“Stop it.”
“I look at women every day,” he says. “I think about what it would be like to be inside them, think about what their pussies must taste like. Sometimes I think about getting off between their tits. That would be so fucking hot.”
I’m shaking, but I can’t move. “Shut. Up.”
“I went to the bookstore the other day and thought about bending the salesgirl over one of those couches, fucking her right there in the store. She was this tiny little thing, couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds, and I wanted to eat her pussy until she screamed—”
I have never slapped anyone, ever. My hand cracks his cheek hard enough to turn his head and make him stumble a step or two. Will doesn’t even put his hand up to cover the perfect imprint of my fingers on his skin. I am horrified at the single, sliding drop of crimson at the corner of his mouth. He licks it away. We both say nothing.
And then slowly, slowly, Will goes to his knees in front of me. He buries his face between my legs, the heat of his breath scalding me through the gauzy fabric of my skirt. His fingers skate up the backs of my bare calves, then beneath my skirt to my thighs.
I touch his hair, lightly at first, barely skimming it. A moment later, when he nuzzles my cunt, finding my clit with his nose and the point of his chin, my fingers sink deep in his hair. I can’t keep the cry locked in my throat, and it’s rough and raw and would be embarrassing if I gave a single tiny fuck about anything but how good his mouth feels on me.
Will pushes up my skirt inch by inch and pulls my panties to the side to find my cunt with his mouth. My knees are weak, but I anchor myself with my hand in his hair, his palms on my ass holding me close while he licks me. He shifts one hand behind my knee, urging me to hook my leg over his shoulder.
Oh, God. I want to come, I’m so close, but he eases off, teasing me. I can’t stay this way forever. I’m going to fall. I’m going to melt.
Orgasm hits me like a truck, and pleasure becomes the only thing I see. Feel. Smell. Taste. His mouth on me is magic; there is nothing else but the flick of his tongue on my clit and the pressure of his fingers on my ass, keeping me standing. And somehow, before I’ve quite finished, pleasure still coursing through me, Will hooks the chair toward me. We move together, in sync, him not pushing and me not fumbling. I turn and put my hands flat on the chair seat, then my forearms. Ass in the air, legs spread, open to him as he undoes his jeans in the time it takes me to catch my breath.
He doesn’t even take my panties off, just keeps them pulled to the side when he pushes his cock inside me, taking his time for this first thrust, but after that slamming into me from behind, hard and deep. He fucks me so hard the chair moves, though I grip the sides so tightly my fingers ache. My head hits the wooden slats of the chair’s back as he pounds me. It hurts. Everything hurts, and I’m coming again, and the pain and pleasure have tangled so tightly there’s no more telling the difference between them.
When it’s over, I’m on my knees, my cheek on the seat of the chair. I’m boneless and aching all over. Will’s on his knees behind me, his face pressed to my back, his arms around my waist. This isn’t comfortable, not at all, but I don’t want to move. I’m not, in fact, sure I can.
He draws in a shuddering breath finally, and shifts. We end up in a tangle of limbs, me between his legs, curled against him, while he strokes his hand down my hair. We breathe together, and I soothe myself with the beat of his heart. It’s not much more comfortable than the other position, but I don’t want to move now, either.
I do, though. I push away to gently touch the mark I left on his face. I think it will bruise. He’ll carry it for a while, anyway. I kiss the corner of his mouth where the blood was, and he pulls me close again.
“I didn’t think you’d show up tonight,” Will says.
Outside, the traffic beeps and blares, even this late. In here, I press my face to his chest and listen to the thump of his heart. I tip my head to get my lips on his throat, to feel the pulse just below his ear.
“I thought we were finished with all of this,” Will tells me.
I say nothing.
“I was unfaithful,” he says next, and I don’t know what that means. Unfaithful how? Can it be cheating between two people who aren’t committed, who’ve never made that agreement, who can’t even be together because one is married? My confusion lasts another few seconds until he continues. “A lot. I cheated on my ex. More than once. All the time, as a matter of fact. Not even because I wanted to, or because I was unhappy. Just...sometimes, because I could.”
This is the sort of confession that should push me away, but I cling tighter to him instead. I shut my eyes, curling close as if I can be absorbed into him. Disappear inside him.
“She left me, and it was my own fault. She hates me, and that’s my fault, too. Married people shouldn’t fuck around,” Will says. “Someone always gets hurt.”
This time, I move. I touch his face again. “I’m sorry, Will.”
He turns his head to kiss my hand before he takes it away and holds it tightly, our fingers linked. “I hated when you told me to find someone else.”
“I thought I meant it,” I say. “But I don’t. I’m selfish and greedy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Our kisses are feverish and sloppy, bitter tasting.
“I want you to be happy,” I say into his mouth. “I know you’re going to find someone else. I don’t want you to be alone forever. Just...just for a little while longer...”
It’s the worst thing I could ask of him, the most awful, selfish and greedy thing, and I hate myself for saying it as soon as the words leave my lips. And still I cling to him, and still I kiss him. I take his face in my hands and I kiss and kiss and kiss.
“We’re together and then you go away. I’m here alone,” Will says. “And I think about how much...I want...and can’t have. Slapping my face hurt way less than that.”
But you can have, I think. You can have everything.
Sometimes you say things because they make you feel better. Sometimes you say them because they make someone else feel better. “I love you” stays locked behind my teeth because there is no way saying it aloud will make either of us feel anything but worse. I don’t say it, because when you love someone, really love them, you don’t want anything you do to ever hurt them.
“I know why you told me to find someone else,” Will says, and I understand exactly how he could want a slap to the face rather than something like this. “But I hated it.”
“I don’t want you to hate me, not ever.”
“I could never hate you,” Will says. “But I don’t want someone else.”
“You should. You will. Someday.” Before I’m ready for you.
He says nothing. I kiss him again, doing my best to memorize the shape and taste of him—as if I could ever forget. I unfold myself from his embrace and stretch my creaking muscles, every part of me stiff and sore and bruised. Will stands, too.
“I shouldn’t have come tonight,” I tell him. “I said we needed to end this, and I didn’t hold up my end of it. I’m sorry for hurting you.”
And then the words rush out of me. I can’t hold them back. I don’t want to lie, and not saying anything feels like a betrayal.
“I want you to be happy, Will. Because I love you.”
He looks startled. Then pleased. But before he can say anything, I shake my head to keep him quiet.
“But this is wrong. It’s not a question of if this will end badly,” I say, “but of how badly it will end. I don’t want to be bad for you. I don’t want to hurt you. You deserve better than this, Will.”
“You’re breaking up with me. Again.” He tries to sound light, but neither of us is even close to laughter.
If I speak, I’ll burst into braying, ugly sobs, so all I can manage is to nod. I want
to kiss him again, but if I do I will never leave this apartment. I will never go home. I won’t drop everything; I will simply open my hands and let it all fall.
I swallow the ball of tears in my throat and force out words. “It will only hurt at first. Only for a while. Eventually, it will all be okay.”
“Do you believe that?” Will asks.
“Yes,” I tell him, even though I don’t. “I need you to do something for me.”
“What. Anything. You know that.”
“I need you to tell me that you don’t want me. That you don’t love me.”
Will says nothing. He won’t look at me. I study the curve of his jaw, the hair that pushes in front of his ears, and the scruff of his unshaved cheeks.
“I need you to tell me you don’t want me, Will.” My voice breaks and I catch myself so I don’t break down. “Please.”
Still without looking at me, he shakes his head.
“You have to.” My voice gets hard and heavy, bordering on cruel. “You have to tell me you don’t want me or love me or need me. Because I can’t leave you if you don’t.”
I want him to say “Then don’t leave me.”
Mostly, I want him to look at me, but he does not. Will keeps his face turned from mine, his shoulders hunched and his fingers tap-tapping nervously on his knee. I swallow against the shards of emotion slashing at my throat. I taste blood.
I think of asking him to tell me he loves me instead. That he wants and needs me. That he can’t bear to live without me. I imagine sinking to my knees in a slow-motion, movie-drama moment set to some sad song; I think I might bury my face in my hands while I kneel at his feet and beg him...yes, fucking beg him, to be my reason for walking away from everything.
But I don’t beg.
He won’t say it.
I won’t ask.
And that’s when, finally, I walk out the door and don’t look back.
Chapter Forty-Four
So now it’s over, that’s what I think, as I sit and stare and stare out the window, but see nothing. It’s really over this time, because it has to be. Because he told me that it makes him sad, because it hurts him, and this is no longer some kind of game, it’s not something I can pretend is not going to end badly.
It’s as if a weight lifts off me, when I think of it, of not trying to find the time to be with him. Of being able to focus and concentrate on my work, the things I need to do in my life. Without Will, I will have so...much...time.
Without Will, I have an empty place.
Knowing it was empty for a long time before I met him makes this no better. At least before I met him, I didn’t know what I was missing. Now I do.
It’s bullshit, I think. All shit. All of it.
Happiness is overrated. Maybe we are not built for it. Maybe the best we can hope for is to be...content. To be resigned. To muddle through life and be grateful for the good, and work through the bad. Maybe that is what I will have for the rest of my life, this good life to which I am resigned, for which I am grateful.
Fuck you, universe, for letting me glimpse what might have been joy, if only he wasn’t so afraid. If I wasn’t so stubborn that I had to be sure I could make it on my own, that he was not my reason, that I would not allow him to be my reason.
Chapter Forty-Five
There is silence in my house.
The weight of words unsaid. I didn’t ask Ross to move out, or to sleep in the guest room, and I haven’t moved my things out, either. We still share a bed. Him on his side. Me on mine. There’s plenty of room between us.
I haven’t told Ross that I want to leave, but every day I look at the real estate websites for houses. Every day I calculate the expenses of dividing our assets. I walk through this house I love so much, room by room, and touch everything we own, and I decide what I would leave behind and what I can’t live without. Decorative vases and candlesticks and cooking utensils with stupid functions, like the pomegranate de-seeder I’ll never use, ever. There is so much that doesn’t matter. And so much that does.
If he notices, my husband doesn’t say anything. He goes about his business the way he always has, while I do the laundry and pay the bills and buy the groceries and keep on schedule this life we’ve built. I don’t greet him at the door, but then I haven’t for a very long time.
If I stay, this could be the way it is for the rest of my life.
But before the rest of my life can happen, I have two daughters to marry off. They move home in the last week before the big day, so I can be on hand to help with last-minute details, and because both of them have ended the leases on their apartments before they move in with their future husbands. Jac will go to Boston, Kat to Colorado. I am going to miss them both so much I refuse to think about it—after all, neither of them has lived at home for the past four years. But it will be different. Everything is different, now.
Every day the wedding planning brews to a magnificent, perfect storm of mania from Jac and curious calm from Kat. Jac is alternately glowing and fuming. Kat, on the other hand, is quiet and contemplative. Jac bursts into tears and tantrums, but her sister merely moves through each day, as we get closer and closer, with shadows under her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks.
So I ask her, one day when Ross and Jac are both out, “Kat. What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t answer at first, and I think maybe she’ll lie to me, but my sweet girl turns to me and says, so matter-of-factly I know she means every word, “Mom, if I have to marry Rich, I swear to you I will end up in prison for murder.”
She looks at me as if she expects me to tell her there’s too much invested at this point, one week away. The dress, the ceremony, the honeymoon. The guest list. But instead I take both her hands and say, “Then don’t do it.”
Kat doesn’t break into tears; maybe, like her mother, she’s cried too many and has none left now. She draws a breath, blinking rapidly. “I don’t love him, Mom. But I think he loves me...I know he loves me. So how do I tell him I can’t go through with it?”
I don’t ask her why she can’t. I don’t try to talk her into going through with it. I like Rich well enough; he’s always seemed like a nice guy. He and Kat have been together for a long time, since their sophomore year of college. But Kat’s my girl, and I have no loyalty to him.
I squeeze her hands. “My advice...just tell him.”
“It’s going to hurt him.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m sure it will.”
“What if I’m making a mistake?” Kat cries.
I give my daughter the advice I wish I could take for myself. “The world won’t wait for you to change, not ever. You either take a chance or you stay in one place while everything else goes on.”
Kat draws a deep breath, but there’s some color back in her cheeks. “Dad’s going to shit a brick. And Rich... Mom. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. He’s going to be so mad. And all the guests...”
“Half of them are coming because of Jac, anyway. Don’t worry about it. It’s a week away—they can all still cancel their hotel reservations. And Rich is going to be mad and hurt and upset, but better it happen now than next week. Or next month. Or next year. Or in twenty years,” I add quietly, and squeeze her hands again.
She nods, then hugs me. “Thanks, Mom.”
I rub her back the way I did when she was small and upset about something. The days of fixing boo-boos with a kiss are long, long gone, but it’s nice to know I can still make her feel better by being her mother.
“I’ll go talk to Rich,” Kat says after a minute, “but...would you talk to Dad? And Jac. Oh, God, she’ll be ballistic.”
“Absolutely. It’ll be fine.”
It’s not quite fine, of course. Ross is angry and shouting about the money, the waste, and Jac’s in hysterics about her
sister’s breakup—and not about the favors or guest list or seating arrangements. I feel a little bad that I’d expected her to be a bridezilla. I should’ve known she’d take her sister’s pain as her own. That’s how it’s been since they were kids.
We gather in the kitchen, Jac and her Jeff. Kat, without Rich, who she says took the news surprisingly well and confessed his own doubts—a much better outcome than she’d expected. And Ross, still angry and blustering, but beneath that, truly concerned for the well-being of his girls. I see that in him. The worry, and not just about the money. It reminds me that he’s always been a great father, and, for the most part, a good husband. At least the best he could be, and that’s the most anyone should ever ask for.
We are a family in the good times, and we’re a family in the bad times, too. We will always be a family, I think. No matter what else happens.
And later, when the girls have gone to bed and the house is quiet, I say, “Ross. I need to talk to you.”
Chapter Forty-Six
I came in on the train and then took a cab. Cold spring drizzle trickles down the back of my collar and down my spine, but my skin is heated and feverish and the chilly water feels good. I’ve taken care to cover my hair with a scarf to keep it looking at least a tiny bit less bedraggled, and my mascara’s waterproof, though not solely because of the rain. I’m dressed for the weather in my woolen overcoat, thick stockings, warm boots. Winter sometimes still clings, even in March.
I called him first, of course I did. I wanted him to be ready for me, not surprised. I wanted to give him the chance to tell me not to come, and part of me expected him to say just that. But he didn’t.
Will greets me at the door, and I drink up the sight of him as greedily as I’ve ever gulped down a glass of water. The plink-plink of water from my umbrella is very loud before he takes it from me, to tuck into the large vase by the door. He takes my coat, solicitous. Polite. My scarf, which he hangs next to the coat, though he hesitates and glances at me before he does. It’s the same scarf I once used to blindfold him. Of course we both remember.