“Don’t play.”
“No, seriously. What are you talking about?”
“The sex tape my father showed me when he came up to my job right before Christmas? You had my dick in your mouth. Does that ring a fucking bell?”
“Oh my God!” Her hand flies to her mouth. “I swear on my life, I didnotmean to send that!”
“I don’t believe shit you say.”
“If you don’t believe anything else, believe that. Ace, I’m telling you. That was an accident.”
I stare at her through narrowed eyes and a lens of suspicion. “What about Veronica?”
“Yes, absolutely," she says immediately. "I still had your gun, so I just swung past there after lunch and shot at her. But I swear to God, I did not send that tape.”
We sit in silence for a minute. I don’t know about her and what she’s thinking, but I’m processing the fact that I was wrong about the tape but right about the attempted murder. I can’t decide which one is worse, or why I’m relieved right now, because no matter which way you slice it, my wife is fucking crazy.
“Okay. I apologize,” I finally say.
“For?”
“For messing with your pills.”
“And you did that because you thought I sent a sex tape to your dad?”
“And you shot at my coworker because…why, exactly?”
She shrugs. “I was mad. Either you were fucking her, or you were hiding her from me because you don’t trust me. Both are equally hurtful.”
I blow out a breath, shaking my head as the realization sets in. “Why the fuck are we like this?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about how fucked up we are as a couple. And as individuals.”
She stares into space for a while before her gaze moves back to my face.
“In one of my classes, we talked about the concept of social constructs. Do you know what that is?”
“I’m an engineer. I took math and science.”
“Well, basically, everything is made up.”
“Okay. Where are you going with this?”
She sighs. “You asked why we’re both fucked up. What I’m saying is that maybe ‘fucked up’ is relative. You know what I mean?”
I shake my head.
“Who’s to say what normal even is? It’s like, okay, basically, at some point, we all collectively decided that ‘normal’ in a relationship is XYZ. So then when two people get together and do JQ7, suddenly it’s fucked up and it’s a problem. But what if JQ7 is healthier than XYZ?”
“What class was this?”
“Do you get what I’m saying? Like, maybe we’re not fucked up. Maybe this is just who we are.”
“You just told me I raped you and then stabbed me in the stomach.”
“You’re being dramatic," she says with an eyeroll. "It’s basically a papercut.”
