Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“It’s good to see you again, Eddie,” Frank says. There’s no judgment in the way he says it, Eddie knows that there isn’t. Still, he feels a little bit guilty. It’s one of the things he wanted to work on when he first started going to therapy. That lingering feeling of guilt he carries with him. The last time he talked to Frank feels like a lifetime ago now. So much has changed since then, Eddie thinks.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been back for a while,” Eddie says even though he knows he shouldn’t.

“We’re here for you, Eddie. If you feel that you don’t need to see me as much that’s perfectly fine,” Frank tells him, “but I’m still happy to see you back, of course.”

“Yeah, I don’t think staying away has been the best choice, to be honest,” Eddie explains. He feels a little bit like a child at the principal’s office. He knows he’s not going to get in trouble, and yet…

“Well, you’re here now, that’s what’s important,” Franks says, “what made you decide to come back now?”

It’s a difficult question to answer. Not because Eddie doesn’t know the answer. He does. At least he thinks he does. He just doesn’t really know where to start.

“Christopher left,” Eddie says after a long pause, “He’s gone to Texas to stay with his grandparents for the summer.” The way he says it it almost sounds like it’s not that big of a deal. His son is spending the summer with his family in Texas. That’s what Eddie has been telling most people. He doesn't want to think about what he'll tell them if Christopher doesn't return when school starts again after the summer. 

“Okay, so you're worried about the empty nest? Frank asks.

“No, it’s not really that. I mean sure, it’s been strange being alone in the house the past few days, but that’s not it,” Eddie tries to explain. Usually, when he tells people about it they don't have any follow-up questions, so he never really had to lie. But this is not like that. So, after a beat, Eddie adds, “it’s that he left because of me.”

“Why do you think that he left because of you?” Frank asks.

“Because he told me,” Eddie simply says. And then he tells Frank the whole story. About Kim and Marisol. About the dates that weren’t quite dates and about that night when Kim showed up at his door looking so much like Shannon that for a moment, he actually believed it was her. Eddie is grateful that Frank remains so calm and professional about it all. He wouldn’t blame anyone for laughing at a story as crazy as that.

“But that’s not really what I want to talk about today,” Eddie says after he finally finishes his tale.

“Okay, what do you want to talk about then?” Frank asks and Eddie can tell that he’s worried that he’s just trying to distract from all that. Maybe he is, in part, but that’s something to dissect another time.

“I think I want to talk about Shannon,” Eddie says. Somehow, he never really did talk about her before. Not to Frank, not to anyone. Not really anyway. He has talked about Christopher a lot, and about being a dad. And of course, he has talked about her death and his grief and about losing his son’s mother. But he never really talked about her and him and how they ended up here.

“Well then, tell me about Shannon,” Frank says and leans back in his chair.

When Eddie first meets Shannon, she is dating his best friend, Alex. In fact, Eddie knows about Shannon long before he actually meets her in person. One summer, on the last day before ninth grade, Eddie and Alex are sitting by the lake near Alex’s house where they spent so many hours. There’s a park surrounding the lake, and a path that goes along it where people often come to walk their dogs or go for a run. When they first started coming here, Eddie and Alex would sit on a bench and watch the people go by. And then, one day, Alex found a hidden passage through the hedges behind the fence around the parking lot that leads to the other side of the lake the path doesn’t reach. Since then, it’s become their spot, just for the two of them to come to if they want to get away from everything for a little bit.

“I got a girlfriend,” Alex says after they sat down on the yellow patch of grass. He's mindlessly picking handfuls of dry grass and then scattering them at his feet.

“Oh yeah?” Eddie asks. It shouldn’t be surprising, really. Alex is outgoing, much more so than Eddie. He’s on the basketball team, they both are, but it suits Alex much better. He gets along with people easily; Eddie is just there to play. And it’s not like Eddie hasn’t noticed the way girls have been acting differently towards them since they joined the team.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him, “you don’t know her though. Her name is Shannon.”

“Oh what, does she go to a different school?” Eddie tries to tease but the words come out slightly too earnestly. In seventh grade, a kid from school told everyone about his girlfriend from a different school. Nobody really believed him, but he still kept it up for months. He finally got caught when someone recognized the girl from the pictures of his supposed “girlfriend” as his cousin. He still hasn’t recovered from the incident yet.

“She does actually,” Alex says, “she lives in Fort Davis. She was spending the summer with her grandparents here but she left yesterday. We’re going to stay in touch though. Shannon says that she’s going to write to me, like actual letters like we’re civil war people or something.”

“Is that why you were MIA this past week?” Eddie asks. He spent two weeks visiting family in Mexico. Eddie begged his dad to let him stay home, he swore that he’s old enough to look after himself, but no chance. Not that he doesn’t like seeing his family. It’s the closest thing to a holiday his family ever gets, it just gets tedious really fast to have a different distant relative whose name he barely remembers tell him how he’s grown and if they’re feeding him enough in America.

When they got back a little over a week ago, Eddie immediately called Alex to ask if he wanted to go to the lake, but it went straight to voicemail. He was a little bit worried not to hear from Alex at all that week except for a quick text a day later that read “busy 2day talk later?” with no follow-up until this morning.

“Sorry about that,” Alex says and to his credit, he does sound like he means it, “I don’t know. It sounds stupid now, but for some reason I was nervous to tell you.”

“What, are you worried I’m going make fun of you? I think we’re a bit old for that,” Eddie replies.

“No, I just… I don’t know, it sounds stupid now that I say it,” Alex says.

“Yeah it does,” Eddie says, “so it’s a good thing I’m back now to tell you if you’re talking bullshit.”

“What would I do without you?” Alex asks and when he finally looks at Eddie, he’s smiling his usual, wide toothy smile.

Things don’t change as much after that as Eddie expected. He’s not sure what he expected, but once school starts again it’s like everything is just the way it’s always been. Alex and Eddie have most of their classes together and if one of them is in detention then the other is certainly there as well, and if they’re not then they’re at basketball practice, or by the lake, or at the mall, whatever it is they usually are together.

One thing has changed, of course. More and more of their conversations eventually turn to Alex’ new favorite topic: Shannon. Through him, it almost feels like Eddie knows her too. He knows which classes she likes and which ones she doesn’t. He knows that she’s reading The Great Gatsby for English class and secretly really likes it. He knows that her best friend Tina got a boyfriend named Hector over the summer, but unlike Alex, he goes to the same school as them. He knows that Shannon thinks Hector is kind of full of himself, but she doesn’t want to tell Tina because she’s so in love. Every day, Alex tells Eddie something new about Shannon, and to his own surprise, he actually really enjoys listening to him talk about her.

By the end of the school year, Eddie almost feels like Shannon is his friend too. He’s never talked to her, and he only ever saw one or two blurry pictures that Alex took with his shitty phone camera, and yet it feels like he’s been talking to her every day too. So, when Alex excitedly tells Eddie that Shannon is coming to spend the summer with her grandparents again, Eddie honestly does look forward to meeting her.

And it isn’t a surprise that by the end of the summer, when Shannon tells them that she’ll be coming back permanently next time, it already feels like they’ve known each other all their lives.  

“My dad got a new job,” Shannon says as they sit right on the bank of the lake, not far from the spot where Eddie and Alex sat almost exactly one year earlier, “so you boys won’t have to miss me too long.”

With that, Shannon has their undivided attention. Not that she didn’t have it anyway. It’s difficult not to listen when Shannon is speaking. She tends to have that effect on anyone lucky enough to meet her. Shannon explains that her grandparents are in the process of moving to a retirement home and that her mom has been wanting to move close to them anyway, so when her dad got the job offer, they didn’t have to think about it long.

“It’s a sign from the universe,” Alex says. He gets up and, with an exaggerated gesture extends his hand to help Shannon up. “We were meant to be, mi amor.” When she laughs and wraps her arms around Alex’ neck, there is a split second where Eddie wishes that it was him instead.

And from then on, it’s Eddie and Alex and Shannon. Of course, it had been Eddie and Alex and Shannon for a while already, even when she wasn’t physically there yet. Still, some things change. Some nights it’s just Alex and Shannon. They can go on actual dates now, instead of infinite messages and letters that Alex would read to Eddie as soon as they came in. It makes sense for them to want to spend time together with just the two of them, of course, but Eddie would be lying if he said that it doesn’t sting a little bit. It’s silly, he knows, and yet he feels something awfully close to jealousy when he has to piece together the night before from anecdotes and inside jokes that Alex and Shannon share the next day.

Things are good, in their own way. They really are. Alex loves Shannon and Shannon loves Alex and they both love Eddie, just in a different way. As far as Eddie is concerned it’s an upgrade. He’s got twice the number of friends he had before Shannon. Really moving up in the world. Watch out for Mr. Popular over here. But like all good things, it wasn’t meant to last. And when their little group of three finally blows up, none of them anticipated the fallout.

“Shannon and I broke up,” Alex says and immediately Eddie feels like he is the one who is broken up with. He was a bit suspicious when both Shannon and Alex didn’t come to school that day. It’s not unusual for both of them to miss at the same time, but usually, they’d at least text Eddie to let him know. Eddie tells himself that it’s pure coincidence that he goes to Alex’s house first, he lives closer to the school after all. Much later, when he revisits that day with Frank, he’ll admit that he would have gone to see Alex first either way.

“Shit man, I’m sorry,” is all Eddie has to offer right now, as they’re awkwardly sitting next to each other on the bed in Alex’ room. The words come out more like a question than a statement.

“It’s fine,” Alex says but Eddie knows that that’s a lie, “I guess it was too good to be true anyway.” He nervously flips through the stack of notes that Eddie brought for him from school but he doesn’t actually read any of it. Alex doesn’t look at him while he speaks, he's too focused on meticulously folding one of the pages into a paper airplane which he then shoots into the corner of his room.

“Well it’s her loss,” Eddie says. It doesn’t feel like the right thing to say, like it’s too casual, but then nothing he could say feels right. He follows the paper plane with his eyes and keeps looking at it when the point gets stuck in the carpet.

“She gave me the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bullshit,” Alex tells him. He's still not looking at Eddie when he says, “But honestly I think it’s both of us.”

Eddie tries to find the right words to say to encourage his friend, or cheer him up, or just anything at all but somehow his mind draws a complete blank. He's grateful when Alex keeps talking anyway.

“Maybe I was a shit boyfriend, I don’t know. I guess you’d think I’d know if I was but maybe that’s exactly what a shit boyfriend would say,” Alex says, “or maybe she finally realized that she could do better.”

“Is that what she said?” Eddie asks, suddenly feeling protective over his friend. Shannon is his friend too, but if she did anything to make Alex feel like he’s not good enough he would drop her in a heartbeat. Not that he’d ever admit that to anyone.

“No, of course not,” Alex tries to defend her, but it’s not very convincing if followed by, “She didn’t have to.”

The words combined with the hurt look on Alex’ face and the fragility in his voice that Eddie never heard before set off all alarm bells in his brain. Maybe he’s had Shannon wrong all this time if she’d be so cruel to Alex. The least she could have done is let him down gently.

“Well then she’s crazy,” Eddie says, “I think you’re a catch.” It’s meant to sound light; cheer his friend up, but the words come out too gentle and too genuine for that. Eddie can tell by the way Alex suddenly turns to him with a look he can’t quite place in his big, sad eyes.

“I think maybe she’s right,” Alex says.

“What do you mean?” Eddie asks, still not breaking eye contact.

“You like her, don’t you?” Alex asks and it sounds like a challenge.

“Of course I do, Shannon is like my second-best friend after you,” Eddie says but he knows that that’s not what Alex means.

“You know that that’s not what I mean,” Alex says. He pauses to think for a moment, looks down at his hands and then back at Eddie. “If Shannon made a move on you, tell me you would reject her,” Alex says but there’s no judgment in his voice, “tell me if she kissed you, you wouldn’t kiss her back.”

“What?” Eddie asks. It’s not like he never considered what it would be like to kiss Shannon. But it was never something he actually genuinely thought about. He’s only ever known Shannon as one half of Alex and Shannon. If he ever thought about kissing Shannon, his mind would supplement Alex standing right there next to them so he tried to avoid the whole idea altogether.  

“I mean I get it I guess,” Alex says, “who would want to be with me if they could have you?” And now that sounds completely crazy to Eddie. He has nothing to offer that Alex isn’t way ahead of him at. Alex is popular in school. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it and he never neglects Eddie and Shannon over it, which is almost infuriating, but he gets invited to all the parties nobody ever bothers telling Eddie about. And he is easily the best player on their team. They’re still a pretty shitty team, but the few games they did win this year they only won because of Alex. And Alex always finds a positive spin on things and stays calm even when things seem hopeless. Many times, he has pulled Eddie out of a downward spiral that he knows he wouldn’t have come out of easily by himself. And maybe that’s what makes it so much harder to see him like this now.

Eddie wants to tell Alex all of those things. In his mind, he rattles down a comprehensive list of reasons why what Alex just said is absolutely outrageous, but when he tries to say any of it the words just won't come out. He knows that it wouldn't be enough. Telling Alex wouldn't be enough, it would feel like empty flattery even if that's not what it would be. In his mind, Eddie knows what he needs to do, what he has been aching to do for so long but never let himself acknowledge. And in the delirium that looking right into Alex' sad eyes has put him in, Eddie doesn't have the time to listen to any of the alarm bells that go off in his mind when his hand almost independently reaches out to cradle Alex' cheek.

For a second after Eddie closes the gap between them, it feels like Alex is kissing him back and it makes all the chaos in Eddie’s head give way to blissful static. But then, suddenly, Alex pulls away and the terror in his eyes is enough to make it all come crashing back down with a force that’s too much for Eddie to bear.

“Shit, I didn’t mean…” is all Eddie can think to say, but the damage is done. He’s ruined it now. As usual, Eddie Diaz made things weird. Having friends was nice while it lasted but everyone knew he was going to fuck it up eventually. Alex doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. He still looks at Eddie like a deer in headlights and that tells him everything he needs to know.

When Eddie rushes out of the house Alex doesn’t call after him and that feels like the final nail in the coffin of their friendship. Eddie is scared and confused and really would rather be anywhere else right now than home, so he goes to the only other person in the world who can calm him down when it all becomes too much.

“Eddie?” Shannon asks when she sees him standing in front of her door. Eddie knows that her parents are working late, he wouldn’t have gone over otherwise. He must look crazy, all wild eyes and messy hair. She doesn’t say anything, at least not yet, but he can tell that she’s concerned.

Eddie thought about what to say to her the whole way to the house. He wasn’t sure if he should console her about the breakup first or go straight in with telling her that he and Alex had a fight. Technically that isn’t really true, but the outcome is the same anyway. Everything he could say feels like a lie, except for the truth and the truth is something he can't even begin to formulate, not even to himself.

So when he stands there, on her doorstep, and she looks so unbelievably soft with that kind look of concern in her eyes and her hair gently falling into her face, what else was he supposed to do than kiss her?

And when he does, she doesn’t push him away. Eddie tries not to think about Alex, who knew that she wouldn’t. He also tries not to think about him when Shannon pulls him into the house and closes the door behind them and he definitely tries not to think about him when he feels Shannon’s hot breath on the side of his neck as she traces his collarbone with her lips.

Eddie doesn’t leave Shannon’s embrace until long after the sun has set. When they hear a car pull up to the house Shannon assures him that her parents never come into her room, they just have to be quiet, and Eddie feels so comfortable and safe in her arms, that he chooses to trust her on that.

Shannon is safe. Eddie matches his breathing to the even rhythm of hers and for a little while it feels like it will all be okay. Maybe he falls asleep for a while, curled up against her naked chest, soothed by the beating of her heart.

When Eddie wakes up again it is still dark, but Shannon is gone and the fresh air from the open window blows away whatever haze was clouding his mind. All at once he is aware of everything that happened. In the clear night air, he knows two things to be true: His only two friends in the world are never going to want anything to do with him ever again, and it’s his fault.

Eddie tries to avoid Alex and Shannon after that. They still have a few weeks of school left, but he figures if he keeps his head down and skips a few classes here and there they can make this amicable. His coach is not thrilled when Eddie tells him that he wants to quit the team, but he never was that good of a player anyway, so he doesn’t really argue. He tries to switch classes, even asks his parents to homeschool him, but of course they just think he’s trying to get out of school a bit early and shut the idea down immediately.

Neither Alex nor Shannon says a word to him in the few classes they do have together, and Eddie is grateful for it, even if it confirms what he already knows. There is nothing left to salvage of their friendship. Maybe it’s for the best. It would have been difficult to stay friends once they all go to different colleges anyway. Might as well get a head start.

Eddie just wants to make it to graduation and then he can move, get as far away from El Paso as he possibly can, away from Texas and his parents and everything that reminds him of Alex and Shannon. That is until one day, during their last week of school when he spots Shannon waiting for him by his car.

“Can we talk?” she asks. She looks different somehow Eddie can’t quite place. She wears her hair in a high ponytail rather than open like she usually does and she’s wearing a baggy, faded t-shirt that looks a lot like one Alex used to own.

“Sure,” Eddie says, trying his best to sound casual, “what’s up.”

“That’s all you’re going to say? ‘What’s up?’” Shannon spits back at him.

“What do you want me to say?” Eddie asks because he really doesn’t know.

“I don’t know,” Shannon says and then, “why have you been avoiding me?”

“Didn’t think you’d want to talk to me,” Eddie admits still doing his best to sound casual while he’s unlocking his car. The attempt definitely fails when he drops his keys and they fall under the car. He figures that trying to crawl down to get them probably isn’t going to help his case so he just ignores the keys for now and turns back to look at Shannon.

“Why on earth would you think that?” Shannon asks, still sounding annoyed with him. She’s probably right to be. “We literally had sex and somehow you read that as ‘I want nothing to do with you’?” It does sound ridiculous if she says it like that.

“You left,” Eddie tries to defend himself but even he knows that it sounds pathetic.

“I was in the bathroom,” Shannon all but yells at him.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie offers.

“I’m pregnant,” Shannon replies. And it sounds like such a wildly crazy thing to say that Eddie can’t help but laugh.

“It’s not a joke,” Shannon tells him, sounding more annoyed than genuinely upset, but it just makes the whole situation funnier somehow. Eddie thinks that he’s just glad that he’s not lying on the floor trying to reach for the damn keys right now.

“I didn’t think it was,” Eddie says when he finally manages to collect himself. He shakes his head as if to get his thoughts back on track before he asks, “So what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Shannon says. She looks off into the distance and adds, “I think I want to keep it.”

And what else was Eddie supposed to say to that, other than “marry me.”?

After that, it's Shannon and Eddie again only this time without Alex. They saw him at graduation, and someone mentioned that he was planning to move to New York for college, but that’s the last either of them heard of him. They don’t mention him and sometimes it almost feels as if he was never real at all. Eddie is grateful that Shannon doesn’t bring him up and if Shannon has a feeling that something happened between Alex and Eddie, she doesn’t ask.

The day after graduation, Shannon tells her parents that she’s pregnant, and on the evening of the same day, she shows up on Eddie’s doorstep asking for a place to stay. So that is how Eddie’s parents find out as well. They’re not thrilled, to say the least, but they’re also not cruel enough to turn her away. That night, after Shannon has gone to sleep, Ramon sits his son down and tells him that he better man up and marry her to avoid bringing any more shame on the family than he already has. Eddie tells him that they can go to the courthouse in the morning and get it done, but he already knows that that’s not what Ramon means.

“You have to make this right with God,” he says. It seems a little hypocritical, Eddie thinks. He knows that his father only really goes to church anymore to appease his mother. But if he’s honest there’s a part of him that wants to get married in the church anyway. He’s not sure if it’s the catholic upbringing or his mother’s voice in his ear, or maybe he just wants to be in the clear in case there is a God after all.

“Is she catholic at least?” is the first thing Helena asks when she finally comes into the kitchen. She looks like she’s been crying but, of course, she wouldn’t want anyone to see her like that so she’s been hiding in the bathroom while Ramon showed Shannon to Eddie’s room.

“Yes, mum,” Eddie assures her. It seems like a crazy thing to care about, given the circumstances.

“Oh thank God,” Helena says, “maybe we can still fix this then. You can go to confession, and we’ll have to start planning the wedding. It’s probably better if it’s just a small guestlist, you understand. But I think we can work with this.” She doesn’t have to spell it out, but Eddie knows that what she’s really worried about is people from church finding out. Her son marrying a good catholic woman and having a child is something she’ll be able to brag about, so long as nobody knows about the sex before marriage part of it.

The next morning, when Eddie has to break all of this to Shannon, he expects her to be annoyed or at least a little bit displeased. He knows he would be. Getting married, it’s a big step. Instead, she just smiles at him in a way that makes him believe that they’re going to be okay.

“You don’t mess around, do you Diaz?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer, she just kisses him, slow and honest and for the first time in weeks Eddie doesn’t feel like he’s a total fuck-up.

“It is always nice to see young people making an effort to include God in their lives,” the priest says after he sits down on his chair across a heavy oak desk from Eddie and Shannon. Eddie already forgot his name. They’re not at his family’s usual church, perhaps part of his mother’s efforts to save face in her community. Not that people aren’t already gossiping anyway, but getting married in their church still seems like it would have pushed the limits.

The priest’s voice is calm, and his words sound kind, but somehow Eddie still feels like he’s in some kind of trouble. He almost expects the classic “not mad, just disappointed” lecture, like the time when he and one of the other altar boys were caught drinking the communion wine and the other boy told the priest that Eddie made him do it. He wasn’t allowed to be an altar boy anymore after that, so the whole ordeal was worth it in the end.

“These days the family is the object of many forces that seek to destroy it. But it is important that we do not lose sight of what is right,” the priest explains, and it already starts to sound a lot more like a reprimand, “God has a plan for you and for your marriage and with the sacrament of matrimony you vow to embrace all that God has in store for you.”

Shannon and Eddie barely said a word since they came in. Eddie’s mother signed them up for the marriage preparation course. She made a lot of phone calls after he agreed to ask Shannon to marry him. She didn’t even wait for Shannon to say yes. In her eyes, it probably wasn’t really up for debate. After all, why wouldn’t a disgraced girl take whatever chance she could get to make things right? She did say yes, after all, but right now Eddie wonders if she doesn’t already regret that choice.

“Now, I want to begin by asking a simple question. It is important that you understand the significance of marriage and the commitment you are making to each other and to God through this sacrament. Tell me, why are you choosing to be married in the church?” the priest asks. The question feels pointed, even if his mother told Eddie that it’s usually the first question they ask.

“Well,” Eddie starts, trying to remember the lines he practiced at home, “we love each other, and we know that God has brought us together so, I guess we want to make sure we’re doing things right.” He knows that he missed some parts about true fulfillment through Christ and embracing the beauty of God’s plan but even the words he did say feel like blatant lies. Maybe Eddie doesn’t really believe in God anymore, but it still feels wrong to lie to a priest.

“Certainly,” the priest replies slowly, like he knows that Eddie doesn’t really mean it. If he doesn’t see right through them now, Eddie thinks, it’s going to be difficult to disguise Shannon’s state over the six weeks they’ll be spending on this course. As if he’s reading Eddie’s mind the priest continues, “But whenever I meet with couples as young as yourselves it is important to me that we make sure that you’re here for the right reasons.” There’s an emphasis on the word ‘right’.

“We are just lucky to have found each other early,” Shannon says. Eddie is surprised that she’s playing along after all. Both of them are here to appease Eddie’s parents but really, he knows that she’s here as a favor to him.

“It is respectable that you two have chosen to go this path together and I do not mean to imply that your hearts are not in the right place,” the priest says, “but it can happen sometimes that young couples are so overcome by sexual desire that they rush into matrimony.

“But I’m here to help guide you and make sure you are aware of the meaning of marriage and the place God has in your relationship and your lives. Once we get to that point, we can discuss methods of natural family planning, but during this time it is important that you resist the temptation of fornication.”

“Thank you,” is the only thing Eddie can think to say to that. He really would rather be doing anything else than discuss his sex life with a catholic priest and his pregnant fiancée but there’s no backing out now.

The next forty-five minutes of their session feel like hours. Shannon and Eddie smile politely as the priest elaborates on the sanctity of marriage and the significance of their commitment to each other. Eddie’s eyes keep flitting back and forth between the mole underneath the priest’s right eye and the arms of the wall clock that slowly creep towards the hour. He nods along solemnly and tries his very best to at least seem interested. Shannon doesn’t say anything else for the rest of their time there which Eddie knows probably already is her trying her best to be polite.

“Now,” the priest finally concludes at exactly four minutes after three, “I hope that today gave you a good idea of what to expect for the next few weeks. Of course, your engagement is a time to enjoy, but it should also be a time for reflection. I don’t want you to walk out today and completely forget everything we’ve discussed until next week, so I will be giving you a small task or question to consider each week before I send you on your way.”

Great, Eddie thinks, these classes come with homework. It’s almost like he never left school at all. He doesn’t say anything about it though and neither does Shannon.

“For this week I’d like you to write letters to each other to read on your first anniversary. You can reflect on your partnership and your hopes for the future and your marriage, or if there are things that you worry about now you can make note of that as well. And then, one year from now, you can read what the other wrote and see how much progress you have made since then. Many couples I speak to tell me that it’s a wonderful opportunity to be reminded of the things they hoped for before marriage and to see how much you have grown,” the priest explains.

“We have to do this for next week?” Shannon finally asks. She sounds a little bit wary.

“Yes, but you don’t have to read it to me or each other yet. I trust that you take this seriously. It is for your own benefit after all,” the priest tells her. That’s code for you don’t actually have to do it, Eddie knows. They just have to promise that they’ll do it and tell him how much they learned afterwards.

“Thank you, I’m sure this will be a very good exercise,” Eddie says through a false smile, but he notices Shannon nodding along earnestly. They can talk about it later, Eddie thinks. Right now, all he really wants is to get out of the musty room and let the sun shine on his skin until he feels real again.

“In the past, you told me that Shannon was your first love,” Frank says. It’s an observation, presented calmly. Eddie already knows what he’s getting at. It always goes like this. Eddie presents him with a tangled mess and Frank gently tugs at one detail and suddenly he feels a little bit silly for not having noticed it there before.

“You want me to talk about Alex,” Eddie responds.

“I didn’t mention him,” Frank says, just as infuriatingly calm as before, “but clearly you’re thinking about him now, so it might be a good point to start.” They’ve started it now, Eddie thinks, so maybe if he just keeps talking Frank can pick out the details that will make it all make sense.

“He was my first real friend,” Eddie tries to explain, “for a while, I think he was my only friend.” He tries to remember when he first met Alex. Alex’ family lived on the same street as Eddie’s. If Eddie thinks about his childhood, it feels like Alex was always there. Alex was the one who taught Eddie to ride his bike when his dad told him he was still too young. When they got older, they took the school bus together every day. One Christmas, Alex got an MP3 player from his parents and from then on, they’d always listen to music together, one earbud each, on the way to school. They went to their first school dance together because neither of them got dates, and the year after that, Alex went with a girl named Christine who called him an asshole for barely talking to her and hanging out with Eddie instead. Eddie tried out for the basketball team because Alex did, he went to parties because Alex invited him, and he snuck into R-rated horror movies even though he was secretly scared because Alex loved them.

“Shannon was my second real friend,” Eddie says, “but I guess it was different. We were friends first and I didn’t really think of her as anything more than that. Alex was my best friend and Shannon was his girlfriend and also my friend, so that was pretty clear. I guess the love developed sometime after that, probably during the time we were engaged.” It seems odd to look at it this way, he recognizes. Shannon was his friend until she was not.

“We’re often taught to think of platonic and romantic love as two completely separate feelings,” Frank says still as gently as ever while he lays out things that should be so obvious, “but that’s not always a productive way of understanding the way you feel. You say that Shannon was one of your best friends before you got romantically involved. Do you think that getting physically involved with her may have just been a catalyst for you to reconceptualize the love you already had for her as romantic?”

“I guess you could look at it like that,” Eddie says. If he thinks about it, sleeping with Shannon really didn’t change much between them. In a way, he already loved her before that. Sex was just the natural next step. Most of the guys on the team had started dating and hooking up with girls by then. Alex was sleeping with Shannon before Eddie even met her. And if it meant nothing then why does thinking about it still make Eddie’s head spin?

“Maybe we should track back a little bit,” Frank says as if he can sense the tension building in Eddie’s chest, “tell me about married life.”

“You what?” Shannon’s voice is barely a whisper when she says it. It’s a tone that may be mistaken for gentle if not for the seething anger in her eyes.

“I enlisted,” Eddie says matter-of-factly, the way he practised on the drive home. A bit more confident this time than moments ago.

“I’ll give you one more chance and if you repeat that again, I swear to God.” Her voice is still soft, like the calm before the storm.

“I made a promise that I would provide for you. I just want you and Christopher to live a comfortable life,” Eddie tells her, but he barely believes it himself. For a moment Shannon says nothing and the ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen and the static from the radio that Shannon always keeps turned on because she doesn’t like it when the house is too quiet create an almost overwhelming cacophony.

“And you think leaving me alone with a fucking infant is going to be the best way to do that?” There it is. The thunder and the lightning that Eddie knew was coming for him.

“It will only be for a while and with the money we’ll be able to move into a nice house. Christopher can have his own room. Maybe even a backyard,” Eddie tries to explain but he knows that he’s fighting a losing battle. When he pictured it before he saw the white picket fence, the Fourth of July barbecue, the lemonade stand by the side of the road. Now he’s not so sure any of that means anything anymore.

“Oh shut the fuck up about a backyard. This isn’t the 1950s you asshole. I need my husband, my son’s father, not a goddamn backyard.” Shannon turns around to face the sink where the dishes from dinner are still soaking in now cold, soapy water. Her eyes are fixed on the tile backsplash as if even looking at him would be too much to bear.

“I know you’re upset now, but it’s the best decision for our family. Maybe we just need to take some time to cool off and talk about this more in the morning,” Eddie says. He hasn’t moved from the doorway. Only now he notices how tightly he has been holding on to his keychain by the stinging pain where the ridges dig into his skin.

“You promised we’d do this together,” Shannon says, eyes still fixed on the kitchen tiles, “that was the deal. Good times and bad, sickness and health all of that. We were meant to do it together. Sure, I knew all of this was going to be difficult, but the one thing I was always meant to trust was that I didn’t have to do it by myself.”

“And you won’t,” Eddie tries to interrupt but she doesn’t even acknowledge his interception.

“What if you get killed out there? How on earth am I supposed to explain that to our son? You think I want to be an army widow, single mother with no family to lean on before I’m even old enough to become an alcoholic about it?” That’s Shannon. Cynical as ever, pragmatic to a fault and, infuriatingly, almost always correct because of it. Eddie would laugh if it wasn’t just so depressing.

“But I’m not going to die. I’ll come back to you. Both of you,” Eddie tries to assure her, but he knows it won’t make a difference now.

“Get the fuck out,” Shannon says. She finally turns to look at him, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Baby, let’s just calm down,” Eddie says but is shut down immediately by a damp dish towel that only barely misses his face.

“Don’t even start,” Shannon says, “I can’t look at you right now. Go stay with your parents or your sisters or your fucking buddies for all I care, just get lost.”

“Can’t we just talk?” Eddie tries again but it’s no use.

“I would go myself if I had literally anywhere to go.” She is no longer able to hold back tears. Under any other circumstances, the stray strands of hair falling into her face would make her look beautiful. They still do, Eddie supposes, even if now may not be the best time to bring it up. Even he can tell that right now, he’d probably do best to just shut up.

“If I wasn’t fucking estranged from my family and ostracized from my community for getting pregnant,” Shannon all but screams, “but hey, I’m glad it turned out okay for you. I’m glad a few Hail Marys could fix it for you, and you can go play soldier because you feel like it.”

She’s right, of course. Eddie knows that he got the easy end. Sure people gave him shit for the whole teen pregnancy thing at first, but in the end it almost feels like people respect him more. He stepped up. He married the girl and stayed to provide for the kid. And now, after the initial scandal has blown over, they treat him like a man, but she is still a whore.

In the other room, Christopher has woken up and Eddie is secretly glad that they’re interrupted by his crying before he can dig himself into a deeper hole. Shannon composes herself, wipes the tears from her face with the hem of her shirt and when she looks at him again it’s almost as if they never had the conversation at all.

“I’ll go check on him. I better get used to doing it by myself, won’t I?” Shannon says as she walks right past Eddie towards their bedroom where they set up Chrisopher’s crib. She doesn’t look at him when she adds, “When I come back, I don’t want to see you. And you better not come back until morning.”

He knows better than to argue with her now. Eddie watches through the open doorway as Shannon gently cradles their son and whispers soothing words that he can’t make out from where he’s standing. When she unbuttons her shirt to feed him, Eddie feels as though he is peeping on something that isn’t his to see. Like a stranger in his own home, he averts his eyes from his wife as she is feeding his son.

That night Eddie sleeps in his car, parked in the driveway. Shannon doesn’t want to see him, and he doesn’t want to see anybody else, so it seems like a good compromise. Besides, a night of poor sleep is probably a weak punishment for making his wife cry.  

They did write the letters for their marriage prep course in the end. Shannon called him childish for suggesting that they lie. She doesn’t really believe in God either, but if they’re going to do this whole thing, then they should at least give it a real try is what she said. She was right, of course. Still, when they sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table to write their letters, he felt like there was nothing to say. It still felt like school homework.

Shannon was scribbling away with the nice ballpoint pen from the stationary set that she got from her parents for her last birthday. They gave it to her for her exams. She’d need a proper pen if she wanted to succeed in life, they told her. That was just a few weeks before they found out about the pregnancy.

Eddie wonders if Shannon is sitting at that very same table right now, reading his letter. They were meant to read them together, he knows, and the thought sends a dull pain to his chest. He should be sitting next to her, and they should be laughing about all the things that changed in the past year and talk about how much they’ve grown.

Instead, he’s all alone under the cool night air. Eddie snuck out of the barracks to read the letter. He had it on him the whole day, waiting for the right time to read it. He figured that it would probably be best to find a quiet time when he’s not around the guys. They’d definitely make fun of him and the creased letter from his wife, written on lavender note paper, that he’s been holding onto the whole time he’s been here. He doesn’t know what Shannon wrote, but whatever it is, he has a feeling he doesn’t want anyone else reading it.

For a bit, Eddie just sits there, turning the envelope around and tracing the creases with his fingers before he finally opens it and takes out the paper inside.

“Dear Eddie,

Congrats on being married to me for a year. You really are one lucky guy! You better have brought me breakfast in bed for our anniversary. By now I hope we moved out of your parents’ basement. I really don’t know how much longer I can bear living here, especially once we have the baby. I guess that’s the biggest change I’ll have to get ready for. Everyone keeps telling me that my whole life is going to change once they’re born, but I can’t really imagine it being a much bigger change than everything else we’ve been through these past weeks.

“I think that day when I told you is when everything really changed. Up until then, it didn’t actually feel real yet. For about two weeks I thought maybe the problem would go away on its own. But look at us now, a good, catholic married couple with their first child. Praise the Lord.  

“I never really thought about marriage and kids and all of that. Maybe that’s weird, I don’t know. It seems like all everyone ever talks about is the importance of family, at least they did at my old church. It’s almost funny how much they kept preaching the virtues of motherhood and traditional femininity and all of that, even when we were little girls but once I actually got pregnant there suddenly wasn’t any room for ‘girls like me’ in the community. You’d think they would give me a medal or something for speedrunning God’s plan for good Christian women.

“Anyway, what I want to say is that I never really thought about marriage or being a mother or anything like that. It still feels weird that I’m supposed to be someone’s mother in a few months. Everyone tells me it’ll come natural once I see the little one so I guess I have to believe that. Still, things never happen the way you plan it, and now here we are. But if I’m doing this whole family thing, I’m grateful to be doing it with you.

“You’ve always been such a positive force in my life, ever since I first met you. I remember, before we met in person, Alex told me about you all the time and sometimes I’d get annoyed. Once or twice, I was close to telling him to shut the fuck up about his friend already but of course, I never actually said it out loud. But then I met you and it made sense. Suddenly I understood why Alex couldn’t shut up about you.

“So I guess what I want to say is that I’m scared. And sometimes I wish I actually believed in God a bit more so I could believe the priest when he tells us that everything will turn out okay with the help of the Lord. And I’m scared that we’ll fuck up this child or that we’ll make the same mistakes as our parents or that I wake up one day and it’s all too much to take. But then I remember that at least I’ll be doing this with you. So at least when I’m scared or worried or panic about everything like I sometimes do I’ll be able to look into your kind brown eyes and listen to you tell me that it’s all going to be okay until I actually believe it.

“You and the little one are the only family I have now, but I think that that can be enough. In a few weeks, I’ll vow to love and honor you until we both die. I don’t think I really know what that means just yet but whatever our lives will be like in the future, I think if I can wake up every day loving you and being loved by you then it doesn’t seem so scary at all.

“Now, based on the way you’ve been chewing on the back of your pencil for the past twenty minutes I’m pretty sure your letter isn’t going to be remotely as heartfelt and sappy as mine so you better make up for it by planning the most amazing anniversary a girl could wish for. There’s still time to buy a tacky card and a little teddy bear for good measure. Maybe take me out to a nice restaurant tonight. I’m sure you’ll think of something. You always do.

Love,

Shannon”

“You don’t have to say it,” Eddie says once he finishes his recollection, “I know that I was a shit husband.”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Frank says. Eddie knows that Frank wouldn’t have said it, at least not like that, but someone had to.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to,” Eddie tells him, “I’m not proud of it, but when Shannon left us I thought she was a stupid bitch. I don’t think I hated her, really, but I did want to. I wanted to hate her for not seeing that I did the best I could. And then, fortunately for me, the world is really awful to women who leave their kids, so everyone told me what a great dad I am and how I didn’t deserve to be treated like that and it was too tempting to just believe it.

“But the truth is I always knew, deep down, that I was a shit husband so good on her for getting out. Not that it really got her anything in the end.” Eddie shakes his head. Whenever he thinks about it he ends up here. He knows that it’s not true, not really, but still. When he thinks about the way things played out, the story always ends with him being such a bad husband that his wife died just when she tried to leave him. Even if he doesn’t really believe in all of that, some part of him feels like it’s his fault for making her vow ‘till death do us part’.

“It is good that you acknowledge that you did what you thought was best at the time,” Frank says, “it is also important to recognize that mistakes have been made and that’s something you’re making good progress on but feeling guilty for the way things played out is not going to benefit you or your healing.”

“See, feeling guilty about things is kind of the only coping mechanism the catholic church teaches, so I don’t really know what else to do,” Eddie explains. It’s meant to sound light-hearted, but it comes out too sincere.

“Well, we can look at some healthier methods,” Frank says, “but for now I think we can start by looking a bit closer at why you feel that way. Why do you think you were a bad husband?”

“I made her cry,” Eddie says without thinking.

“It’s normal in a marriage to fight. It doesn’t sound like you intentionally hurt her,” Frank counters.

“I left,” Eddie tries again.

“Do you think you were wrong for joining the army or do you think that you did it for the wrong reasons?” Frank hits back.

“I think at the time I convinced myself that it was for the best, but really I think I wanted to get away from it all,” Eddie says. It’s something he has known, deep down, but he’s never admitted to it before.

“What did you want to get away from?” Frank probes further.

“I don’t know. Her? Being a father? The way everybody acted like we were some kind of degenerates? That this was going to be all there is for the rest of my life?” They’re questions that Eddie already knows the answer to. Still, he wants someone else to tell him, even if he knows that that’s not something Frank is going to do.

“Many young couples struggle with the concept of ‘the rest of their lives’ when they first get married, even if they are sure about each other,” Frank says as if that has anything to do with anything.

“That’s not it,” Eddie tells him.

“Then what is it?” Frank pulls at the string and everything unravels.

“I wasn’t in love with her,” Eddie says, quietly. It’s a revelation he has just then, as the whole mess untangles right in front of him. Somewhere, deep down, he knew, but it’s never been something he could have said out loud. Frank smiles at him encouragingly so Eddie keeps on talking just to see where it takes him.

“I loved her, I told you I did and I really did, but I wasn’t in love with her,” Eddie says, “I thought that’s what it was. If you’re a guy and you love a girl, then that means that you’re in love and if you’re Christian you should get married and if you’re not you should fuck. But I knew that's not the same. I tried really hard to pretend like I didn’t, but I did. And I thought that if I like Shannon and I like being close to her and she loves me then that would be enough, and I would eventually stop thinking about Alex every single time I kiss her but I knew it’s not the same I just pretended not to and that’s why I was a terrible husband.”

“Alright, let’s take a few deep breaths,” Frank says and inhales deeply as if to demonstrate it to Eddie. Then he adds, “and then you can tell me about Alex.”

“I already told you about Alex,” Eddie tries even though he knows full well that that’s not the whole truth.

“Then tell me again,” Frank says as gently as possible, but it still feels like an accusation. Eddie is once again a little boy getting scolded for drinking the communion wine. He is once again sitting in the confessional only this time he doesn’t just repeat the words his mother told him to say the night before. This time he’s going to tell the truth and accept the consequences.

“Alex was my first real friend,” Eddie says again, “ever since we were kids we spent almost every day together.” He takes a deep breath before he adds, “And somewhere along the way I fell in love with him.”

“When I was seventeen, I kissed my best friend and every day since there is a part of me that feels like I’m irredeemably wicked for it,” Eddie admits. It’s something he’s carried around with him for so long but that he’s never allowed himself to acknowledge. For too long it has lived in his brain as a lingering sense of dread, an unshakable feeling that something is wrong with him, and he is evil for deceiving everyone into believing that it is not.

“Why do you think you feel that way?” Frank asks.

“It felt like I betrayed his trust,” Eddie tries to explain, “we were friends. He trusted me to be his friend. And then I fucked it up. I crossed a line. I made him feel so uncomfortable that he never wanted anything to do with me ever again. We were best friends until I went and messed everything up.”

“Is that also how you felt when you kissed Shannon?” Frank asks. It seems like a ridiculous question. Eddie wants to tell him that that has nothing to do with it, that it’s a completely different situation. But then, when he thinks about it now, it really isn’t all that clear.

“That was different,” Eddie tries, even though he’s not so sure he believes it.

“How so?” Frank asks, “You said she was your best friend too. Was that not true?”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Eddie says, defeated. Suddenly he remembers why he stopped going to therapy. Then, quietly, he adds, “Please don’t make me say it.”

“What was the difference between kissing Alex and kissing Shannon, Eddie,” Frank says completely unfazed. As if that’s not a crazy thing to say. As if hearing him say it doesn’t make Eddie feel like he’s shot in the chest again. As if it’s just a question with an easy answer. Even just thinking about it makes Eddie’s head spin so fast he feels like he’s going to throw up, but he knows there’s no way out now but through.

“I’m gay, Frank,” Eddie says so quietly he isn’t sure Frank heard him at first. But then he looks up and sees Frank smiling at him and he knows that he heard him. And if it’s his mind too tired to keep up the guards or a sudden rush of insanity, Eddie doesn’t know, but if he’s made it this far, he figures he might take one more plunge if he’s at it.

“I’m gay and I’m in love with my best friend and I’m worried if he ever finds out he’s going to leave and I don’t know if I can go through that again,” Eddie says, and it feels like crossing the finish line. His body and mind are exhausted, and everything hurts, but he knows that he made it, at last. The whole tangled mess is laid out right in front of him now, neatly folded and stacked, and he almost feels silly for not figuring it out a long time ago if it was so clear, right in front of him.