As Told By Paramours

chapter two

josie

YOU ALWAYS HEAR ABOUT CHEATING in an after-school-special type of way, where you feel like it'd never really happen but in passing you say "Once a cheater, always a cheater." You don't really think about if it were to happen in your reality, but if you do, you think about what if my partner cheated on me?

It's never, what if my parent cheated on my other parent and I have a sibling and I didn't know for most of my life?

Hearing about cheating itself is one thing, but knowing someone you loved wholly, someone you put your trust in could be able to do something you yourself said you could never forgive is another thing.

Then you're running through everything you've ever said about cheaters in your life.

Cheaters are scum.

Cheaters are trash.

If you've ever cheated, I sincerely hope you--

And other things.

Most of the time it's human nature to make exceptions for people we love or care about if they mess up. But suddenly instead of downplaying cheating, suddenly that person you told you loved yesterday, or the person who watched you take your first steps, suddenly they've changed.

If they're capable of cheating on someone they claimed to love, what else are they capable of?

Or was the love thing a lie, too?

At least, that's the first wave.

The second is wow someone out there has my blood in them (not literally of course, I'm no blood specialist. What are those things called?). Someone out there has my dad's nose, and I didn't even know. Someone out there is literally my sibling and I had never heard of them until months ago.

The next waves vary.

You cry and cry because the one person you thought you knew more than anything turned out to be a liar. You wonder what would've happened if he'd chosen that family instead.

Some days you laugh and you say, wow, that's insane. I really have another sibling. And other days you cry because it all comes back to you and you hate him but you also love him but you don't know if what you're feeling is forgiveness or compulsory-dealing-with-it and you hate your sibling and just thinking that word makes you sick because it's true and this is something that happened and you cannot change that, not in a million years.

Today, I'm on a mix of the second, third, and fourth waves.

It's crazy, to be honest, and sort of embarrassing.

I don't know why it hit me when it did.

I was in the corridor at Jameson Retirement Home thinking about siblings, maybe laughing maniacally, and then it hits me that I have not two, but three, one of which I've never met nor spoken to, one of which probably looks like me, one which literally is related to me. One which had a name, had a life, one which existed before me. One that was my father's child before I was.

I feel like sand is being dumped into my airways (sounds gruesome, though it isn't as graphic) and my eyes are prickling before reaching the next room.

I've never visited on Wednesdays because I dedicate them to studying, and my parents say visiting my father's mother every day was a little excessive especially with the insults she barreled at me. I disagree, though, obviously. What was life without a couple insults here and there, anyway?

I thought it'd be a nice change of scenery, and I could play chess with Angie and help out a bit.

However, after today, I'm concluding that nope, Wednesdays are not my cup of tea.

I crouch down for a moment, running my hands through my hair, and as the anger builds up, I grab at the roots.

He lied to me.

He lied to me.

He has another child.

I'm not his second child.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and somehow the tears that drift down my face make me even more irritable. Why am I crying? Why does this still affect me?

I hate the ticklish feel of the tears as they glide down my cheeks. I want to wipe them but I also don't want to do anything at all but exist, maybe not even that.

My thoughts pause when I hear singing. Someone is playing guitar faintly, singing a slow strummed song. One which I recognize instantly: Daniel Caesar's Japanese Denim.

It's heavenly.

My fingers loosen from my hair and re-station themselves on my face, wiping the snot and the tears and everything as I stand, ignoring the annoyed feeling nagging at me.

It's a masculine voice, low and smooth, and a little throaty, but sounds insouciant.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one who hears the melody, or if all the staff passing hear it and just aren't as stunned as I am. It's almost surreal, like every note that passes releases one bag of tension in my chest, lifts one stone off my shoulders.

And it's coming from John's room.

Despite myself, I continue down the corridor, pausing at the entrance. No way that's John.

I think about it for a bit. If it is him and he's singing like that, I might have sided with him on the heartbreaker thing in a heartbeat. Blood isn't thicker than that voice.

The door is slightly peeled open, so I peek into his room, feeling silly after the fact because I was headed here anyway, and showing up would not be out of the ordinary other than the fact that it's a different day.

There's a boy perhaps my age or a little older, sitting on the edge of John's chair, holding a worn looking guitar. He stops singing, and I think he sees me, but then he just takes the pencil from behind his ear and scribbles something down on a paper on the oak table, tunes his guitar, and continues. He looks like John a little, with caramel brown skin and dense, slightly overgrown curls that are almost hanging in his tired but lively eyes above a soft, square jaw. There's a dimple in his cheek when he says certain words, and a small smile when he says certain lines like I'm so in love, so in love, and high school was never for me.

I only realize I'd been staring for a while when John speaks: "Talented, isn't he."

His low voice is right by my ear, and I jump belatedly. "As talented as he is taken."

"Good grief John," I say, putting a hand to my heart, then reflexively touch my face to make sure it isn't still damp. My head hurts, I notice. "How long have you been standing there?"

He's smiling at me with an eerie set of pearly whites. "Longer than you'd like."

"Wait—" something clicks. "Is that your grandson?"

"Yes, that's Elijah."

Ooooh.

"But the photo..."

He arches a scraggly brow. "Was taken seven years ago."

"Oh." I take a quick glance in the boy and back up from the door. "He's really good."

"Do you want to meet him?"

I don't know why, but I freeze, and gesture in the vague direction of the main desk. "Carl needs me on call. I was heading there before, so," I lie.

He inspects me closer, realization dawning, and I almost step back as he says: "Is everything okay?"

I nod a little too vigorously. "Yes, I am. Thank you."

Then I turn and jet down the hall.