White Russian by J. A. Konrath

Author:J. A. Konrath [Konrath, J. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2017-11-26T22:00:00+00:00

JACK

In the dream, Phin was taking Sam and leaving me. For good.

“Stick to chasing psychos,” Phin told me. “You care about that more than us.”

“Don’t leave,” I begged. “You’ll destroy me.”

“You’re destroying yourself, Jack. You want to drag us down, too? We’re better off without you.”

And then they left, walked off without looking back, and I didn’t chase after them. Because Phin was right. I kept making the same mistakes over and over, and I didn’t learn from them, and when I tried to change it was always half-assed because something always came up that put me back in the line of fire.

After they left, I started bingeing on bread. Phin’s delicious baked bread. And I got fatter and fatter and finally so impossibly huge that I’m all of a sudden an elephant and the main attraction at a circus. Criminals from my past, horrible people who had done horrible things, are pointing at me and laughing and throwing things and I just stood there, fat and humiliated, and I don’t do anything. And my husband and daughter were in the crowd, and Sam said, “Daddy, is that Mommy?”

And Phin said, “No, Mommy is right here.”

And standing next to Sam, with her hand on Sam’s head, is…

Pasha. A woman Phin used to date.

Used to love.

Younger. Prettier. Smarter. Kinder. More affectionate. And no doubt a much better lover than I am.

She deserved him. And Sam.

I deserved to die alone while the world laughed at me.

And then some long dead, leering psychopath from my past spat in my face.

Alex Kork.

“Did you really think I was gone, Jack? You’ll never be rid of me.”

She laughed, and I’m covered in her warm, slimy phlegm, and I finally opened my eyes to see Rosalina licking my face.

Sleep-groggy, still disoriented and confused, I realized we were no longer moving.

What a shitty night.

All evening I’d been restless, unable to get comfortable, unable to shut my mind off, and whenever REM came it had been some variation of Phin leaving/Me binge eating/Shit I’m an elephant/Alex Kork is still alive/Phin’s cheating. In one of the permutations, I actually watched him make love to the impossibly beautiful Pasha, and he was staring at me the whole time saying, “This should be you.”

Worst. Nightmare. Ever. If I believed Freud was anything more than a penile-centric misogynist in deep romantic love with his mother, I would have wondered if my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

I sat up in Harry’s bed.

Checked my phone.

Phin hadn’t returned my call. And why would he? I hadn’t left any message.

Checked the time.

It was almost noon.

Checked the GPS.

We were in Nebraska.

I redialed Phin.

He didn’t pick up. This time I left a voicemail message, asking if Sam was okay, telling him to call me. I should have also said, “I love you”, but I didn’t. I didn’t, because in my dream he left me and cheated on me.

How much sense did that make? How could I be mad?

Seriously, I was an awful spouse.

After half a second of

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