, I was clutching the empty bottle. I was crying and saying I had to leave, to go find Davie.

Reggie sighed and took my car keys out of my purse. He wouldn't give them back or let me have any more alcohol until Sunday.

[*]

My key didn't work in the lock of the apartment door when I got home. I pounded on the door, begging him to let me in. "If you wanted to be exclusive you should have said so!"

Reggie had warned me not to go there. He said it sounded like I had been sleeping with others all the time, but I couldn't think of any other defensible argument, so I stubbornly stuck to it.

But it didn't matter. Davie wouldn't let me in. In fact, he dumped all my stuff in garbage bags into the hallway and tried to closed the door again. I blocked it.

"You can't be mad, Davie. We never talked about being exclusive." I tried again to make him see my side.

He just sneered at me. "Why don't you keep repeating that, to the tune of 'But we were on a break!', like Ross on Friends. 'But we were not exclusivvvve!'" He glared at me. "You remember that? You had no problem agreeing with Rachel that Ross fucked up."

I was exhausted and defeated. "But we never did talk about being exclusive," I mumbled.

He basically told me to go whore myself in a bar if I wanted somewhere to spend the night. Then he did close the door.

I kept pounding on the wood barrier, desperate to talk to him, until the neighbor threatened to call the police. I dragged a few bags down to my car, then drove over to Reggie's. He'd offered to put me up for the night and then drove me over later to retrieve the rest of my things.

After that, I began stalking my former lover. I wasn't sure when he'd be leaving to return home and I had to convince him it was all a drunken mistake before he left. I had found out from his friend Roger that Davie had been able to submit his thesis for review before he'd come up to the cabin and that he was scheduled to defend it soon. Roger couldn't or wouldn't tell me when.

Whenever I could, I put myself in front of Davie and pushed the point of the lack of promised exclusivity. My mother even called him about it. Heck, I was thrown out of the movie theater when he just wouldn't listen to me and I had to get louder and more insistent.

After confronting him several times off campus, I caught up to him when he was visiting his faculty advisor's office.

He looked exasperated with me. Then he smiled meanly, and said loudly, so the students nearby could hear. "Yes, Ross, 'you think that was a break? You think you're gonna get out of this on a technicality?' You keep saying it, but I don't want to hear it!"

"Oh, my God!" A girl squealed. "She's Ross! You know, Ross from Friends!"

I felt humiliated. David just gave me a sardonic smile as I hurried away.

Each time I confronted him thereafter, he whined at me, putting us back into the Ross-Rachel scenario. The other students still on campus ate it up. They started watching for the next confrontation. When Reggie started calling me "Ross", I knew it was over.

But I couldn't give up. I loved him. I needed him. And I knew he loved me. He still had the bust I'd carved from a maple log, a bust of him. My teacher had called it a masterpiece and warned me that few people achieve that level of beauty more than once in their lives. He told me if I could demonstrate that talent again, I would certainly achieve fame.

I was proud of that piece but knew I would probably never replicate it. It was the embodiment of my love. I was lucky to find that love once, and I doubted I'd be lucky enough to encounter it again.

But Davie had kept it. He had kept my love. I couldn't just abandon him. I had to try one more time.

He always attended the end of semester bonfire his dorm put on, and I knew I'd find him there. And I did. He was standing by the edge of the fire.

"Davie, I love you. You know that. Had I known how you felt, I would have..."

I stopped abruptly as he pulled the maple bust out of a bag. My heart clogged my throat as I realized he was going to give it back to me. He was going to reject my love. I couldn't breathe.

Then he lifted it over his head and faced the fire.

"What are you doing?" I yelled with horror in my voice. "I made that with all the love in my heart. I put my heart into that! I know you love it. I know you love me. Please don't do this. You can't burn our love!"

He sneered at me. "Gee, we never talked about me keeping it forever. You should have said something."

And he tossed it into the fire.

He couldn't even let me grieve in peace. "I wished you had said something! How was I to know that it meant so much to you?" He was laughing as he walked away.

I fell to my knees, crying at my loss. Not of the bust, but of Davie. I knew we were through. As I crumpled, I landed so close to the flames that several girls rushed to pull me back.

When I finally got back to Reggie's, he took away my new bottle of No. 7 and poured it down the drain. I didn't even argue.

The next morning, I drove home to New Mexico.

[*]

My parents welcomed me home, but within a week were recommending that I see a therapist.

"You're not yourself, honey." My mother said gently. "We miss your happy face, your smile."

"I miss being able to hear the TV without having to turn it up to drowned out someone's weeping," was my father's offering.

But I refused therapy. I sought solace in my art. I would express my love, my desire for Davie again, like I had in the maple bust. I found a suitable log, again of maple, and began removing everything, intent on only leaving the remains of my expressed love.

My parents ran out to the garage when they heard me shrieking and saw me hacking at the remnants of my log. I screamed as I realized that there was nothing left of my love.

I began therapy although I really had little to say. The therapist urged me to "unburden" myself of my story, so I ended up telling her about Davie, Ross and Rachel, and whatever-the-hell-his-name was. But beyond relating the facts, I had no answers for her prodding questions. "Why did you?" "What do you think about that?" "How were you feeling?"

I was glad I didn't have my chisels with me. I felt like "expressing my love" on the therapist's head.

I really didn't think therapy was for me. I really didn't see it helping at all.

I bought some mesquite wood. It was harder than maple. I wanted tougher.

I also bought some more No. 7 and hid it from my parents in the garage.

Under Jack's influence, I began to experience a strange pareidolia with the mesquite wood. But the faces I saw were unlike any creatures I had ever seen or imagined. Twisted, evil creatures were crawling out of the wood. I freed them, somewhat, leaving them attached to the trunks. Sometimes, they were just faces, other times they were a total monster.

That first night, I carved until dawn, long after the effects of the whiskey had worn off. I finally freed that first thing from the wood, but was surprised when I had a twisted, screaming fiend reaching for me as it immerged from the log.

I didn't remember carving that or even imagining that. I just remembered chipping away at the wood. Frankly, it creeped me out. I put it aside, carved but unfinished.

The next day, a new piece of wood. What crept out of that piece was indescribable. Again, something I never envisioned and didn't recall carving. The wood was calling the shots, not me. And not Jack this time. I was completely sober, all day long.

The damn things were haunting my dreams. My sleep was filled now with nightmarish images, which followed me into the daylight, popping out of any piece of wood I saw.

I was working feverishly, striving to reconnect with the love I had expressed in the bust of Davie. But only demons crawled out of the grain.

My parents still worried about me, but I was shut up every day in the garage, carving. It obsessed me, filling my days as well as my nights. Mom begged me to return to therapy, especially after she saw my growing collection of devils and beasts.

"Honey, you shouldn't stay locked up in here all day, every day. Wouldn't you like to go out with your friends, maybe to a club?" She even had some of my high school friends over, but they failed to engage me as I just continued chiseling and whittling.

My father looked at my growing menagerie and just asked if I planned to finish any of the carvings. I stopped working and started looking from one statue to another. Then I picked up some sandpaper and began smoothing out the rough posts. I stained and varnished, accenting the grain and the things seemed to come even more alive.

When I was done, several days had passed. I took pictures of the finished projects and emailed them to my old teacher back in Boulder. Then I went back to work on new pieces of wood.

I was surprised a week later when my mother led Professor Ruth into the garage. "Honey, look who came down from Boulder to see you."

I tried to say, "Hello." I think I did, but it was difficult. I couldn't remember when I spoke last. The professor looked concerned as she approached me. "Evelyn, are you okay?" she asked. She reached out, pulling wood chips from my tangled hair. "Have you been eating, child? You're so thin." She bit her bottom lip. "Have you showered, uh, today?" I think she chose 'today' to be polite. I did think that I had showered sometime this week.

My mother led me into the bathroom while Ruth went back out to the garage. As she stripped off my clothes, I saw myself in the mirror. My dark hair was almost blond with wood dust, my face gaunt and my eye dead. My mother bathed my unresisting body, untangling my hair and combing out the wood chips. When she finished, I was able to stand up and dry myself. I felt like I was waking up. I dressed while my mom brought Professor Ruth into the kitchen for coffee. She also made some ham sandwiches which I wolfed down. Eating was another activity I could barely recall doing.

But I was recovering. I was able to smile shyly at my old teacher. She returned it hesitantly, asking if I was feeling better. I was able to say, "Yes," but then took several minutes to follow up with, "Why are you here?"

The woman seemed to come alive, all hesitation gone. "The pictures you sent. Those pieces! They're exquisite. They're genius. Evelyn, that bust you made was a masterpiece, but these... these originals are so unique. I've shown them to some galleries and they all want to do a solo exhibition.

"I also showed them the bust you did last year, and they think it would be a wonderful offset to these pieces." She smiled excitedly, then looked horrified when I burst into tears.

"It's gone! He burned it!" I sobbed.

"What? That wonderful piece? Who burned it?" I stopped crying as the urge to laugh arose as her indignation at such a sacrilege tickled my funny bone. Only my mother slapping my face put an end to that hysterical laughing jag.

[*]

The professor took the twenty-four pieces I had completed back to Boulder and arranged for their gallery exhibition. I spent two months in the New Mexico Behavioral Health Institute. In the end, I began to understand what I had lost and how I lost it. I don't think I will ever again be the happy child my parents want back, but I'm not the chiseling zombie that had come back to them from college.

The exhibition was a great success. I was written up in the various art journals and my pieces were selling in the mid-four figure range, far more than I ever imagined any piece being worth. The gallery owner assured me that those pieces would soar in price in the future, and future efforts would easily be into the five figure range.

Therapy was good for me, finally. It didn't cure the pareidolia that plagued me, but it did tame it. My pieces began to feature fairies, pixies, leprechauns, and anthropomorphized

animals of all kinds. As predicted, they sold well, but the resale values of my original beasties would far outstrip them. Weird trumps whimsical every time.

It was five years later when I ran into David again. He was married now and a father. He seemed quieter and more sober than the last time I saw him at the bonfire. His wife was a quiet woman who smiled briefly when he introduced us but quickly returned her attention to the baby in the stroller, ignoring us and our conversation. I guess we all have creations that consume us.

"I'm sorry," Davie said softly. "I feel guilty about burning your bust. It was truly a work of art."

I offered a smile. "I don't think I gave you much choice. It took me several months of therapy to understand that I was beating a dead horse, hurting both of us in the process."

Looking around the gallery, he congratulated me. "It doesn't seem to have hurt your talent. These are wonderful. I wish I could afford one!" He laughed. "Hell, I wish I still had that bust. It would have funded the little one's college tuition."

There really wasn't anything left to say. I watched as they walked away.

Ruth came up and hugged me. "That was him, huh?"

"Yes, him, his wife and child." I smiled.

She leaned in and kissed me. "You wish that was you, sweetie?"

"What do you think?" I asked, pointing to the statue at the center of the exhibit.

She looked at the four-foot statue of a goddess, perfect in dimension and detail. The face was the quintessence of beauty and femininity, while the body below was a paragon of sexual power. I noticed the visitors glancing from the statue to the professor.

My wife laughed. "I think if the bust you did in college was a work of art, the bust you put on that statue of me is just perfection. If I ever doubt your love, I just need to see that image."

I melted into her arms.