Tobin’s mouth sets harder. The vulnerability of half an hourago is lost. “We can’t get an in-person therapy appointment before midsummer, unless we lose four hours driving down to Vancouver and back every week. And the science says the book works.”
“You mean the book your best friend wrote,which is a sex manual.” I tug the page so hard it rips a little. Sure, it’s notsupposedto be a sex book, but McHuge didn’t factor in the impact of doing it with Tobin Renner-Lewis, which is approximately equivalent to the impact of a dinosaur-killing meteorite hitting ancient Mexico. Being near him, doing scenarios with him—I mean, McHuge spent half of last week’s class telling us improv is all about intimacy.
“Can you please not damage it,” Tobin snaps, glancing from the torn page to the open window, which happens to face his mom’s house. I get a petty burst of pleasure from the window causinghimdiscomfort, for once. “I promised Lyle I’d give it back.”
“Oh mygod,Tobin! Nobody wants your sex book back when you’re done with it!” On purpose, I fail to keep my voice down.
It takes, like, fifty turns for him to hand-crank his window shut.
I face the man who looks like my husband, but feels like a stranger. My back is against the door, in a defensive position, but the fight in me has died.
He doesn’t know me at all.
“I told you we’ve lost our connection, and your solution isthis.” The worst part is, I’m tempted. Breakups are fucking terrible and I’m so alone right now, with Stellar away and my parents in Arizona and Amber on my case. Yeti is very absorbent for my crying needs, but the only human who hugs me is Eleanor, and it’s beyond inappropriate for me to pin my emotional support requirements on a six-year-old.
I’m able to recognize how unhealthy it is to want comfort from the person who’s hurt me, who I’m hurting, too. I need to get as far away as possible from the Tobin he becomes when we’re alone: quiet. Thoughtful. Charmingly almost shy; a secret that’s all mine.He listens so carefully, so closely, that for years I didn’t notice the things he’d stopped talking about.
He gave me everything but himself.
I can’t give in to the urge to burrow into his arms, stumble into his bed, smack into the same emotional walls, and start the cycle all over again.
“Sex wasn’t our problem, Tobe,” I say softly.
It sure wasn’t. We took our time getting to home plate—practically unheard of, in the horny, monogamy-optional world of summer adventure tours—but once he fell into my sleeping bag, he never found his way out.
“For both our sakes, we need to make a clean break. And I have… a lot going on right now.” No need to get into my “get magic” plan with Tobin. He wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have landed your only job through what you later realized was the sheer luck of having in-demand skills right when a struggling new company needed more people than it could hire. Or how it feels to get shuffled into a spreadsheet pigeonhole you can’t break out of. All you can do is watch your hopes melt away year after year, like a glacier losing ground to summer.
I grab my suitcase again. This time, he doesn’t reach for it.
“You need an improv partner,” Tobin says suddenly. “This book is improv. I’ll be your partner.” He leans forward, resting his fingers across the open pages in my lap. His eyes are sharp as icicles, his mouth bracketed by brand-new creases. “Ifyou do the book with me.”
“How do you know that?” My voice shakes. “McHuge promised what happens at improv stays at improv.”
“He didn’t tell me anything that happened in class. We were hanging out and he asked whether you’d found a partner yet. It’s not his fault; he doesn’t…” He looks away.
“Jesus, Tobin. Haven’t you told anybody?” But of course hehasn’t. He’d throw his best pair of broken-in boots in the fire before admitting things aren’t as perfect as they seem.
He might be the only person lonelier than I am right now.
Still, this is suspicious. “Why did McHuge give you the book if he doesn’t know about…” I gesture at us.
Tobin looks away, catching his lips between his teeth. “He asked me to read it. I’m interested in his new career.”
I take back my thoughts about him being lonelier. He and McHuge being all bromantic and reading each other’s books and DMing each other about the good parts… yeah. I’m the lonely one. It’s me.
“Do the book with me, Diz. We can still turn this ship around,” he insists. “It’s not too late.”
“And if it is? What then?”
“Then I’ll do whatever you want. Give you…” He swallows. “Whatever you want.” His callused hand is brown against the fresh white page, fingernails stained from months of unknotting frozen leather harnesses. It’s shaking.
My eye catches on the word “Introduction” below his pinkie. McHuge writes,
As a relationship counselor, I meet a lot of unhappily partnered people. Most of them are looking for a referee who knows the rules of relationships and will blow the whistle on foul play. They want accountability: Who broke which Law of Love?
As a therapist and an improv comedy player, I believe relationships aren’t about the rule oflaw. Like improv, relationships operate by the rules of thegame. Games mean play, fun, imagination, and creativity. Games leave room for unexpected things to happen. They bring teammatestogether. Rules exist to make sure everyone has the most fun possible.
You might think joy, invention, and laughter have abandoned your relationship. You might have trouble seeing your partner(s) as anyone but the person or people who hurt you. Improv can turn that around.
