. double cross

[jack kearney]

Although he didn't have to work in-office most of the week, Jack still enjoyed the ritual of physically going to work. It meant an early alarm, a lunch cooked and packed the night prior, the stretch of freeway to Carson. There would be catching up with his colleagues on break, furtively returning Sylvia's texts, the day becoming a blur of work by the end as he packed up to leave. Already he was looking forward to weekend plans with his girlfriend, albeit wary of early birthday surprises as the date approached. Also on the horizon were the holidays and their first anniversary together, a smile creeping to Jack's lips at the thought of it all. After work he headed to his other home, the place he frequented more than his own—especially now that Sara had moved out. The many routes there were memorized, making the usual turns until he arrived at her building and took the steps up to hers. They'd exchanged house keys months ago and kept spare clothes at each other's places, practicing living together. Unlocking and nudging his way through the door, Jack welcomed the familiar scent of it. “Honey, I'm home!” he sang as if his sitcom wife awaited, footsteps echoing down the foyer. Setting down his bag, a brief investigation revealed Sylvia on the couch in the living room. "There she is," he said with a smile, leaning down to kiss her, undoing the topmost button of his shirt and nudging the sleeves up his forearms. “What are we in the mood for: going out or staying in?”

[sylvia constantinou]

Anxiety gnawed at Sylvia and in turn she gnawed at her nails. Catching a hangnail between her teeth, she tugs sharply, blood blooming to the surface as she wears under her breath. "Fuck, ow," she mutters, readjusting the phone where it's wedged between her cheek and shoulder. "No, dad, sorry, sorry-- that wasn't at you. I caught myself on something. What were you saying?" As soon as her poor father resumes his train of thought once more, Sylvie is distracted again, fussing with a loose thread on her sweatpants. She had been distracted all day, starting a number of tasks only to let them lapse, a trail of unfinished chores left in her wake as she moves around her very empty apartment, wishing Sara was still there to lessen some of the echo.  She's soon saved by the bell, hearing the scrape of a key in a lock. "Gotta go dad, Jack's here. Yeah, yeah, I'll tell him. Love you, I'll call you later." A smile spreads across her face as he appears, her first natural one of the day. "Hmm..." she looks down at herself, sucking on her sore finger as she contemplates. "Let's stay in, I can't be bothered putting makeup on. How was your day? My dad says hi, by the way. He actually said 'tell my son in law I said hello' but I think that's jinxing things." Suddenly she's very aware of the chaos she's wrought, the visual noise of half folded laundry on the kitchen table, a sink full of dishes, random notebooks and pens strewn on the coffee table. "I was gonna tidy all this up before you got here, you're early." He was not early. "Can we order sushi? I've got a brutal craving for salmon sashimi."

[jack kearney]

Sara’s departure had been quite an ordeal in every way between the move itself and the emotional events before, during and after. Witnessing these girls’ friendship up close was lovely and beautiful, but also daunting sometimes, a closeness he could never achieve as a boyfriend. Yet through it all he was dedicated to keeping Sylvia from falling apart in the aftermath, talking her down from every proverbial ledge that appeared, still learning how to navigate her anxieties. Although he was tempted to move in right away, Jack suspected that Sylvia needed to have something of an adjustment period before they could embrace a new normal. The flowers he’d brought her a few days ago stood proudly on the kitchen table, although currently eclipsed by laundry and other clutter that spiked in his peripheral. He noted down some chores on his mental to-do list, also catching sight of her bleeding hang nail. Naturally he disappeared to the bathroom to fetch a band-aid, plopping onto the couch next to her to wrap up the mark. “Oh I missed George? Damn,” he said as he focused on the adhesive, giving it back to her with a kiss. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he hummed with a grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’m getting the hang of this rotting thing. I have to save up some energy for football Sunday,” he continued, excited for the return of the season…although it might earn him an eyeroll or complaint about American sports. “Sushi sounds amazing, you know my order.” Jack ran a hand through his hair, put his foot up on the coffee table edge. “My day was good. Flew right by,” he said, looking at the notebooks and imagining her working away all day. “How about yours? How many pages today?”

[sylvia constantinou]

The place immediately feels better for Jack's entrance, having previously had the feeling of a theatre set that was waiting for the curtain call. Everything was so alarmingly still now, things left where she put them down. It used to drive Sylvia mad when Sara would eat her last Magnum or leave her half drunk water glasses around the place, but now their absence taunts her, every untouched snack a reminder that she was alone. Jack moves around with comfort but a distance that came from not being a true resident, his belongings limited to a dedicated drawer or two, everything else screaming at her with how much it was hers and hers alone. Naturally Jack has started fixing things already, her eyes glazing over as her finger is wrapped in a bandaid she didn't know she owned, snapping to when he kisses it. "Thank you." A laugh escapes her, another first of the day. "You are not getting the hang of it, but I admire your can-do spirit. Very American of you." She feels slovenly beside him, having barely moved from the couch all day, the oversized t-shirt she's wearing one of his that she had also slept in the night before. "I was looking up recipes for that," she says of his football plans, picturing herself as the perfect American girlfriend. "I'm gonna try to make queso, maybe even tater tots." One of her many distractions today, a rabbit hole that was much more engaging than the blank pages staring up at her. The question comes and she feels a fission of irritation, though she knows he means well, knows too that it's a valid question. "Um, hard to say... more kind of ideas, getting the structure down..." she stands up, stretching. "I'm gonna shower quickly but then I'll call, ok? There's beer in the fridge."

[jack kearney]

Usually her nail-biting was symptom of a peaking stress level. Besides the move, what immediately came to Jack’s mind was their New York visit. Only after they’d left did he learn the truth about her meeting, that her team was applying pressure on her to reach certain milestones in her writing process. She didn’t want to spoil the trip, she’d claimed, which is why she waited to tell him. So it turned out, all her worrying had been for something...and unfortunately, it was her own doing. Now it was a hole that Jack could only try to help dig her out of. “I just need more practice,” he assured, still learning how to simply do nothing. It was a challenge, his fingers already itching now to tidy up the place. At the talk of football Sunday, Jack perked up at her interest in participating. “You might as well be talking dirty to me,” he chuckled into a kiss he stole, eager to hear more about these plans but also knowing the importance of her writing progress. She was dangerously close to some deadlines—ones that had already been extended. He laughed at the incoherence of her sentence, easily distracted by her standing to height and stretching, the hem of his shirt riding up on her. “Yell if you see any spiders,” he teased, waiting for her disappear before he moved to deal with the laundry and dishes. The sound of a beer cap popping off echoed in the kitchen, Jack returning to the couch and seeing the notebooks up close, no more filled than the day before or the day before that. When she returned, Jack sipped at his beer and turned down the TV. “When’s your next book meeting?”

[sylvia constantinou]

Sylvie looks at the plaster— no, band-aid that's now wrapped around her finger, a pinprick of red blooming against its aggressive beige. It was becoming quite the talent, her ability to stare at uninteresting things and zone out for whole minutes at a time. For now there was no background noise to distract her, Sara's bedroom door remaining unslammed, her keys never scraping the lock. Only her two loves - Jack and the podcast, of course - stopped her from doing absolutely nothing with her days, moving around the flat—no, apartment, as listlessly as a goldfish in a bowl. It was in stark difference to Jack's casual but continual motion, a man who was always doing something though he managed to make it seem easy, never frenetic or urgent. Sylvie had two states, for the most part; stillness or panic. She kisses him back, a kiss that snaps her back to life. In the shower hot water further revives her, though she can't be bothered washing her hair so awkwardly avoids getting it wet under the jets. If she just stayed in that shower indefinitely, what would happen? Would everything cease to matter? Well yes, because eventually she'd die. It was alarming how often her thoughts stretched to this eventuality, though of course in jest. At least for now. Getting out and wrapping a towel around herself, she returns to find her half finished chores complete, something that makes her feel both guilt and relief. "You didn't have to do all that," her catchphrase. His question elicits a heavy sigh, one she's not even aware she's made. "I don't know, I need to check my diary." She makes no attempt to do so, instead going to the fridge and getting herself a beer, tapping it against the countertop to clear the top off. "The usual, yeah? Can we skip the spicy tuna this time? They never make it spicy enough, it pisses me off every time and then I make the mistake of ordering it again."

[jack kearney]

If Jack was good at anything, it was managing all things in his life. Managing tasks, himself, other people. After years of being the family business arbiter, he’d read books and attended seminars on how to better communicate with others, rife with the banality of corporate lingo. There was “work Jack” and “home Jack,” but sometimes the topic of Sylvia’s work—which he felt quite involved in after months of shadowing her at meetings, screening emails she was too afraid to open, encouraging her to write while he worked from home next to her—left the switch halfway flipped, caught between the two modes. He waves off her catchphrase, ready with his own: I don’t mind or I’m happy to help. Over their months together he’d learned her likes and dislikes in the home, her strengths and weaknesses. Jack enjoyed a tidy environment that reflected the stability of his life, seeing clutter as the symptom of a disarrayed mind, though he loved Sylvia for it…most times. He could pick up where she left off, balance her in that way without resenting her or hoping for change; in turn, she loosened the grip he sometimes had around the neck of life. A beer of her own opens, Jack tipping his symbolically toward her for a cheers to their cozy Friday, feeling woefully overdressed in his work clothes. He put up no fight about the spicy tuna roll, letting her make the call to their favorite sushi place. Motioning for her to sit back next to him, Jack put his arm over the back of the couch. “C’mere, take a load off. Tell me all about your day.” The what-Sylvia-does-while-he’s-gone series was his favorite.

[sylvia constantinou]

There is a trail of wet footprints in her wake as she crosses the apartment, her hair tied up in a messy bun though strands have broken free and frame her face, sticking to her damp skin. The shower makes her feel more like a real person, someone whose skin now smelled of apricot and musk, someone who had things to talk about with her boyfriend who had been out in the world all day. She had long felt sorry for stay at home mothers, wondered what they would tell their husbands when they got back from work. Had the little one shat more than once today, or maybe spectacularly badly? Maybe a parcel hadn't arrived as expected. It was a cruel viewpoint on meaningful domestic work, and perhaps her lack of things to talk about now was her penance. She picks up the laundry he's politely folded for her and moves it to the bedroom, though not fully away, pretending to herself that this was now much more of a collaborative effort. The phone is held between her ear and shoulder as she rattles off the familiar order to the familiar voice, who asks if she wants spicy tuna rolls too, reminds her that she usually does. Unable to admit the truth she agrees to the addition, even pretending she'd forgotten and thanking the person for the reminder. When she reenters the room she's wearing another of his t-shirts, clean this time, alongside a pair of his clean boxers. "Hmm let's see," she sits where he's gesturing to, curling into him and his lovely familiarity. "I woke up sometime between eight am and eleven am, impossible to say now. Watched somewhere between three and six hours of TikTok, also impossible to say. Looked at your location on find my friends a few times. And then you got here. How was your day?"

[jack kearney]

Even after nearly a year together one could say they had not yet left the honeymoon phase, rose-tinted glasses still firmly in place. An objective pair of eyes might point out the obvious clashes in this very room: Sylvia leaving a trail of mess behind her, traces of her manifesting in the clutter and disarray to which Jack pointlessly tended. Barely just beginning her day as his own work one had ended, obvious in the stark contrast between their clothes. It even shows in their body language, Jack attempting to unwind while Sylvia was more like a cat caught lounging in a forbidden place. But his excitement to see her after a long day and think about precious time off with her blinded him to the many many signs. Now it’s a waiting game for their food, Jack’s thick arm dropping along her shoulders as soon as she was near, pulling her in for a kiss and teasing tug at the hem of her shirt. Her day pajamas into her evening pajamas, he would have joked, had she not launched into the nebulous, almost spiteful recollection of her Friday. His brow jumped, swallowing a pull of beer before the bottle edged back onto the table, Jack concerned by the type of day she had. “I…thought you were going to tackle those pages today?” he tried cautiously, combing a wet tendril from her temple. It seemed she was dodging the topic entirely despite her lofty goals earlier in the week, a to-do list probably enshrined somewhere in the notebooks on the table. “What’s going on, Syl? Are you ok?”

[sylvia constantinou]

As they kiss her concerns ebb away, if only for the duration of his lips against her own. He was a balm for her, soothing without ever being condescending, though in some of her more temperamental moments she had cruelly accused him of the latter. They had barely fought over this past year and that was purely down to Jack and his seemingly limitless patience, that being the only thing they had clashed about, in fact. There were times her frustration with herself was so boundless that it found a new home in perceived frustration with him. In her lowest moments she could find herself resenting him for his inherent capability, the ease with which he could compile a mental to-do list and tick it off like it was nothing.  This threatened to be one of those times. His completely justified concern sparks shame, an emotion that she very easily converts to annoyance despite his obvious attempt at trepidation. "Oh my god Jack, you're barely in the door and you're already nagging me," she huffs, pulling away from him and distracting herself with a swig of beer. There's a stirring of guilt somewhere deep inside her, but to confront it would be to climb down, something she is not currently willing to do. "My best friend literally just moved out and it's Friday night and all I want is to try to relax, to hang out with my boyfriend when he's been out all day, but you can't help yourself, can you?"

[jack kearney]

The deadline had bought her time, time that would hopefully light yet another fire under her since the first one had apparently not scorched enough. Sylvia was struggling to meet her team halfway, procrastinating until it was too late, trying to self-motivate with stress and the threat of danger. But unfortunately that risk was in fact catching up, and she could not afford to admit to doing nothing when she promised and planned otherwise. There was a lot hanging in the balance—money, trust, integrity—which made it a hard spectacle for Jack to watch, who was convinced that he could love her into the muse and discipline it would take to finish her book. Suddenly he is very aware of the nerve he’d plucked. Although they often boasted about their fight-free relationship, this only prolonged their exposure to friction and conflict—which she tended to avoid, and he would rather resolve than explore. The shift in her tone is enough to alert him, feeling her pull away physically and mentally. “Ok, not a good time,” he realized out loud, trying to dodge the sharpness of her words. “I’m only checking in, babe. You asked me to keep you accountable, I'm just trying to help,” he reminded, the few good days she managed to have alongside him working from home, supervised and undistracted. “I won't bring it up again ‘til Monday,” he amended, not realizing that becoming a deadline in itself. “What do you want to watch?”

[sylvia constantinou]

This was not a new game for Sylvia, whose temper tantrums had become a fixture of every relationship she had ever been in. Anxiety teeming under the surface, it took so little to cause it to spike and this made her volatile, more prone to lashing out than breaking down. Jack had suffered at the sharp end of this a handful of times since they first started seriously seeing each other, though admittedly many of those times had been in the last few weeks, the looming deadline peeling off a layer of skin that left her extremely exposed. As soon as the words leave her lips she knows they won't be lobbed back at her, though she can sense the shift in Jack, the almost imperceptible pulling away. Sometimes she could see his eyes on her fingers when they stilled over the keyboard. The secret desire she suspected they shared, that if only he could just pick up her laptop and write it for her. She's made it to the edge of the couch, where she holds her head in her hands for a few seconds as she collects her thoughts. Be nice. It's Jack, poor, lovely Jack. "I know," she says finally, not ready yet to apologise. A twinge at the mention of Monday that stops the 's' word from leaving her mouth. She turns her head back to him, simultaneously grateful and irked by the question. A blatant invitation to change the subject, something she had thought she wanted but now she's not so sure. "You can tell me off, you know. For being lazy, or snapping at you, whatever. You don't have to put up with it."

[jack kearney]

It was very simple man logic to Jack: she needed to do something, she was stressed about doing it, so if she did it then she would no longer be stressed! This did not, of course, factor in Sylvia's anxiety or complicated feelings of shame and fear, nor the dread watching the cursor blink in a blank text document or the cryptic preview of a fresh email in her inbox. If he could try everything but write the book for her, he would, until something finally stuck and she stopped adding bars to the cage of her making. Jack takes a measured breath, reminding himself of what she had just said about nagging, ignoring the emotional bait. “That’s not going to accomplish anything,” he countered, confused by the invitation to lay into her. The idea that conflict was her versus him—rather than them versus the problem—was a foreign and frankly startling one he did not wish to entertain. But their perspectives were so askew they might as well be speaking different languages now. She’s retreating on the couch but he angles himself toward her anyway, holding her gaze, those normally rich colors crowded by what she wasn’t saying. “Look, I know you’ve been having a hard time since we got back from New York,” he started, reaching for his beer again to have something in his hands. “I don’t think you’re lazy. I think you’re stressed,” he explained, feeling almost like this was a bad employee’s performance review. “You put so much pressure on yourself. I hate to watch you suffer, especially when what you’re stressed out about is solvable and doable. It takes more effort to avoid doing it than to actually do it, Syl.”

[sylvia constantinou]

Sylvia spent so much time thinking about what she had to do that it felt like a form of work in itself. It was hard to believe that she had spent so much time considering this plan of action - concepts of a plan as a certain politician had recently quipped - that she felt in some way that she had made headway, that this was all a necessary part of the process. Until she had met Jack she fully believed that everyone was prone to procrastination, that it was a basic of human nature and not something she ought to beat herself up about too much. Meeting him and learning that this was not always the case had been a shock to her as a teen, and one she had yet to get over. It made her jealous. There it was again, his obsession with accomplishment. He's saying things that should be nice to hear but in her state they sound like a rejection of the truth, of her. Substituting laziness for stress, because stress was outside of her, something that happened to her and was not actually her, a function of her own personality. Sylvia knows herself to be lazy, a trait that she made peace with some time between leaving the band and starting her podcast. But she feels he doesn't want her to be, that if she is, he might finally start reconsidering this whole relationship. So she doesn't correct him. "Oh right Jack. Of course. It's so easy to write a book, that's why everyone does it, isn't it? That's why writers block is a myth? You're right, I should just sit down and write a fucking book, thank god you're here because truly, truly that thought had never occurred to me. Think I'll be able to do it before the food arrives? You know, if I really apply myself."

 

[jack kearney]

The cut of her words and stark of her tone reminded Jack of disagreements between his siblings, his parents, his workers. The manager hat was harder to take off than to put on, already thinking of defusion tactics and resolution skills. Consider the angles of both sides, aim for a middle ground, validate feelings, assess the risks, use neutral words. Zooming out of this living room, the big picture was keeping Sylvia on track—her goal that he felt not only invited into but obligated to see through as her partner. Still, try as he might, he could not lend her his strengths nor make up for her weaknesses. “Of course that’s not what I mean,” he said after she was done, careful of reining in his own tone now that misunderstandings were incoming, intentional or not. The beer drains empty in his hand but he keeps his hold on it, worried the animation of his hands would further irk her. “Even you agreed that sitting down to write for an hour or two a day was reasonable. Chip away at it little by little, remember?” he tried, reminder of a day that she catastrophized everything and saw no end in sight. A similar spiral unfolding now if he didn’t pull her back in, nothing a tomato timer or productivity app could help. Conversely, hearing about the fraction of her day spent on TikTok made Jack realize how wide the gap was between what she was supposed to be doing and what she was actually doing. “I thought you wanted this,” he said, biting his tongue about the fact that she could spill her life and opinions on her podcast but not on paper. “One day you say you changed your mind and want to back out of the deal. The next you’re asking for an extension... What's changed?”