Bottled Abyss by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

him right now anyway.”
    “I’m going to go sleep—”
    “We haven’t had a chance to really talk about us, lately.”
    “This isn’t the best time to bring this up, Evan. In fact, I thought we weren’t ever bringing this up.”
    Evan moved quickly to her side and sat uncomfortably close. He wore the aftershave she’d once told him she loved. He took both her hands in his and kissed them. His face was so desperate and nerdily handsome, she thought fleetingly of kissing. With almost compulsive ease, she could transform into that other woman: Not-Janet, the woman who accepted and gave pleasure in exchange for the mental dam it built around her memories.
    But Not-Janet had never gotten her far. Screwing Evan behind Herman’s back, drinking like a lush to all hours of the day and night, marinating in household filth like a slug, it didn’t do much else than conceal the emotionally deformed clone who screamed beneath. Realizing that, she decided it was time to stop talking about suicide and really check-out of this life. After all, if Not-Janet couldn’t bring her out of this hell, what could?
    Evan had been working up to saying something again and at last it spilled out, “I didn’t think it would have that effect on you…finding out about Faye’s baby. I should have told you in private first.”
    Janet cocked her head. “It’s both your baby, and that’s not why—”
    “When I found out, that she was pregnant, I mean, I didn’t know what to feel.”
    Why the hell does he have to be here right now? I’m just home from nearly dying. God damn him.
    “Weren’t you happy?” she asked with a sigh.
    “I love her, you know I do, but—”
    “No, no, no. No buts. You don’t need me, Evan. We had a thing, but it was really stupid, and I was cruel and selfish and screwed up to let it happen.”
    “Why are you blaming yourself? Herman abandoned you, remember? He’s still abandoning you!”
    “I’m over it. Be over it too, please. Christ, I thought you were happy again. Why can’t you ever make up your mind, Evan? Why?”
    He dropped her hands in astonishment. “You think I took advantage of you. That’s what this is about?”
    She shook her head and shifted away from him.
    “Then you’re saying you never felt anything for me?”
    “I’m not saying that either,” she replied. “You’re one of my best friends, you dumb ass. I don’t know what I’d do without you and Faye.”
    His wife’s name made Evan look physically ill for a second. “Like I said, I love her, but she’s so cold lately…”
    “Evan, the woman’s nearly slobbering on you every second of every day.”
    “It’s an act.”
    “Oh please.”
    “I thought she’d change with the pregnancy, but she’s become more of an automaton than ever.” Evan took a deep breath. “Faye will make a great mother, and a great wife to somebody else maybe, but she’s not ever going to be the love of my life. She’s not passionate like you. I need that.”
    “You listen to me right now. That passion came from a drunken, wounded animal, Evan,” Janet said, leveling her gaze. “How dare you.”
    He began to say something but his dull expression indicated he didn’t have any more cards up his sleeve.
    Janet got up and he grabbed her arm, lightly. She didn’t pull away, just stood there, feeling breathless, suspended thirty thousand feet above the earth.
    “I love you,” he said.
    She snorted. He gently let go and looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head. “I recognize a recurring pattern of behavior here. Why can’t you? You’re going to be alone again. After this, Herman’s probably off to the gym again for ten hours a day, doing steroids and god knows what—”
    “Steroids?”
    “You didn’t know?” Evan’s eyes were cartoon wide behind his glasses. “I thought he would have at least told you by now. Why do you think he was gone so much? He really and truly doesn’t give a shit about you.”
    She headed for the bedroom