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A family cabin in Oregon is an amazing place for a family vacation. Unless your marriage is falling apart, and then it’s just the same hell on earth as anywhere else would be.
But Jonathan’s trying: he’s promised himself, and he’s promised their couples therapist, and most of all he’s promised Dean. He’s trying: he’s really trying.
(Dean’s a bit fragile, after his third divorce. He hangs onto Jonathan and Sara’s fairytale as proof of the existence of love in the world. He can’t let Dean down.)
Note: that’s his first, deepest, most profound feeling on the matter. Not, he can’t let Sara down.
...yeah.
And hence, their first family vacation in about two and a half years. There’s always been some excuse –- a deadline, a client having a breakdown, too fragile to leave.
You do what you want, really, though, on the whole. Everyone does.
Sara’s cancelled all her appointments. He’s cajoled his agent into putting his latest deadline on hold.
And now, they tumble three kids out of the cross-country Volvo, the best, sweetest fruit of fifteen years of marriage.
Great. More people he can’t let down.
Chapter 2: I was tired of my lady: we'd been together too long
Notes:
Chapter title is from Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes.
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It doesn't help that he’s carrying a secret with him. It’s consuming his mind, even as he shepherds the kids into the cabin’s TV room, and settles them down with juice-boxes and crackers, while he and Sara unpack.
Sara asks him if there’s anything wrong. She comments on how quiet he’s been, the whole drive.
But Jonathan tells her he’s fine, just decompressing, that’s all. He kisses her cheek, and pours her a glass of wine, and offers to cook.
It’s not as if he can tell her that he’s been talking to Halley, recently.
The first time, just bumping into her on the street, outside his therapist's office.
The other four times, not so accidental, no, not at all.
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It's not like she wasn't always hot. She was always gloriously hot - that wasn't ever the issue, no, not at all.
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And Jonathan knows perfectly well it would have been better to say something straight away, that first time he actually backed into Halley while maneuvering skiing gear out of his shrink's office building, ready for a boys' weekend with Dean.
It would have been better. Yes. But not half so exciting, lacking that shudder of newness, of memory. Of bad behavior.
He's got a template to follow - he can't even claim he hasn't had Sara model how to deal with this. It's been a good seven years since Lars first got back in touch, and now they're all good buddies. The idiot even brings his latest girlfriend for weekends in the city with them, long Sunday mornings with brunches and wandering round farmers' markets.
If only he didn't usually bring his latest recordings, too.
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(Sometimes J thinks back to the magic of their early days - and even before that, the magical mystery and strangeness of how they lost and found each other, after years of restless dreams. How can they ever recapture that feeling? ... How did they lose it? Sometimes he wonders if the entire charm wasn't about losing each other in the first place. Who's as magical as the lost princess you can never track down, lost in the forest, caged in a tower? Training as a psychotherapist and getting engaged to a dire Swede-jazzrocker, on the other side of the country?)
If he hadn't lost that phone number... he does wonder, sometimes - oh, it's so disloyal - if they'd have dated, and lost interest, and broken up within a month.
If he'd be married to Halley anyway, now.
Chapter 6: tarryhootin' round the house last night
Notes:
Chapter title is James Thurber.
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First night at the cabin, the kids can't get to sleep - too excited and too much upheaval, after a long journey. (Bats in the outhouse! An oppossum making its home in the laundry room! They'd forgotten to bring chargers!)
Jonathan is up and down half a dozen times, trying to settle them down, reading stories, being a good dad and a soothing influence.
Once they've finally dropped off - after three in the morning - he can't sleep either. He lies in the dark, and thinks about getting up and making coffee, because at this point, fuck it.
He lies in the dark, listening to the birds waking up and stirring outside, and grinds his teeth.
Sara sleeps beside him, like a baby. The stranger beside him, walking hand in hand with him through life this past fifteen years.
That doesn't help.
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He thinks about Halley - he tries not to, but he does.
But when he finally sleeps, he dreams about Sara.
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The dreams are disturbing - perhaps more so because they don't actually feature Sara, as such. This time - every time - they hark back to that Lost Time, the years when they had briefly encountered each other, and each gone on their merry way.
And if his subconscious regards these as the precious lost halcyon days, then what the fuck is wrong with him?
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Perhaps dreams are magical.
In any case, he wakes in the morning, and Sara isn't there. Nor is the Oregon cabin.
He's back in his apartment - his old apartment. The one before Sara, and even before Halley.
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He thinks he's dreaming at first, of course. And he's quite chuffed by it. Lucid dreaming isn't a thing he's ever mastered, and he might as well enjoy it while it lasts, eh?
He's a good hour into breakfast, and wandering nostalgically round his old stamping ground, examining the prehistoric technology (Gamecube! mp3 player! cable TV!) before he begins to feel real unease.
It doesn't stop him lounging on the sofa and watching a few of the CSI and Everybody Loves Raymond episodes he's got backed up on TiVo. (TiVo!) (Everybody Loves Raymond! ... Maybe he doesn't deserve Sara.)
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Things are definitely... odd, though. Sure, things seem pretty real in a dream, or maybe you just never think to examine them too closely.
But things are just too real, all around him.
And anyway. He's seen Sliding Doors, and Freaky Friday, and Inception. He's seen Groundhog Day.
(He's got Groundhog Day on the TiVo.)
He's just too culturally informed and cine-literate not to be aware of what's going on.
Or at least, to be suspicious.
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Maybe he should call someone: maybe that would shake things up, make him wake up, break the dream apart into a few broken fragments of illusion.
Maybe he should try calling Lisa Bonet, or the Notorious B.I.G. And when they take his call, because they're his best buds, that'll do the trick.
He's prowling around the apartment, now: more suspicious, more tentative, than his first blithe romp.
And, holy hell.
He's got a landline.
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Anyhow, he succumbs to temptation. He makes the call. Of course.
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He calls Dean.
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He can't honestly say that it's Dean's fault that he doesn't understand a word that Jonathan's talking about.
Or that he assumes Jonathan's absolutely rat-assed drunk.
Rick (Guest) on Chapter 2 Thu 14 Jul 2022 03:03AM UTC
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