Ben lifted his fingers from the arms of his favorite chair when he realized he was feeling the foam stuffing beneath the tips. From both hands. Quick glances told him what he already knew; his pathological need to grip what he thought was solid had done some real damage in the form of torn upholstery. It was telling that the feel of the innards of his refuge registered with him before the pain of incredibly cramping finger muscles. Probably because it was physical, and right then, physical pain was a joke.
Gingerly, he raised his hands and forced himself to exert some control, placing his palms flat on the arms and keeping them there, still. He actually smiled then, considering the exercise to be good practice for what was coming. Well, maybe not good. That really couldn’t exist. Adequate practice, he supposed. Better than nothing.
As it was, those couple of seconds would have to do, because they were all he got before his front door finally creaked open, and the golden rays of the morning sun streamed in from the outside, around the trim form of the woman standing there, key in hand, with a look on her pale, lovely face like she was turning herself in to begin a prison sentence.
Barbara’s green eyes shimmered, and she brushed a lock of her fiery red hair away from them absently and without care. The tresses easily stayed in the new position behind her ear because they were still damp. They were still damp because she’d recently showered, Ben had absolutely no doubt, just as he had no doubt as to why.
“Where are the girls?” Barbara flicked her stunning eyes past her husband to the stairs, and the question came out hushed, in something a bare sliver above a whisper. Absently, unknowingly, one hand had begun fiddling with the curve-hugging black dress curvedly hugging those huggable curves, like she was subconsciously trying to undo the evidence of the abuse it had recently taken. Pointless, but she didn’t stop.
“Where are the girls?” Ben grasped on to the false calm hard enough that it should have made his armrests envious. “You sure that’s what you want to ask? Not, do they know what I did?”
He saw it then, in her face. It was easy, after twenty years of a conjoined life, to read his wife and tell that she’d actually held out hope that he’d not known what she did. He watched that laughable spark die. Seemed fitting.
“They’re sleeping.” Ben was magnanimous. He’d deign to answer her question, merciful like no one else in history. “They went to bed thinking you had too much to drink and crashed at Cynthia’s, since she’s always a designated driver, and her place is a lot closer to the venue.” He grunted. “I’m guessing… half right? I mean, the drinking half. The site of your crash…” He turned his palms to the ceiling and shrugged his shoulders. “A studio apartment draped in leopard print velvet?”
“You know I hate it when you’re this sarcas–” Barbara pursed her lips and looked away from him, flushing with guilt. “Sorry. I… I didn’t mean to snap. This… it’s hard. I don’t know how to… what to say.”
Ben realized then, neither did he. What could be said? The English language was rich, varied, and full of contextual goodness, so he just let the first thing that could find its way into his mouth come right out. “Was it worth it?”
Barbara staggered like she was still drunk over to a chair normally meant for guests, plopping down bonelessly and putting her face in her hand. Without looking up, she just mumbled. “I want to ask what the price is.”
Oh wow, was that the wrong answer.
“Goddamn it, Barb!” Ben barely managed to keep his exclamation to a furious hiss rather than the bellowing shout it deserved. His children were still upstairs, sleeping. Oblivious. Protected… for the moment. He did lean forward though, doing what he could to make sure his wife didn’t miss one single iota of what was inside him. “You’re saying it might be worth it? That you getting dicked by a horny party planner might be okay… if… if what? If you can keep your happy lie of a life intact?”
“God no, Ben that came out…” Barbara was looking at him again, but her earnest, emotional plea was aborted suddenly. “Lie? What do you mean, lie? I… I was… am happy. With my life.” She leaned forward then. “With you.”
“Bull. Shit.” Ben sank back in his chair once more, away from her outstretched, questing hand. “Happy people don’t do what you did, my dear. Content wives don’t flirt shamelessly with fashionable gym-rats for weeks, then tell their husbands they’re crazy for being wary.” He was on his feet then, and he didn’t remember doing it. “Hell, Barb, when I first came around to see how your pet project was going, you know… supporting my loving wife… you tried to tell me he was gay!”
Barbara flushed and looked away. “You don’t have to… I remember…”
“Yeah? Do you remember me actually, physically taking his hand off you? That it had to happen twice before you gave up that lie, and switched to warning me against assaulting him because he’s the type that would definitely call the cops?”
She sniffled then. “Yes. Ben, honey…”
He narrowed his eyes and took a step towards her. “Good. Exam passed. Your brain still works. Leaves me with whole mess of new questions though. We’ll start with this; why the ultimatum?”
“Ultimatum?” She sounded genuinely confused.
“When I told you it was done. Yours and Cynthia’s charity ball. When I said that what I saw was too much and I wasn’t an idiot…” Ben looked at the ceiling, gathering himself, before he fixed her with his glare. “And you said that I was an idiot, and that if I ever forbade you anything again, you’d show me just how much. That ultimatum. The one you gave a day before you walked out last night while informing me I wasn’t welcome to accompany you. So… why? Best defense is a good offense?”
Barbara had her fingers woven together in her lap and was studying them intently. “What was I supposed to say? The truth? That another man was getting in my head, was staying there, no matter how hard I was trying to evict him? That I was struggling… losing… because I didn’t know how to play the game? That I was feeling things about a man I hadn’t since college, because you and I are so intertwined that it’s not… an adventure anymore?”
She finally looked up, and Ben was actually surprised at the earnestness he saw there. “I forgot, Ben. I forgot what was true. I forgot you, even with you right in front of me.” She sniffed again, and real tears began to pool. “You’re a victim of your own success, my eternal love. You’re… good. Too good. I’ve never been tested before, because you make me happy, my life easy, and my soul content. Todd…” She bit her bottom lip briefly because of something she saw in him. “…he… he was, like, the one-in-a-million guy who was in the right place at the right time…” She rolled her shoulders. “I don’t even know the word. He… flipped me.”
“Flipped?”
She shook her head. “I dunno… yeah. Flipped. He figured out a way to put me upside down and rattle me… crap, I mean…”
The red in her cheeks showed Ben that a sudden, recent memory was matching her words a little too closely, and then he was somehow sharing the visual without having been anywhere near his wife and her night of gymnastics.
Naked asses taking turns pile-driving, bent spines and fingers curled to claws…
“I’m leaving.” His coat was somehow off the hook and in his hand, and he was one foot towards the still-open front door before Barbara was on her own feet.
“Leaving? Wha… why… where…” She swallowed, trying to regain control. “Ben, stay with me. Please, please, I need–”
“You need.” Ben stopped, but didn’t turn his back from her. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He rotated his head just enough to catch her with the corner of his eye. “You know what? I’ll tell you where I’m going, since I just now figured it out.” He looked down at his watch. “It’s Sunday morning, Seven O’clock. I’m gonna let myself into the office, and since no one will be there, I’ll have the privacy to look at the employee registry and get Candace Tennen’s address.”
“Dandy Candy?” Barbra sounded fully horrified. “With the fake… Ben… Ben, no.”
He laughed then, shocked he had it in him, even if it was laced with malice. “No, huh? You’re forbidding me? Interesting. You should think on that a bit. Anyway, I’ll have you know, I was given a standing invitation over a year ago. I’ve shot her down so much, I’m sure me showing up will be a real surprise. But hey, surprises are supposed to fun, so why should you and I hog them all?”
The last thing he heard before he was out of earshot was a kind of warbling squawk. It should have been comical, and was anything but. As he tore out of his driveway though, he managed to look on the bright side; for a forty-three year old man–no, for anyone–he was in great shape. That was good, because knowing Dandy Candy, she of the best body money could buy, he’d need all the stamina he could get.
__________
Barbara lifted her fingers from the arms of her favorite chair when it dawned on her that the house was nearly completely dark, and she could barely see a thing inside it. That her home was lost to her. The cumbersome poetry of it all was also lost to her since there was no room for it in her lovely, tempest-tossed head.
She figured her daughters would be turning on lights and making all the noise preteen girls were wont to do… if they’d been there. As it was, she’d shuffled them off to Cynthia’s within an hour of their waking up, telling them that she and their dad had special plans, and needed time to work on it without distraction. It was flimsy, and yet another lie, but Barbara had nothing else by then, and her kids were trusting. They were trusting because they were good, and they were good because they’d been raised right by a fantastic father.
And a mother who didn’t know which way was up.
After that, she’d come back home and settled in, waiting. Barbara knew she had time. Probably all day, because she knew Ben better than she knew herself. She knew he was doing exactly what he’d said, and was doing it to the best of his ability.
Fucking Dandy Candy. Fucking Dandy Candy. Fucking Dandy Fucking Candy.
And round and round she went. That was her day; bobbing in the open waters of her own mind, directionless, and coming nowhere close to land. It was an unfortunate use of her time, because that meant that Barbara was still… let’s say, unevolved, when her front door opened up.
She squinted at the silhouetted figure that had paused there, obviously watching her, and didn’t know what to say… so she just said it.
“How was the slut? Hope you used protection. Otherwise, you basically just fucked half the dudes in your…” She clamped her lips shut. Too late.
“Because you stopped at the drugstore on your way to leopard-print paradise?”
It was odd getting the cold truth from a nebulous blob of shadow, but truth it was, and Barbara had no reaction other than to hug her pajama-clad knees to her chest and put her forehead on them. Buried, she could only listen to her husband shuffle his feet in tight movements, expressing his frustration without words.
“You’re angry.” He finally spoke after an eternity, and when she looked up, he was looming over her. “Angry.”
“I… it’s…” What was he expecting? What did he want her to say?
“Angry? That’s it? Your husband, the man you’ve said repeatedly that you cherish and love, just spent hours having sex with a woman you can’t stand… and you’re pissed. You… you’re just…”
Barbra watched a little life leave Ben then, right before he turned on his heel and went back the way he’d come.
“Don’t expect me until the morning.”
This time, the door slammed without an embarrassing caterwaul on her part. In another life, that would have meant something.
__________
Ben’s return home in the morning felt like act one of a stage production. First, greeting his family as they sat eating breakfast. He somehow managed to pick up on the lie Barb had told their daughters, and then managed to convince them that he’d been out all night on an errand, even implying–through the bile in his throat–that it had something to do with his wife’s charity work.
He felt sick, and not only for the merciful deception. Hours spent slapping flesh with a Dandy Candy had been… well, one for the books. That was part of the point, really; to drive everything out of his head and forget his fucked up life for as long as he could, but that also didn’t leave much room for planning what to say to the children he’d, shamefully, forgotten about amidst his own heartache. Thus, given an easy path to dodge the bullet, he took it and joined in Barb’s lie.
So yeah, he felt sick because he knew he was taking advantage of his daughters’ innocence. Their happy, trusting natures that’d been fostered by a mother who’d been phenomenal… until she, apparently, forgot.
“Girls, you’re gonna be late for the bus.” Ben smiled at his treasures as they simultaneously hugged him goodbye, gave the same to their mom, and then giggled their way out the door. He kept looking the way they’d gone for a long time. A very long time. Long enough that what he was doing was becoming too obvious.
“Ben… we have to do this.” He heard Barbara get up from the breakfast table. “I’m not angry or going to yell. I’m not, I swear. I’m going to the living room now. Please come sit with me.”
Though it was petty, he waited till he was sure she was out of sight before he turned around. After a good minute of gathering himself, he finally followed, heading back to the heart of their home to find his bride for nearly half of his life waiting for him in her chair, seeing that she’d turned it to face his own favorite one. She looked over her shoulder at him silently, with eyes pleading so loud they may as well have been screaming.
He sighed, resigned himself to the torture he knew was coming… and sat down.
“I get it now. I do.” Barb’s voice was low, and she only managed to look at his chin as she spoke, but she was clear and understandable. “You needed me to feel it. That’s why what I said last night set you off.” She hiccupped and rubbed a thumb on her cheek, below her eye. “Sent you off.”
“You… you didn’t care.” Ben realized his lids were down, and abruptly forced them back up. “When I came back, you lashed out, angry with me. Blaming me.”
“Didn’t care? Didn’t care!” Barb was animated, shiny green eyes completely round. “Ben, god, I was dying inside! How… how could you not see it? I wasn’t really mad, I was… shit, I was throwing up a shield! Trying to claw my way out of a hole! I don’t blame you, and I didn’t last night. I know I made this happen, dammit, I know it!” She pounded her little fists on the arms of the chair. “And when I saw you, when I had to face what you’d been doing… I didn’t know how to react, I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know who…” She stopped herself and looked away.
“Who I was.” Ben was stone. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Barb hung her head, veiling her face with her red locks. “I’m so sorry. I feel like–”
“There it is!” Ben shouted so hard, spit flew from his lips. “Do you realize that’s the first time you apologized? Do you? Since the moment you walked in that door yesterday morning, you’ve been sheepish, and cagey, and even fucking combative… but never said you were sorry until just now. Until you were backed into a corner.” He shook his head. “I just… I don’t believe you, Barb.”
“I have to say it?” She was quick, and somehow she had his hand in hers before he knew it. “My god, we’ve practically been one person for decades, how could you not tell that every fiber of my being regretted even looking at that man? No part of what happened was worth a second of the pain I’ve put–”
“What pain?” Ben leaned back. “No, I mean it. Describe it. You told me you get it now. Describe what that pain is.” He gritted his teeth. “Live it for me.”
“It hurts to breathe.” She didn’t hesitate. Not for an instant. “I’m hyper aware of every single second that passes, but somehow each one feels like it’s hitting me at a million miles an hour.”
“Your chest is tight. Squeezed.” Ben locked eyes with her. “It’s physical, not something you’re… you’re translating from a sappy love song you heard once.” He grimaced. “It’s real pain.”
A small sob escaped Barbara’s lips, and she nodded. “Agony. It feels like my body’s aged fifty years in a day. My bones hurt.”
“You did that. To both of us.”
“I did.” This time, she didn’t hang her head. “I never thought I could. I’m not the person I thought I was.” She swallowed. “Worse, I’m not the person you thought I was.”
“But you want me to… what? Forgive? Does a person forgive the semi-truck that ran him over?”
Barbara blinked at Ben. Then she blinked again. “You… can you really wonder about that? Do I want you to forgive me? Ben, no forgiveness means no you, and I’d literally break my bones rather than live without you.”
“Broken bones don’t stop your twat from getting stuffed, so it’s a good deal for you, isn’t it?” It was crude, and cruel, he knew that, but that wasn’t about to stop him.
“That… that’s not…” Barb rolled her eyes upward, lost. “What can I even say to that? Your confidence in me is battered, I get it, but one night can’t possibly erase twenty years. It just can’t. I fucked up beyond anything either of us could have imagined, but I didn’t have a brain transplant… I had a weak moment.”
“That’ll never be repeated?” Ben growled at her. “You’re saying that you found the one guy besides me in this entire world that you’ll ever consider attractive, and now that you’ve had him, you’re all set forever?”
“No! You think I’ve never found other men attractive till smooth-talking Todd? Jesus, you know I’m not big on false modesty, look at me! I’ve been fending off swinging dicks since the day we had our first date! Hot men! Hot men whose hotness didn’t mean a fucking thing to me, ’cause I had your tasty, loving, fantastic ass!”
“Then what the fuck, Barb! What happened this time? I saw that asshole, and he’s a dime a dozen!”
“Nothing stays the same forever, Ben. Nothing.” Barb’s nostrils flared and a flush rose to match her hair. “Every fortress gets holes when you don’t pay attention. Mine were bigger than I’d realized. The pretty decorations inside made me think the gates were still like brand new… until a barbarian came with a ram.”
“I don’t even know what that means.” Ben drooped then, rapidly losing energy. “How’s it supposed to convince me you’re trustworthy?”
“I’m a kid who touched the burning stove.” Barbara actually chuckled. “Almost literally. We established how much pain I’m in. How many kids do it twice? Pain teaches. Misery is a master class in life. I…” She stopped, a sudden look of dread flashing across her features.
Barbara closed her eyes and ran her palms down her face. “Christ, I can’t deny what’s probably going to happen, can I? Even if you can’t live with what I did… if you, you leave…” She took a shuddering breath. “Even if. I’ll never do this again. In whatever form of… existence I’ll find, I will never lose vigilance, or take my own strength for granted ever, ever again.”
Ben rested his face on his palm and didn’t speak. It was too much right then. After a time, though, he felt his wife tentatively, delicately touch his shoulder. “You know what you haven’t asked me? The question I’ve been dreading since I saw you in this chair yesterday?”
“Why you spent all night with him.” Ben mumbled in his hand. “I didn’t ask because I know, and I’m not ready to hear it out loud. I’m not… fortified. Like you’d say.”
Barb drew her hand back. “You know? You don’t–”
“He’s, what, a few years shy of thirty? I’m guessing his down time was, like, a minute. You were getting it good for hours.”
“Why were you with Candace all night… after being with her all day?”
Ben looked up, angry. “Couldn’t wait to go on the attack again, huh? I’m not the–”
Barbara had her hands up, pleading. “That wasn’t an attack. Like I said, I understand. It’s killing me, but I get it. No, I mean, what kept you there? The sex? Was she better than me? Did you enjoy your time with her more than with me? ‘Cause I don’t believe that.”
Insanely, Ben couldn’t stop a grin. “Like you said, no false modesty, huh? Well, she does know what she’s doing. And she was… grateful when I knocked on her door. Honestly, that was surprising.”
“Shouldn’t be. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m better.” Barbara smirked, and, for an instant, Ben saw that spicy little co-ed he’d fallen in love with on their first date. “So that’s not why you kept fucking her. You kept fucking her because you had something to prove. A goal.”
“Jesus. What’d you have to prove then?”
“The first time? Not a damn thing. I was a drool-on-herself idiot that’d let things build for too long and nursed a grudge against her too-perceptive husband and drank too much at exactly the wrong time. Hell, I barely remember the drive to his place.” She paused. “And… yeah. There was some leopard print.” Barb was shaking her head, like she was hearing a bad joke. “We… had sex. It was sweaty. It was… okay. I think.” She shrugged. “And it was quick, and I was hammered. Then… dammit, then the mists cleared and I thought I did have something to prove.”
“I almost don’t want to know. I can’t imagine it’ll help.”
“I’ll keep it to myself, if that’s what you want.”
“Fuck it. Just say it.”
Barbara nodded, but she was quiet for at least twenty seconds before she kept going. “I will never be able to say sorry enough for what happened, but I feel it in every cell. I love you with everything in me, but what I did that night… wasn’t about you. Not… not directly.”
She looked at her husband, and when he twirled a finger for her to keep going, she nodded again. “The first round was because of… pressure that’d built, like I said. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the reason. Then… god I’m sorry… then the booze wasn’t as much a factor, and I was left with the horror of knowing that I’d cheated. With a douchebag. At that point, dammit, at that point my panic and self-preservation took over and I told myself that Todd was as master seducer. That he had to be a sex god, and I was helpless under his spell.”
“So when he poked at you for another round…”
“I… do you really…?” She groaned. “Okay, okay. I… mounted him that time, instead of just… bent over and hiked up my dress. I thought, if I was helpless, then I was helpless. Helpless women, women who are victims of a strong personality… they go with the flow, I guess. They’re, I dunno, they’re conquered, or some bullshit.”
“Too many romance novels, Barb. That’s insane.”
“That’s something you figure out in the light of day. At night, still fucked in the head, with a dick inside you, you stop thinking.” She was rocking back and forth then, her nervous energy spilling out like her words. “It was the worst possible combination; the dam was burst with the first rut, the asshole was determined, and I had this idea that, if I was cheating on the perfect husband, then I must have been helpless to do so. That was the story I clung to so I didn’t have to face myself. That was what I had to prove.”
“And you proved it All. Fucking. Night??” Ben slammed his fist down on his chair.
“I was asleep all fucking night! I passed out after we bumped uglies, I think maybe three times! I’d been swimming in gin, what do you expect? The shame of what I did will last my whole life, I know that, but the act itself? It lasted, I guess, like fifteen minutes total. Fifteen minutes of mediocre sex that I’m already forgetting. Fifteen minutes, and now I’m on life support.”
She was crying then, and Ben had to fight hard to stop himself from holding her. “Knowledge isn’t power, my love, it’s a curse. I know it, because right here, right now, I’m goddamned Einstein. I see all the equations, and my heart is breaking for both of us.”
“I don’t see them.” Ben threw up his hands. “I really don’t. Enlighten me. Tell me what you’ve figured out.”
“That neither of us is who the other thought they were.”
Ben had to admit, that one he didn’t see coming. She had balls, he had to give her that. “I’m not the person you thought I was. Me?”
“Well… no. You’re not.” She reached for him again, and he pulled back. She nodded though, like she expected it, and it set him simmering. “I’m still not blaming you. I’ll never blame you for my screw up, I’m not a psychopath… despite what you’re thinking now. But this last day has popped every pretty bubble that my head used to be filled with. The first is that, even though I can’t imagine myself without you, can’t even picture myself without your form next to me… I betrayed you. I fucking stabbed you in the heart after you warned me what was coming. After you told me you saw what I saw too, but purposely ignored. That’s a rough illusion to lose, the sense of your own virtue. Everyone at least starts off as the hero of their own story.”
“And I haven’t lost that sense, if that’s what you’re about to say.” Ben was trying to control his breathing. “Candy, right? That was necessary. You’re too intelligent to not know why I did that. You as much as said it.”
“Because I needed to feel the pain you were. Not guilt, but loss. Yeah. After a day and night to do nothing but face the truth… I agree. Mostly.”
“Mostly, huh. But…?”
“But you’re lying now. To yourself more than me.” Barbara was composed then. The tears dry. “You were telling yourself that, if we still had a future together, I’d have to know what you went through. I’d have to feel the pain, or else I’d just cause it again. Which makes sense, and I love you so, so much for that, because it shows you still… want that. Want me.” Her voice dropped. “At least some.”
“The lie, then?”
“Is that it’s the only reason you had sex with another woman. The rest, maybe even the biggest, though I hope not, is that you were wounded, and you needed to lash out. Something was taken from you, so you had to take. Balance.” She looked long and hard at him. “Revenge. Pure and simple. That’s not… I never thought you had that in you.”
Barbara was right. Ben knew it. He would never forget hate-fucking Candy until she kicked him out of her place. Then, that night, with a charity he didn’t deserve, she let him back in when he returned… and he hadn’t learned a damned thing. Even a screaming orgasm isn’t enough for any sane woman to put up with the kind of anger he’d been taking out on her, and the rest of the night spent in a motel should have torn the scales from his eyes on that one.
Still, it would have taken a crowbar and sodium pentothal to get him to admit it in that moment, so he just kept his peace.
Barb wasn’t fooled, he knew that, and she kept going. “That’s the book of fairytales that was closed on my end. That my husband was perfect. That he wouldn’t use pain as a weapon, that he wouldn’t go to an innocent bystander and treat her like the corner whore. That he wouldn’t forget his children and abandon them all night…”
“Like their mother did?”
“Like their mother did.” She nodded, miserable. “We’re the same after twenty years, but in the awful ways too. I’m stupidly cruel, you’re reflexively cruel. It’s harsh, and it’s fair, and you know it.”
“You took it from yourself. About… three times. I think.”
Barbara tilted her head, confused now. “It? What’s it? Three… I don’t…”
“My virtue.” He chortled bitterly. “My hero status, in your eyes. Before you laid it out just now, I saw it. You asked me three separate times how I couldn’t… know you. Your soul, I guess.” He shrugged. “You wondered how I couldn’t see that you’re dying inside, how I didn’t understand that you fully regretted what you did, and how I could ask if you even want forgiveness. Your confusion was clear as day. You were genuinely shocked that I wasn’t just… reading your mind.”
“Because you always have.”
“I never have. Barb, perfect didn’t get torn away, tunnel vision did. You always do this. You always tell me that I should already know the answer whenever I ask you a question, and then ignore it when I get pissed about that. You think your idea of my perfection was that I was a saint. The truth is, you just thought we were closer than we’ve ever honestly been.”
Her eyes went wide, and, in a flash, they were underwater. “No. No, no, no… don’t say that… you can’t say that…”
“The fortress was built with holes.” Ben had to look away. “No ram needed.”
“Noooo…” With a distraught cry, she lurched and grabbed both his hands in hers, squeezing tight. “I see it, you’re giving up. God, please no. Don’t give up.”
“Barb, now it’s not even about what you did.” Ben let her keep gripping him. Let her have that, at least. “Not anymore. Not really. I believe you that it was a mistake you wish never happened, I do, but, goddamn, it was the skylight opening up! Everything’s exposed now, and it’s…”
“Real?” She was blubbering, trying to keep a modicum of coherency intact. “It’s real, it’s us… and you can’t stand it? Okay, you’re right; I never listen. And I’m right; you lash out on instinct. And it doesn’t matter. We… we’re…”
“What?” Ben rasped and didn’t fight it when his wife, the mother of his children, his bride and mate, pulled him close and pressed her forehead to his. “What are we, Barb? Meant to be? Soulmates? Lovers with promise writ in the stars or something?”
“Human.” The word was a sob. “We’re fucking human, and that’s all we will ever, can ever be.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Ben started the first tepid steps in pushing her away. “It’s over.”
Barb gripped the back of his neck tight and, before he could react, she slid from her seat into his lap, framing him with her knees and pressing their bodies together into an embrace. He ached from it, all through him, and the breath in his ear that carried her whisper was a furnace on his skin.
“If I was chasing perfect… it’s nothing compared to what you are now.”
Ben tried again to push at her, and though he put a bit more effort into it, his arms were noodles and his heart was on another continent. Barbara pulled back a bit, a few inches, enough to take his face in her hands and stare as deeply into him as she could.
“Tell me what you’ll find if you take this nose from me.” She ran a finger down the object of her plea. “What you’ll get when you take these lips from me.” Now the digit pressed on his mouth. “Tell me what this face deserves, and how you’ll claim it. Tell me who you’ll give it to that you can be sure will never do you wrong. Will never say something insensitive. Will never believe the incorrect thing about you. Will never make a mistake… small, or… or devastating.”
Barbara clenched her teeth to try to contain a particularly bitter moan. “Tell me what she’ll look like, this person who will take my spot? Please, please, if you ever loved me, tell me what I could never be! Tell me what exists out there that will cradle you and protect you and keep you from ever feeling hurt ever again!”
“Barb…” Her name was a razor through sliding out his throat, and his fingers in her hair were steel vices.
“Tell me, because, if she’s real, I’ll love her forever for giving you what I just can’t.”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut and began shaking his head. “What can I even say right now? How can I get past this? How can I live with what I know?” Ben wished he knew if that was rhetorical or not.
“A second at a time.” Barb had her cheek on his shoulder then, and was running her hands up and down his back. “Heartbeat after heartbeat of choosing to accept me. Of watching me, of… of evaluating me… and deciding if I’m worth the risk. You’d have to decide that our life together wasn’t a lie, and outweighs the things inside both of us that are terrible. You have to decide that we can be better.”
She pulled back and kissed him softly for a good, long time before breathing again. “You’ll have to trust that I’m better than my weakest moment, and I’ll endure every black look, every bitter word that I have coming… because I’ll have to trust that you’re better than the world wants you to be.”
In his arms, Ben could feel his wife go limp, as if those words were all she’d had left in her. They stayed like that for a time; her still in his lap, and him softly stroking her back, each unwilling to break the spell. Unwilling to let life take that timeless, gossamer moment from them.
But life is relentless, and time can’t be stopped.
“Ben, my beloved Ben… what’s going to happen?”
The whisper was the sound of an exposed, raw nerve.
Time comes. Life demands… and Ben was just a man, helpless before its cold face.
__________
Barbara leaned against the door frame, taking in the sight of Cynthia’s new pool, to the side of the new house, in that new upscale neighborhood that her best friend’s family had relocated to only a couple weeks before. She could hear the other housewarming guests milling about behind her inside, but it was the noises, and the vision, of her two daughters splashing around with their friends that caught her attention and trapped it.
They were bubbly and happy, and seeing those faces–the shape of those noses and mouths that were so heart-wrenchingly familiar–started the countdown on a batch of tears that was also, sadly, very familiar for her lately.
“It’s nice, they’re nice… but you want to come back inside?” Barbara felt Cynthia’s hand on her shoulder before the question came. “Lots of people, also nice, would love to talk with you. Catch up.” A pause. “Get an update on the hermitage.”
It was a joke, and Barbara knew it. Still, she suddenly resented her friend with a sharpness that was staggering. Luckily, it was there in a flash and gone just as quickly when sanity reasserted itself. With a smile only partially forced, she patted the woman’s hand affectionately. “Ugh, people suck.” She turned to catch her friend’s face. “We’re all the worst.”
Cynthia grinned. “A couple little girls out there might destroy that theory.”
“Nah. They’re not people, they’re angels.” Barb’s grin was depressingly poignant. “I’m a person, and you know what I’ve done? I’ve used them shamelessly. Didn’t even hesitate.”
Cynthia frowned then, honestly confused, and Barb laughed humorlessly. “It’s been six months since…” She took a breath. “Since he left.” She grimaced and worked past it. “And from the first day that I got the girls back after they’d spent time at his new place, I grilled them on what was going on with him. Hell, I was so unsubtle, even my innocent little cherubs picked up on what I really was asking after a couple weeks.”
“Which is…?”
“If he was seeing anyone new.” Barbara began playing with a lock of her fiery hair, suddenly chagrined, even though she and Cynthia were closer than sisters. “I know, it’s not Ben. We’re not divorced, and he…” She stopped. Was she really about to say that he didn’t have it in him when she knew for a fact that it was a lie? Was she already retreating back into a fantasy?
“He’s… deeper than that.” Cynthia tried to finish for her, and Barbara just let her. No need to air it all out uselessly. Ben was deep, but Ben was good at rationalizing shallow impulses. They both were, she knew that now. The only real question was if one had picked up the trait from the other, or if they developed that little crappy quirk at the same time over the two decades together.
No. The real question was; did it even matter anymore?
“Anyway, the girls didn’t try to hide anything from me.” Barbara went on, suppressing her melancholy so she could have a real conversation with her friend. “For, I guess like five or so of the last six months, they had no problem saying that their dad was pretty much kicking around alone. Now, well, their lack of practice at lying showed itself, and they stopped answering that particular question. They just say that Ben’s… distracted.”
“Barbie… I’m not sure what to say.” Cynthia’s hand tightened on her arm.
Barbara went to pat it again, but found that she didn’t want to let it go, and took it in hers to squeeze. To get an anchor. The other hand, though, was busy with wiping at her eyes as they locked onto her friend’s. “The paperwork is coming. I can feel it. Six months, Cyn, six months of hope is about to be… to be…” She gulped, then sobbed out her finish. “It’s almost over. I know it.”
“Come with me.”
Barbara was a wreck becoming a disaster at that point, so she didn’t question or fight it when Cynthia led her through the house, past the murmurs, and to the door of her husband’s office. They stopped then, and Cynthia took her in for a long, heavy moment before talking again.
“Something’s inside. Something that may or may not be good for you. I honestly can’t say… but I agreed to it.” She turned the knob and began opening the door, but stopped at seeing her friend’s reaction.
Barbara had stiffened up, every muscle going taut, and her lips curved downward with disgust. “Cyn… no. Just… you can’t be doing what I think you’re doing.”
Cynthia’s brow scrunched at the sudden vitriol. “Can’t I? You know girl, sometimes I think we share a brain, and sometimes I’m sure we’re from different planets. I truly have no idea what you think I’ve got waiting for you in there.”
Barbara narrowed her eyes. “I remember the charity planning with crystal clarity, Cyn. I remember that you were the one who hired the personnel, that you were the one that did all the ice-breaking exercises that were a little too… intimate.” She crossed her arms. “I never blamed you. I thought you didn’t realize what was happening, but I’m telling you now, if you brought Todd back so I can… can get my rocks off and forget about–”
The punch to her shoulder was light, but it wasn’t nothing. “Fuck you. Just… get in there bitch.”
Gawping like a beached fish–and rubbing at her shoulder–Barbara watched Cynthia open up the office the rest of the way and vacate the area without another word, bristling like an offended cat, and with just as much drama.
Shaking her head, Barbara decided that, cat-like herself, curiosity was going to win out, and she walked into the office. Then she nearly fainted.
“Shit, Barb… shit. Um… maybe you should sit down.” Then he was there, arm around her shoulders, leading her to a sofa against the wall of the expansive room with a tenderness that made her vow right then to keep it together.
“Ben. Jesus, how… why are…” Eyes suddenly wide with panic, the fight became not to keep to together, but to keep from hyperventilating. She rolled her gaze down at her–thus far–husband’s hands, sure what she’d see. “Oh god, Cyn, she said it isn’t… it might not be good…”
Sure enough, there was a big brown envelope wavering in his loose grip. She covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes. For a few seconds, everything was quiet, then she heard a rustling as Ben sat next to her. She moved her hand finally, but she couldn’t quite get her lids up. It had to do. “Okay. Okay. I guess… I knew this was coming. I just… I just hope… for the girls…”
“I just hoped the little imps kept their mouths shut enough.” Ben actually laughed. “Guess they managed it somehow.”
“Managed…?” Barbara opened her befuddled eyes and saw that the envelope was open too. The contents weren’t legal paperwork, but… photos. Pretty ones. “What the hell?”
“Our story was junk.” Ben looked away, out a window as he spoke. “It wasn’t just fiction, it was bad fiction. The setting was too idyllic, the characters were too flawless, and the real plot was ignored because it made you squirm in your seat.”
“I know.” Barbara leaned back, letting herself lose a bit of the tension that’d gripped her. “It was happy and sunny, and the first dark cloud ruined the whole picture.”
“So we start writing a new one. Illustrate a new book with detail. Characters with shitty personality traits that piss off everyone around them, and illustrations with… um, y’know… detail. Like, dark… lines?” That goofy, wide grin of his that Barb had missed with everything in her made an appearance as her husband shrugged. “Crap. I’m not good at metaphors and stuff.”
She touched his cheek. “Ben… you kinda are.” She laughed too loud, she couldn’t help it. She felt like someone had brought her back to life. “Hell, I feel like I’m at a poetry jam right now.”
He grinned at her some more, then it faded and he let out a big breath. “Barb, I won’t apologize. For leaving. I had to. It was too much to be around you after…”
Barbara sat up straight again and skootched over next to him, pressing her leg on his. “I know. You shouldn’t be sorry, but… fuck, I must be crazy to say this…” Despite her resolve, she could only look down at his chest. “I’m not sorry either.” She felt him go rigid, and she plowed on. “Not for laying it all out that morning you left. I could have thrown myself on your mercy, claimed that I was the worst scum alive, didn’t deserve you, and that I’d do anything debasing to just be in your presence… but that would have just been more lies.”
“You’re not wrong.” Ben still wasn’t moving, despite the admission.
“We do deserve each other.” She began to raise her gaze, venturing a few centimeters. “I know with all of me that there’s no one out there better for either of us, and I wouldn’t want there to be. What happened…” She froze, then shook her head. “Shit, I’ll just say it. It was good. It was necessary for us to be honest, and to keep something worse from happening. Something like us waking up one day a decade from now and realizing everything was just… hollow. Flimsy. If that happened, one of us would screw up, and who knows if we could have come back from it at that point.” Barbara rallied, twisted her body to finally take him in fully again, and cupped his beautiful face in her hands. “I mean, we’re not young anymore…”
“But we’re not old.” Ben put his palms over the backs of her hands. “And… what happened… was bad, but endurable. If it’d been worse, later, we might have run out the clock bitter and wasted.”
“Might have.” Barbara gave a hiccupping little laugh suffused with glee. “Because it won’t happen now? Please tell me that’s what you’re saying.”
Ben raised the photos in his hands, the ones depicting a lone cabin in a picturesque forest. “The girls loved the idea when I ran it past them, and Cynthia hates it… but is willing to give me the benefit of the doubt.” He gave a light snort. “She thinks I’m a coward, I know it, but I also know she feels guilty, and I leveraged that to get her to set this up.”
Barb rubbed her shoulder again. “Probably not so much guilty anymore.”
Ignoring that, Ben went on. “We leave. For a month. We go to this place I’ve, uh, already rented…” He watched her, and she could tell he was waiting for her indignant outburst at his assumption.
Her response was to lean into him and curl a leg over his. “I think I get it. A place where it’s just us. Where we have to live without anyone running interference.” She smiled. “A test.”
“Cynthia will take the girls.” Ben rubbed the back of his head. “After seeing them in the pool when I came in… I think the real problem will be prying them out of here when we get back.”
“There’ll be two of us to do it. I have no doubt.” Barbara was rubbing his chest now, not in a sexual way whatsoever, but with a need. A need to feel him again. To know he was real, and with her. “When do we leave?”
Ben kissed the top of her head. “I can’t get enough of your bravery.”
“I live for your confidence.” She kissed his chin.
“I hate your giggle.”
“I loathe that mole on your forehead.”
“When you kiss me, my cock hardens every time. And when you try to get creative, I know I’ll probably have to massage your ego for a week after.”
“Every time you use the word cock, I cringe. And every time you get creative, I float on air for a week after.”
Ben tilted his wife’s chin upward. “I’m going to become an impatient moron again one of these days. Probably a day soon, whether I want to or not.”
Barbara swung over and nestled into her husband’s lap. “I’m going to be an oblivious idiot, and I’m going to keep being one way past the point when I should have wised up.”
When his lips crashed into hers, each one melted. They made out like they did on their first date, decades ago, for a good–very good–ten minutes. Then, for three times that long they… broke in Cynthia’s husband’s new sofa. If Barbara felt guilty about that, well, it just one more thing on the list by that point.
After, disheveled and mostly disrobed, Ben and Barbara looked at each other, and he was the one to break the spell, though by deepening the magic, ironically.
“I hate everything about you that’s hate-worthy, my beloved bride. Lucky for me, I think I’m about to find out that the things I can love about you, I mean the actual, true things that I’m going to discover, are gonna bury the others pretty damned deep.”
Barb put his cock in her mouth.
Words. Sometimes they were just pointless.