Rabbotfest - Day 1: Drunken Confession
It took years of pushing and pulling for their relationship to work. Years of Robby refusing therapy and pushing back against each one Jack set him up with; years of Jack’s nightmares, swat shifts, and reclusive behavior.
If you asked how they got together, they’d tell you it was years of work after jack’’s grief for his wife to settle in a place where he could fit it next to his love for Robby. Robby would smile and nod, avoiding eye contact with an easy shift, almost like it was practiced.
The truth was, he had been in love with Jack since med school. Their rooms across from each other in a corner of the dorm hidden behind a few hallways, coveted privacy easily available by chance. He had fallen for the red curls, crooked teeth he mourned when Jack wore braces for years to “correct” them. He had fallen for the confident and strong man who had never reciprocated the same feelings his best friend had.
Robby had smiled through the year of parties where Jack had a different girl on his lap each night. He had smiled sophomore year when he met Sadie and introduced her to Jack, subsequently starting the next 25 years of their marriage.
He smiled through years of holidays, get togethers, dinners, and just random nights they all needed each other’s presence. When he met Janie, her and Jake then became the most important people in his life for the next decade.
Janie who loved Sadie and respected Robby’s friendship with Jack and Robby’s need to drop everything to go help his brother. Janie who knew she was competing for Robby’s love with an oblivious man who looked at his wife like she hung the moon.
Janie who confronted Robby and, instead of coming out like he wanted, blew up at her instead. She told everyone she had accepted a new job overseas, and that she could never ask Robby to leave his job. Instead it marked months of Robby sleeping off the bottle of Jack he had started drinking in college after Sadie came to tell him that Jack had asked her out.
He had been so jealous of her smile; because it was caused by Jack. Robby had wanted it to be him and he couldn’t stand the green monster rearing its ugly head, demanding to be known. But he had swallowed it down like bile and smiled as Sadie asked which shoes she should wear.
Jack Daniel was a disgusting liquor but it was the only Jack he’s ever been able to have his lips on. It also left him with a nasty headache, a consequence of his secret he tells himself. It’s what they’re drinking on a rare night off the two doctors had.
The Abbot’s had welcomed Robby with open arms, knowing from many drunken rants that Robby’s brownstone now felt dark and cold since Janie and Jake moved to Europe. It made them feel better knowing there was always a doctor at home with Sadie; her epilepsy making a comeback after years of repression with medication.
The two men wanted to drink like their college days. But it ended with Jack passed out on the couch with Sadie; his head in her lap, his arms around her waist, and her knees lightly pressed against his ribs. She has one hand in his greying curls, red barely hanging on.
Robby watched as her blue eyes shifted from her husband to his best friend lying across the living room in front of the fireplace.
“I’ve loved him for the last 27 years. It’s why Janie left.” He turned back to the fire, its warmth welcomed on the cold Pittsburgh night. “She said she couldn’t stay in a relationship where she was the third person.”
Sadie hasn’t said anything then, or after that night; Robby’s secret was safe behind her locked lips. He had waited for her to spill it to Jack, waited for the moment his best friend would call him and end their friendship. Or would Jack come over? Yell at Robby and watch the older man break before leaving?
Instead, he was forced to hold up his best friend through the worst months of his life. Sadie’s epilepsy had become too hard to ignore, landing her in the hospital with round the clock care. The two men took turns taking shifts by her side so she was never alone. The cancer was too aggressive to fight by the time it was found. Hospice was discussed. Organ donation and funeral arrangements and a Rabbi had also been in the process of being arranged.
Within six months, Sadie was gone.
So yea, it took years of work and patience and love and anger. But Robby wouldn’t change it for anything. He missed Sadie, he knows Jack does too; but in the fifteen years since her passing, the two men knew she would love to see them now.
And it’s all Robby can do to keep that little secret.
