Moments

It’s easy to get lost in the moment. No one can blame you for that. Emotion can overwhelm you in such a way that you don’t have room for thought, just action. So you make a decision, often the wrong one, and you regret it when the moment’s over.

But the thing about moments is that life is made of them. They string together and in seconds you can’t find where one ends and the next begins.

I’ve always thought of myself as a good person. I donate to charities; I volunteer; I’ve never stolen anything or been in trouble with the law. I’ve always been there for my friends. And when I didn’t have anything else, when I didn’t have money or grace or success, at least I had that.

I don’t know how it happened. It was a moment, one moment, when he kissed me. It was just one moment when I kissed him back. And a moment after that when my heart was beating so hard that I had to kiss him again.

I don’t know how that led me here or how I could get addicted to a person when I’ve never been addicted to anything in my whole life. I guess some people are like vitamins, the boring kind that you take every day, but that you need to keep you healthy and stable. And some people…some people are like drugs. They’re both wonderful and horrible. They make your blood rush and your body shiver and you can’t tell if you love or hate the feeling, but you know that you need more.

I love Roy now, and I loved him then too. I’d like it better if I hadn’t, if he had just been in the right place at the right time. And maybe he was, but maybe that’s all love is.

He was dumb; he was insensitive; he was tiring and ungrateful, but he was there. He was there for ten years and for some reason, once it’s over, you remember even the fights and the anger with regret and self-loathing.

I wish they knew that however much they hate and resent me now, it can’t possibly be as much as I hate myself.

I’m not that girl. I’m not an Ashley or a Tiffany; I’m especially not a Katie. I’m not even Pamela, I’m just Pam. But maybe that was the problem, maybe because I’d never really known what it felt like to be so wanted before...

I’ve been spending a lot of time making excuses lately. As sensible as I can force myself to believe them to be, excuses don’t change what happened. Even if they forgave me, nothing would ever be the same.

I never meant to hurt anyone. I wanted everyone to have what they wanted, and I wanted time to figure out what I wanted, too.

It would have went on like that forever, probably. Because how could I feel guilty if Jim was smiling through kisses in the break room, and Roy was grinning about the best sex of his life. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

Is that justification? Is that what every cheater does? I try to convince myself it’s not. I try to convince myself I’m not that girl.

Roy was the one that brought it all tumbling down. I blamed him then. I screamed about how it was all his fault and cried about my privacy. How could I blame him? How could I blame him for caring about me more than I cared about him?

I don’t think if I even realized what it meant when it happened. Roy had barged into Jim’s apartment, a piece of crumbled green paper grasped in his hand. The paper, I was sure, was the note Jim left me on my desk that day asking me to come over. It was signed “Love you” and when I went home to change, I had slipped it in with the other notes I kept in a locked box in my closet. Roy looked at us emptily, hopefully, and I looked back, too shocked to be upset.

In 10 years together, I had never seen him look like that before. He had always been emotionless, strong, and controlled. I’d never seen him look so helpless.

“Pam,” he breathed, weakly holding up the paper. “God, I don’t…I can’t…” He looked towards where our hands were locked. In the first real thoughts I had beside ‘Oh shit’, I suddenly worried he would try to attack Jim.

But he didn’t. Instead, he broke down in tears. I was in numb disbelief and instead of any appropriate emotional response, I was furious with him for bringing all my clearly crafted lies crashing down.

“Pam,” he forced out, clearly trying hard to stop the tears that threatened his masculinity. “Pam…please…” he begged.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I admitted, though I’m still not sure why my voice came out so cold and plain.

“I’m so stupid,” Roy whimpered. “I can’t believe I…I’m so stupid.”

It was so strange to understand so plainly that nothing could possibly be the same again. It was impossible to comprehend that a minute ago I was watching The Price is Right before we headed to the park. I wanted it to be impossible. I refused to believe this wasn’t just a nightmare.

“I can’t believe you would violate my privacy like that,” I can’t believe I tried to blame him. “We talked about this…you said you were going to stop.”

“I wish I had,” he growled through tears. “God Pam, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry. I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid.”

His grip on the paper loosened, and he slipped to the ground. I can’t remember now if I had even looked back at Jim. But I think that one, instinctive rush to Roy’s side is what sealed my fate. The hand that Jim had been holding suddenly felt cold.

Jim stayed seated and silent on the couch and finally, I broke into tears.

“Please Pam,” Roy mumbled. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

I didn’t want to say it; I couldn’t say it. How did criminals confess to a crime? Saying it made it real, showed both of them the kind of pathetic, wretched person I suddenly felt myself to be. I wanted everything to just work out, and if I said outloud what I had done, not even my cleverest tricks could change that.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I repeated, though I knew exactly what he wanted me to say. The truth, for once.

Roy seemed to suddenly become aware of Jim’s presence. His red eyes darted to him and then back to me. “Can we talk about this outside?”

I nodded and was unconsciously thrilled at the chance to reassure Roy I only loved him out of the earshot of the man I really loved.

“No,” Jim said. The solemn, unforgiving tone of his voice was so unfamiliar to me, I had to turn and face him to understand who was speaking. He was still sitting on the couch, left outside the world of Roy and I. “She’ll lie. She’ll lie unless she has to say it in front of both of us”

I hated him for knowing me so well that he knew how to bar planned path of escape. But Jim had been lied to for too long and for what? I had given him nothing of substance and that day, stuck between the two, for some reason, I had rushed to Roy’s side.

Call it selective memory (because that’s what it is), but I can’t (or don’t want) to remember the rest of that night. There are only some things that stick out to prominently to be forgotten: Jim’s face when I left him sitting alone in his house, leaving him without a word; Roy asking to just lay next to me for a while; that feeling deep in my core that I was the worst person in the world.

As usual, what I couldn’t fix, I hid from. I went months without speaking to Jim. What could I have possibly said? There was no more justification. The game was over, and we both lost. Jim had faced a betrayal that left him completely changed. I had killed the sweet boy I fell in love with and left a guarded, cynical man in his place.

Roy and I stayed together for a few months after the incident, but it wasn’t the same. He moved out, and called me every night on the phone, trying to work out a solution. But once that first seed of mistrust is planted, there is absolutely, positively no removing it, no matter what anyone says. You can forgive someone, maybe, but there is no forgetting. So the seed grew and sprouted, finally giving Roy a justification for looking at other possibilities. Our relationship became a constant struggle, and he couldn’t help but see that there were plenty of easier options.

I remember the night that it ended. I had wanted to go out after work, for drinks, and Roy had sternly forbid me. We had fought our way out to the parking lot where some line of conversation had lead me to the idle threat of “If you care about me that little, then why don’t we just break up?”

I never expected him to agree. I tried desperately then, for quite some time, to win him back. But he was quick to take it up with some easy, bimbo ex-cheerleader and quick to forget the feelings behind that night in high school when he swore I was the girl of his dreams. The more he ignored me, the more I wanted him, and the more I tried to get him back, the more he grew to hate me. It was a vicious cycle.

And that’s how I ended up here. It’s been two years since I’ve had any real contact with Roy, but for some reason, it still stung when I heard he proposed to that other girl and that their going to get married this June. It’s hard to admit he is happier with someone else.

Somehow though, it hurts more that Jim is still single, like that cookie jar that is just out of your reach. Hope and possibility make it nearly impossible to let go. We speak now, but there’s no feeling behind it. The small, unconquerable part of me that is trying to make him fall back into love keeps us from having the same, meaningful friendship we once shared. That part motivates so many of my actions around him, and he knows it. He knows we’ll never be just friends again.

And some part of him won’t let us be anything more. I’ve hurt him. I’ve tricked him, more than once, and I can’t blame him for not wanting to get hurt again. He makes sure not to get to close; he limits our time alone together; he tries not to laugh when I grin. His good-natured teasing gets cruel and honest, making sure I keep my distant. No matter how well we get along and things seem like they used to be, he’ll keep them from ending up that way.

Very few people believe that love is a one-time feeling, that just because you loved your high school sweetheart who moved away means you can’t love college quarterback. So why do so many have such a hard time believing that you can love two people at once? You can’t control when you meet those you fall in love with, or I would have spaced mine out.

Sometimes when I’m watching romantic movies alone in my apartment, I feel positive that I could fix everything if I could just go back in time. But the thought never goes farther than that. I never force myself to say exactly what I would of done, which man I would have run to, probably because I’m still not sure whom to choose. I’d like to think if I knew then what I know now, I could have resisted my desire for Jim or been wise enough to break it off with Roy…but a part of me knows no amount of knowledge would have stopped me. I loved them both, and for a few months, I was loved by both of them. I don’t if I could ever give that feeling up. But that’s the real question, isn’t it? Is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?

I hate what I did, who I am, how I hurt. The actions were despicable and deceiving and can be traced back to the lowest human desire for affection. I want to regret it for what it was; I should regret it. But I know, deep down, all I truly regret is getting caught.

I wonder, then, if mine really is a cheater’s heart. If it is, then we’re not nearly as threatening as you’ve made us out to be. We’re just desperate addicts, craving moments, thirsting for attention. It’s a sickness, not a character flaw.

But I guess I’m making excuses again.

Jim is sitting across from me now, eyes focused on his work or his cell phone or the clock on the wall, anywhere but on me. I want to get up and lay this all out before him, and to say “I’m sorry,” whether I mean the words for him or for myself. It was just one moment, one moment, that ended everything, that rearranged my whole world, so maybe one moment could fix it. I want to erase it all and run into his arms and never leave him and tell him that I love him and be with him forever. I want to have 17 kids and live in a big house and have three pet fish and grow old and die together.

The clock on the wall ticks monotonously, such a dull sound it makes it hard to believe any one could be thinking about anything but paper. Jim types something on his computer. Roy is out somewhere with his new girl. And I…I’ve gotten into enough trouble chasing what I want, so I sit silently, stationary at my desk, thinking about all I had and everything that could have been.

Fin.