Archive of Our Own

It was a ritual now. Tom sat on one end of the taupe couch and Shiv on the other. As always, Shiv had one of their therapist, Tamara’s tacky brocaded cushions, positioned over her stomach, and her fingers worked deftly to unpick the terrible sewn in pattern. Tom focused his attention on the similarly brocaded fainting couch on the other end of the room and wondered if anyone actually used it as they did in movies. Maybe if he was alone, he’d have used it. He always did feel more comfortable lying down and avoiding eye contact with the person he was supposed to be having a difficult conversation with. 

Instead, Tom was watching Tamara as she adjusted herself and her notepad. He averted her gaze from hers when she finally stopped. Tom always hated this part of therapy; he’d sink into the sofa and instantly forget everything that had happened to him in the past week. Tom took a glance at Shiv, who was looking purposefully aimless as she stared off at the framed doctorate for one Dr Tamara Wickes at the other end of the room.

Tamara crossed her legs at the ankles and greeted them both in her usual professional manner. “Good afternoon, Shiv, Tom.”

Tom smiled, the expected joy of it not quite reaching his eyes, “Afternoon.”

Shiv’s face twisted back in the direction of where Tamara sat in her large leather-bound chair, “Hey.”

Tamara waited expectantly for either of them to begin talking. As always, Tom’s mind remained blank and waiting on Shiv to start these sessions was like waiting for rain in a drought. Not entirely impossible but devastatingly unlikely. 

As Tom crossed his legs at the ankles, his attention was drawn to Shiv, who was now gnawing on a hangnail. Her nails had been increasingly shitty lately, chewed to the nub, cuticles red and angry. In a brief moment of candour, she’d once told him that it was a habit she had as a kid when her mom and divorced, her nails had gotten particularly disgusting. She’d grown out of it quickly, but clearly, it was back. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad that all the money in the world couldn’t fix a problem as pedestrian as this. 

Tamarama let out a thoughtful sigh and turned her attention to Tom’s fidgeting wife, “How are you feeling, Shiv?” 

Shiv patted at the pillow on top of her stomach. “Yeah, fine, I’m doing fine.”

She always kept the pillow there, every week, without fail. Tom wasn’t sure if she liked to cover her swollen stomach or if she just wanted to cover the softest parts of herself. Tom wasn’t sure what a pillow would do to stop an emotional stab wound to her soft gut. Maybe he’d ask her about it, but he thought that ought to be Tamara’s job and not his.

The moment lasted in the room, souring the longer it hung around. 

Tamara shifted in her seat and spoke again, “How has your week been?”

Tom thought that she ought to open with something a little more pointed, ‘Shiv, how do you feel this week about your husband being the COO of your father’s company whilst you work on your brother’s insane presidential campaign? Do you feel useless, bored, overlooked?’ followed by ‘Tom, how do you feel this week about the never-ending pit of loneliness that has opened up so deeply within you that you fear that no amount of love will ever begin to fill it up again?’ Things like that. 

Non-committal, Tom responded, “It’s been fine.” 

Shiv nodded in corroboration. Tom had once read that therapy was all about what you put in, and admittedly, neither of them were giving much. 

So he tried to be a little more forthcoming, “I’ve been busy at the office.” He had been swamped in truth. Mattson and the ghost of Logan Roy, not technically alive in the company but ever-present nonetheless, had Tom working on a hack and slash of the existing and new staff that had come in with the merger. He and the other department heads had been having meetings that ran to about ten o'clock each night. Turned out that nobody was willing to let go of any of their staff without a fight. Except for Greg, who seemed happy enough to let go of ‘Tall Amy’ in his department. When pressed for a reason, he could only come up with a perfunctory answer, and after a while and a couple of glasses of Malbec told Tom that she’d said something inappropriate to one of the interns. Tom had berated him about the fact that he should have taken that directly to HR; Enrique, Tom’s assistant, laughed at the irony, and Tom told him to shut up. 

And there was this whole buyout thing that Mattson had pushed onto his desk one Thursday morning. It should have been an easy takeover, but the mom and pop shop of a media conglomerate was being somewhat evasive.

“Work’s been a lot for me too. Con’s campaign is really picking up…” Shiv trailed off without finishing her train of thought. She was usually eager to talk about her work, but there was something about Connor’s campaign. Tom thought it was embarrassment, but she’d never said that out loud. Tom wanted to worm it out of her like an ice pick lobotomy, but he didn’t want to deal with the conversation that came from that. It was an easy jump to ‘I’m embarrassed, it’s because I can’t get another job because I worked at the prejudice factory, you pushed me out of there, this is your fault’. Tom was ready for the conversation when it came, but he wasn’t about to bring it up himself. 

Instead of verbalising his bustling internal monologue, Tom just sighed out a statement that sounded almost like a warning, “Yeah, there’s been a few late nights. Some later than others.”

Shiv glanced at him, broken from her transfixed state, and the skin between her eyebrows bounced. If Shiv didn’t want to get this session done as quickly as possible, he was sure she would have said something about that. 

Clearly latching on to what Shiv hadn’t said, Tamara questioned them both, “How do you feel about those late nights, both of you?”

Tom spoke immediately, “It’s normal.” 

“Yeah, it’s normal,” Shiv parroted. 

Tom wanted to change the subject. He uncrossed his ankles and placed his hands on his knees, sliding them against the navy wool, “We’ve been keeping up with those exercises you told us to do.”

“Yeah, we have,” Shiv turned to look at Tom, a strand of hair that was stuck to her cheek glistened in the afternoon sun, “I mean, what’s the point in coming here if we don't? Right Tom?”

“Yes, honey” Tom didn’t mean to sound so disengaged, but the hair on Shiv’s cheek was twinkling in a way that looked just like the trail of a tear against her pale skin. 

By now, Tamara was looking at them sceptically, the rift between them not cavernous, but just the seam of the two sofa cushions between them. Not particularly large but deadly if one was to pull out a handful of pocket change emotions. They were bound to meet their linty end betwixt the two cushions on which they each perched themselves, week after week. 

She leaned forward a little against her crossed leg and lay her pen flat against her pad, resulting in a light thud, “So, you’ve been coming to see me for about twelve weeks now; typically, I like to do a check-in and see how you’re feeling, how you feel this whole process is going for you?”

Shiv didn’t so much as look at Tom before she answered, “It’s fine.” 

“Yeah, it’s fine, y’know as much as airing your dirty laundry to a stranger can be.” Tom hoped it would make Shiv laugh. 

Looking less than impressed with Tom’s remark, Tamara spoke, “I’d like to think I’m a little more than a stranger to you by this point?”

Shiv didn’t laugh at Tom’s remark, but she did expand upon it, “All of this is confidential, right? Because if you do breathe a word of it, I’ll be up your ass so fast with a lawsuit you won’t know what hit you.”

Maybe this was why she had come highly recommended to Tom. Tamara was always so calm in the face of conflict; she didn’t wince, smile or flinch over any dirt that was flung across the proverbial table at one another. So it was expected that she didn’t seem at all spooked when she confidently responded to Shiv, “Therapist - Client, confidentiality is always upheld unless someone becomes a danger to themselves or others.”

Before speaking, Shiv pursed her lips to make them as sharp as the words she was about to say, “Are we either of those things?”

“I haven’t told anyone about either of you if that is what you are asking, Shiv?”

Tom hadn’t even realised that Shiv had leaned forward until she leaned back into the couch with a soft ‘poof’ and drawled out, “Good.”

The inertia in the room had been somewhat reset by the establishment of trust between two titans whilst Tom scrambled around in the background, trying to find a pen for their peace treaty. 

“Tell me about your week then, Tom, you go first,” Tamara’s voice was as calm as ever.

Once again, Tom had forgotten everything that had ever happened to him during his 44-year tenure on Earth. He scratched at his chin to bide time and realised that he’d forgotten to shave, as he often did on therapy days, “Oh uh, there’s this coalition deal being discussed with a smallish firm in the midwest, Logan and Mattson want me to head it up because of my ‘cultural background’, it’s an easy win. Not much importance to it, but it saves on time trying to build up that user base organically.”

Shiv made a grumbling noise like an engine halfway to backfiring.

“Is there a problem with that?” Tom asked, his head whipping round to watch Shiv’s reaction. 

She looked plaintively as she continued to try and figure out what Tamara was writing in her little notepad, “No problem.”

“We are here, to be honest-” Tamara stated.

And as if that is all Shiv needed, she immediately blurted out, “I’d rather you not talk about business.”

Tucking hair behind both ears, Shiv tilted her head to look out of the window. Tom was sure that was neither a good business tactic nor how to win at therapy tactic, but it sure went away to pissing off Tom.

Slowly Tom spoke, adjusting his position on the sofa until his right foot was tucked under his backside, “Well, it’s my job?”

“It is, but it’s… boring” Shiv’s voice was far off and noncommittal in the way that everything that Shiv said was non-committal. 

“Boring?” Tom quizzed, knowing full well that Shiv had been circling everything that Tom had done for Waystar for weeks. 

She let out a deflated chortle and turned herself back toward their therapist, who was not doing a great job in wrangling her pettiness, “Yes, it’s boring, let's talk about something else.”

As if summoned by Tom’s almost momentary thought to fire her and leave a bad review on Yelp, Tamara pressed Shiv for more information, “I’d like to talk about why you find that so ‘boring’ Shiv.”

Shiv took a large breath and an even bigger exhale like she was a bull in an animated kids show from the 1950s, “Well, it just is, isn’t it? a shitty little deal with some family-run radio station?” Shiv was turned away from Tom, but he could still tell she was sucking on the front of her teeth as if they were hard candy, “Is this what it was all about, Tom? Brokering deals with a mom and pop business from Indianapolis?”

Despite being, well, not okay with what had happened, but having come to terms with it, Shiv liked to bring up Tom’s deal with the devil every chance she could, holding it above his head like a righteous halo that dripped nasty and acidic every time she stretched out her hand to shake it. 

“It’s part of the job”, he sighed, knowing full well that he’d already lost this leg of the conversation. 

The unmistakable sadness in her voice was barely concealed by her sarcastic comment, “A COO’s critical work.”

Tom sucked in a breath before he spat back, “And what about Connor, that’s so very important to the fabric of American society?”

Shiv’s chin bounced back, and her mouth lay open for a moment as she looked around the room for an audience to boo at Tom and cheer at her, validating her annoyance immediately. She began with confidence, “Connor happens to be pretty well-liked. Thanks to me, and only me,” her mauled nails were pressed into her chest just above her heart as she carried on the parade thrown in her honour. “Kendall is off doing fucking god knows what with Stewy, and Roman has been talking with Dad and Mattson, I think. He’s usually a slippery little bitch, but he’s just become extra slippery lately, and that only happens when dad is involved.”

Trying to pull him apart piece by piece, she stole glances, hoping that under scrutiny, he may fold. On what? Tom had no idea. 

“I don’t know anything about that,” even though it was the truth, Tom still spoke with a stutter. 

With a long exhale, Shiv deflated against the overly stuffed chair, “I shouldn’t be stressing myself out too much,” she stated decisively, as she still continued to pick at the heavily brocaded cushion across her lap.

In one confident motion, one down, Tom nodded, hoping it would kill the conversation like a smeared full stop at the end of the particularly sad letter. 

The atmosphere in the room swelled to discomfort, and Shiv moved to place her hands across her stomach, still hidden from view by the pillow. She began to chew on the edge of her lip; Tom wondered if it was involuntary. It sure looked that way. She looked almost scared, her evident indecisiveness leaving her vulnerable, even if it was only to Tom. 

Tamara spoke carefully, as if not to spook Shiv, “Shiv, what are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about-” Shiv started with a petulant tone before she interrupted herself, her voice settling into a manner far more truthful. Tom could barely recognise it, “ How I never wanted this, y’know?”

Tom’s whole body stiffened as Tamara asked, “Wanted what?”

“The baby, I never wanted a baby.” Her voice only threatened to shake, she had trained it well. 

Tom could never know such control, and his question exited his person in little more than a quiver, “My baby?” 

“Any baby,” she said with finality. 

“Oh right,” Tom continued in a borrowed breath, “Well, why’d you keep it?”

Shiv's head of flame hair snapped in Tom’s direction, “Don’t you want me to keep it?” 

She had reasonable control over her voice; however, the question began as a biting indictment and ended as a motion for Tom to convince her. This wasn’t the first time she’d done such a thing, and it never got easier when she did. It always settled within Tom like she was the ocean, and he was an unmoored anchor, drifting slowly down. 

Tom coughed to catch the rattle in his voice box, “Jesus Shiv, of course, but it’s not my fucking body, is it-”

Before Tom could finish his counterpoint, Shiv looked to the therapist, not really interested in Tom’s attempt to convince her at all. 

“Sorry, that was a kind of pointed statement, wasn’t it?” Shiv had at least remembered the tools their therapist had given them for better communication; it usually took a few tries and a well-timed rebuttal from Tom for her to recognise she had failed to use them. Tom was pretty sure that wasn’t exactly the point of those tools. He was sure they were supposed to be pots and pans and spoons and ladles, intended to build and nourish. Instead, she had taken a flint to them, whittled them into arrowheads and knives. Shiv could find a weapon in everything. 

Tucking up her legs beneath herself, Shiv spoke once again in that unfamiliar tone, “Y’know what my mom said to me? She told me she wished that we’d never been born.” She looked down and her hands and spun the wedding ring on her finger around and around as she decided what to say next, “Not just me, her kids in general, Ken and Rome, but I think me especially. She didn’t tell me that in those words exactly, but ….she told me she wished that she had dogs, dogs instead of children.”

There was a difference between knowing something was true and having it verified. There was a distinct difference between knowing that the earth would meet its fiery end one day and looking out into the night sky one black December night, whilst the stars blinked uncaringly in the distance and watching that end careen towards it. 

Finally, and despite the lump that had hardened in Tom’s throat, he spoke, “Doesn’t your mom hate dogs?”

“Yeah” Her answer was the truth, even though she clearly wanted it to be a lie. 

“Oh,” said Tom in lieu of anything else at all, and the word swelled in the room, expanding with every exhale. 

Tom rolled his tongue between his lips and hated that he was about to cry already. Usually, he could last until about the twenty-minute mark of their sessions. 

Luckily, Tamara spoke, “How does that make you feel in relation to your own child Shiv?”

“What kind of question is that?” Shiv snipped back, immediately defensive. 

“Our parents have a profound effect on us; they mould us into shapes that they sometimes don’t even realise they hold.” Tamara folded her hands into one another on her lap as she spoke, “Has your mother ever said anything like that to you growing up?” 

“Not that I can remember. It’s not really something you say to someone you supposedly love, is it? ‘I’m supposed to love you, but I don’t, and I don’t know why? ’ ” Shiv’s tone was mocking but filled with such profound sadness, even the great Shiv Roy, the great pretender, couldn’t hide it. 

As always, Shiv’s sadness sired his own. Tom stiffened and rubbed his arm as if kicked by an invisible foot. Shiv’s eyes darted over him before settling at a point on his lap, her lips pursed and quivering before she spoke again, “I think it was something that didn’t need saying.”

Tamara spoke carefully and with authority, “It’s had an effect on you. No child should ever have to question their parent’s love,” For a second and perhaps for the first time, she faltered, maybe having looked at the scowl on Shiv’s face, and continued, “I say should, because it does happen, often by parents who have had to question their own parents. Patterns of behaviour don’t just appear out of nowhere; they’re learned.”

The scowl on Shiv’s face morphed into something more volatile as she clearly processed what had been said to her. “Are you trying to excuse my shitty mother?” Shiv scoffed, venom thick in her voice. 

On some kind of instinct that he couldn’t quite place, Tom leaned forward and tapped at the expanse of the sofa between them, hoping that the repetitive sounds would calm her like rain upon a tin roof, “Shiv, honey, I don’t think that’s what she is trying to say-”

A scoff morphed into a laugh as Shiv interrupted him, “Tom, this isn’t about you. You had a perfect little suburbian Rockwellian bullshit life growing up-”

“It is about me, though, Shiv!” Tom interrupted her interruption with his own, “You’re my wife, and you’re carrying my baby…Our baby.” Tom folded up his arms and pivoted away from Shiv, which must have looked damning from Tamara’s perspective, “It kind of is a lot about me and my life actually if you feel like you can’t love our child as they deserve to be loved...”

“Tom, what are you saying?” Shiv asked, her testy tone punctuated with a whimper. 

Pouting, Tom replied incredulously into the absent space beside him, “I don’t know, it’s not about me, is it?”

If the room remained quiet, and everyone in it held their breaths, Tom was sure that he could hear Shiv’s eyes roll into the back of her head like a fruit machine when she spat back at him, “Oh, grow up!” 

Tom sucked his lower lip against his teeth and blinked slowly, perhaps hoping if he stayed really still, she might think he was dead and no longer a threat. 

His half-formed plan seemingly backfired as Shiv continued her attack, “This is one of your problems, you take everything so personally, not everything is about you Tom, sometimes people do shit and say shit for no fucking reason. You’re so selfish sometimes a-”

“Shiv”, Tamara interrupted sternly.

“Oh yes, I statements”, Shiv responded with a mock but headed the request anyway. “Okay, I think that you could never understand the fear that I have about not loving my own child correctly because my mother never loved me in the right way. I clearly can’t love you in the right way. Why would this kid be any different?” The words tumbled from her like a landslide, at first slowly and harmless and then all at once until she slipped down the side of the mountain along with them.

Tamara took a sharp inhale. If Tom wasn’t busy doing the same, he’d have probably thought that was rather unprofessional. 

Hesitantly, Tom looked toward her. For a second, he was too scared to look, as if he was expecting her to find her mangled and bloody at the bottom of a rockslide. If he’d take one look at her now, the memory of his beautiful wife would be gone, forever replaced with the bloody body at the bottom of the mountain. Humbled and vulnerable, barely breathing, entirely and only human. 

As if the final thought had convinced Tom, he looked toward her and tweaked his lips into a smile. 

Immediately Shiv twisted away from him, folded into the cushion across her stomach and spoke, “Don’t look at me like that. Like I’m some pitiful hysterical housewife- ” Tom knew she had probably intended for the statement to come across as biting, but it fell out of her as a plea. “-Okay, just I need a moment.”

Tamara responded, her voice returning to its usual insipid timbre, “That’s okay.” 

“I’m-” She paused and inhaled one deep breath as if to prolong what was about to tumble out of her next, “I’m worried that I’m not going to love my kid.” 

This time Tom found it easier to look at her, very quickly becoming acclimated to her honesty. And this was honesty by any means of honesty. This wasn’t Roy honesty; this was crackled breaths in a hospital bed honesty. 

Her bottom lip quivered as she carried on, breathing heavily and shakily between words, “I’m worried I’m going to hate and resent it for the rest of my life. I worry I’m going to turn out just like my mom, and my kid isn’t going to hate me, but it’s going to keep loving me even though I don’t, and I’m going to have to look them in the eyes and feel nothing at best and hate at worst.” 

Tom outstretched his palm on the sofa cushions, but she didn’t take it. Instead, he offered a paltry bit of wisdom he’d probably pulled out of a cracker somewhere, “None of us want to be our parents Shiv.”

“Why don’t you Tom?” She suddenly turned to face him. Her eyes were more brilliantly blue than usual, watery reflecting ponds that you could only ever see the worst of yourself within them. She blinked rapidly before she spoke again, probably aware of the fact that Tom was looking into her eyes, “Your parents are fucking squares, but they love you. They tell you that all the time. It’s why you’re the way that you are.”

The statement skewered Tom. He pulled out the spoon, whittled into a spear and tossed it back her way, “Which is what?”

“ Tom- ” She did this, said his name in such a manner that made him feel like he was the one attacking her trenches. 

“Yeah, but what is that?” He snapped, “Smothering?”

Tom caught Tamara’s eyes which were boring into him for being too confrontational. 

Palms out in front of him, he acquiesced, “Sorry, sorry.” 

“You’re” Shiv picked at a mauled hangnail and spoke to it instead of either of the people in the room, “You are smothering.”

“What is it about Tom’s behaviour that makes you feel smothered?” Tamara began before catching herself, “Remember to use I statements, Shiv.”

“I feel…smothered,” Shiv quickly expanded after Tom shuffled poignantly next to her, “I need my own space…Plus, it makes me feel bad...” She let out a resigned sigh and crossed her legs beneath the cushion, “That he’s giving me stuff that I just can’t give back.”

If Tom was to listen really carefully, he could hear the sounds of shingles dropping down the mountain once again, and if he listened really, really carefully, he could hear the dull rumble of what was about to follow. 

Tamara clicked her pen and placed it flat against her unused pad as she asked, “Can’t or won’t?”

It didn’t take long for Shiv to answer, “Can’t,” she said. Nobody asked her elaborate, yet she did anyway. She was clearly getting something from therapy. It was warming in a way, like a house fire or an acid burn. She swallowed and swallowed again, “It’s like there's just this piece of me missing, and whenever someone with that piece, Tom, comes near me, it makes me feel broken.”

After an eternity of silence, someone in the room responded. The better man, Tamara, replied, “You’re not broken, Shiv.” All Tom could do was sit frozen on his side of the couch. 

“I am compared to him.”

Tom’s eyes flitted over to Shiv, too paralysed to move anything else. 

“Are you jealous of Tom?”

Shiv’s eyes widened as she comprehended Tamara’s question, and instinctively she barked out a “Hah!” as all Roy’s did when confronted with the notion that there was something in the world that did not and could not belong to them. Eventually, that laugh turned into a pitiful, “Yes.”

As if the word was the final rock holding the mountain in place, words began to fall from Shiv, fast and unrelenting, not caring where they fell or who they hit.

“I feel jealous and broken and not good enough, just how my mom would make me feel, and it makes me want to hurt you, Tom. I just want to be good enough with that piece missing, and you make me feel like I’m not.”

The words stuck in Tom’s dry throat for a second before they materialised into the room, “But I love you the way you are, whatever pieces in whatever order.”

All of a sudden, Shiv was facing Tom again; around her eyes were red, along with the tip of her nose, “That's precisely it, Tom!” “Don’t you get it, like, it’s a fundamental problem because you love me in that way, it just reminds me that I'll never be enough, I’ll never be able to love you in that way? I’ll never be able to love anything in that way. Love our kid in that way….”

She trailed off, and Tom could feel his heartbeat hammer in his throat. 

Before Tom could even begin to fathom what to say in response to that, Tamara stepped in, “Toxic relationships are cyclical, but fifty percent of the problem is noticing that there’s a cycle in the first place and then a further twenty percent is understanding that there’s a problem with it that you want to change. You and your relationships can be anything you want to be.” 

“But I can never be someone other than me.”

Tom spoke after too long of considering what to say, “That’s true, but the issue isn’t with you, is it?” 

“Don’t you want someone who loves you the way you want?”

Tom hated how Shiv’s voice sounded pitiful. For once, she was being vulnerable, telling the truth in therapy instead of ticking enough boxes to keep Tamara off her back, yet she still felt pity toward Tom. 

At first, he was angry about it all; he had to be right? That was the correct reaction to everything he’d been through with Shiv. The cheating, the dismissals, putting his beloved Mondale in a cage. If that was the way that Shiv loved him, then how could he not be angry with himself. At one point in his life, he’d had standards about how he treated others and himself. But time could heal all things, but it could corrupt them too. Over time palaces turned into rubble and ruin, and the world wouldn’t know them any other way. That could happen to a person too.

“I don’t actually know what I want…I think if you’d have asked me that question six months ago, I'd have lied and said no, and actually, the answer was yes, but now I just don’t know. You’re a cat, and I can’t turn you into a dog, Shiv. You’re never going to love me like a dog, you’re just not, and I have to make peace with it.”

Shiv mumbled back far too quickly for any thought to have gone into her response, “Or you could leave?” 

“Well, you could leave,” he sneered back, “Stop trying to push me away.”

There was a slow shift in Shiv’s tone; it was veering back into the way she usually spoke, all business.“I’m not pushing you away, Tom. I’m just stating the facts. You’re a loving guy, why wouldn’t you just leave me for someone who loves you, right?”

“Because I’m fucking stubborn”, Tom spat back, “and I love you, Shiv. Maybe the first reason wasn’t the best reason to stay in this or any relationship but the second one was.”

For a moment, Shiv looked at him as if this was the first time Tom had said I love you to her. He remembered it well. It was on a ski lift somewhere above a mountain in Vermont. Her mouth hung open for a while. She didn’t say it back until they met again at the bottom of the mountain. He’d scooped her up into his arms and peppered her face with kisses like snowflakes. 

“Yeah…I still don’t know Tom. I want to make it work, I really do,” Shiv spoke in her politician’s voice, and Tom’s heart hung on the ‘but’ he knew was coming. She sucked in a quick breath, and her voice faltered a tiny amount, “And I’m trying, really fucking hard.”

“I can tell, and I appreciate it, I appreciate it so fucking much” Tom didn’t care about how desperate he sounded. For every moment he hated Shiv, there was a moment he loved her, unequivocally. 

“I love you, Tom. I do love you-”

Finally, Tom verbalised the terrible feeling sinking in his gut like a ship struck by a u-boat, “I feel like there’s a but coming.”

Shiv responded, her voice calm and soft, strange actually, “There’s no but.” She smiled without it reaching her eyes, “You once said that you were really pretty unhappy with me. Is that still the case?”

He tilted his head and opened his mouth; no words came out. Shiv and Tamara looked at him expectantly. However, after a minute, Tamara looked away. Even for a professional, it was a little too much to bear. “Sometimes”, He finally mustered, “But less, I think.”

“Don’t you want it to be all the time?” Shiv asked as soon as Tom had finished talking. 

Tom chuckled when he probably shouldn’t have, “I think that would be a little unreasonable, don’t you think?”

Shiv rolled her eyes again, “Don’t be a martyr, Tom.”

“Well, do I make you happy?”

“You’ve always made me happy, Tom, but my issue wasn’t that.”

Tom ruminated on what she’d said, sucking on the words like the world’s sourest candy. As he swallowed, it upset his stomach. 

“It was that…that wasn’t enough?”

“Yeah”, she stated in nothing more than a whisper.

Tom used to think that somewhere down the line, the love had run out. That happened between people all the time, didn’t it? However, he’d never thought that love itself was never going to be enough, that making his partner happy would lead to his relationship's downfall. He also never thought that it would happen to him fucking twice . 

“Well, then that's the trillion-dollar question, if me making you happy isn’t enough, then what will be?” 

Before Tamara could silently scold him, he corrected his intention, “I’m not trying to attack you. I genuinely want to know the answer.”

By now, Shiv was looking out into the room again, her body turned almost entirely away from her husband, “It’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Happiness? It’s just a concept that we made up in the fifties when there weren’t any wars to fight, so people needed some shit to get them through the day.”

“Am I happy?” She asked herself with a scathing hiss, “What kind of unanswerable bullshit question is that?”

It was the kind of question only an unhappy person would ever think to ask themselves. He knew that because he asked it to himself all the time.

Tamara stepped in, cutting off Shiv’s nihilist ramble that would make Nietzsche proud, “Tom didn’t ask that question. Do you find yourself asking yourself impossible questions, so you don’t have to look for the answer?” 

“Doesn’t everyone do that?”

Tamara shook her head in response to Shiv. When she took a softened yet firm tone like this, Tom could hear the hint of an accent in her voice, Uganda maybe? “Not everyone, not always. You’re an incredibly smart, capable woman. Do you feel that if you do not like the outcome or can even control the outcome of a question, you change it? It’s okay not to know things.”

Reflectively, Shiv nodded and pivoted her body on the sofa, not to face Tom but not to face away from him either, “To answer your question Tom, I need more than to just be happy, I think.”

“Can I give it to you?”

Chewing on her lower lip, she shook her head before answering, “I don’t think so.” 

“Can anyone?” Tom asked, masochistically. 

“No.”

“Can you give it yourself?” Tom asked again, almost actually hearing the whip crack as it tore into his own back.

“No.”

“Then why’d you need it?” 

Suddenly, Shiv’s teeth were gritted as she answered, “I just do.”

It wasn’t the answer Tom was looking for. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to find what he was looking for, but he knew, whatever it was, it wasn’t that. 

“What is it , Shiv?”

“You know when you betrayed me in Italy? You fucked us all seven ways to Sunday?” She turned to Tom, and Tom nodded. She pointed her finger downwards and drove it into the pillow, “That. I need that. That was the most I’ve ever loved you.” She let her hand fall into a fist and laid it on the cushion before unfurling it and tracing a finger along the pattern. 

Finally, she spoke again after a moment of pure silence, “and I think that’s wrong. It’s the wrong thing to be chasing?” She phrased it like a question, which broke Tom’s heart because what had to go so wrong in a person’s life for them to ask themselves that question?

She laughed to break the inertia that had built in the room, “Hah god fuck, I sound pathetic.” 

Tamara shook her head, and so did Tom.

Shiv smiled a little and craned her head to look at Tom. The humourless laugh left her face for it to be replaced with surprise, “Oh shit Tom are you crying?”

On instinct, he touched his face. He found his cheeks damp. He had no idea when that happened, but in truth, it could have happened at any time. 

“It’s okay, it’s…” he touched his cheek again, “It’s not okay actually. I don’t know what to do with these feelings.” 

Tamara leaned forward and handed Tom the box of tissues that had been sitting underutilised on the coffee table, “What feelings are those, Tom?”

He turned to the side and dabbed at his face as he spoke, “Knowing that one of the times I hated myself the most, that was when you loved me the most.”

Bundling up the damp tissue into his hand, he spoke again, “I don’t, I don’t always like who I am, Shiv.”

“Neither do I.”

“What a fucking pair,” he laughed with a choked out sob.

“Yeah, ha, look at the state of us Wambsgans.” Her smile was genuine; it reached the creases of her eyes. It was kind of breathtaking in the way that a house fire was breathtaking. 

“I don’t want to have to be that person for you to love me, Shiv.”

“I don’t want that either; I’ll never be a dog, right? But like maybe, I don’t know? I could learn some cat tricks or something?” She said candidly, her animated shrug at the end of her sentence reminded Tom of Roman, “I don’t know, I’m not good with metaphors.” 

“I’ll help you,” he sighed and felt another round of tears collect on his long lashes, “I have written a poem before.”

“For Shiv?” Tamara asked, and honestly, Tom had forgotten she was there. 

“No, my first wife,” Tom’s voice trailed as he thought of Evelynn and how they used to sit in her brother’s old room in the basement of her house because she liked how quiet it was there to read. “I was nineteen, and we just started dating. I wrote her this corny ass poem because she liked romance books.” 

“Did she like the poem?”

The poem wasn’t very good, Tom thought. It was all technical skill and no soul, and at first, he thought that was the reason why she didn’t like it. Honestly, it probably was one of the reasons. The other, far more glaring, was that she left him for another woman a little over two years later. 

“I remembered the look on her face when she heard it, and I don’t know why I remembered it, but I did. I always thought, what a funny way of expressing adoration`” Tom took a weighty inhale and chuckled at the absurdity of what he was saying, ''Then I realised, after we broke up, that it wasn’t adoration or whatever I thought it was. It was sadness, there was this deep-rooted sadness in her that I could never get to. But I never noticed.” 

Tom wasn’t very good at noticing things, or perhaps he was, but he was just even better at ignoring things. 

“How did that make you feel?” Tamara asked. 

Momentarily, Tom glanced at Shiv. He didn’t expect it, but she was listening intently, her face calm and neutral, the vestiges of the smile still on her face like how a sunset still lingers after dark. 

“I think I love things so tightly I can’t see when they can’t breathe,” he began. “I think I just want so badly to be loved and needed. I kind of don’t consider what the other person wants.” 

Tom glanced at Shiv again, the sunset on her face completely gone. He pulled at the corners of the damp tissue in his hand and continued, “Makes me feel like a shitty person, a shitty person about something I never thought I would feel shitty about.”

Eyebrows briefly pinching together, Tarama pried him for more information, “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, have you ever watched a movie from the early 2000s? Actually, any movie ever? Seems like everyone and their mom wants to be loved like that,” Tom paused before he finished his thought. He intended it to come out with a scoff, but he could only hear the melancholy in his own voice, “and they don’t actually. Which is kind of a cruel joke.”

Tamara chuckled a little as if what Tom had said was, in fact, a joke, “That’s not real life, Tom.”

“Obviously, it’s not,” he mocked in a voice he usually reserved for Greg. “It just feels like everyone knows something I don’t, y’know? It’s like I studied for the test all my life, and then when I get to take it, it’s in Spanish.” 

“Did you know that my favourite film is Love Actually? Which is apt…And ironic.”

Maybe Tom was going to find a new favourite film. He couldn’t get that gay cowboy film that Greg made him watch out of his head. That’s all a favourite film needed to be, something he couldn’t stop thinking about? Besides, that was about love, too, right? Tragic and disgustingly beautiful at times but mostly tragic. People talked about porn rotting young men’s brains, but he’d never had a problem with porn, even when he was a teenager. But romcoms? Fucking toxic. 

Tamara always had this look when Tom got too self-flagellating; maybe he should tell her that his favourite song was Poor Poor Pitiful Me by Warren Zevon. But that would have been far too on the nose. “Nobody is telling you you’re wrong, Tom.” 

“It feels that way, though,” he scrunched up the tissue as tightly as he could in his fist and squeezed it like a stress ball, “Something is wrong-”

Before Tamara could interject, Shiv did, “You never wrote me a poem.”

“Did you want a poem, Shiv?” Tamara didn’t just sound surprised when she asked that. She was actually surprised. 

“Haha, fuck no,” the final word in Shiv’s statement was elongated like a steam whistle, just to make sure she got her point across. 

Lips turned down in something that looked a little like pride. Tamara looked at Shiv and then at Tom again, “Maybe you don’t love as tightly as you think, Tom.”

“You didn’t write me a poem when that kind of thing is in your blood. The doc’s right. Cut yourself some slack, Wambsgans.” 

Tom laughed a little, and as he did, another stray tear rolled down his cheek. Quickly he flicked it away with his index finger. 

Not changing the subject, Shiv pushed on, her voice thick with self-importance, “Has anybody ever wanted a poem written for them?”

“I don’t think so,” For some reason, Tom’s thoughts fell to Greg, lover of love, great at romance in theory, terrible at it in practice. He could definitely imagine Greg writing one for a woman, but the plausible option was Greg blinking back tears from his oversized eyes as one was read to him. Usually, he wouldn’t voice whatever banal thoughts that came up about Greg, but this was therapy, the home of banal thoughts. “Maybe Greg,” he mused. 

“Hah, what would someone write about cousin Greg?” Shiv sneered, “An ode to Greg?”

Tom laughed along, and pulled something from Shakespeare’s first sonnet and receipted it with over the top conviction, even placing a hand over his heart in his giggling chest, “Oh Gregory, From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die-”

“Could you imagine?” Shiv snickered.

Tom shook his head quickly and removed his hand from his chest and his quickly beating heart.

The giggles at Greg’s expense dissipated into the room, leaving a strangely jovial atmosphere in the room for once. 

“Tom, who is Gregory?” Tamara’s question ripped through the atmosphere like a machete through pudding. 

Immediately Shiv answered, “He’s my cousin.”

Gaze fixed on Tom, Tamara clarified, “I asked Tom, Shiv. Who is Greg to you?”

“He’s Shiv’s cousin. We’ve definitely talked about him before,” Tom crossed his legs, folded his arms and straightened his back. He began again, a sneer in his voice that wasn’t usually reserved for people he had any respect for, “Have you not been listening? What are we paying you for if you’re not listening, Tamara?”

Tamara crossed her own legs and flicked through the pages of her notebook to something a few pages back, “Yes, you’ve mentioned him a lot.” 

Scoffing and barking back a response, Tom retaliated, “Well, I’m not here, with my wife, to talk about her weird string bean of a cousin.”

Shiv nodded enthusiastically at what was clearly the most obvious thing in the world to her.

“Yet you mention him a lot, Tom.”

“Do I?” Tom glowered at Tamara; he didn’t dare look across the sofa at Shiv. “I don’t,” he spat to drive home a point he didn’t think needed making.

Tamara spoke again, clearly having ignored what Tom had just tried to say, “Why did he come to mind when you thought about someone who may like poetry?” 

She was really getting on his last nerve. He wondered how frowned upon it would be to flip the table during a therapy session. Fuck he was thinking of Greg again. Fuck her. Fuck this.

Tom was too busy seething to notice Shiv shift beside him, a confused look settling across her face. When he did notice, she was already leaning forward and firing pointed words in Tamara’s direction, “Are you insinuating something?”

All of a sudden, Tom was hit by something. He didn’t exactly know what, but it was overwhelming and immediately threatened to be life-changing if he thought about it too much.

“Tom?” Shiv asked, turning her attention to Tom.

In return, he laughed because that’s all he could do, really. He gave her an easy smile and explained himself, “Honey, please, it’s fucking Greg. I only said it because he’s the exact kind of sap who likes that shit. Wants to feel special and important when he’s not.”

Satisfied with his response, Tom relaxed back into the sofa cushions, his smugness absorbed by them. 

As Tamara asked, “Is he not important to you, Tom?” he felt like those cushions had been spring-loaded, and he was going to be fired across the room.

On instinct, he gripped the arm of the sofa, loosening it when Shiv clocked the tips of his fingers going red and his knuckles going white. 

Tom let out something that could be called wheeze adjacent before answering, “Well, no.” 

Circling her pen in the air, Tamara pressed again, “If he was in the room with us, would he be surprised by that answer?”

“No”

Suddenly Tom recognised the feeling; it was the same collection of emotions he felt before congress. Senator Eavis, poking him and prodding him about Greg. Why did everybody want to know about Gregory John Hirsch? Who made Greg the most important thing about Tom?

By now, Shiv was getting visibly irritated with the situation, “Come on, Tom! You see him all the time, he’s your best friend. I don’t know what you see in him, but it’s clearly something.” 

Tom held up his palms and smiled, trying to make light of the whole situation. Situation? Why was there a situation to begin with? This was just absolute bullshit! “There’s nothing going o-”

Shiv’s hand was outplayed and pressed between her two collar bones, “Why are you getting so fucking defensive, Tom?”

“I just don’t see why we are talking about Greg in this setting!” Tom raised his voice to match what he thought was Shiv’s level of anger but accidentally completely overshot.

Shiv’s face went from mild irritation, bonafide anger to deep intrigue, all in the time it took for Tom to realise he’d probably chosen a bit of a weird hill to die on. Maybe Greg would plant a flag for him. 

“No, I want to talk about Greg,” Shiv’s voice was animated and over-pronounced, it was a habit she’d picked up from Tom, but she only did it when she was particularly wound up about something.

Before Tom could respond with a half-decent defence, she caught herself and rubbed at her forehead and mumbled, “God, I never ever thought I’d say those words.”

That gave Tom time to collect his thoughts into a somewhat cohesive narrative, “What do you want to know about Greg? He’s my best friend. You said it yourself.” 

Shiv opened and closed her mouth once before the runaway train of Tom’s somewhat needless alibi of a genuinely innocuous situation careened out of the station, “Are you jealous of the time I spend with him? Because It honestly seems like you are?”

Perhaps that was too much. It all stunk of a man compensating for something. The hysterical wife in a police interrogation for her husband’s murder, the child, crying over the broken cookie jar they’d been stealing out of or the boy on the playground, hands wrapped around the pigtails of the girl he liked. 

He wasn’t compensating for anything.

He wasn’t compensating for anything, right?

It had seemed like an eternity had passed when Shiv finally cried out, “I am not jealous of cousin Greg, Jesus! I just want to know why you’re being so weird about him? I feel kind of off about this whole thing , Tom.”

“I am not being weird. You are making me feel fucking crazy” Tom caught himself and gave Tamara a sardonic look, primarily out of habit. “I,” he emphasised, “I feel fucking crazy. Am I fucking crazy?”

Shiv’s eyes were wide and almost close to laughter when she stuttered out, “Jesus, Tom.” 

“Well, yes, Cousin Greg is important to me.” 

Shiv seemed to completely ignore what Tom had said and even seemed to ignore the fact that he was in the room, judging by the fact that she began to speak as if he wasn’t, “I don’t think Tom told you the first time, but y’know he got Greg promoted alongside him when he betrayed us all.”

Tom didn’t have siblings, but he suddenly felt like his sister was tattling on him to their mother.

Desperately, he tried to even out the tit for tat. Unfortunately, he did that with an outright lie, in therapy of all places, “He was my assistant, of course, he came with-”

In the time between breaths, he tried to place the story he’d replaced with a lie but couldn’t find it. It all suddenly seemed very damning that he couldn’t. 

“Oh, he was, wasn’t he?” Shiv confirmed. She confirmed his story and the fact that she had paid very little attention to Tom, considering that Greg hadn’t been his assistant for no less than three months since before that incident. 

As the room recalibrated itself, Tom spoke again. Another half-truth, “I latched onto Greg because he was like me, an outsider and I like, felt a connection with him. Mutual experiences and all that.” Maybe not a half-truth, but something that was wholly true when it first happened, but in the time since, everything around it had blossomed so incredibly vibrantly and large, like the Amazon rainforest, the original truth felt paltry in comparison.  

“Eugh, I’ve never said that out loud. Don’t tell him I said that, ever.” 

Clearly placated, Shiv waved her hand, the sour look on her face gone, “Dude, your weird little relationship with him is your weird thing. The only thing I cared about was you being so weird about it; now I know you’re like pauper brother’s in arms that makes sense.”

“I think it was just the realisation that Greg, cousin Greg, is my best friend. Wouldn’t you feel weird too if you’d just had that epiphany?”

Tilting her head from side to side, Shiv responded, “Yeah, probably.” 

Shiv seemed happy, but Tamara was still looking at him like there was something he wasn’t telling them. He wondered what code of ethics it would infringe upon if he was to drag her into the waiting room and ask her to tell him what she was clearly searching for. Instead of all that, she simply summed up the conversation, “You know him well enough to know that he would like a poem written about him.”

“I guess I do,” said Tom, wholly unsatisfied by the whole exchange but relieved that it had ended. 

For a moment, the only sound in the room was the clock that Tamara would point to when they had five minutes left of their session. Shiv spoke first, with a playful lilt to her voice, “Wambsgans, do you want someone to write a poem about you?”

“No.”

It was far too fast of a response, and Shiv picked up on it almost instantly, “You do!” No lying in therapy.”

It wasn’t that he wanted anyone to sit down and write him a bunch of words on a page, poets throughout history had done a better job than anyone who ever knew him could have, but he couldn’t deny to himself that the notion that someone could feel the emotions that might incline them to do so, felt kind of… nice. 

“This is entrapment,” he mumbled, much to Shiv’s glee. He sighed and let his arms lay loose by his sides. 

“It’s cute, in a way.” Tom wasn’t entirely sure what ‘way’ that was in this context. Luckily Shiv didn’t elaborate, “I’m not going to write you one, you know that?”

Tom shrugged, “I never said I wanted one in the first place, Shiv.”

She beamed at him, and to him, it felt like an odd time to do so. 

“It is telling, though,” Shiv began with uncharacteristic insightfulness, “You love people the way you want to be loved, and you want to love people by writing the poems. I know you, Tom.”

“You do,” he admitted, and she slunk her hand over to his side of the couch and intertwined it with his. 

“Besides,” Shiv started in a tone that could only be described as bitchy, “Who writes a poem about a man?”

“You’re just not the poem writing type.”

“Been inspired to write poetry about many men, Tom?” All of a sudden, Shiv’s laugh felt like a thousand thumbtacks sticking into him. 

“A couple, maybe.”

By now, Tom was sulking, but Shiv didn’t really seem to notice. 

“You’re an odd guy, Wambsgans.”

As Shiv’s jibe lay responseless in the room, Tamara focused all of her attention on Tom. The strange thing about her face was that it was completely blank. He expected her to be giving something more. He didn’t know why he expected it, and even more inexplicably, he wanted her to be giving him something more. 

Tom squirmed and squeezed on Shiv’s hand, “I’m glad we are trying Shiv. I’m really, really grateful for the effort you’re putting in.”

“I want to make it work,” The look she gave him could only be described as sweet, sweet for Shiv Roy at least, “I really do.”

As the dust of their mutual assurance settled, Tom drummed his fingers on Shiv’s palm. Suddenly hit with the desire to be truthful, he began to sputter, each word getting caught on the last, like a particularly inept hurdle jumper collecting them around his legs, “You know that time I said I slept with that woman? I didn’t, I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to.” 

Shiv’s eyes were like saucers as he spoke. It was almost disheartening that he was that good of a liar that it had all warranted such a reaction from Shiv. Or even more upsettingly, she had paid so little attention that his half-hearted attempts at convincing her had been enough. It wouldn’t have been the first time. 

“I can’t do that, this whole open thing. You can, but I can’t do it”. I won’t hold it against you or anything like, I know I have to be less smothering and less me about everything. But I can’t do it, Shiv.” 

Shiv spoke slowly, “Are you sure, Tom?” 

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh.

“To be honest, I can see how unhappy it makes you…and besides, I’ve not been sleeping around being pregnant and all, that would be so weird, like eugh.” 

“Thanks, Shiv”

Despite telling the truth, Tom felt somehow heavier. What he wanted to say was, ‘Why didn’t she offer to stop too?’ He didn’t want to force her to stop, he’d somehow passed the point of caring about it, but he just wanted one offer to meet him somewhere in the middle. 

“Do you think you’ll return to it once the baby is born?” Tamara asked curiously. 

“Yeah, I mean, probably…If I have time.”

Tamara turned to him again, “Tom, is that alright with you?”

“Yes, I just said it was,” he responded with a blank face and withdrew his hand from Shiv’s. 

Not long after that, Tamara pointed to the clock and provided a quick summary of the session. Tom couldn’t tell if her observations were astute or not, as he didn’t really listen. His mind was elsewhere, far, far away, completely uncharted. They waved their goodbyes and left the office. Tamara’s assistant waved a goodbye of his own, and as usual, they both ignored him. 

It began to rain during the car ride back to the apartment. Rain thudded against the outside of the window as it misted on the inside. Shiv was in good spirits as she tried to explain something about Connor’s user base polls that had come back last week. She was saying something about some data analysis software that hadn’t been adequately implemented. Tom nodded along, trying to pay attention. 

Suddenly Tom’s hand was on Shiv’s stomach, and she stopped talking, “I like Marcus for a boy”, said Tom as he patted her stomach. 

“Huh,” She postulated; keeping her face straight, she continued, I thought if we had a boy, we’d name him Logan.”

As if it was scalding, Tom retracted his fingers from Shiv’s stomach.“Really?” he asked, his teeth cooling as they were exposed to the air of the car in a half snarl, half grimace. 

“Hah, god, you’re so gullible!” She jibed and knocked his leg with her own, “I like Marcus.”

“I like April for a girl or Olivia.” Tom didn’t say he’d had those names picked out since he was eleven years old. For some reason, he’d always envisioned having a girl, two girls to be precise, and he’d teach them how to make pancakes whilst the sunrise streamed into their marble kitchen whilst the city rose beneath them. 

“They’re both nice,” Shiv mumbled as she pulled out her phone and began scrolling.

“What about you?” 

Immediately she responded noncommittally, “I’ve not really thought about it.”

“Well, we still have time.”

Shiv wasn’t looking at him, but he smiled non the less. 

After the moment passed, Tom pulled out his own phone, and his thumb idled over Greg’s contact name before pressing it. The last messages they’d shared between them were about what film Tom was going to pick for their movie night on Friday. In light of recent events and conversations, Tom typed out a message to cancel. 

Before he could hit send, Shiv nudged him, “Tom?”

“Mhmm”, he answered, deleting the message entirely and wording it less formally, calling it a rain-check instead. 

Suddenly Tom could hear the unmistakable sound of the divider going up between themselves and Leo.

Tom watched the back of his head disappear as Shiv began, “You don’t have to answer me, but-” 

Overcome with sudden panic, Tom closed the message to Greg and left the home screen open, a photo of Mondale with a hand buried in his fur.

“What did you mean, exactly, by you’ve wanted to write poems about men before?”

A wave of relief hit him, and he barked out a shaky laugh, “Hah! That? I was worried it was something bad. Oh god, you know how it is. Odysseus, Beowulf, Achilles, tales of great men, that sort of thing. I would never have such a talent to...well. You see what I mean?”

She looked at her hands cupped in her lap, “Oh right, that makes sense, I suppose. It’s just I thought maybe-”

“Maybe what?” he asked, the vestiges of laughter still creasing his face. 

She looked up, and a coy smile pulled at her lips, “Promise you won't laugh?”

“When have I ever laughed at you, my honey badger?”

“Tom, eugh.”

Shiv was still jovial, but Shiv’s request had hung far too long. Tom was beginning to feel uneasy.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice suddenly solemn, his heart beating loudly in his throat. 

“Well, it’s kind of funny because when I first met you, I did think you were gay.”

Tom never really thought the word flabbergasted quite conveyed the meaning which it was designed to entail. But, regardless of that, he was feeling pretty fucking flabbergasted. 

“What? I’m not gay Shiv,” He pointed enthusiastically to his wedding ring, and then to her swollen stomach and finally to her crotch, “I don’t think many gay men love her as much as I do!” Tom hacked out a singularly uncomfortable cough.

“Tom, don’t be gross; I know you’re not gay. It’s like,” She sighed and feigned an arch with her hands, “a spectrum.” 

Immediately, Tom’s hackles rose, and he pivoted as far away from Shiv as the car door and his seatbelt would allow.“Oh god, what like, bohemian shit is this?” he snarled into the window, his close breath misting it even further.

“It’s not bohemian. It's science. People can be one hundred percent straight or one hundred percent gay, and then it kind of like, slides around on that scale, or not even on the scale at all, Tom. I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to you. It’s 2019.”

After getting past the hump of his sulk and thinking of a witty retort, primarily because of the latter, Tom turned around again. He waggled his hands in the air and complained, “Sorry, I don’t make a habit of going on Twitter and talking about my feelings.”

“Fuck you, I’m trying to like have an honest conversation with you, and you’re being such a prick about it.” In a flagrant act of dismissal, she picked up her dormant phone from her lap and began scrolling through it again. 

“Honest about what?” Tom snapped, tempted the slap the silly little rectangle from her hands.

She closed the device with a poignant click and slammed it face down onto her lap, and sneered, “What do you think?” 

“Do you wanna know where on that scale I fall, Shiv?”

She nodded once and folded her arms, her fingers tapping impatiently against her shirt. “I do, Tom.”

“One hundred percent fucking straight”

“Okay fine whatever,” her tapping fingers turned into a dismissive flick of her wrist, “Well, you know I’m not.”

“I don’t,” his voice rose and fell on the ‘O’. 

Tom could tell that Shiv wanted to shout, but she kept her voice to a dull hiss, “I asked you for a fucking threesome Tom. Of course, I’m not one hundred percent straight.”

It was utterly unbeknownst to Tom why she started this conversation here, of all places. 

“I just thought that was a thing people did in your hippy lifestyle,” it was a genuine thought that Tom had held for quite a while, even before Shiv. 

“Oh so, Mr hundred percent, you’d suck a dick just for the hell of it, just because that’s what people do?”

“No”, he started, quickly he began correcting himself and making it worse all at the same time, “Well, maybe. I don’t fucking know.” Not allowing Shiv to rebuke what he’d just said, he added a final incredulous thought, “To be honest, I’m upset that you didn’t feel open enough to tell me about you before now.”

Her eyebrows were halfway up her forehead when she responded to him plainly and calmly as if she had never committed the high sin of lying to her spouse before, “I thought you knew Tom, I’ve never tried to hide it.”

“Well, why not?” he spat back.

Now she genuinely was surprised, the thumb that had made its way into her mouth fell slowly, and her mouth remained agape, “Why not? What kind of question is that?! Do you want to know why I didn’t try and hide it? That’s so fucked up…I didn’t take you for a bigot-”

“I’m not a fucking bigot!” he argued back with a pinching feeling gnawing at his stomach like he’d swallowed a colony of rats. 

She was glaring at him expectantly; she was looking for an explanation.

“I want to know why you didn’t hide it when I had to… Uh…When I fucking hid it”

“To be honest, you didn’t hide it very well,” she sneered.

Tom wanted to jump out of the car. He didn’t care if he got flattened by a bus or his head sheared off by a lampost like in that film Greg had forced him to sit through. He was naked, battered at the bottom of a rockslide, and Shiv was poking him with a stick that she had taken the time to sharpen. 

Instead of opening the door and tossing himself out, he just spat, loudly and mercilessly, “Fuck you, Shiv.”

“Why fuck me? I just came out to you and tell me to go fuck myself.”

“Well, you said it wasn’t a big fucking secret, so why do you care so much? No skin of your teeth telling me, your husband about it” He imitated a sprinkling motion, “just peppering it into conversation.” 

She folded her arms and turned away from him, “I don’t know what to say to you, Tom.”

A minute, maybe two passed before Tom chided, “We are clearly learning a lot from therapy then.” He probably shouldn’t have made the joke, but he wanted to anyway. It’s not like Shiv was even listening to him anymore. 

“I know the sex of the baby,” she announced, “I wanted to save it for a nicer moment, but now is as good as any.”

Tom froze in his seat. 

She spoke unceremoniously, almost viciously, every good thing twisted into a weapon, “It’s a boy, he’s a boy. Marcus, yeah?”

Tom didn’t react to the news, he simply asked, “When did you find out?”

“It doesn’t matter.” 

“It does matter because you’re keeping another, really fucking important thing from me, your husband.” Tom pointed to himself in the chest, hard enough it may even leave a mark. 

Shiv’s sulking head whipped around and her face was contorted and ugly, filled with fake self-importance, “Jesus Tom, you can’t be angry about me not telling you about being bi before, you can’t pressure someone into coming out, that’s really fucking uh, not okay.”

He hated it when she did this, twisted and twisted and twisted until she’d twisted it into Tom’s hands. Quivering as he held the knife that he didn’t even realise he was holding. 

“Don’t bullshit me, Shiv. You just told me it was no big deal and that you thought I already knew.”

“Well, it’s not like you wanted to utilise that part of me.”

“It’s not about, fuck, fucking utilizing you, not everything is ‘how does it serve my interests?’ You’re my wife, and I want to know you.”

Finally, she snapped, “Well, I don’t fucking want that.” It was the truth, the most honest thing she’d said all day. 

“Jesus Shiv, what are we spending thousands of dollars on then?” his voice was calmer than it ought to be, clearly already resigned.

When she tried to backtrack, “I don’t fucking know Tom! Ah fuck I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought you knew already, like genuinely. I want you to know me. I do.” Her false pleas fell on deaf ears. Tom’s phone buzzed in his hand, and he flipped it over to check the screen.