Florid Affairs

Mitchell

She was wearing a square-cut black dress and black heels. She still had that toughness in her eyes and that sexy athletic build, but she seemed smaller than she used to be. I saw her looking at his photos from where I stood in the back entrance of the church. It made me want to punch the glass out of the picture frames but also wrap my arms around her and never let her go. 

I’d gone back and forth when I heard the news about his death. Was it appropriate for me to go when I hadn’t spoken to her in 8 years? Would she even want to see me? Maybe she’d take one look at me and burst out laughing because I’d started shaving my head due to early balding. Maybe she’d look right through me and play the perfect role of a grieving widow.

Nobody else was in there yet. I guess I was early. But in many ways, I was much too late.

Anastasia 

August knocked on my door the way someone knocks on a door of a sauna, steam creeping in and sweat dripping down my face, a slow burn. There I was, once again, going through the motions of my life like I wasn’t 26 and about to be an actual doctor. They kept telling us it was our last year of freedom until retirement. I was fighting my constant urge to keep busy and avoid my own thoughts while my classmates were gallivanting around in Europe and Cancun somehow - despite our negative monthly income. By the time August came around, things started to get real. If I didn’t take an opportunity to go on vacation, I was going to waste my youth, waste my beauty. So that prompted me to coax Jess into going on a last minute beach road trip with me this weekend, to none other than Florida, of course.

My friend group mainly consisted of married couples: Milner and Yousef, Vera and Brad, Rishi and Ben, Cyril and Oriel, Jess and Jacob - with a couple of outliers, myself included, riding totally solo or in a relationship like Mitchell, Tiana, and Priya. Mitchell had a girlfriend who lived in New York and went to dental school there. Vera and Brad Nguyen entered medical school together as a couple. Milner was an engineer and Yousef was my classmate. Jess was my classmate and Jacob was a store manager. 

A couple of us sometimes joked that Mitchell and Jess had crushes on each other. When you saw them together, it just seemed right. His lanky frame made hers look delicate and free-flowing like the ocean. Her laugh made his slightly greasy face turn red and his crooked teeth show in a way that suddenly painted him as a beautiful human being with a heart full of love and longing.

She was plain-appearing on the outside, at least initially - mousy brown hair, perfectly oval face, and tall, muscular build. You wouldn’t do a double take if you saw her at the grocery store, but when you got to know her her beauty grew on you like the unassuming wildflowers on the highway median. He was this 7-foot-tall giant with fire-engine-red hair who always seemed to have dark circles under his eyes and walked with a slight limp. He’d catch your eye at the mall for sure, but not necessarily because he was the kind of guy you daydreamed on an airplane about.

It was like they grew up together and were childhood friends. First year, they partnered in anatomy lab together and walked together to their cars in the parking lot in the dark, reeking of formaldehyde and talking about nothing but the intricacies of the brachial plexus and differentiating between a nerve and a vein by texture alone. Second year, they’d taken up going to the gym together and sat next to each other in lecture hall, away from our group. Third year, they planned their rotation schedules out together to the T and spent 24-hour surgery call getting delirious on the floor of the student lounge waiting for their pages to go off with an incoming trauma and drifted off to sleep with their knees just barely touching as they slept under hospital blankets a few inches apart. Yes, I joked about their secret love story with select friends in the group but never truly meant it. After all, Mitchell took a romantic vacation with his New York girlfriend to the Hamptons summer after second year, and Jess was married to Jacob, who always attended our friend group gatherings. 

But Jacob, thankfully, hadn't made the cut for this beach trip. The truth was that I didn't know Jess that well; she was the kind of person who was impossibly difficult to get to know, at least deeper than the surface level. Our car ride was fairly boring, our conversations fading into the blur of the highway behind us, until Jess started talking more about Jacob.

“His dad wants us to have kids… he won’t even take Spotty out for a walk or feed him… I have to do all of the laundry and cooking… he calls me stupid... sometimes he pushes me… Mitchell would never.”

I began to piece it all together: the way Jacob always sat in the corner staring without a word at our gatherings and the way Jess always cheerfully said that everything was fine. She was the person who seemed like she’d never been sad a day in her life - the person who you needed to worry about most. 

“Fuck it,” I said, “Call him. Tell him to come.” I didn’t make eye contact with her; I just stared at the road ahead. We passed the Welcome to Florida sign. 

“What do you mean?” She asked, laughing nervously. 

“Mitchell.”

It was like all of the blood drained out of her face. “Mitchell?” She laughed, her voice cracking. Then we made eye contact, and I nodded. She nodded back, laughing again nervously. But she’d already clicked on his contact to make the call.

15 minutes later, he was on his way to Panama City, Florida in his clunky 2003 Volvo that was going to break down any minute now. We arrived at our motel room, checked in, and started getting ready to go out to dinner. It was one of those crusty ones where you needed to press your finger up against the bathroom mirror and look both ways before exiting out of the back. 

Mitchell finally got to our motel around 1am. I was barely awake when she let him in, so I waved goodnight and drifted off. That night, I was tossing and turning in my sleep and sat up in bed with the intention of stepping out onto the balcony. I just wanted to hear the predictable sound of waves crashing and shiver at the vastness of the pitch-black ocean. That was when I saw her with her head on his chest.

Nothing stopped. The ocean kept roaring in its far-out way. The ceiling fan kept turning with all of its dull predictability. The ground was steady underneath my feet. And she finally seemed at peace.

It made me think about morality and how it can bend in the face of unwavering love. I was no longer a person who thought adultery was bad. Instead, their love story had such a grip on me that I nearly felt the dull chest ache of a teenage love on behalf of them. 

Not everything was black and white. People weren’t one thing or another. Everything was a gradient, and I found myself watching yellow fade into blue and creating a deep, other-worldly green as we drove away from the beach that day.

He tried to get her to leave him for a few months, ultimately giving up. They said a depressing goodbye on Match Day, our whole friend group mourning along with them. She packed up with Jacob, moving to rural Arkansas for her training, and that was the last I heard of her.

Mitchell

We looked at each other, neither of us breaking eye contact. The wind blew the chimes near the window. The casket seemed to have eyes that bore into my soul, like his spirit was still there, lingering like a dense cloud sending hail down to the earth below. The bright morning sun made her hazel eyes glow like warm honey. Suddenly, she ran. She grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. 

“You’re early,” she finally uttered, not moving her head from its spot on my chest.  

“No,” I muttered, “I’m late. I know I’m late.”

No cars were in the parking lot yet. She lifted the lid off of the casket and seemed to whisper something down below. She took off her heels, one by one, and sat them next to it. Her eyes made their way to mine and smiled, for what seemed like the first time in a long time.

“Just take me home.”