This Is Where I Leave You

straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy mélange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I’ll make a real go of it this time.
    “You were right, what you said about me,” Wade says.
    “What do you mean?”
    He shakes his head and looks over his shoulder. “I’m not a decent guy. Not really.” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “I think I always just told myself I was, that at some point I’d grow up and start behaving.”
    He rubs the back of his neck as he blows smoke into the mist. “I always figured I could stop anytime I wanted to.”
    “What do you want, Wade?”
    He peers down his nose at the glowing ember of his cigarette. “I don’t know. Nothing, really. I just saw you as I was driving past, and I realized that I never actually apologized to you.”
    “So you hit me.”
    “Yeah. I didn’t actually know I was going to do that until I did it.”
    “Got it.”
    “I know it won’t change anything, but I just figured it was better said than not.” He looks across the parking lot. “You want your job back?”
    “Fuck you.”
    “I just thought I’d ask.” He tosses the cigarette into a puddle and nods at me. “I’m really very sorry for everything. You were my only real friend, and it sucks that we’re not friends anymore. I deserve it, but it still sucks. And whether you believe it or not, I really hope you guys will be able to put things back together, man. Sincerely.”
    The planet lurches beneath my feet. “What the hell are you talking about?”
    Wade takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “I was kidding myself. I’m not going to be any kid’s stepfather.”
    “You broke up with Jen?”
    He shrugs, then turns and steps off the curb, walking around to the driver’s side of the Maserati. “I think it’s what’s best for everyone.”
    I stare at him, incredulous, as the rage in me builds. “It’s what’s best for you.”
    “I know it looks that way.”
    “It is that way. You had a good thing going as long as she stayed married to me, as long as you didn’t have to take any responsibility.”
    “It wasn’t like that, Judd. I really did love her.”
    “And now you don’t.”
    “Love isn’t enough.”
    “She walked out on her marriage for you.”
    He looks at me over the scraped, dented roof of his car. His smile is sad and broken. “I’m a professional bastard, Judd. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” He pushes a button on his key chain and opens the door.
    It would be so perfect right now if a passing eighteen-wheeler lost control on the rain-slicked road and just plowed into him, irreversibly embedding his crushed corpse into the steel and leather of his Maserati. They’d have to bury the car with him and justice would be served with poetic flair. But this is real life, and in real life Wade gets to fuck my wife, to fuck my life, bloody my mouth, and then flash me a last rueful grin before speeding away on twelve Italian cylinders. His tires spin briefly on the slick blacktop before catching and hurtling him out into the traffic, just another set of red lights disappearing into the horizon. 284If nothing else, I am now completely sober.
    I sit down on the retaining wall of a parking lot, my mind racing. Jen has been left. Jen is alone in the world for the first time in her adult life - alone and pregnant and vulnerable and contrite and probably scared out of her mind. I don’t know what it is I’m planning to do, or maybe I do, maybe I know exactly what I’m planning to do. Whichever it is, I like my chances.

    11:45 p.m.
    My cab driver is Mr. Ruffalo, who taught English and driver’s ed when I was in high school, until he fell for one of his students, Lily Tedesco. They would set off every Tuesday in the driver’s ed car, Lily’s hands positioned firmly at ten and two, and then pull over behind the county park, where they would discuss their plans to run away together after she graduated, and where she would crouch down between his legs, balancing herself on the training break to prove her love. They must have been spotted at some point because one day Mrs. Ruffalo showed up outside the school and tried to stab her husband with a steak knife hidden in the pocket of her red velour housecoat. No charges were ever filed, but the school board voted unanimously in favor of termination. Now he’s