At the End of the Tour

She gasped and reached out for me, "What, Tim? No! No, I'm not going to leave you like this. I don't want you to hurt yours-- " I slapped her hand away and, overextended from kneeling, she landed on her ass. I'd never laid a hand on her before. I'd never laid a hand on a woman at all. Hell, outside of martial arts in high school, I hadn't hit anyone since I was in the fourth grade.

"Fuck, El, I'm sorry." I stopped. No. Fuck that. "I shouldn't have hit you, but you shouldn't have tried to touch me. Did you think you were going to talk your way out of this? That I'd still want you after you let that diseased prick slide into you? Is it just him, or have you been fucking his whole band, too? How big of a fucking whore are you, Ellie?"

"I'm not a whore!" Sudden anger in her eyes. She reared back. I was too stunned to block her; this was Ellie. She couldn't even kill a bug, always had to get a piece of paper and put them outside. I felt her hand impact my cheek, a loud, full-on slap.

The gloves were off.

I hadn't laid a hand on her before tonight, but I guess it was a good night for it. My adrenaline surged again, even as the warning lights in my head started to go from flashing red to burnt-out black. I grabbed her by the arm, gripping her so tightly that I'm sure I left bruises. Ellie whined in pain as I hauled her to her feet. She stumbled, but I just dragged her with me, grabbing her suitcase on the way out of our bedroom. Our bedroom. What a fucking joke.

"Tim, please! Stop!" I wasn't the strongest guy, but Ellie was tiny and afraid. She struggled, but there was no chance for her to resist. We got to the front door, and she began to beg. "No, Tim, no, please, I'm sorry, I love you, please, we need to talk, babe, I-- "

"DON'T FUCKING 'BABE' ME, YOU GODDAMNED WHORE!" My voice was a roar, and she shrank back, prey trying to escape a predator. I had been Tim, her babe, her love, her cuddlebug. She didn't recognize the person she saw. Good. She was beginning to understand how I felt.

I opened the apartment door and hurled her suitcase through it. Our neighbors were starting to poke their heads out. I shoved her through. She stumbled and fell to her knees. I sneered down, looming in the doorway."You can get the rest of your shit later. Have your dad call me, I'll arrange it with him. I don't want to see your face or hear your voice again."

"Tim, wait, my purse!" It was by the door. I snatched it up, opened it, and fished her keys out, then threw it at her. Not to her, at her. "But my keys, I need-- "

"I paid for it. It's in my name. It's not yours anymore."

"But how am I going to get to my Dad's?" The sheer fucking audacity.

"Call your Dad, call your boyfriend, call an Uber. Hell, go turn tricks on the corner for bus fare, whore. I don't give a fuck." I slammed the door on my life. I turned the bolt as she banged on the door, begging to be let back inside so we could talk, begging for "her" keys, begging for someone she never really valued at all.

I slid down the door, grief welling up in me. Shame at how I'd let my emotions get away from me, from the rage that almost... that almost... Jesus. I almost hit her. There was a moment there, after she slapped me, that I almost decked her. I didn't want to be that person. I started grieving anew, not just for the loss of my love, but for the loss of my sense of self.

All of the warning lights in my brain went black. The gauges flicked to max and then to off. I couldn't stay upright, even seated. My body tumbled on its side, and I fell asleep to the sound of the most important person in my world pounding on the door and crying.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP

Where? Oh fuck! Shit! Why did everything hurt?

Oh god. Oh. Oh god. Ellie. Oh god.

I slowly pulled myself up to sitting; my neck and back felt like I'd been in a car crash, and my legs were shot. My hands were still working, though. I managed to fish my phone out of my pocket and silence the alarm. There were text messages from Ellie, of course, and Don. Don's were full of concern for me. That was really touching. Some dads would be haranguing me about how I'd hurt their daughter, but Don just wanted to see if I was okay. But then, I guess he'd been through the same thing.

Ellie's were almost all pleas. A little anger at being thrown out, but mostly entreaties: "Please talk to me." "Please don't do anything rash." "Please don't hurt yourself." "Please don't throw us away." Little late for that one, El.

I was going to be late for work. That was just a given at this point. I limped to the bathroom and stripped off my clothes. They reeked of sour sweat and pot. So did I, for that matter. I pissed in the shower and did a cursory cleaning, then brushed my teeth. My jaw ached where Ellie had hit me. The guy staring back at me in the mirror looked like Ed Norton in Fight Club, just before he got into the fight with his boss. Hopefully that wasn't in the cards today, but it had been a week full of surprises.

I got into work almost a half hour late. I could barely walk. I looked like I had been mugged, and wished it had been only that painful. My manager, Al, came to my desk to see why I was late, but he recoiled when he saw me. "Jesus, Tim, what happened?"

There are few things more emasculating than breaking down at your desk at work, but most of those had happened to me in the last twenty four hours, too.

Al gave me the rest of the week off. He was a decent guy, and he'd been divorced before. In his office, he commiserated with me; he had found her in bed with a guy ten years younger and fifty pounds lighter than him. "At least you don't have kids, Tim. I know it's cold comfort now, but you can just get her out of your life." With a manly slap on the back, he sent me out into the world to do... nothing.

It was the middle of the week and the middle of the day. My friends all had jobs. My body was wrecked from my run and my grief. I tried to think of a place to go. I had no appetite. I was too distracted to enjoy a movie. I wasn't quite to the day drinking stage yet. There was no way I could repeat my run from yesterday; probably not for a week the way I felt right now. I sat in my car and procrastinated, until I finally admitted that the only place to go was home.

I started researching divorce in our state. We had no kids, few possessions, and no real property. It was a community property state, so she'd probably get one of the cars, all of her books and records, her clothes, and half of the cash in our account. Maybe alimony. Whatever. It was a bargain to be rid of her. Hell, I could start the paperwork myself.

I sat on the couch and started flipping through Netflix, looking for something that was engaging enough to distract me, but not good enough that I cared about tainting its memory by watching it while I was still so torn up. I hadn't decided on anything when I heard a knock at the door.

I expected Ellie. Or maybe Don.

I opened the door, and Derek said, "Dude, I'm sorry. This isn't how I wanted to meet you."

My fist clenched, and I started to feel rage, but then... I just couldn't. I was so tired. Exhausted. This was just another indignity tossed onto a heap of indignities, and I was crushed under their weight. This douche, with his neck tattoo and messy black hair that must take half an hour to arrange just so, was the pickle on the shit sandwich of my life. I could only start laughing.

"Can I come in? I think we need to talk."

I was still laughing, and this was what it took to make me double over. This is what my life had come to.

We were on the third floor. The stairwell was open, and it was only twenty feet away. Part of me said 'Why not just go pitch him over that? You've got half a foot and thirty pounds on him.' Another said 'You know, you could just go pitch yourself over it instead.' The last one, the really crazy one said, 'You've been on this ride far enough; why don't you see where this goes? Invite him in. You can always murder him later.'

I just turned my back on him, still laughing, and beckoned. He reluctantly entered and sat on a chair while I flopped onto the couch.

"Okay, asshole. You think we need to talk. I think you just came into the apartment of the man whose wife you've been fucking, and he's between you and the door. So you better have something really fucking amazing to say, or you're going out that window."

Derek didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed. I think he was the type of guy that really felt things, man. The type of guy that gets how hard this is, bro, that feels your pain. He expected his dimestore faux soulfulness to get him through this, just as it probably got him into girls' pants. Into my girl's pants.

He sighed. "You're mad. I understand that-- "

I snorted. "Oh, do you now? You understand how mad I am that my wife has been cheating on me with you since before we were married? That I only found out because I saw her sucking face with you in public? That I've wasted my almost my entire adult life with some fucking whore that bangs a knockoff Jack White when my back is turned? Oh, but I guess only when you're back from tour. So I get her the rest of the time. Lucky me."

He looked at me with pain. "Yeah, dude. Yeah. Lucky you. You get to have her in your life all the time. I'll never get that."

I snorted. "Well, you can start now, Derek. She's not going to be in my life anymore, so you're free to take her off my hands. Oh, wait, you already did."

He bowed his head. "No, I didn't. I couldn't take her off your hands. Even if you are done with her, and I don't think you-- "

"I don't give a fuck what you think, asshole."

"Even if you are done with her, I couldn't take her off your hands, man. She'd never leave you. You're the man she needs. I think... I think that even if you can't take her back, she'll never be with anyone else."

"Good. Fuck her."

He looked at me. "I know you're hurt. I know she... I know we hurt you, dude. I'm sorry. I wish we hadn't. But please don't take out your anger at my weakness on her."

"'Your weakness.' What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

He looked out the window, the one I'd threatened to toss him out of. "When I left Ellie behind, dude, it was the hardest thing I'd ever had to do. I loved her. I don't think I'll ever love another person as much as her. But... but I loved my dream more. I'd always wanted to be up on stage, playing guitar and singing. And, at first, it was everything I wanted it to be."

I growled, "Good for you. Get to the part where you decided to ruin my life."

He nodded. "Ellie was my muse. I knew that. But I had hoped... I had hoped that the memory of her in my heart, the pain I felt from leaving her, maybe that would be enough to inspire me. It was, for a little while. But then it wasn't. After we got back from the second tour, I started trying to write new songs. Nothing came. I just couldn't, man. Ellie wasn't there.

He lowered his head. "I hadn't intended to... I knew I couldn't be what Ellie needed me to be. But I hoped maybe I could be her friend. I came to her at the bookstore. She was so angry at me, and I knew I deserved it. But I apologized for leaving her the way that I had. Not for leaving her; we both knew that was a lie. But for doing it so abruptly. And, well, you know Ellie, man." I scoffed, but he ignored me. "She's so kind. So forgiving. We went out for a coffee to talk."

"Talk, sure." I rolled my eyes.

He looked at me. "It was just talk, man. I promise. She told me about you, about how happy you made her. She was sure you were the one." I shook my head. "No, dude. I'm not bullshitting you. I knew that look in her eyes. It was love. She'd felt it for me, but I knew it paled in comparison to what she felt for you. You..."

I saw a tear in his eye. "You were going to give her everything I hadn't been able to. I was so happy for her, man." His voice cracked. "So jealous of you. You got to be her fairytale. I was just the guy that couldn't keep her."

My voice dripped with contempt. "Give me a break with your fucking pity party and get on with it."

He nodded. "I got home afterwards and was able to write again, really write. The songs were good, man, better than the stuff I'd written when me and El were together. But I started to run dry again. I called her and asked her if we could hang out some more. She was reluctant at first; didn't want you to worry about her.

"She... dude, I really fucked her up when I left the first time. I know that. I know you picked up the pieces, man. She didn't want to put you through that again if I flaked on her as a friend, too. That's why she didn't tell you about us hanging out at first.

"We started out meeting for coffee. Then she came over to my place to check out the new songs. Then... then we had a few drinks and-- "

"Yeah, no, I fucking get it. Then you fucked my girlfriend. Or was she my fiancé by then?"

He looked away. "Not yet. She was so guilty afterwards. She wanted to run straight to you and tell you everything, but I... dude, I convinced her not to. Told her that it would kill you. It's my fault. All of it is. Especially... especially what came next."

There was anguish on his face. Real anguish. The guy seemed, frankly, to be too stupid to be a decent actor. "I knew that I needed her. Needed my muse, yeah, but needed her in my life. I hadn't realized... I'd convinced myself that I could get along without her light as long as I had my music. But I couldn't. I was greedy. I wanted to have everything. I came back to her at the bookstore a week later. Played her the songs I'd written after we... after..."

He couldn't look at me. "I... god help me, I tricked her. Got her convinced that, as long as she was everything she could be with you, that she... she could still be my muse. That we could still be together sometimes, that she'd help my art. Dude, we'd been so much for each other when we were younger, given so much of ourselves to each other that... that it just made sense. To her. To both of us. She felt guilty at first, but she... it just became normal, you know? It had nothing to do--"

"If you finish that sentence, I will break your fucking neck." It was said coldly. Without emotion. And it was the absolute truth.

He stopped and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. It sounds like bullshit to me, too. But we convinced ourselves it was true. I... I convinced her of that. It felt like that, because... because nothing happened. You didn't find out. The world didn't explode. It was just how our lives were, and you were both happy. I was happy, too. But it was a shitty thing to do to you. It was a shitty thing I got her to do to you, dude. But please, don't punish El for that."

I just laughed again. "'Punish her.' Like I'm grounding her for staying out after curfew. She fucking cheated on me, 'dude.'" A horror suddenly appeared unbidden on the horizon of my mind. "Were you even using protection?" I hadn't even thought about that until just now, my brain too focused on the pain to think logically. Oh, fuck, I needed to go get tested.

He paused. "At first. We... I missed... missed feeling her. I told her I'd stay celibate for the last month on the road. Get tested when I came back. Make sure you were safe. She insisted on that. That was a few years ago. We were so far along, man, it just... it felt normal to..." He spread his hands, as if I'd find the answers to why my wife would let a touring musician go raw in her somewhere in those empty, outstretched palms.

"Oh my god." I would have thrown up if there was anything in my stomach. "Get out. Just get the fuck out of my house." I stood. I'd had enough time to rest, to let my batteries recharge. The anger was returning.

"Wait, dude, please, I'm begging you. Don't punish Ellie because of me. I've known her since we were kids. I knew what buttons to press, how to play on her sympathies. I'm the bad guy here. I am a bad guy. I know that. But please, please. I'm begging you, man. You're her dream. You're the good guy, you're her good guy, she's always called you that. 'The best man I've ever met.' Please, don't take that away. Please, don't take your love away from her, dude. It'll kill her." He started to half stand, but I was already grabbing him by the collar.

I dragged him to the door and tossed him out. I was getting good at it. "Tell the whore I'll have some papers for her to sign soon." I slammed the door in his face.

Once back on the couch, I just stared at the ceiling. I still loved her. That was the real bitch of it. I hated her now, too. I never thought I'd be able to hate her. But I loved her. If she had told me about this, if she'd come to me before I found out. If she'd confessed and cried and apologized and begged, maybe, maybe I could have gotten past it. But this... finding out like this. I just... god.

I needed someone to talk to. Someone besides her and the asshole. Someone besides my big loud family. Someone who'd been through this. Someone who knew everyone involved. Someone who I could trust to be, if not impartial, then fair. I grabbed my keys, got in my car, and drove.

"Hey, son." Don wrapped me in a big, loving hug. I started to tear up, and he held me at arm's length. "Hey, now. It's going to be okay. We'll figure this out." He led me inside his house.

He already had coffee made, and he poured me a cup, cream and no sugar, just like I liked it. Back in my goth days, I'd say "pale and bitter, just like I like my women." That changed when El came around. I liked her sweetness once she was past her gloom. I guess she'd been getting her sugar somewhere else for awhile, though.

We sat at his kitchen table, the same one where I had sat with him when Ellie introduced us. The same one where I'd asked him for her hand; old-fashioned, maybe, but he had really appreciated the gesture. I sat for a while, collecting my thoughts. He gave me the space I needed, but he was always there as a comforting presence. Finally, I was ready to talk.

He had spoken with Ellie, knew I'd thrown her out. Knew the shape of why, of what she'd done. But he had little in the way of details. I filled him in on everything I had learned from the asshole. He just shook his head sadly. "I thought I raised her better than that. I'm sorry, Tim. You deserved better."

He took a deep breath. "Have you decided what you're going to do?"

I took a drink and thought long and hard about it. "I don't know. I'm incredibly angry. I hate her, but I still love her. But I don't think that's enough. I can't trust her anymore."

He was contemplative. "Mmmm, I don't know about that. No, I get it, I understand why you're looking at me like that. But..."

He looked up at the ceiling. "Ellie isn't Gloria. I know you came to me for advice, but I want to start there. Gloria was always a snake. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but she was." He looked at me seriously. "Gloria was an addict. She ran around on me, stole from me. Trapped me in a marriage because she wanted someone that she could use and abuse. She never loved me. Ellie isn't like that. I know that's hard for you to see right now, but she's not."

He stopped, trying to decide if he should tell me what he needed to. Then he nodded to himself. "Son, I love you. I'm going to tell you something very few people know: Ellie isn't my daughter. Not my biological one anyways. She's the same sandy blonde as me, and she looks so much like her mom other than that. I just assumed, even after I knew that Gloria cheated on me. I didn't find out until she was eight, when she got hurt in an accident. They were trying to figure out blood types and there's no way she's mine. It's not biologically possible."

"Oh my god! Don, I'm so sorry."

He smiled kindly. "Thank you. It hurt at the time, but I realized, by then, it didn't really matter. She's my baby. I'll always love her. DNA's just DNA. It doesn't make us who we are, not really. It's just a part of it, and the way we're raised is what matters most. That's what I've always thought."