Rock Paper Scissors

by Alice Feeney

We weren’t always the people we are now, but our memories of the past can make liars of us all.

Time can change relationships like the sea reshapes the sand.

Marriages don’t fail, people do.

We still finish each other’s sentences, but these days we get them wrong.

My husband doesn’t cheat on me with other women, or men, he has love affairs with their words.

Four-legged creatures tend to make better companions than those with two, and dogs don’t hold grudges or know how to hate. I’d rather not think about the other reasons why I work there; sometimes the dust of our memories is best left unswept.

The wind wails like a ghost outside the car, constantly trying to blow us off course, and when we slide a little on the icy road, I grip the steering wheel so tight that the bones in my fingers seem to protrude through my skin.

i love this simile

Nostalgia is a dangerous drug, but I enjoy the sensation of happier memories flooding my mind.

At least I won’t have to listen to your incessant nagging once we’ve been crushed to death by a falling tree, or died from hypothermia in this shit-can car you insist on driving.”

All people are addicts, and all addicts desire the same thing: an escape from reality. My job just happens to be my favorite drug.

There must be fifty sets of our faces reflected back at us. Almost as though all the versions of ourselves we became to try and make our marriage work, have gathered together to look down on who we’ve become. Part of me is glad I can’t recognize them. I’m not sure I’d like what I saw if I could.

“You don’t need to draw in the dust to make a point,” Amelia says. I stare at the small, childish, smiley face she is referring to on the church bench. I hadn’t noticed it before. I didn’t draw it.

The woman I married more than ten years ago would never believe that. But these days, my wife only ever hears what she wants to hear, and sees what she wants to see.

limerence noun. An involuntary state of mind caused by a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one’s feelings reciprocated.

Words are only of value if we remember how to feel what they mean.

Your dark and twisted love story, about a man who writes a letter to his wife every year on their anniversary, even after she dies, has inspired me to start writing some letters of my own. To you. Once a year. I don’t know whether I’ll share them with you yet, but maybe one day our children can read how we wrote our own love story, and lived happily ever after.

But I worry that if you knew Henry Winter only trusted you with his book because of me, it might be the end of us.

WHATTT??????

Some people say that marriage is like wine and gets better with age, but I guess it all depends on the grapes. There are definitely years that were more pleasurable than others, and I’d have bottled them if I could.

Affection is like playing the piano and you can forget how to do it without practice.

I wonder what he sees when he looks at me? Blurred features?

You can’t get this close to a cliff edge without seeing the rocks at the bottom, and even if my husband doesn’t know the full story, he knows that this weekend is a last attempt to mend what got broken. What he doesn’t know, is that if things don’t go according to plan, only one of us will be going home.

affection has been absent without leave for a long time in our marriage.

Henry and his books weren’t just work for me, he became a surrogate father figure. I doubt he felt the same way, but feelings don’t have to be mutual to be real.

I wish people were more like books. If you realize halfway through a novel that you aren’t enjoying it anymore, you can just stop and find something new to read. Same with films and TV dramas. There is no judgment, no guilt, nobody even needs to know unless you choose to tell them. But with people, you tend to have to see it through to the end, and sadly not everyone gets to live happily ever after.

We’re all responsible for casting the stars in the stories of our own lives, and she cast me in the role of her husband. Our marriage was an open audition, and I’m not sure either of us got the parts we deserved.

That’s it. The final act. If I wasn’t sure before I am now, and I’m counting down the hours until this is over once and for all.

growlery noun. A place of refuge or sanctuary for use while one is feeling out of sorts. A private room, or den, to growl in.

It’s hard to imagine feeling luckier than I do right now.

Ironic given the first sentence of the next chapter

It’s hard to imagine feeling unhappier than I do right now.

SEE? Ironic.

Just outside, no more than a few feet away, there are several pairs of eyes staring at us.

HELL NAWWW

I hope you never talk to me like that, I’ll be upset if you do.

Hahahaaaa girl too late

But I didn’t mention that I’d seen Henry Winter several times during the evening, wearing his trademark tweed jacket, bow tie, and a strange expression on his heavily lined face. He looked older than he does in his author photos. With his thick white hair, blue eyes, and extremely pale skin, it was a bit like seeing a ghost. I didn’t tell you that your favorite author had been staring in our direction, constantly following us around the party, desperately trying to get your attention.

Youre actually crazy. Why are you literally praying on his downfall…

Then the lights go out. “Adam?” I call. The trapdoor up above me slams shut. “Adam!” I scream, but he doesn’t answer, and all I can see is black.

Men hate women. This proves it

The fingerprints of the men who made them are still visible, two centuries later, and it always cheers Robin up to think that nobody disappears completely. We all leave some small part of ourselves behind.

the world keeps turning, and the years go by, regardless of how much she wishes she could turn back time. She wonders about that a lot: why people only learn to live in the moment when the moment has passed.

She knows he’ll eat when he is hungry.

UHH… HE??? WHO IS "HE"

The third match I strike briefly illuminates part of the wall, and I notice all the scratch marks on the surface. It looks like someone, or something, once tried to claw their way out of here.

Hell naw

Then I hear the sound of scratching.

HELL NAWWW

Adam is gone.

:/

We’re all too busy looking down to remember to look up at the stars. It makes me sad when I think about all the things I might have already missed out on in life, but I plan to change that.

“I just think we’re at an age where we need to plan ahead,” she said, after eleven on a school night with a pen in her hand. “I’m only forty.”

Shes literally plotting on him

My wife is planning something, I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what.

DAMN STRAIGHT

But I also believe that what I do—telling stories—is important. Stories teach us about our past, enrich our present, and can predict our future. But then I would say that. The words I have written are all that will remain of me when I’m gone.

Enjoy the stories of other people’s lives, but don’t forget to live your own.

People should be more careful what they wish for.

WHO IS PLOTTING ON WHOOO???!!

There are forests less shady than my wife.

Hahaa good one Adam

All those promise-shaped good intentions made me cry. It reminded me of the us we used to be, and who I thought we’d be forever.

Maybe it is only ever a matter of time before life makes the love unravel.

My husband’s expression is one I’ve never seen his face wear before, and it makes me feel afraid.

In this car, in this marriage, in this life. Ten years ago, I thought I could do anything, be anyone. The world seemed full of endless possibilities, but now it’s nothing but a series of dead ends. Sometimes I just want to … start again.