When The Other Side Calls

She knew her man was vulnerable to a good conversation about life, politics, and why everything was secretly falling apart. Give him depth and a little eye contact and he was gone.

Lesley and Jeff had been dating for four years, the kind of couple who were annoyingly in sync with each other’s playlists and could finish each other’s thoughts. You know, the cute ones who you want to roll your eyes at, but secretly wish for the same. I had rolled my eyes enough times before giving in to the fact that yeah, maybe they were perfect.

They treated honesty like a seatbelt. If they wore it, nothing bad could happen. And they meant it. Jeff had even told her about his bisexuality right from the jump. They were cool like that : no secrets, no lies. However, Lesley had one rule, “Sleep with whoever you want, Jeff, but if you start catching feelings, you better let me know.” She didn’t mind a guy here and there. Bodies were bodies. Pleasure was pleasure. It was the emotional part she guarded. That was her territory. Her homeland. Her embassy. At least, she thought.

I remember the day she broke the news to me, voice shaky like she’d been holding herself together with invisible safety pins.

“He fell for him, didn’t he?” I joked, half hoping she’d laugh it off.

But she didn’t. Silence.

Turns out, Jeff met Sam at the gym ,  classic, right? The modern temple of flirtation. They started with innocent, sweaty conversations between sets. Complaints about leg day. Compliments about form. Smiles that lingered a second too long. What started as innocent, sweaty remarks between sets, evolved.

It stretched from Netflix debates to childhood stories, to voice notes about the existential dread of turning twenty-seven and realizing no one really knows what they’re doing. Lesley wasn’t blind; she saw the spark, the way Jeff lit up when his phone buzzed. The way he smiled at nothing. The way he suddenly started “forgetting” his charger in the living room so he could stay up on calls. She knew her man was vulnerable to a good conversation about life, politics, and why everything was secretly falling apart. Give him depth and a little eye contact and he was gone. Still, she thought she could handle it. After all, she’d said it was okay for him to sleep with other guys. But then she realized he wasn’t just sleeping with Sam, he was waking up thinking about him too. Otek small!

One night, over supper, with the TV murmuring in the background and onions still clinging to the air, Jeff confessed. “I think I’m in love with him.” His voice was small. Like he’d folded himself inward. Like he was afraid his own feelings might hear him and grow louder. Lesley froze, spoon mid-air, soup dripping back into the bowl like her body had forgotten its instructions. She wanted, briefly, violently, to turn him into that very soup.

She’d always joked that if Jeff ever fell for one of the guys he slept with, he’d come crawling back. Apologizing. Begging. Writing paragraphs. Promising exclusivity and forever and puppies. But there was no crawling, no pleading, just this awkward honesty that felt more like a knife to her chest.

Lesley met Sam once, during Jeff’s 28th birthday shindig.

He wasn’t one of those third parties who show up ready to audition for the attention of the shared partner like it’s a reality show. No performances. No strategic flirting. No desperate charm. He wasn’t trying to win anything. In fact, she found him annoyingly gentle.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Sam said, smiling. He was kinder than she expected. The kind of man who says “excuse me” even when he has every right to pass. She wondered if Jeff had ever spoken about her to him, the way he spoke about Sam to her, probably. But the thought of it not happening hurt her.

She couldn’t deny that Sam had a certain je ne sais quoi to him. He had this way of listening that made people confess things they hadn’t rehearsed. He laughed with his whole body, and never pretended to be cooler than he was. He was taller than Jeff too. I remember Lesley pulling me aside during the party and joked, “If I were progressive enough, I’d be poly and have him too.”

We laughed. We were not joking. So to realize that her person had fallen for that person felt like a matter of national urgency.

“So, are you leaving me for him?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt. She tried to play the ‘I just want to see you happy, even if it’s not with me’ card. Jeff shook his head, confused and torn, “I don’t know, I don’t want to lose you. I… I don’t want to lie. And I don’t want to choose wrong.”

Isn’t that what we all do? Cling to the comfort of the familiar while yearning for the new? Call it loyalty. Call it fear. Call it love having too many languages. His uncertainty felt like betrayal. He knew he felt love, but he couldn’t locate her inside that love anymore.

It was the not knowing, the wavering, the in-between that made her feel like she was the one losing. And she was.

People talk about the apocalypse like it’s this grand event where the world goes dark and all hope is lost, but I think it’s smaller than that. It’s the little things that really break us. The stupid moments you didn’t think would matter. Like how Lesley misses the way Jeff used to apply PB & J on her bread: she liked how he looked like he was painting a canvas. And how he’d always leave the sugar jar open because he never used it. It’s that goddamn sugar jar that gets her now. And the way he laughed at her really terrible puns. Or the way they’d do the eye thing in a crowded room when they related on something. All those micro-miracles, gone.

In the end, it wasn’t about who Jeff chose, or if he chose at all. It was about the spaces he’d filled in Lesley’s life that were now just empty. She had believed loving a man who existed outside the norms of patriarchy would spare her from heartbreak. If only she, along with many other people, would understand that heartbreak is democratic. It is inevitable, no matter who you lend your heart.

They tried to make it work, patch things up like one of those old ships you see in movies, holding together by sheer willpower, but eventually, the leaks become too many, and it all sinks. Jeff moved out, and Lesley was left with an empty guest room. They had separate rooms while living together and it seemed to work for them.

One day, when the solitude grew louder than her thoughts, Lesley found herself scrolling through Instagram like a modern-day detective. It was a particularly tragic moment when she stumbled upon a story , a seemingly innocent glimpse into Jeff’s new life. There he was, looking all too cozy with Sam: in a pottery class of all places!

Jeff, the same Jeff who once begged her to join him in molding clay, a request she dismissed with a dramatic declaration that her hands couldn’t bear the rough texture. Now, it seemed, that very texture had invaded her life in the most intimate way, pressed into places she had once reserved for herself. What made it worse was that, in a moment of weakness, she had asked Jeff to block her. To erase her. To make the separation clean and cruel and final.

He had refused.

“Let’s not become enemies,” he’d said gently. “We shared something beautiful.”

And somehow, that tenderness hurt more than rejection ever could.

So now here she was, cursed with the reality of having to take in the sight of Jeff bending down to kiss Sam’s forehead. They shared a tenderness she once thought was reserved for her. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. She had known Jeff was the one “doing the bending,” but this was a new level of heartbreak. It wasn’t just the sight of her ex moving on; it was the poignant realization that Sam was now in the very place Lesley had been. Lesley wondered what Sam felt. What was it like being loved by the man she had once embraced and cuddled in the wee hours of the morning? Was that love everything he had hoped it would be? She wondered if Sam felt safe. If he felt chosen. If he ever feared being temporary.

The rough texture of clay had somehow become a metaphor for the rough edges of her broken heart.

They say heartbreaks are the worst when you’re left wondering if you were ever truly enough. Sometimes, Lesley had always wondered if loving Jeff meant learning to love Sam too. The outcome of the arrangement hurt her more deeply for this very reason. Not because of jealousy, but because of how much courage it had required of her.

Lesley told me once, while wiping away the tears she swore she’d never shed, “It’s not the falling out of love that hurts; it’s the fact that I was willing to make space for someone else in his life, but I never thought I’d be the one pushed out.” And that’s the raw truth. Sometimes you can be okay with everything, until you aren’t.

So yeah, apocalypses are overrated. It’s not the end of the world that wrecks you: it’s the small, everyday devastations that come when you least expect it.

It’s realizing that love is vast, uncontrollable, and sometimes too honest for the containers we build.

(Jeff and Lesley) pinterest inspired cover photo.

FICTION BY ADHIAMBO JOY.

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