The Bear’s Mail Order Menage

“Here’s what I don’t get, Andrew.”

“What’s that?”

“What I don’t get is why you care so much. Are you in love with her? Are you in love with Alina?”

“Sh*t, are you kidding? Who falls in love with the hooker they like to fu*k from time to time? I ain’t that stupid, ok? No, I’m not in love with her. Not even close.”

“Stop it! Stop calling her that! She isn’t a hooker, alright? You don’t know a thing about her.”

“Oh, and you do?”

“Yes, I do. I know a lot about her and do you want to know why?”

“No, not really.”

“Because I cared enough to ask. Because I bothered to get to know her in all of this time we’ve been spending together. She’s not a hooker, she’s an orphan, just like you are. Did you even know that?”

“Nope. Don’t care, either. Doesn’t change a thing.”

“Really? Well it should. If you gave a sh*t about anyone but yourself. She’s had a sh*tty life, man. A sh*ttier life than you have, that’s for sure. What is it you wanted from her, anyhow? If it wasn’t love, which you’ve just made it very clear it wasn’t, then what? Why do you care so much about finding the two of us together?”

“Because!” Andrew shouted, slamming his fist down on the table and causing everyone else in the place to jump in surprise and fear.  “Because, it was a betrayal! How do you not see that?”

“I just don’t. We never made rules like that. Never, not once.”

“So you wouldn’t have cared if it had been the other way around? Seriously? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“No, I can’t say that. I would have cared. I would have cared very much, because I love her. I love her enough for it to make me crazy. It keeps me up at night. I always thought that was something you only saw in sh*tty romantic comedies that nobody but preteen girls wanted to watch. But turns out, joke’s on me. Because it’s a real thing.

I think about her all of the time. I lay in bed and I think about what I can do to make her happier, what I can do to change her life in a way that counts. I think about spending the rest of my life with her, having kids with her, all of that sh*t. So yes, it would have bothered me. It would have bothered me because it would have broken my heart.”

“Well, then I feel sorry for you.”

Joshua looked like someone had physically reached across the table and decked him in the face. He looked like he was in real, actual pain and Andrew knew he was the one who had caused it. It was the oddest feeling, knowing a thing like that. Because Andrew had always been the more aggressive of the two, he had been the one to take up for Joshua when anyone was dumb enough to make the mistake of bullying him.

It hadn’t occurred to him that he might one day be the one actually doing the bullying. It made him feel hollowed out, like the last bits of life that were sacred for him were slowly slipping from his fingers.

He had thought, before this confrontation had begun, that it would feel something like freedom but that wasn’t turning out to be true at all. What it really felt like, if he was being totally honest with himself, was death. It felt like the most monumental kind of loss and yet he couldn’t retract his statements, couldn’t back down. It turned out, he didn’t really know how. He was a destructible force, even when the destruction he was contributing to was his own.

“You feel sorry for me? You feel sorry for me? What the hell does that even mean? I just told you that I love a girl. How is that something to feel sorry over?”

“Because, look at the girl you fell for. You’re just this sad sack of sh*t who can only love broken things. What does that say about you?”

“I love you, don’t I? Like a brother. So what does that say about you?”

“Nothing we didn’t both already know,” Andrew said with a humorless laugh, “if it took you this long to realize I’m a broken-down man, then you haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been broken since I’ve been born.”

“But why can’t you just let me have her? You could have any woman in this town and we both know it. You’ve already had at least half of them. This is the only woman I’ve ever wanted. She’s one of the only things I’ve ever wanted for myself in my whole life. Why doesn’t that matter to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, ok? You want her? Take her. Good luck to you. Hope you don’t knock her up or anything. Then you’d really be stuck.”

“Andrew!”

“Whatever, man. I don’t care what you think. Just do me a favor, ok? Don’t come around me anymore. I don’t care what you do or where you do it, but as far as we’re concerned, you don’t know me. You’re just as dead to me as your little sister and you can’t get much deader than that.”

Andrew stood so abruptly he almost knocked the table over and all of the liquid containing objects jostled back and forth precariously. He grabbed the bottle of vodka just in time to keep it from falling clean off the table and took one long pull off of its chilled neck before stomping towards the door. He didn’t bother leaving a dime this time.

Everyone in this dump knew he was good for the money and if they didn’t like his leaving, they were more than welcome to track him down and demand the payment. Otherwise, they would just have to wait until the next time he rolled in because if he didn’t get himself out of the building, like right now, he was going to completely lose his sh*t.