Ch.2, Part 2: Knife to the Heart, Arrow to the Knee (Warning: mentions of suicide)

(Continued from Chapter 2, Part 2. Note: Long post under cut)

For a while, things between the three of us was...well, as decent as it could be, given I still hated Goodwin's guts.

Of course, Shark and I started dating, he got a job at the Stadium, it was all good. As long as he left me with a wad of cash to blow on fun stuff, it all stayed decent.

He probably had an inkling that I was just using him at this point, but he didn't seem to mind too much. Might've been some rationalizing on his part. The whole, "at least I'm not lonely", kind of deal.

After a while, things changed. Goodwin and I...well, we started talking more. He started to not seem so insufferable.

I almost wish I didn't spend so much time with him back then. But I did, and I got in way too deep with him...

...and ended up hurting Shark in one of the worst ways possible.

At some point, while Shark and I were still in the early months of dating, I started spending more time with Goodwin, as I've said.

See, Shark's new job essentially made him absent from home for...pretty much the whole week. And since I was starting to take more days off myself...

Goodwin was there most of the time, and he and I visited places, made small talk, and wondered about our future.

Eventually, I took him out to some remote area, where nobody could see us, and...

When he didn't reject me, it was a shock because, well...it just was, I guess. I mean, he and I just started to fix things between us, and I was lonely and...

Well, that night Shark was working late, and...You can guess what happened between Goodwin and me.

And the next night, we did it again, in secret. It went on like this for awhile. The whole time, Shark was blissfully unaware of what had been going on behind his back.

He was just on Cloud Nine, and I was boning Goodwin over and over. I thought I was untouchable. I was sure I could keep going on like this, without Shark ever finding out.

Of course, after a while, I started to get this feeling in my chest. It was like a mix of burning, and stinging. It wasn't a physical pain, it was more of a mental feeling.

What that feeling was, I didn't know at first. Then came that little voice from the back of my head. I thought I was for sure starting to lose my mind, but it just kept repeating the same phrase over and over.

That little voice, nagging me, and pushing me, giving me the same command each time:

Tell him what you did!

I tried to ignore it, at first. Then it just kept getting louder, until it was practically shouting at me. Not to mention that burning/stinging sensation in my chest just got worse. Eventually, I gave in.

At some point, I confessed to Shark that I'd been sleeping with Goodwin for quite some time. He took it about as well as you'd think.

That is to say, he didn't take it well at all.

He looked so hurt, so confused. He had good reason to be. I mean, I had been cheating on him for who knows how long.

He stood there, not saying anything, just shocked and processing through his mind what I'd just told him.

Then he practically exploded.

(One of the (hopefully) few pictures with a speech bubble in it.)

He started calling me all these horrible words, said I was a lying, cheating bastard, asked me how could I do this to him, then just screamed that he hated me repeatedly.

Didn't matter how many times I said I was sorry, he wasn't going for it. I'll admit it, I deserved it. And it ended up with me sleeping on the couch for a while. That little voice in my head disappeared, and I finally knew what that feeling in my chest was. 

It was guilt.

I didn't understand at that point. I mean, I was Sinbad Rotter, one of the baddest boys in Twinbrook! Of all people, why did I feel guilt for what I did?

Was it because I was actually...nah, it couldn't be. At least, that's what I thought.

A few nights of not talking to me later, I'm woken up at about one in the morning. It was kind of more, I felt the couch being kicked a few times, and that woke me up.

The way he looked at me, he just had this expression that said, 'I'm still pissed at you'. He kept staring at me for what felt like forever.

Take it from me, it was awkward. I just stared at him, and he glared back, and then he finally said something to me.

It was just a few things, but he got his message across. He first asked me:

"Are you really sorry for what you did?"

What could I say? I didn't know how to word my answer without sounding redundant, so I just nodded.

He then told me: "Prove it. Show me that you're willing to fix what you broke."

Pretty obvious what he meant. If I wanted him back, I had to do what I was told. And to me, that meant one thing:

Goodwin had to go.

Later that morning, I told Goodwin we had to stop what we were doing. That I couldn't keep screwing around behind Shark's back. More or less, I said he had to move out. He was upset, of course. He told me he felt used, but he understood.

Eventually, he did find his own place. Can't remember if he moved back to our old house, or what, but it didn't seem to matter. Some time after he moved out, give or take a few months, and after Shark finally took me back, Goodwin visited us, saying he had great news.

He told us, with a huge-ass smile on his face, that he was getting married.  And of course, Shark and I were happy for him. And then he said her name:

Amy.

...Not Jenni?

(Sinbad's take on how Goodwin described his proposal to Amy)

Goodwin moved in with Amy after he left. The two of them apparently grew close, and started dating, and well, obviously they got engaged.

And here I thought he was finally taking responsibility. But apparently, it's too much to ask the mother of your own child to become your wife.

Not only did Goodwin not decide to marry his baby mama, but he ended up marrying her best friend. I was just... Sure, I was glad he was finally moving on and happy, but at the same time, I wanted to just backhand him. He couldn't just do the right thing, and marry Jenni?

Apparently, it never crossed his mind. And I never asked him how Jenni felt about it. But I guess that second part was answered in due time. See...

There's this magic shop that had recently opened up around the time they got married, about a week or so. Shark and I figured, why not check it out? What was the harm?

I'd just walked through the door, and then I had to keep him from coming in himself. We'd gotten there a little early, so the person running the register wasn't there yet.

That wasn't why I was pushing him out, though. I just didn't want him to see her.

She was just laying there, not moving. If I had to guess, she'd been there that way for a good portion of the night.

Nobody knew that Jenni was going to go to that extreme, but it must've been that when she heard that the father of her child, and her own best buddy were getting hitched, it was too much for her.

I saw her body next to that damn jelly bean bush. The authorities ruled it an accident, but that was probably for their own sake of mind. It didn't take a genius to know what really happened.

If you eat the wrong bean from that plant, you're basically chomping on a licorice-flavored cyanide pill. Jenni must have known that, and she saw it as her way out.

She left behind her parents, and she left that kid of hers without a birth mother.

I just looked at her curled up like that, and couldn't help but feel responsible. If I hadn't cheated on Shark with Goodwin, maybe Goodwin wouldn't have had to move out. Then maybe he wouldn't have married Amy, and Jenni might still have been alive.

I told Shark how I felt when we got back. He was upset too, but he told me not to blame myself entirely. I had no idea it was going to end that way for her, so I shouldn't dwell on it too much.

Hard to believe that just a few months before, he wouldn't so much as acknowledge my existence. Now here he was, telling me not to beat myself up.

I essentially started a chain reaction of events that ended in someone's suicide, but he was saying that I shouldn't be crying over spilt milk. The girl was already dead, so there was no sense in whining like I just got shot in the ass.

Shark...

I can't believe he took me back, after what I did to him... Knowing that he could very well have booted my cheating ass out on the curb for good, I still can't believe he forgave me. I had just about lost the best thing that ever happened to me.

The best thing that ever happened to me...?

When we started dating, all I could think about was that gigantic fortune he had. Anyone who had a brain knew the amount was nothing to sneeze at. Somewhere along the line, though, that changed. Sure, the buttload of cash was great, but it was just a fringe benefit. See...

I didn't want the inheritance anymore. I wanted the inheritor. I finally realized that Shark did something else for me. He gave me...he gave me a reason to change, and I about threw it away. And for what? For some casual fling with a guy I used to hate?

...How stupid I was back then, to think I was invincible. Might've been from all those times I got my head smacked on a police cruiser, or something, who knows. Either way, when I realized I almost lost Shark, it was like a fog cleared in my head.

Like I said, all I thought about at first was money. Where should I spend it, what should I get, can I get it without Shark finding out? Then it soon turned into, when's Shark coming home, what does he want for dinner, was he in the mood for...you-know-what tonight?

All I could think about from then on was my future with Shark. It was him I wanted to be with, the guy I wanted to kiss, and hold close, and...spend my life with.

Then it dawned on me. I wanted a future with him...but did he really want a future with me? A lying, cheating criminal?

For some reason, I thought that if he had married me back then, given who I was, he would've essentially become his mother, marrying a man who was involved with crime. I doubt he wanted to break the promise he made to his uncle. Not to mention, I'd already hurt him once, and I didn't intend to do it again.

So, I made a promise to myself. I swore to leave the criminal lifestyle for good. I was going to change, and make myself a more decent person.

I was going to start a different, more legitimate job as soon as it was possible. And it was all to create a better future for him.

For the both of us.

(A/N: End of Chapter 2, part 2. And to those in the U.S. who celebrate it, Happy Father's Day.)