Previews: Gateway Drug | Volume II

Preview: Gateway Drug | Volume II | Part Five

I see the look on his face as soon as the door opens, Eddie's hair wild from what I'm assuming was a nap before I interrupted it, until he opens the door a little wider to reveal his guitar.

He looked at me as if he was witnessing a car accident and couldn't look away. My hair was completely unkept, I had dried baby vomit on my already stained t-shirt, I was still in pajama shorts and my bedroom slippers and my eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying.

Crying over a screaming baby, crying over feeling alone, and crying because my husband had apparently contacted his mistress and didn't tell me about it.

I probably looked like a Martian compared to how he'd been used to seeing me before going out with Valerie, or at events.

I could see the temptation to shut the door in my face, but he wasn't that kind of guy.

"Viv?" He asks me, glancing around outside before adding, "Umm, Val's not home. Were you supposed to hangout or...?"

"No, no – I just...I wanted to talk to you, actually...um..." It's awkward as I wait for him to invite me inside, but then remember maybe it's best that we talk out here to avoid anybody getting the wrong idea.

"Oh, okay." He closes the door a second to go put his instrument down before he's back out in his t-shirt and jeans, sitting down on one of the little cream-colored wicker chairs on the porch.

I opt to stay standing to keep some distance between us – again, voiding any prying eyes of making it into something it's not – and cross my arms nervously while he obviously waits for me to tell him what it is I wanted to talk about.

"Valerie told me what happened with you two, you know." I confess it, and he looks as if he knows this, raising his brows slightly as I continue, "And she told me she cheated first."

"Yeah." It looks uncomfortable coming from him, perhaps a blatant indication that I'm crossing a line, but knowing him, if I were crossing a line, he'd let me know rather quickly.

"Do you think she loved him more than she loved you?" It's the only thing that can come to my mind, only because that's the question that torments me more and more despite Nikki's affair being further and further into the past.

Immediately, he shakes his head.

"No, I don't. I think..." He takes a moment to really gather his words, chewing at the inside of his lips before explaining, "...I think I was getting more and more busy, and kinda got absent...and she felt alone. He was there, and she liked that."

He was there, and she liked that, I repeat it in my head, secretly understanding that notion completely being I myself have felt that same feeling.

"What if you found out she recently contacted him to have some closure for the relationship? What would you do?"

"Has she?" His face twists.

"No, no, she hasn't. But, just theoretically, what if she did?"

"I wouldn't like it but...closure exists as a way of indefinitely closing a chapter, right?" He asks softly, scratching at the back of his elbow.

"Yeah."

He gives a shrug and a breath out and says, "Then why get angry or hurt she's officially being rid of it?"

It's clear now that he knows a little bit of what's going on, or why I'm here asking him very personal questions, because he then asks, "If he loved her, he would've left you for her."

"If he loved me he wouldn't have gone to her in the first place." It slips from me.

"I thought that, too, at first. Then, I fucked up, too." He mumbles. "And I know I damn sure love her, but I still did it. Some things just aren't black and white. You gotta know that by now." He points out with a small smirk, his signature grin that pulls a smile of my own. "Did you love him?"

It's asked as I'm about to thank him for his time and bid him "goodbye," and I'm taken aback by it.

It's not prying or nosy — he legitimately looks curious. He let me overstep, so I suppose I can let him, now, too.

"I still do." I admit it to him, the only one I've admitted it to. "But I love Nikki more."