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Homewrecker

"The good are never easy, the easy never good.
And love, it never happens like you think it really should.
Deception and perfection are wonderful traits.
One will breed love, the other, hate."

- "Homewrecker," MARINA (2012)

Jordan

Contrary to the popular sentiment, I used to hate weekends more than anything else when I was little. For other kids, it meant relaxation and recreation—the opportunity to play on swings, watch cartoons, and make pillow forts...or whatever the hell normal children were doing back then.

But for me, Friday through Sunday meant imprisonment: a picture-perfect penthouse inside of which I didn't even dare to speak. Piano practice. French books. Writhing under the annoyed, contempt-filled gazes of my parents.

And tears, of course. Lots of tears.

Now that I think about it, I just hated weekends because I was no longer guaranteed to see Lily or Alex like I usually would—at school or directly after. Up until my mid-teens, I had absolutely no freedom to come and go as I pleased. Instead, I had nannies and chauffeurs watching my every move at the behest of my parents. And we all knew better than to cross them.

But I'm starting to realize that I wasn't afraid of my parents nearly as much as I was afraid of just...being alone. I want to say that I'm over both of those fears, but, every time Friday starts to wind down, I still get a twinge of that sadness.

I guess things haven't changed as much as I thought they did.

I watch a small group of rainclouds converge on Palo Alto, folding my arms on the railing of my terrace and leaning into the view. The evening sun sinks toward the western mountains, and a cooler-than-usual breeze for late May wraps around my uncovered arms.

Even though I have Alex and Lily within a ten-mile radius of me at all times, my weekends are now more lonely than ever. It was easier when Alex didn't know about my past with Lily—when I could spend a day with either person and the other wouldn't know or care. But they're a package deal now, and, when my relationship with Alex is so sour, it's a lucky day if I get even an hour with his beloved.

I honestly have no idea where I went wrong with him. I told him everything he wanted to know, I promised that I'd stay out of his relationship, and I have yet to do a single thing with the explicit intention of encroaching on his territory. But we're still at an impasse—staring at each other from across an emotional ravine with no idea how to cross it.

I miss him. I miss him way more than I want to admit, but he seems to be taking our separation rather well when he has Lily to distract him. Even though there's an echoing, Alex-shaped chasm in my life now, he clearly has no intention of filling it anytime soon. I don't know what I did to make him so adamant about that. And I don't know how to change his mind.

He doesn't trust me—so much so that, after months of being good, I almost want to prove him right. But I don't want to be a homewrecker...I've had enough experience with those to not want that label. But is the minuscule "home" that Alex is building with Lily worth putting all the potential we had to the side? I was her home first, and she was mine.

Biding my time, watching them be together, being on Alex's shit-list, waiting for the mere possibility that she might change her mind—can I keep living like this?

I guess I have to.

I move away from the railing, turning around to gaze at the rainforest of greenery that Lily took it upon herself to plant out here. If anything on this terrace makes me feel close to her in her absence, it's the potted tulips, hanging primrose baskets, and climbing ivy that she's training to spread across the solid exterior wall. I told her that there's no point, that we'll just have to tear it all down when I move back to New York, but she wouldn't hear it.