Jenga

                Her favorite part of the game was actually the part most people found to be tedious and boring. She loved to build something and feel the satisfaction wash over her once all of the pieces were perfectly in place.

                They stacked the individual blocks silently until the entire tower was built. She ran her palms up and down each side to ensure the edges were smooth and each block was perfectly aligned.

                She could see him watching her as she did this. It was a look she hadn’t seen before. She could tell on the drive up that something was off with him. He didn’t scoop her up in a hug when she first arrived at his house. That could be explained by his full hands, but even then, something was missing from his eyes. It’s like how everyone from true crime shows describes a serial killer’s eyes as “dead” when they smile. Maybe saying her boyfriend’s eyes were “dead” was a bit hyperbolic, but they were at least in a coma.

                “Did you want to go first?” She asked with a half-smile.  

                “Sure.” He said without meeting her eyes.

                He sighed and began to examine the blocks. With his attention off of her, she glanced over to the cell phone he had placed on the table when they sat down. She remembers when they first started dating, and they would make fun of other couples at restaurants with their phones out. They made a pinky-promise pact to keep screens out of site on their own dates. He had obviously forgotten the deadly ramifications of breaking a pinky-promise. She smiled to herself.  

What she was more alarmed by, though, was how often he would pick the phone up, turn the screen on, turn it off, and put it right back down. She wondered what it was he was checking for.

He began to poke at a block on the lower end of the tower. It was an outside block on the side opposite his phone. An outside block was a risky one, she thought. Why not a middle block? He must have seen the look on her face because he finished pushing the block out and glanced up at her.

“What? I wanted to take a risk this time.”

She laughed, “Since when are you a risk taker?”

He set the block on the table next to his phone. The phone began to vibrate as if the block’s presence woke it up.

He picked it up. A smile bloomed on his face so rapidly, he almost couldn’t contain it. It caused a spitting laugh to escape his lips.

“What is it?” She asked curiously.

“It’s nothing.” He said, still smiling. He set the phone down. “You gonna go?”

She turned her head slowly toward the tower without moving her eyes from his. What the hell was that? She thought.             

“It had to be something. Did someone text you? Just tell me.” She said as she gently pressed a few blocks before finding one that gave way easily.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It was just this friend from work. They sent me a meme that’s super funny, but I’m not sure you’ll understand it ‘cause it’s work-related.”

Since when did he describe people as “They” she thought. Obviously, this is a woman and he is being cagey about it. What stung more was the idea that she wouldn’t understand a work joke. She knew the ins and outs of his job. He had always shared everything about his co-workers and the office politics. What could possibly be so deeply rooted in the tech industry that she wouldn’t understand it?

She set her block down and the tower shifted.

“After you take this turn, I’d like to understand this complex joke that dumb little me wouldn’t understand.” She said facetiously.

He rolled his eyes in a humorless way. He was not feeling this date today. He didn’t seem to be feeling most of them lately.

“If you weren’t so passive aggressive, I’d feel more comfortable sharing jokes with you.” He said stagnantly. He felt two blocks before deciding on the one he wanted. It wasn’t an easy one to push. She didn’t know why he didn’t search a little harder.

The block came out, but not without some swaying from the tower.

“Whoa, easy. This will be the quickest game of Jenga we’ve ever played if you’re gonna play like that.” Without touching it, she wrapped both hands around the stack it as if to hold it up using an invisible force field. She knew it didn’t do anything, but it made her feel safer.

“Also, I don’t appreciate your attitude right now. What’s going on with you? I feel like you’ve been distant with me all day.” She lifted her hands once the swaying came to a stop. She then began her search for an easy give.

“Sometimes, I just wish you treated me differently, that’s all. I wish our communication was better.” His voice was softer, but the mellowed tone was ruined by the—again—vibrating phone.

“Seriously, who is this person you keep texting?” She was growing annoyed.

He glanced quickly at his screen before putting the phone face down on the table. That was new. It had been face up all the times before.

“I just made a new friend, okay? It’s not a big deal. You’re always making everything into a big deal.” He crossed his arms and looked off like a petulant child.

She stared at him dumbfounded. Who was this man? She remembers when they first started dating—back when he couldn’t keep his hands off of her. They would do dates like this and she would all but sit in his lap the entire time. He would kiss her shoulder and tell her how nice she smelled. They would watch the people around them and reenact how they assumed their conversations went. They used to be silly and cute and fun. What happened to them?

He uncrossed his arms and pushed at another piece. This time, he just went straight for it. It was on the very bottom of the stack on the right side. The whole tower tilted to one side but caught itself before it fell.

“I really feel like there are things you aren’t telling me, here. Who is this new friend?” She thought about the recent nights when he was out later than usual. He always came home showered with some excuse about hanging out too late with the guys and going back to their houses, first, before cleaning up and coming back home. Her friends said this was a major red flag. She had never thought twice about it--until right now.

“She’s a girl I met at work.” He said with an expressionless face. They both let the sentence hang in the air between them for what seemed like a lifetime.

“She?” She finally spoke up with raised eyebrows.

“See? I knew you’d make a big deal out of this. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you would get all jealous and think something more was happening. We’re just friends. I just knew you’d react this way.” He threw his arms up as if to put on a show for some invisible audience. Who was he selling this idea to? Who was he trying to fool?

She quickly pushed a block out from the center of an un-touched row. At this point, the game had become a habit more than something she was focusing on.

“That is a super aggressive response to me asking a pretty simple question. I don’t see why you’re getting so defensive—I haven’t accused you of anything. I just think it’s weird that you referred to your new friend as ‘they’ and then went off in this way when I asked about it.”

He ran his finger up and down the side of the tower as he took a second to think. Was this him conjuring a response? She wondered. Who is this man?

“You’re right.” He said as he pushed out a side block; the tower didn’t move.

“I shouldn’t have gotten defensive. I just know how my friend’s girlfriends get dramatic over things like this, and I guess I just assumed you’d act like that, too.” He placed the block on his growing pile by his turned-down phone.

She thought long and hard about this response. She pretended to be pre-occupied by her search for a loose brick. She knew his friend’s wives, and they weren’t jealous people at all—mostly because they had no reason to be. Maybe there were things she didn’t know about their relationships, but if she didn’t know, how would he? He never discussed marriage problems with his friends. They were dumbasses. They drank beer and talked about sports or the tech world. The deepest they ever got was discussing bowel movements.

She also had talked to him on a number of occasions about jealousy, cheating, and the idea of same-sex friends. They had always agreed to be very open with each other about those topics. That was back in a time where she used to feel like she could talk to him about anything. I guess we’re no longer in that time, she thought.

She pushed out a center block toward the top of the tower, and she glanced at him through the now open hole. He had his head dropped as if he was looking at something in his lap. When she looked up, she noticed he was on his phone.

The tower swayed once more.

He was so sucked in to this conversation, he hadn’t noticed when she stood up and walked around behind him. She glanced down his shoulder only long enough to see the name “Audrey” followed by lines of blurry conversation. Where were her glasses when she needed them?

He felt her breath on his neck and whipped his head around. The phone was turned over in his lap faster than she had ever seen him do anything.

“What the hell are you doing?!” He screamed at her.

“Jesus, I was coming over to give you a hug.” She lied. “Why are you screaming at me?”

The blood returned to his face when he heard this, but the sweat never stopped collecting on his forehead.

Something is up. She was now sure of it.

He gave her a hug and she returned to her side of the table.

“You scared the shit out of me.” He said with a heavy breath. He put the phone in his pocket this time and went back to searching the tower.

She didn’t know how to approach this, but she knew it was now or never. They rarely had time for dates like this. They worked opposite days and didn’t get to even talk on the phone anymore, it seemed. She just knew this needed to be addressed.

“I am not a crazy, jealous girlfriend, and you know that.” She said gently. “But you have to admit, it looks sketchy when you’re hiding your phone from me on dates and coming home late and showered multiple times a week. I mean, come on, you have to see how sus that is.”

In the past, this would have been something he would have agreed to in an instant. In the past, he would have been someone on the same planet as her with the same understandings as her. Whoever this new man was, he seemed to be on some other planet, and possibly with someone else.

“You’re being insane.” He said as he pushed out the other side block from the bottom of the stack. The whole thing was not resting on one, single block in the center on the bottom row. The tower took a few big sways before settling back into place. She couldn’t believe it didn’t fall over.

“What?” She snapped back. “I am being insane? Are you serious? You can’t see how that looks even a little bit like a cheating scandal?” She waited for the tower to contain itself entirely before she gently felt around it. It might have seemed crazy to someone from the outside, but it felt like, as long as they were still playing the game, none of the life being lived outside of it was entirely real. So, she kept playing.

“Audrey and I have hung out, like, once, and sometimes we text. That doesn’t exactly constitute a ‘cheating scandal’. See? This is what I mean about your drama and communication skills.”

She used the delicate touch one would use to pet the wings of a butterfly to nudge out the last loose block that she was able to find. The tower rocked, but it still didn’t fall.

“You guys hung out? When?” She asked while scanning her memories of all of his recent outings. Had he ever mentioned a girl being with him?

“You can’t even acknowledge your inability to handle this maturely because you know I’m right. And it was a few weeks ago, I don’t even know. It doesn’t matter at all because she’s just a random person at work.”

He pulled his phone back out and began texting furiously.

She had felt the shift in their relationship a month or so ago, but it hadn’t quite clicked with her then like it was right now. The feeling had never been something she could explain well in words—which is probably why it was so easy to ignore. It was like the kisses goodbye and the greeting smiles had lost their soft edge. What was once a fluffy and warm “goodbye” became rigid and forced. It might have happened so slowly overtime that she didn’t even really notice the difference until she saw the smile in which he answered this “Audrey” girl’s text. That’s when she remembered when the smiles she would get looked like that. That wasn’t a smile she had seen coming her way in a long time.

She thinks back to a moment from a few days before when she picked up his phone just to turn the main screen on to see the time. That’s when the phone prompted her for a passcode. He had never had a passcode on any device. He used to joke that he had nothing to hide and would probably forget his code, anyway. That was a different man back then. That was a different relationship.

He finished texting and put his phone back down on the table.

“I don’t want to fight the whole day, again. Let’s just finish this game and get out of here. I’m not in the mood to try to explain what good communication is to you right now.”

He forced his finger into a block that wouldn’t budge. Before he knew what he had done, before he could take any of it back, before he could cradle his hands to catch the pieces in a manageable way, the tower came tumbling down.

She reflexively jumped back as the blocks fell into place on the table. She noticed one land nearby with a red mark on it. She picked it up and examined it closely. It almost looked like grape juice or something--maybe wine? She thought. Wasn’t this a brand-new game? He had told her he just got it the week before and was excited to play it on their next date night.

“Fuck.” He said as he began to collect the pieces. “Let’s just go. This game is stupid.”

“No.” She said, “You can go.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“Oh come on, get over it. We’ll talk about this ‘cheating scandal’ shit later. I’m so sick of…”

“We’re done.” She interrupted him.

She stood up, threw the red-stained block at him, and walked away.