May had finally come to an end and June was at our door. It was hard for me to believe that this time last year, I'd been a blissfully happy newlywed, living in Alberta with Wendy and making the most money I'd ever made in my young life. Now I was working my ass off night and day at a fucking convenient store, trying desperately to provide for two hopeless teenagers, one of whom I spent most of my energy lying to, and the other I spent the rest of my energy fucking. God sure does have a magnificent sense of humor.

The three of us were all home at the same time one evening, which was a fairly rare occasion. It was almost entertaining, all three of us on the couch, munching popcorn and laughing at bad television, together like one big happy fucking family. The phone rang, and I was closest, so I answered it. It was the shaky voice of a teenage girl. I handed the phone to Sean. Ellie and I listened with interest as he spoke urgently to the voice on the other end.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, don't worry. Just act normal. I'll be over there." He hung up the phone and saw that we were waiting expectantly for details, mouths hanging open pathetically like TV junkies waiting for the next episode. He sighed. "That was Ashley. She says Craig's been acting weird tonight and she thinks he might have blown off his meds."

Ellie stiffened. "Is everything okay?"

He nodded reassuringly. "Everything's fine, she just wants someone there just in case. It's probably nothing... you know Ashley overreacts sometimes."

She bit her lip. "Do you want me to come?"

Sean was already standing up and walking towards the door. "No, it's fine. You should stay here. If it's nothing, I'll be back in about an hour... and if Craig does have another episode, I don't want you to get caught up in it." He retreated a few steps and kissed her forehead before he left the house.

The living room settled into a slightly more quiet state, adjusting to having one less person. Ellie and I stared mindlessly at the glowing television. After several minutes of this lull, she glanced over at me. "Hey," she said conversationally. "You wanna... you know?"

Lethargically, I tore my head away from the TV and turned to her. I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "What... now?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Eh. I mean, he's gone. We could. If you want to."

I chuckled incredulously. "You know what? Wow. You're like, a machine. I mean it's kind of hot, but damn..."

She blushed. "I was just saying..." She sighed and pulled her knees into her chest, sinking into a quiet state. I watched her for a moment as we sunk into silence again, the TV glow flashing against her face.

I smiled. "You know what, fuck this shit." I reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned the TV off. I climbed off the couch and grabbed Ellie's hand. "Come on, let's blow this joint. I am so sick of this fucking house."

She regarded me with raised eyebrows and a curious smile as I yanked her across the living room, throwing her leather jacket at her. "Um, and we're going where, exactly?"

I grabbed my keys from the table beside the door, still pulling her along. "Who knows. Who cares? Let's just get the hell out of here."

Ellie had no argument for that, so we walked out the door.

She climbed onto the back of my bike and we tore out of the gravel driveway. We passed flocks of trailer park kids with dirty clothes and sticky icecream mouths, trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of play time in the ebbing daylight. Ellie pressed her face into my back and tightened the legs that straddled my waist as we left the crumbling avenue of duplexes and trailers behind us. I took her to Charlie's Pancakes, a greasy trucker dive that had provided me with cheap and delicious food after many all-night excursions. Ellie said she'd never been there before, which prompted me to tease her mercilessly, which prompted her to blush and pout, which I frightened me as I realized it was the most irresistable thing I'd ever seen. She giggled as we slipped into a tacky orange booth and jokingly called this trip our "date."

A round, disgruntled waitress with frizzy black hair and heavy bags beneath her eyes took our orders, subtly eyeing us with disapproval as she did so. Me dressed like a skeevy bum, Ellie being a scantily-clad teenage girl, and us sitting together laughing in a grungy diner probably wasn't the most family-friendly scene. As she waddled away, Ellie wrinkled her nose at me. "You're getting a burger?" she asked. "At a pancake place? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?"

"Pshh, that's what you think," I countered, tucking the lamenated menus behind the napkin dispenser. "They have the best mother fucking burgers you've ever tasted at this joint. I've been on the other side of town at 2:00 in the morning before, and come all the way over here just because I was craving one of their burgers. They're like, as big as my head, no joke."

This visual didn't seem to please Ellie too much; she lost some of the color in her face. "Gee, that sounds.. splendid. But unfortunately I don't DO burgers. I'm a vegetarian."

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me? What the fuck?" I was reminded of the shock and bewilderment I'd felt when little Sean, only thirteen at the time, told me he was giving up meat. "That doesn't even make sense, Ellie. You made burgers for dinner like, last week."

"No, I made veggie burgers," she said with a mischievious smile.

I felt my stomach turn, and Ellie started cracking up. I was not amused. "Aw, man... that's just... That's just wrong. You can't feed a man a burger under false pretenses like that." I sighed and shook my head. "Frickin' hippie, right under my own roof." I fished a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and lit it in the midst of my discontent, adding to the already polluted air of the diner.

Ellie smiled wider. Pissing me off always seemed to give her this sick pleasure. But then, I guess you could say the same for me. "Hey, I'm just trying to improve your health. Combine the amount of red meat you eat with your... smoking..." She took a deliberate pause to make a disgusted face at my cigarette. "...and you're just begging for heart disease."

"Yeah well, combine all the random metal objects you stick in your arm, and you're just begging for tetanus." I chuckled softly, but Ellie said nothing. The amusement drained from her face and she was silent, shrinking into herself. Cutting jokes, apparently, were out of bounds in our little game. I wanted, so badly, not to give a shit. I mean, if she could dish it out, she should be able to take it, too. But something in me was giving out. Something made me reach out and take her hand.

"Sorry," I saida awkwardly, stroking her knuckles. "I didn't mean to... be a dick."

She stared with uncertainty and intrigue at our hands, touching so delicately. She grinned softly, still not looking at me. "I know. You never mean to. In fact, you're awesome most of the time... I think I just push you to dickdom. I mean, I'm just setting myself up for this shit... I shouldn't be surprised when you take the bait." She brought her eyes to mine, still playing it off as funny. "I just love making things hard, don't I?"

I didn't feel like answering that. Instead I smoked my cigarette, easing us into silence. I absorbed the cluttered conversations around us. At last I sighed. "What is it with girls and cigarettes, anyway? Girls who are bothered by nothing else will still be like, freak out around cigarettes. Wendy made me quit when we first started dating."

I held my breath for a moment, realizing I'd done something incredibly stupid. I'd brought up Wendy. After trying so hard over the past few weeks to erase her existence in my mind, she'd slipped from lips without warning.

Ellie noticed my uneasiness. She looked at me for a moment, thinking deeply. She slid out of the booth and crawled into my side, curling up beside me. "Tell me about Wendy," she said with her face nestled in my chest. She was like a little kid, begging for cuddles and story time.

I sighed and turned my head away from her to take another drag of my cigarette. I ran my fingers through Ellie's hair, staring off through the grimey diner window as I swam through the rush of thoughts of Wendy. Tell you about Wendy? There was so much to tell I didn't know where to begin. So many endless pieces of Wendy that I did not have the energy to sort through..

"What do you want do know?" I asked tiredly. Ellie did not know the dangers of the waters which she waded through.

"Well... why did you guys break up? What happened?"

What happened? If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't have been the downtrodden worthless mother fucker that I was. If life made sense to me, I wouldn't be sitting in a greasy diner, spilling my troubles to a fucked-up sixteen year old girl. But here I was. "It's not something you can really explain. Just... stupid kids, thinking we knew what we were doing. I mean, Wendy and I, when we first met, we were like... wild. Crazy bar-hopping, up all night, no responsibilities kind of people. Then last April, she graduated from university, I got an awesome job offer in Alberta, we were in love, and the next thing I knew we were married. You know, we had this like, married life. Everything just changed, and I guess we weren't ready for it. I mean... it was like..."

I was amazed at how difficult it was to dissect the gradual collapse of my marriage. The entire past year was covered in a thick fog in my mind. I reached for the ash tray behind the napkin dispenser and slid it closer to me, flicking the ashes from the tip of my fast-burning cigarette. I shifted in my seat. "I guess it was more growing up than I was ready to do. We wanted to have it both ways, you know? We wanted to stay free and wild and have fun all the time, and at the same time have this ideal, stable marriage. We were fucking kidding ourselves. We drank alot, argued alot. Pissed our money away, got into some debt. And then Wendy gets this like, amazing white-collar job that pays a shitload of money. And I mean, what am I? I'm this psuedo-alcoholic nobody that does menial grunt work. It's hard for guys to accept it when their woman's bringing home the bacon... My pride kicks my ass every time, I swear."

Our solitude was interrupted as the chubby waitress, still watching us distastefully, plunked ceramic plates of steamy food onto our table. I'd been telling my story to no one, staring vaguely at nothing, but I took this moment of disruption to glance down at the girl in my arms, who'd been watching my face attentively. Man, could the two of us have any more combined emotional baggage?

Ellie uncurled herself from my embrace and scooted up to the table, taking dainty bites of her syrup-coated panackes. "So, what then? You stormed out of the house in a male egotistical fit, never looking back?" She grinned at me, mouth full of pancake and eyes glinting with mischeviousness.

I sighed as I placed my cigarette in the nook of the ashtray and reached for my burger. "Yeah, sure. Something like that. I mean, Wendy started cleaning herself up, turning all responsible and shit. And I was still a loser. And we just started... fighting. All the time. I started accusing her of sleeping around, and she started calling me a drunk... it just got progressively uglier until, I don't know... we gave up. I don't even remember. Relationships are a load of bull shit, anyway."

Ellie nodded, brushing strands of hair out of her face to keep them out of her syrup. "Hence, you and me. The anti-relationship."

I shrugged as I took a gulp of my Coke, looking at her. My broken little lover. "Yeah, I guess so."

We spent the rest of the evening digesting obscenely greasy food, laughing and talking of much lighter things. We discussed old episodes of Power Rangers at length, and moved from there to critiquing the guy on the evening news with the funny nose hairs and arguing over what Jack Nicholson's best movie was. I scolded her for never having seen Chinatown, and she was equally appalled to discover I'd never seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The obvious conclusion from there, of course, was that a Jack Nicholson movie marathon was in order. She said we'd need snacks, and I said we could just raid Sean's candy stash again. We both laughed, but I'm sure we both felt that uneasy pang of guilt as we did. As we strolled out of Charlie's Pancakes an hour or so later, my arm was wrapped around her and we talked enthusiastically about Very Very Jealous, a band I had worshipped in high school and was surprised to discover was one of Ellie's favorites.

It was dark when we returned to our trashy little duplex. We laughed loudly as we sauntered inside, teasing and flirting and acting high on an evening of genuine fun for once. We were in such a good mood we at first didn't notice Sean, planted on the couch and staring at us with the utmost confusion.

He stood up, and Ellie and I's laughter quickly vanished. I swallowed hard, putting forth all the energy I possessed just to not look guilty. "Where have you guys been?" he asked with sincere curiosity. His face was mostly bewildered, but there was the slightest hint of fear and suspicion in his voice.

I smiled casually as I tossed my keys into their usual spot. "Just went out to grab a bite to eat," I said, peeling off my jacket as usual and stretching my arms. Acting as normal as I possibly could. Hoping he wouldn't look at me too hard and see the truth.

"We brought you back some fries," said Ellie, taking the styrofoam container that held my left-overs and handing it to Sean. Good cover, I thought. She ran her fingers through his hair. "We weren't sure when you'd be coming back. Was everything alright with Craig and Ash?"

I had to admire Ellie's expertise at lying. At the same time, I was disgusted by her ability to look him right in the eye and act as though she wasn't breaking his heart behind his back. And then I realized I was disgusted with myself. I was worried he could hear my racing heart and quickened pulse.

Sean took the food from her hands reluctantly, as if he knew he was taking hush money. They were blackmail french fries; french fries of deception. "Yeah, um, everything was fine," he answered Ellie at last. There was distraction in his voice. He looked at the two of us. "Since when have you two been so buddy-buddy, anyway?"

I then remembered Sean's temper, those wild eyes of anger. I remembered how much he loved Ellie, how he contemplated her existence daily, how he was completely unaware of her many, many flaws. I remembered how meticulously he used to watch me when I first moved back, waiting for me to fuck up and ruin his life. As I stood there in front of him, bearing my sins so heavily on my shoulder, I felt like time had stopped. Like in this one moment, all the shit was going to hit this fan.

But I just stared at him, my face as guiltless and indifferent as always. "Well, you know how much I hate feeding you worthless kids," I joked, walking across the room towards the kitchen. I reached out and touseled Ellie's hair, an affectionate brother/sister gesture. "But I couldn't just let this rugrat go hungry."

I walked into the kitchen without bothering to catch his response. I filled myself a glass of water, and by the time I'd turned around Ellie was already kissing his cheek, asking how his evening went, playing the part of innocent so well. Ellie's kisses had a way of blinding you from reality, after all. I slipped into my room, and when the door was shut tightly behind me, I exhaled. How long could this shit possibly go on? How far could Ellie and I take this twisted game? How badly could we hurt Sean, hurt ourselves, before it all just blew up in our fucking faces?

We were sabotaging ourselves. That's all there was to it.