Entombed by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online

friends, but sitting aside one another, laughing together, having fun. Alyssa confronted me about it, and I protested once more, assuring her that there was nothing going on. I told her she was being paranoid and jealous, and in my mind, I believed that to be so, because I hadn’t realized I was entering into an emotional affair with Hannah. I honestly saw her as just a friend—someone who could be emotionally intimate with me in ways that Alyssa could not. I didn’t want to lose Alyssa. I loved her. But she couldn’t give me what I needed, so I sought it elsewhere, and where was the harm in that? You do what you have to do to survive.
    Despite our problems, Alyssa and I got married and ended up buying a little house. My friendship with Hannah waxed and waned. When Alyssa and I were having problems, Hannah always seemed to be there, ready to step up and open herself to me emotionally. We flirted somewhat, and joked about sex once or twice, but I never slept with her. I never even considered it until eight years later when Alyssa told me that she wanted a divorce. I remember that day so clearly. I’d come home from work, surprised to find Alyssa already home, as well. I gave her the customary hug and a peck on the forehead, but she felt distant and stiff. By then, I was used to that reaction from her, so I simply walked away and sat down on the couch. I had turned on a video game and was just getting ready to play when I realized that she was standing next to me. I noticed then that she’d been crying. Without a word, she sat down next to me and began to talk, and the things she told me about myself and about our marriage were the most awful things I have ever heard, because they were true. They were all true. I’d just never realized them until then. I was a self-centered, immature asshole who had lied to her and treated her like shit and had been engaged in an emotional affair with a co-worker for the entire eight years of our marriage. The worst part, she said, was that she knew I had the best of intentions. She knew I didn’t mean to hurt her. I was just too selfish to realize that my efforts not to hurt her were doing even more damage.
    I pleaded with her. I promised Alyssa that I could change. I promised we could go to a counselor together. I wept and begged and swore. Each time I reached for her hand, Alyssa flinched and pulled farther away. We went on like that all evening, until there was nothing left to say. She wanted me out by the end of the month. She’d already contacted a lawyer and paid a deposit (her parents had lent her the money). At least we didn’t have any kids. Hell, we didn’t even have a dog or a cat to fight over. There was just us, and soon enough, there wouldn’t even be that anymore.
    “Why are you doing this?” I asked her, as she walked me to the door.
    “I’m doing what I have to do to survive, Pete. Isn’t that what you always say? Do what you have to do to survive?”
    I couldn’t respond to her because there was nothing I could say. Alyssa was right. Many times since then, I’d played the conversation back in my head, searching for things I could have said, different words or promises that might have changed the outcome, but there are none. I know that now.
    Things are how they are. It is what it is. You do what you have to do to survive. And if the situation changes, and life throws you a curveball, then you’d better well fucking adapt.
    Adapt or die.
    Things didn’t work out with Hannah. Distraught over the divorce and riding an emotional rollercoaster, I’d shown up drunk at her apartment, crying in the rain. She’d invited me inside and dried me off, and when I told her what had happened, she’d done her best to console me. We ended up having sex. I can’t call it making love, because it was anything but that. It was just sex. I lay there in the darkness after it was over, shivering and thinking about Alyssa. Her words, her accusations—her truths—echoed in my