Chapter Text
It was dark. Lying next to a warm lump of a body, Wendy was thinking about what she would do with her life.
Honestly, it was ironic. Her whole life, she had escaped being bound to her town: friendly neighbors, a husband next to her, and an unhappy but stable marriage. Funny, even her worst nightmare was obscenely middle-class of her. And yet this became her reality, didn’t it? She had been barely a preteen when her father became an alcoholic, and she had looked at her mother and thought, “I’ll never be her.” Forty-two-year-old Wendy scoffed at that thought now; she was undoubtedly worse than her mother.
It was okay. It was fine. She wasn’t her mother, not really, she wasn’t in a redneck mountain town, but even the thought of South Park as that hurt her soul. No matter how much she ran from there, she missed it. She rarely went back—only when she was broken beyond repair by elitist assholes, and wanted to sink into the warm comfort of her hometown’s crudeness. She stared at the suitcase at the top of her closet, the shiny rose-pink exterior winking at her through the gap of the closet door.
Her sigh reverberated through the room. So what—she’s going to pack up, and that’s going to change the fact that Billy is fucking his assistant? Or—sorry, has fucked his assistant, maybe even on this very bed, but he ‘wasn’t fucking her anymore’. He had begged on his knees until she believed him. Forgave? Not so much. He knew she couldn’t forgive it, no matter how much he sobbed or clawed at her legs. He needed her. She wasn’t the one he directed his desires into, hadn’t been for years, but she was the one he needed to keep his life and this facade together—and this facade was something they both constructed. It had been a mutual effort.
Jesus, who was she? She used to pick fights with Cartman during recess, just because he needed his ass handed to him. Now, she laid next to her cheating husband, ready for the next day, where she will get up at eight, make coffee for two, and go back to work like nothing happened. She was so close to getting her tenure at Harvard, but that didn’t save her from getting cheated on with the younger, bouncier assistant. Prisoned in her own life, she can’t even have her Amy Dunne fantasy played out—no, she has to forgive, forget, move on. Billy killed The Amazing Wendy, if she even existed.
It wasn’t the first night she lay awake like this, staring into the ceiling, self-soothing herself into not abandoning the life and the career that she built back to back with her asshole husband. No, she wasn’t going to do it. She lasted a week, damn it, she could get used to it! Perhaps after therapy, she would forgive and forget. Stop staring at the shine of the pink suitcase winking at her, tempting her like the Serpent tempted Eve.
She looked at Billy, barely daring to move her head, irrationally scared of waking him now. What would happen if he woke up? She’d say she couldn’t sleep, they’d have an awkward talk, he’d go back to slumber, and she’d return to her ruminating with the ceiling.
The semester was over now. The summer was long, warm, and humid. Billy’s arm grazing hers felt sticky with moisture, getting itchier as seconds passed. Actually, her entire body began to feel that way. The early-June weather must be showing its fangs.
Maybe she should take a shower.
She sat up, slowly, afraid of waking Billy, the way she used to fear waking her father on the nights she snuck out as a girl to play superheroes with the boys. Not even his breath hitched as she swung her legs down the bed to feel the solid ground beneath her feet. The fuzzy texture of the rug stuck under her heels as she stood. She used to be deathly afraid then, and she felt that redundant feeling at the back of her throat. It was a useless feeling, because Billy didn’t mind or notice her absence, not even when he was awake.
The water was cold when she stepped into the shower, making the hairs on her forearms stand. She fought back a flinch, used to her husband and his post-run cold showers. For a moment, she thought, mistakenly, that the temperature was fine.
There was mold in the corner of the ceiling somewhere. Billy warned her about warm showers.
“Fuck Billy,” she muttered, the knob of the faucet slipping beneath her fingers as she cranked the heat up. “Fuck Billy, fuck his stupid showers, fuck his thirty year old assistant—”
She closed her eyes as shampoo suds ran down her face. She shaved under the scalding water, for no reason other than to satiate this odd craving for something beneath her chest.
She was done just as she began, shutting the water off, staring at her pruned toes as water dripped onto the floor from her hair. “Fuck Billy,” she whispered again, as if trying to win an argument. The pink suitcase was too big and too high up; if she attempted to take it down from its perch at the top shelf, Billy would surely wake. She couldn’t linger around packing up either, or she would look at Billy’s warm, sleepy form on the bed and feel guilt crashing all over her, breaking this brief spell. It was as if The Amazing Wendy’s ghost visited her at times like this, materializing from thin air with her pink beret and mustard pants.
“Backpack,” Wendy mumbled, feeling recklessly nine years old. “I’ll need documents. I got money. I need my laptop. Some– some clothes, not a lot. Okay. Fuck, Jesus, okay, I need to do this.”
Take a moment. Breathe. Fuck. Okay.
She left the bathroom quietly, deciding to begin with getting dressed. Her trusty college backpack sat on the floor of the closet, barely getting used but never getting put away. Maybe she had felt that she’d need it.
She got dressed in something secure and comfortable and packed some clean clothes that would last her at least a few days. She didn’t even know where she’d go—probably a simple motel in the city or something. Maybe the airport. She could use a few trips to the mall, especially if it meant never seeing her cheater of a husband again. He wasn’t even handsome, not really. Not even in their youth, she had never regarded him as handsome. He met her criteria career-wise: He was smart, easy to work with, had work ethic. Well, not so much anymore, now that she knew about the affair with his assistant.
She checked herself: documents, money, her laptop, some clothes. She had to stop by a gas station for a toothbrush. Just about ready.
“Fuck,” she whispered into the dark room, flinching at her voice. You can’t turn back now, said The Amazing Wendy in her head. It doesn’t matter if you beat it or not. You can’t let it make you feel powerless.
How did you leave your husband? In her manic haze, she wondered if she could program a machine to experience this: learning that your husband has been cheating on you, and feeling like a ton of bricks has been lifted off your chest. Would the machine also conclude that she had been waiting for an excuse to leave Billy, leave Massachusetts for so long? Would an artificial heart be happy that she finally dares to leave?
She needs a pen and paper. And a lawyer too, as soon as possible. She found a stray napkin on the dresser and a red pen from the chest pocket of Billy’s blazer. The ballpoint tip of the pen dragged across the fragile surface of the napkin, vague scribbles forming nouns and verbs she couldn’t decipher in her delirium. Something along the lines of Goodbye, and I want a divorce.
She barely remembered anything after that, as if it were a bad hangover—nothing about how she left their townhouse or drove to the airport, and only came to herself when her plane landed at Denver and she went to the restroom as soon as her feet touched the ground. Something about the way the frame of her glasses shone in the dim bathroom light—she realized The Amazing Wendy was gone, or perhaps she retreated back into the depths of the past now that the past was unreachable again, within the borders of her home state. What was she going to do, go home? She didn’t even have family in South Park anymore; there wasn’t a home to go back to. But her feet were crawling back anyway, her body forgetting that she’s not twenty-two anymore and her life is different now.
An hour later, she found herself in a McDonald's parking lot, a breakfast of coffee and a McMuffin lying in her lap, fumbling with the radio to find some entertainment with her meal. Her phone was buried in her purse, turned off since she boarded her flight in Boston. She felt oddly rested, even though the only sleep she got was a short nap on the plane. The sun shone confidently over the mountains now, the neon red of the car clock nearing close to nine.
The road to South Park was uneventful, as it usually is, like a calm before the storm. As her rental Honda Civic sped past the wooden sign, a sense of nostalgia filled her. She hadn’t come here since that summer in college, and her parents had retired and moved shortly after that. She remembered the town as it was twenty years ago, every nook and cranny carved into her mind. It was the first time she came to this town with nowhere to go.
She drove by the road that led to Stark’s Pond. So what—she’d rent a motel room, go on a week-long bender, calm her nervous system down. After all that, she would go back to her life, sue for divorce, adjust.
Even the thought of going back to Massachusetts made her throat close up with the ghost of the loneliness that awaited her. A summer of divorcing her husband and sitting by herself in some unknown living room that she’ll have in the future. She resented that idea—her house with Billy was decorated very carefully by her through the years, and it upset her to leave it all.
She pulled up to the store, contemplating how cheap she should go with the wine. The fact that she was probably the only person in there to buy wine at ten in the morning made her smile to herself. So what? She’ll sit in white, impersonal sheets all afternoon and get drunk in her childhood town. Maybe if she got drunk enough, something could possess her to visit Skeeter’s Bar.
In front of the liquor aisle, she stared at the wine labels like she was picking up a housewarming gift. She was thinking of how maybe she should forget about the wine and go for a trusty bottle of vodka, when she heard someone shuffling beside her, standing quietly.
“Wendy?” A voice called out. She didn’t immediately recognise it, but its boyish tone made her head snap up. It was the same nasally voice that made her laugh so hard as a girl that she snorted soda out of her nose.
Wendy had a fascination with the sky that she didn’t know when it began. So much so that her third date with Billy had been laying their backs on damp grass and watching the blue sky, trying to match the clouds to shapes like they were little kids. When asked, she always said it was the color that she liked so much—especially the darker shade of the afternoon skies of Boston. She was drowning in that color now, staring at this pair of eyes, and for all these years, she couldn’t name that color. It suddenly came to her, like a switch being turned on, that his eyes were the same color as the afternoon sky when she kissed him for the first time underneath it at eight years old.
“Stan,” she said, in half disbelief.
“Wow, I thought that was you! How have you been? I thought your parents moved away.”
“They did,” she replied as easily as she could. Stan looked drastically different since the last time she saw him—he had a thick stubble, his hair was thinner, and that round belly hadn’t been there before. Yet everything about him was the same, from his boyish speech to even the way he smelled, like pine trees and warm vanilla.
Was she a freak for remembering the scent of her childhood boyfriend?
The edges of her vision blurred with tears. She tried to blink it away, but something shifted in Stan’s eyes as they flickered between hers. With how many facades Wendy put on throughout the years, Stan saw through all of them. Maybe it was the fact that she had known him since then, but in his presence, even at forty-two, she felt like an elementary schooler.
“You okay?” he asked with a gentle voice, and it was so familiar. She felt self-conscious of this, because she didn’t actually know the person in front of her—this man with silver hairs scattered across his temples and crows feet crinkled in worry around his eyes—yet she knew him, the core inside of that foreign outer layer.
“Um,” she said eloquently, and the syllable shook with the sob rising from her chest. She didn’t need to say anything else before Stan’s heavy hand was on her shoulder, guiding her out of the store. The moment they stepped into the open air, sobs spilled out of her, the floodgates opening. Just when she was ready to accept that her memories of South Park were days gone by, her most treasured memory had materialized before her felt like nothing had changed, no years had passed, and she was still in grade school.
Stan’s arms were around her immediately, just as they had been whenever she fell and scraped a knee at the park, or one of the kids pissed her off to the point of crying.
“Hey, it’s okay… Wendy, what’s wrong?”
“I left my husband today,” she muttered into his shoulder, shirt already dampened from her tears.
“Oh, sweetheart…” he cradled the back of her head, not caring that it was an odd amount of intimacy for two people who hadn’t seen each other in years. “Who are you staying with? If your parents aren’t here?”
“Just—the motel. I just wanted to see the town again, I guess—”
Stan pulled away to look at her face. “No way, you can’t stay at the motel. Hey, why don’t you sit in my car? Here, there it is.” He opened the passenger door and kneeled in front of her when she settled down in the car, like he was dealing with a small child. “Wait here for a second, I just need to make a call. Okay?”
She froze, feeling like a little girl in front of him. Shame dug a hole in her gut, urging her to tell him no. But her body moved in its own accord: she simply nodded and watched his retreating back. Stan spoke on the phone for a short time, barely even thirty seconds, and settled beside her in the driver’s seat.
“Did you have breakfast?” he asked. She shook her head, even though she had that breakfast sandwich, and felt oddly naughty for it.
“Great! Kyle always makes an insane amount of food for our weekend brunch. And I always get tasked with pancake duty, so if you want pancakes, you’ll have to wait.” He stole a glance at her wet, blinking face. “Kyle and I live together, by the way, I guess I should’ve opened with that. And his kids.”
Wendy’s eyebrows perked up. “Kids?”
“Yeah, two! Um, Jake and Teddy. You’ll love them, they’re great. They’re a bit of a handful, but—Uh, I hope this is okay with you, by the way. I kind of kidnapped you back there.”
“No, it’s fine,” she muttered, watching the town from the window. Jimbo’s store had a new sign, and City Wok still looked like its walls were covered with cooking oil. “I don’t really know why I came here, honestly, I’ve had a weird night. I guess I subconsciously wanted to be somewhere familiar. I don’t know.” She sighed. “My plan at the store was to buy as much alcohol as I could carry and check into a motel. Family brunch sounds much more appealing. Wait, pull over for a second, I should’ve bought you guys a bottle of wine or something–”
Stan laughed.
“I’m serious! I can’t just show up empty-handed— I’ll get champagne, how about that? I know how to make Mimosas!”
“That’s not necessary,” he chuckled, “I don’t drink, anyway. Not anymore. And, come on, nobody’s going to judge you for that after everything you went through today.” He was eager to change the subject to save her the awkwardness. “What’s the situation with that, by the way?” he began timidly, “The husband?”
Wendy sighed as she buried her face in her hands. “The husband. He’s— Well. He cheated. Nothing much to it.”
“Doesn’t sound like ‘nothing’. How long had you been married?”
“Nine years,” she sighed. She could see the way Stan’s brows rose to his hairline. “We met in school, obviously. He’s been my research partner for way longer. We won’t be able to work together anymore, so my career might be over.” She stared out into the street. “It’s fine. I’ll find my way, like always. Hey, isn’t this your–”
“My childhood home? Yeah,” Stan said as he parked in the driveway. “I bought it back a few years ago, had to renovate it a lot, actually–” His voice cut off as he exited the car. Wendy sat still for a brief moment, watching the house that stood like a mirage from the past. There were curtains with lace trimmings flowing behind an open window.
The sound of the passenger door opening snapped her out of her trance. She looked up to Stan, holding her door open. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked. She nodded blankly as she unbuckled her belt.
Stan was fiddling with his pocket, trying to get to his keys with the groceries in his arm, when the door swung open to reveal a little boy. The boy looked so identical to Kyle that the visual made her travel back in time: Frizzy red curls fell over his forehead, over the same sea green eyes.
“Hi, Jake,” Stan greeted him. The boy beamed at Stan for a moment, before he noticed Wendy and quietly shuffled back inside. “Hope you don’t mind an additional seat at the table. He’s shy,” he added to explain, and she saw a fatherly mist in his eyes. Her suspicions were confirmed, then.
“I feel for him,” she muttered as they stepped into the house. “If a random lady showed up in the morning when I was a kid–”
“You’re hardly a random lady,” Stan laughed. The corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that made Wendy’s heart ache.
“Thanks a lot for doing this, Stan,” she mumbled quietly.
He caught her eyes and smiled at her. “You’d do the same for me.” His hand rested on the small of Wendy’s back, leading her further into the home. “Come on, they’re in the kitchen. You can leave your bag anywhere.”
She dropped her backpack beside the couch, having an odd deja vu of coming home from college. She looked around. It was hard to believe that this was Stan’s childhood home with the way it was decorated now. Colorful paintings adorned the walls: Flowers, animals, a marble statue on a big canvas. She could hear children giggling in the kitchen, and a man’s voice berating them about settling down. Kyle’s tall frame appeared the moment she stepped into the kitchen, and she reeled back in shock, eyes wide.
Kyle smiled at her. “Hey, Wendy. How have you been?”
If she had seen Kyle in the street, she wouldn’t have recognized him. Last she saw him, he had long hair like it was the 80s and still had baby fat around his cheeks. This metamorphosed Kyle had close-cropped hair and a full beard, trimmed along his sharp jaw. She knew she was blatantly staring at him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was smiling at her, face wrinkled, something bright and warm in his eyes, something that made her travel back in time.
Twenty years ago, it’s college junior Wendy’s first time in South Park for years, and the one night her parents aren’t at home, she’s picking up her takeout from City Wok. She had been gathering courage to argue with Mr. Liu over her order that she had been waiting half an hour for, when a hand gently grabbed her elbow.
“Wendy!” Kyle exclaimed, appearing suddenly out of thin air. His hair was even longer than it was in high school, and she spotted quite a few piercings glinting in his ears. “I didn’t know you were in town! How’s it going?”
The truth was, she knew he was in town—because Stan was. When she came home for the summer, all she wanted was to lie in her bed and be depressed in peace after she ruined her entire college life by catching feelings for her hot lesbian TA—yet her mom kept insisting that she should hang out with people in town. By people, she mainly meant Stan, because she had always thought Stan was a nice boy, and it pissed Wendy off that her mother’s first instinct after seeing her experience a horrible breakup was to set her back up with her high school boyfriend. It wasn’t that she disliked Stan—more that she knew she needed stop running to Stan the moment things got difficult, because she had promised herself that she’d drop that habit back in high school.
Even though Kyle also suffered from this due to his proximity to Stan, she liked Kyle: They had this weird academic rivalry thing in high school, and it was silly, but it had been the only thing that moved her forward at the time.
“Hi, Kyle! I didn’t know you were in town either,” she lied. “I thought you would be doing summer internships by now.”
“Oh, I am,” he laughed. “I’m interning at my father’s firm. Kind of a dick move, but whatever. It’s the only place that would hire me as a pre-law.”
“That’s great!” she exclaimed, the lie thick on her tongue. She should’ve gotten an internship this summer too—she was going to be a senior next semester after all. Too bad Thalia dumped her and took all of Wendy’s college life away. She didn’t have anybody in Boston now, and she could’ve started over, but it had all been so overwhelming that all she wanted to do for the summer was to go home and be a kid under her parents’ roof.
“Not great,” Kyle sighed. “All they have me do is read through past cases and press buttons on the printer.”
“At least it’ll look good on your CV.”
He shrugged. “Honestly, I’m only doing it so that my parents don’t complain about me sitting on my ass all summer. I just missed home, you know.”
The way his mouth formed the word home made her think that he didn’t mean his family, or South Park. He was referring to something more specific, someone she knew very well.
She nodded in understanding. “I’m in the same boat. I’m kinda going through the worst break up of my life, so…”
“Regrouping at home?” he smiled. “I feel you. Been there, last year. How long of a relationship was it?”
“Uh…” She furrowed her brows, doing the math. “It didn’t become official until last year, but we had been seeing each other for about two years.”
Kyle furrowed his brows. “Why wait that long to make it official?”
“Well, she was my TA, so…”
“Oh, God,” he groaned. “That sounds rough, I’m sorry. Did you have to wait to pass the class or something?”
“Not really, I switched classes back then to… be as ethical as possible, I guess. It’s just…” she sighed, playing with her hands. Well, she wasn’t in Boston anymore. In the safety of this little town, she could be as crass as she wanted. “It’s just that she was an asshole. I don’t know, I did like her a lot, but I guess as I got older, I started noticing how she was… kind of a loser? Is that mean?”
Kyle laughed in response, seemingly enjoying her meanness.
“She was like, twenty-five?” she continued, “When we met? And—I know it’s awful, okay, don’t look at me like that— And now that I’m also in my twenties, I’ve realized that there’s no way I’d go out with a freshman. But she did it while she was in post-grad! So I had to break it off, you know, it was just freaking me out.”
“I’m glad you did. Oh, those must be ours,” he said, as Mr. Liu emerged from the kitchen with two plastic bags in his hands.
“That took ages,” she muttered. “I’m sorry I talked your ear off. It's just that I haven’t had a social interaction in a while with someone that isn’t related to me.”
“Dude, it’s totally fine. You should’ve let us know that you’re in town earlier; we could have hung out! I mean, we still can, but you know what I mean.”
Wendy smiled, remembering why she liked hanging out with Kyle in high school: He was a great study partner, and he never let her relationship with Stan make things too awkward. She had always thought he was a good influence on Stan, so she tried to befriend him as best as she could. She remembered the first time Stan had invited Kyle to one of their study dates, and she had been so shocked of why she didn’t think of that before. Even the way he categorized and annotated his notes reminded Wendy of her own. Her and Kyle had always had similar personalities, so much so that she had even teased Stan about having a type when they were in middle school, thinking he’d find it funny, but he hadn’t laughed very much. It hadn’t taken them long to ditch Stan for their study dates, and Cartman had poked at Stan with a tasteless cuckolding joke, to which Stan had replied with a dig about how he’ll never know the warmth of a woman.
Everyone else had laughed at Cartman’s joke back then, which was expected from high school, but it hadn’t soured their newfound friendship. Stan and Kyle’s camaraderie was so deep rooted in their personalities that whenever she was around one, she could feel the presence of the other even if he wasn’t near. Stan’s presence was often so palpable that sometimes Wendy felt like Kyle never saw her as a girl.
She had suspected for a while that he was gay, but that theory had been debunked when he dated Esther throughout junior year. Back then, she had joined their study sessions a few times, and Wendy distinctly remembered not enjoying that experience even though she and Esther had been good friends at that time.
Now that she was thinking about it, it was weird that he’d prefer to bring Esther over at Wendy’s rather than studying alone with his girlfriend, but that’s just how Kyle was. The situation hadn’t even seemed weird to him, even though Esther had been obviously upset by Wendy’s presence. But she knew what Wendy knew at the time as well: No matter how academically smart he was, Kyle always followed where his heart took him. You could never take him somewhere he didn’t want to be—at least willingly. He never hid his emotions. If he enjoyed spending time with you, he’d find a billion ways of spending time with you.
She looked at his smiling face for a moment, thinking of how she missed that honesty. When Stan and Wendy had separated after high school, it felt like South Park was separated into halves for them, too. Kyle had been Stan’s part of South Park, and Wendy had respected that.
Right now, Wendy wanted to share.
“Are you going anywhere?” she asked, gesturing at the takeout bags in their hands. “Wanna have lunch together? We could go to Stark’s Pond, or something.”
Kyle’s face fell, and Wendy immediately regretted it. Who would want to hang out with their best friend’s ex? That was weird. “It’s fine if you can’t,” she quickly added.
“No, I’d love to! It’s just… I was going up to Stan’s. His lunch is also in here, so…” He brightened up suddenly. “Why don’t you come with? We could hang out. Stan bought a new Playstation.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you guys. It’d be weird for me to show up at the farm randomly anyway.”
“He moved into the barn, so it’s kind of like his own place,” he shrugged. “If you’re worried about running into his family or anything. But, I mean, he’d enjoy having you over. We used to hang out together in high school all the time.”
Wendy knew she should’ve said no, gone back home, and continued watching Sex and the City from where she had left it off. But she was bored out of her mind living with her family, and she wanted to say yes so badly. Maybe she and Kyle were even more similar than she had thought, because her heart wanted what it wanted, and her brain didn’t have the power to say no.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll come over.”
“Sit down, Wendy, I’ll start the pancakes,” Stan instructed. She followed wordlessly. Two kids were sitting by the breakfast table: The boy from earlier and a smaller girl who looked nearly identical to him, save for her looser curls. They looked horrified at the sight of a stranger, and she felt for them.
She smiled at them awkwardly. “Hi, I’m Wendy. What are your names?”
“She’s a childhood friend of ours,” Kyle explained to his kids. “She needs somewhere to stay so Stan invited her over, because what do I always tell you?”
“You can’t have a village without being a villager,” the kids chanted in unison, voices monotone and eyes dull. Wendy guessed that it was Kyle’s parental catchphrase.
“Exactly. Now, please introduce yourselves.”
“I’m Jacob,” the boy said, playing with his fingers. He glanced at his sister, waiting for her to speak up, but the little girl was half-hidden behind the table and gazing at Wendy suspiciously, so he continued: “This is Teddy.”
“My name’s actually Athena, but everyone calls me Teddy,” the girl exclaimed, making Wendy flinch at how the volume of her voice contrasted with her quiet demeanor a few seconds ago. “It’s a Greek goddess!”
“Really? What a pretty name,” Wendy said gently. She crouched down to Teddy’s eye level. She was adorable with her curly hair done up in pigtails, like a little cartoon character. “Do you know about her story?”
“Um…” Wendy didn’t think the kid could hide further behind her brother, but she did. “Daddy told me, but I forgot.”
Kyle reached over to pat her head. “I’ll tell you again whenever you want.”
“Okay,” Teddy mumbled, embarrassed. Her face immediately softened as Kyle planted a kiss in her hair.
“Nice to meet you, Jacob and Teddy,” Wendy said, trying to be as friendly as possible. She never got along too great with kids, which was one of the main reasons for her childlessness. It wasn’t that she disliked them, but she felt they were too unpredictable, and she was always scared of hurting a child’s feelings accidentally.
“Stan told me what happened,” Kyle said. “Very briefly, at least. If you need anything, we’re here. I know some great divorce lawyers.”
“Any of them in Massachusetts?” she sighed, leaning her chin against her hand. “It’s all very new. I haven’t even turned my phone on yet. He probably alerted the police or something.”
“Why? Are you a criminal?” Teddy asked, feet swinging under the table.
Jacob poked her in the ribs. “That’s not what she means, dummy.”
“Shut up!”
“Guys,” Kyle warned, and the table went still.
“You just packed up and left?” Stan called from the stove. When Wendy nodded, he let out a low whistle. “You got some guts.”
“It was the middle of the night, too, while he was still sleeping. He’s probably really worried.” Guilt started to settle in her gut now that the adrenaline was wearing off. “I should call him. Ugh, I don’t want to deal with that.”
“Eat first, deal with your problems later,” Stan said as he set the giant plate of pancakes on the table. “Dig in, everyone!”
The kids attacked the table immediately, creating mountains of food on their plates. Kyle laughed at them. “Eat slowly, okay? No one’s taking your food.”
Wendy put one of the pancakes on her plate, too. “Are these blueberries?”
“Nope, chocolate chips. Teddy’s not a fan of fruit.”
“Kind of ironic,” Kyle joked with food in his mouth. It made Wendy giggle.
“So…” she began, “You guys are married, or something?” She worried Kyle would choke on his bite for a second with how red his face got.
Stan laughed easily. “No, we’re just… uh…”
“They might as well be married,” Jacob’s little voice said, which made Kyle blush even harder.
“We just became… partners, I guess.” Stan finished his thought. “It was a little after we moved back to South Park together… How long ago was it? Three years? Four?”
“Four,” Kyle agreed, voice quieter.
“Oh, I thought…” She looked at the kids for a moment, who thankfully didn’t catch her gaze with how focused they were on their breakfast. “You guys like South Park?” She asked the kids instead, willing to change the topic after seeing the misty look in Kyle’s eyes. Her mind was brimming with questions, but she held her mouth.
“People at school are weird,” Jacob mumbled. He looked so much like Kyle at that age, the only thing missing was his green hat. Wendy wanted to pinch his cheeks. “But they’re okay. I like being able to play outside.” he continued. “And Dad has more friends here, so that’s good.”
Stan laughed in response to that—a full bodied belly laugh, the kind that fathers have. It weirded her out a bit, considering that Stan had been beardless and bellyless and childless the last time she saw him. “See, I’m telling you, you’re worrying the kids,” he said, “You need to make more friends.”
“He has you,” Teddy chirped, seeming proud of her response.
“She’s right,” Kyle chuckled, leaning his head on Stan’s shoulder. “Thank God I have you.”
Wendy glanced away, her heart hammering. She remembered this odd voyeuristic feeling of watching them interact with each other, embrace each other so casually. She felt envious of that affection, the kind that only men could experience among each other. No, actually, scratch that. It was an affection only Stan and Kyle could experience. Her hand clenched around her fork, cutting into her pancake with more fervor.
“How about you?” Stan asked her, his thumb stoking Kyle’s knee under the table. “Do you like Boston?”
“Not really,” Wendy replied as she tweaked the AC of Kyle’s car. It was a hot summer, even in the mountains. “I mean, it’s nice to be around so many like-minded people. I think you can relate to that about college. But it also feels very elitist, you know. Everyone has summer residences and grandparents with college degrees. I don’t think I can relate to a lot of people like that.”
“Yeah, I get what you mean,” Kyle said, gently pushing her hands away from the buttons of the AC to turn the radio off. “The people feel colder in bigger cities. I think we’ve been pampered by our small town a bit too much. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed about the fact that I don’t know most of the people at school. It freaks me out. Back home, we all knew each other since diapers. It just feels weird.”
“Like nobody will know the real you,” Wendy said, watching Kyle take the turn that led to the farm road. “Because they haven’t been in South Park. It’s an integral part of who we are, I think.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, throwing her a sideways glance. “I like that everyone is smart or whatever, but I sometimes miss the stupidity.”
Wendy scoffed. “No, you don’t. That’s the nostalgia talking.”
“Well, maybe. At least knowing that I’ll return to South Park at some point puts me at ease.”
“You will?” That surprised Wendy. They had always fantasized about leaving this town behind back when they were in high school. She still fantasized about it, which made her slightly ashamed of the fact that she returned the moment she had been burned by the outside world, with her tail between her legs.
“Definitely. I mean, even though I hate some parts of it, it’s still ours, you know? I’d want my kids to grow up here, too, someday. Because if they don’t, they’ll turn out like one of those New York assholes, too, and I don’t think I could love those douchebags even if they were my kids.”
That was true. The thought made a shiver run down her spine. “Well, thank God I’ll never have kids.”
“I love that for you,” he laughed as he pulled into the driveway of the Marsh residence. She expected him to park, but he drove a little further, up next to the barn with the peeling red paint.
Kyle opened her door for her before she could gather up her stuff. “Did you tell him I was coming?” she asked as she stepped out.
“Well… No. But it’ll be fine. Come on.” He guided her to the barn door with a gentle hand on her back, grounding her. She let him go in first, barely knocking before he opened the door.
“Hey, dude, do you mind if I brought someone?”
“You brought someone? Who?” Stan’s voice echoed from the door, muffled from the distance. She thought she heard hurt in his voice, but decided not to linger on it for her sake. She inhaled a breath. It’s just Stan. It’s not like they had broken up with a fight or anything.
She gathered her courage before peeking her head in from the door. She had expected the inside to look like… Well, an empty barn—maybe with the addition of a mattress. But it really looked like a home, complete with a TV and two couches, and of course, a bed in the corner. “Hey, Stan. Do you mind if I join you guys?”
“Wendy!” Stan exclaimed, standing from his seat in surprise. “Of course! Jesus, when you said you brought someone, I thought it’d be Cartman, or something.”
She couldn’t see Kyle’s face with how he towered over her, but she knew his face soured. “Where would I even find Cartman?”
Stan approached her with a smile and wordlessly embraced her. She had been ready to push him off –but now that she was in his arms, all of that resolve melted away. She hugged him back quietly.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” Stan said as they pulled away. “I would’ve called, or something.”
“I didn’t either,” she lied, “I just ran into Kyle while getting food, and he invited me. I hope that’s okay.”
“Dude, of course! You’re welcome anytime.” He gestured at the couch. “Sit! I just got the new PlayStation. We could game, or something.”
“Yeah, Kyle mentioned it.”
“She came for the games, dude, not for you.” Kyle teased him with a punch to his arm, which felt like something Esther would’ve done to Kyle in high school when they had been dating—it was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.
She settled on the couch cross-legged and tore into her takeout bag, trying to shake the awkwardness off herself. “Could we eat first? I’m starving.”
Kyle put on an episode of Spongebob as Stan unpacked the carton boxes, checking each of its contents carefully. “Ugh, he put too much sauce in the chicken again. Did you tell him not to?”
“Yes, dude, do you think he cares?”
They ate quietly, letting the sound of the TV fill the comfortable silence. They kept sneaking bites from each other’s food, and they had even insisted that Wendy should have a taste, because ‘they finally mastered the perfect City Wok order’, which she argued didn’t exist. City Wok food was just that—shitty.
After they had finished their food and tidied up their trash, she sat back on the couch and asked the question that had been bugging her since she entered the barn. “Do you guys smoke here, or does the whole farm just smell like weed?”
“Both,” Stan replied. “Why, you want some?”
“Yeah,” she said without much thought. Stan looked at Kyle, who in turn rolled his eyes and got up from the seat. He disappeared behind them into the room, shortly returning with a jar in his hand.
“I thought you hated marijuana,” she said to Stan.
“I gave in to peer pressure,” he sighed. Kyle laughed at that, already grinding a nub.
He passed the joint to her when he was done, and she lit it carefully. She felt her bones relax even with the first inhale. She passed it to Stan, exhaling the smoke to the ceiling. “Damn, I didn’t think I’d be able to smoke this summer.”
“Anything is possible if you hang with us. I’ve a minibar too, if you'd like a drink. Actually, I’ll get a beer. You guys want some?”
“No, thanks,” Kyle answered as he plucked the joint from Stan’s fingers.
Kyle started setting up the gaming consoles as Stan fetched himself a can of beer. She wanted to steal a sip, so she did, and her face soured with the taste instantly. “Ugh, please don’t tell me you drink this willingly.”
“I drink whatever’s in my dad’s stash. No way I’m spending a penny on anything when I’m home, dude. I’d rather spend my scholarship on new games.”
“I’ll get you some good quality beer as a housewarming gift, then,” Wendy said. “The next time I come over.” It was a risky thing to say, since she didn’t know if she was welcome again, but she was willing to play that bet.
“Seriously?” Stan’s eyes glimmered. “You’re the best.”
After the breakfast, Kyle’s kids were quick to get on their feet and help Stan and Kyle tidy up. Teddy couldn’t carry the plates when they were stacked up, so she carried them over to Kyle one by one—who was washing the dishes by the sink. Stan was packing up the leftover food to store in the fridge, and Jacob was dutifully helping him. It was so domestic that she felt like she was in a Norman Rockwell painting.
“Let me help,” she said, to nobody in particular. Feeling useless was the very thing she hated the most. She started to pick up the trash scattered around the table, but Stan gently approached her and took that task from her hands.
“We got it. You go call your guy, okay? You can use one of the rooms upstairs, if you want.”
Perhaps it was the fact that Stan had been parenting two little kids for the last few years, but whenever he spoke to her he had the most patient and gentle air to him, as if she could tell him her greatest secrets and he’d keep them. She let him take the stuff in her hands wordlessly, his fingers grazing her palm by accident.
“Could you, like… Wait? Down here?”
“We’ll be here, don’t worry. Just make sure he doesn’t convince you into doing anything you don't want to do.”
She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself to resist the urge to hug Stan again. She found her bag where she left it by the couch and fished out her phone. She pressed the power button, and the screen only lit up when she was upstairs, in the first room she saw—It was Stan and Kyle’s room, with a giant bed in the middle. She perched on its corner gingerly as she scrolled through her notifications: five missed calls and countless texts from Billy, even some of their friends. Her mother had called her multiple times too, which pissed her off because it meant Billy called them and let them know of the situation. He probably thought she’d go to their house, but that place has never been her home.
Her finger hovered over his number, not wanting to face the reality of her situation yet, but she pressed it before she could psych herself out. It only rang once before Billy answered: “Wendy! Where are you? Are you okay?”
There was something tired in his voice, beneath all the worry and panic. She sighed, lying flat on her back at the foot of the bed. “Hi, Billy. I’m okay. I’m, uh. Did you read my note?”
“Yes, but—Wen, I thought we were going to work through it. I’m sorry— you know I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you, and I hate that I’ve made you go through this, but—” He sighed. “Baby, please come home.”
His begging was less desperate than last week's. She imagined how he must look: Was he still in his pajamas, curled up on the couch like a kid? Had he already gotten dressed and gone out to search for her? Did he cry? Were there red rims around his sea green eyes?
“I can’t,” she answered, quietly and honestly. “I’ve already betrayed myself enough. Every time I look at you or even think about you, I think of what you did, and it feels like a part of me dies. I can’t live the remainder of my life like this.”
“Where are you? We need to talk face to face, okay? I need to see that you’re okay–”
“William, listen to me.” Hearing his full name made Billy shut up immediately. “This isn’t some rash decision I’ve made in the heat of the moment. I’ve been thinking about this for the past week, and I know I made it seem like I was okay with it, but I wasn’t. I fucking wasn’t, okay? And— And you should’ve thought of that before you went ahead and did what you did. So. I want a divorce.”
There was a sniffle on the other line—was he crying? “What about our research?” he said in a pathetic voice. It was just like him to think about work at a time like this. Their relationship had started as research partners, and she knew that in his eyes, she was a coworker first and foremost. He was a pragmatic person, or at least tried to be, which was why she had married him. She held back a laugh as she listened to his pathetic sobs on the other line.
“I–” She began, but stopped herself before she could say something stupid like ‘It’s yours now’, or ‘Burn it to the ground’.
“The tenure review is this month, Wen. At least— Can’t we at least try until it’s done? Until you get your tenure?”
“No, Billy— I can’t. I don’t— Let’s discuss custody later, okay?”
Her pathetic joke made him cry even harder, and she knew what he was thinking: If Wendy had agreed all those years ago and they had children, it would’ve been different—it would’ve been better. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t fantasized about having little babies with Billy’s pretty eyes before, but she had always been glad that she never followed that thought through. After watching the pathetic lives of moms in her town, she had promised herself that she’d never have kids. She had kept that promise, and she was proud of herself for that.
“Wendy— Baby, please. I can’t live without you.”
“I don’t know what to say to you. You were the one who slept with your assistant, not me.”
“It was a mistake! You know that! I promise—it was a mistake. I’ll never do it again, I swear on my grave. Please, Wen, I beg you. Please come back. I love you.”
His sniffling was the only thing audible through the speaker as she lay quietly, listening to it. She contemplated what would happen if she caved in and went back to him: The first weeks would probably be great—Billy would take her out on fancy dates every night, fuck her like it was their honeymoon. It’d be fun for a while, but when that was over and they had to get back to their lives and work, who could say that he wouldn’t cheat again? Who could guarantee that she wouldn’t black out in the middle of the night again, only realizing the weight of her situation at Kyle’s breakfast table?
“I’ll send you the papers soon. I’ll see you in court, or whatever. Please don’t call.”
“No, no– Wendy, please, let’s just talk–”
She hung up the phone, staring at her reflection on its black screen with both horror and amazement. She hadn’t even let him finish his sentence. Atta girl.
Once her phone was turned off again and the problems of her life were swept back under the rug, she went back downstairs. Stan and Kyle were lounging on the couch, and she could hear Teddy’s laughter through the back door. Kyle spotted her first as she descended the stairs, already scooting over to make space for her between them.
“You okay?” Stan asked after she sat down, his hand hovering over her shoulder, unsure if his touch was welcome or not.
“I think so,” she replied, “I didn’t cry. He did, though. Does that make me a bad person?”
“Of course not.” Stan’s hand settled on her shoulder hesitantly. She stole a glance at Kyle to see if he’d react, but he only threw her a comforting smile.
“How long had you been together?” Kyle asked.
“Married for nine years,” she sniffled. The tears were coming to her only now. “I don’t think I’m sad about leaving him. He deserves it. What I’m upset about is all those years wasted on him, you know?”
She wiped a stray tear off, and Kyle immediately handed her a tissue that he procured from seemingly out of nowhere.
“You know he was my research partner? We did our master’s together. That’s where I met him, he was my classmate. I had thought that he was this— This unattainable, amazing person. I don’t know. I think I wanted to be him, but I couldn’t, so I married him instead.”
When they had first met, he had seemed impossibly intellectual to her small-town girl self. During their wedding, she had watched the way the line of his shoulders shook with laughter, and thought that she had obtained what she wanted. It had been too late when she realized that it wasn’t him she wanted—all those horseback riding lessons and country clubs, those were what she had been envious of.
Stan visibly hesitated over what to say. “There’s no use psychoanalyzing yourself,” he finally said. “Whatever happened, happened. It’s better to focus on the future than overthink the past.”
“I know. I don’t even know what I’ll do now, though. We did most of our research together. You know, he asked about that— ‘Where are you?’, ‘Are you okay?’, ‘What’s going to happen to our research?’ Maybe— Maybe he really didn’t love me.”
“Who could not love you?”
A wet smile graced her lips. “That’s sweet of you. It’s probably true, though— I mean, he wouldn’t have cheated if he loved me, would he?”
“Don’t think like that,” Kyle said, brows furrowed. “His cheating says nothing about you and everything about him. It’s not because of you or anything you did—it’s who he is. People cheat because something is fundamentally wrong with them, you know? Nothing you could’ve done would’ve changed this outcome.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice enough to speak.
“The fact that you got cheated on says nothing about you or your worth. Okay? Don’t blame yourself. He was just a dickhead. There’s nothing else to it.” His gaze softened as she wiped more tears from her puffy eyes.
She felt Stan’s hand squeeze her shoulder reassuringly. “Can I hug you?” he asked, voice gentle as ever.
Her voice strained on the word “Please,” and he pulled her to his chest gently. Kyle reached over to Stan’s shoulder, half-hugging both of them. She pressed her ear to Stan’s chest—his bigger stature had always made him a great hugger. The added weight had made his embrace even softer and warmer –like sinking into a teddy bear. His heartbeat was steady under her ear, every drum against his ribcage sounding like words of affirmation: You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe.