“Would you rather me be the man?” She started singing the guy’s part instead. Then, she grabbed my hand and twirled me around. I had to admit: in that moment, dancing with her up there like an idiot did make me feel a lot better.
When I got home that night though, my mind spun with everything that was happening to me. My entire life, all I’d wanted to do was be an actress. So much so, that my ambition was the reason Brett had broken up with me. He’d claimed I was too focused on my career and had no time for love. I figured I’d never be able to love someone else, and then Vincent came along and changed my entire way of thinking. I kept remembering Puerto Rico. How he’d asked if I’d leave everything for him, and how tempted I was. I hated his wife, and yet felt bad for her at the same time. I didn’t even know this woman, whose life I could potentially ruin.
SAMANTHA
I was unenthused, to say the least, about Aruba this year. “Dreading” was a better word. I didn’t want to pack, didn’t want to get on that plane, didn’t want to share a room or bed with Vince. I didn’t want to smile and pretend to the staff who knew us so well that I was into any of this. The resort we stayed at was a gorgeous, beachfront paradise and, now that the kids were older, they didn’t even hang out with us except during dinners. We were forced to entertain ourselves together—something that should have been fun but had turned into a huge chore. Vince and I had nothing in common anymore.
At least when the kids were young, we could take them to do activities. Now we barely spoke, and we didn’t have sex. We didn’t even share the same interests. I would lay on the beach for hours, reading a book while he stared off at the water sports that I refused to try, like jet skiing or parasailing. He did convince the kids to go zip lining with him on our first day there, which left me some time to shop by myself.
The next day, I grabbed Casey to go shopping and get some lunch. We found this nice little restaurant on the beach outside the resort. I was feeling nostalgic, watching the children playing in the sand and building little castles. I missed our kids being that young—back when they still needed us and wanted to do things with me. While we ate, I observed the young couples kissing and holding hands. I couldn’t take my eyes off of this one couple in particular. They frolicked in the water with their arms around each other, gazing at each other like they were madly in love. Vince and I had never had that, I realized. I couldn’t even fathom what it felt like, to be that into someone.
Searching for a distraction, I asked Casey if she was seeing anyone. She didn’t answer, but by the way she smiled, I could tell that she liked somebody.
“I want to tell you something,” I said, and she looked up at me. “If you’re ever out with friends, or a guy, no matter what you’re doing, even if you’re being inappropriate—if you tell a guy no, it’s no. I don’t want you ever to feel like you have to do something you are not comfortable doing, no matter what you’ve already done with him.”
Casey stared at me like she had no idea what to say. “I’m not comfortable having this conversation with you, can we stop now? We’re on vacation!”
I shook my head. “Casey, I know this may be difficult to talk about, but you need to know—”
She cut me off. “What is going on with the two of you?” she asked. “Did something happen with you and Dad that you guys aren’t telling me?”
I gaped at her. “What do you mean?”
“Dad just had the same conversation with me when I was home for the summer. Date rape, drugs, harassment—what exactly do you guys think I do in college?” she asked.
I was impressed that Vince had bothered to have the same conversation with her. I knew for whatever reason, our daughter was more comfortable talking to him, so I let it go.
By the third day at the resort, I felt like it was the third week. I suggested that next year, we should try to convince Lisa and Jimmy to travel with us, and Vince agreed. Of course, first he made some stupid comment about Jimmy “at least being fun.”
“What did you guys do last night?” Vince asked the kids that night at dinner. They looked at each other and smiled.
“What’s the joke?” I asked.
“Nick left me hanging to go get laid,” Casey said. Vince and I looked at each other and then at Nick.
“You got laid?” Vince asked, putting his steak knife down and leaning over the table towards him. “What did she look like?”
It got to the point that whenever this man opened his mouth, I truly envisioned myself killing him. Nick started to go into detail about the girl when I interrupted.
“We’re your PARENTS. We don’t need to hear about your sex life. You shouldn’t even be having sex,” I said. All three of them shut up. Vince started laughing to himself.
“What exactly is so funny?” I asked him.
“He shouldn’t be having sex?” he repeated, picking his knife back up and going right back to his food. “When you were twenty-three, they were both already born.”
Silence. Tension. Casey tried to lighten the mood. “How about we take a family Thanksgiving shot?” she suggested. I looked at her, appalled.
“You’re not even twenty-one yet, maybe in a few months.”
Vince rolled his eyes and lifted his hand in the air to summon the waitress.
“Shots! Please,” he ordered. “ASAP.” He looked over at the kids and said, “What kind of shots are we taking?”
They both answered simultaneously. “Green tea shots!”
“Green tea shots,” he repeated to the waitress. “Four of them.”
After three “family Thanksgiving green tea shots,” the kids departed to do their own thing, leaving me at the table with Vince. I was really buzzed. I held the shot glass up and turned it in a slow circle. “What do you suppose is in a green tea shot, anyway?”
“Let’s find out,” Vince said. He picked up his phone and Googled it. “Hmmm, well, apparently it’s peach schnapps, sour mix…oh, and Jameson,” he said, letting out a laugh. “That explains why you can suddenly stand being at a table with me.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t. I was just drunk enough to be around him. I lifted my hand in the air and called for the waitress.
“Can we have two more shots, please?”
Vince smiled. “Now you’re getting fun!”
When the round arrived, I held up my glass towards his. “To Jameson,” I toasted.
He clinked his glass on mine. “Yes, to Jameson!” he repeated.
We had two more shots there, and then he suggested we go to another bar. We left, making our way to a much livelier scene.
“Is it me, or are crowds getting younger and younger?” I asked, pushing our way through the mob of people, toward the bar.
“No, we’re getting older and older. You shouldn’t mix too much, I don’t want you to get sick. You want Jameson? I’m going to get mine neat, no need for the other shit.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
We’d been drinking there for about an hour when a band started playing in the back. Vince took my hand to lead me through the crowd to get a closer look. Suddenly a man—or boy, really, since he couldn’t have been too much older than Nick—groped my ass as I was passing him.
I dropped Vince’s hand, whirled to him and said, “What the fuck?” He was drunk, sloppy drunk. Came right up to me and put his arms around my waist, slurring about how hot I was. He was practically drooling on me.
When Vince realized what was happening, he hurried over and pulled him off.
“Hey, that’s my wife, asshole, get back in your lane,” he warned.
“Or what?” the guy asked, taunting him. “If that’s your wife, you shouldn’t let her walk around looking like a hoe.”
All of a sudden, Vince shoved him and then punched him in the face. The guy hit him back, and a fistfight broke out. He had got one good shot on Vince, but I really thought Vince was going to kill him. I tried to pull him off the guy, but he was drunk and yelling at me to
stop holding him back. Security came and broke it up. They grabbed Vince by the shirt and told us we’d better leave before they called the cops.
We exited to the beach, where I watched him growing angrier by the minute as he paced back and forth on the sand. I hadn’t seen him this infuriated in years. The worst thing that guy could have done was call me a hoe. It was like a trigger point for Vince; some sort of longstanding guilt for taking my virginity, like he was somehow responsible for stealing my innocence. The only other time I ever saw him get physical with someone was the night we told my parents I was pregnant. My father called me a slut and hit me so hard that I fell to the floor. In that second Vince lost his shit and punched my dad in the face. Until then, he’d had no idea that my father was abusive. When we made it back to his apartment that night, he made me so many promises. He promised I would never have to see my dad again; he would never let another man hurt me. He would never walk out or abandon his child, like both our fathers’ had done to us. From then on, it would be him and me against everyone else.
Now on the beach, Vince was still pacing and cracking his knuckles, ready to go back for round two. I tried to calm him down, but nothing was working.
“This fucking guy!” he kept repeating, over and over.
Suddenly, I started laughing. Cracking up uncontrollably.
He shot me the dirtiest look.
“What the fuck is so funny?” he asked, his pacing coming to an abrupt halt. “You okay with the fact he called you a hoe? You don’t find that to be disrespectful? Come on. He deserved to get punched in the face!”
“Vince, we just got kicked out of a club. Kicked out of a club! When was the last time we got kicked out of a club?”
He paused and looked up to the sky like he was trying to remember. I guess he realized how ridiculous that sounded because he too started laughing.
“If I had to guess I’d say twenty-four, twenty-five years,” he answered.
“What would you have done if you got arrested in a different country?” I asked.
“What, they don’t have bail here?” he replied, still laughing. “You know, I used to be pretty badass.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, “A real rebel.”
“I was!” he insisted.
“I know, I remember. I’m agreeing with you. You. Were. A. Rebel,” I said slowly, smiling at him. I could picture him in his twenties in that baseball uniform, coming home all dirty and sweaty after a game. He would sneak me into clubs, let me drive his car, taught me how to drive a stick and how to shift gears. He would spontaneously race other sports cars on the street and afterward, we’d have sex in the back seat of that Camaro. He would smoke in places where he wasn’t allowed, and didn’t have a care in the world about rules.
As he stood there smiling, the thoughts of his glory days running through his head; I realized suddenly he had this dimple when he smiled. That, somewhere along the way, I’d stopped noticing. I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, the fight, or seeing how single men acted now after Ibiza, but for the first time in years, I was extremely attracted to him. I leaned into him, stood on my tippy toes, and kissed him.
He was taken back at first, but kissed me back. “What was that for?” he asked, as I pulled my lips off of him.
“Do I need a reason to kiss my husband?” I asked.
He ran his fingers through his hair and stared down at the sand. Then, looking back at me, he answered. “No, I guess you don’t.”
I kissed him again, this time slower and more sensual. We stayed there kissing for a while, with his arms wrapped gently around my waist and me using the back of his neck to pull him closer. I reached over as we were walking back to the room and took his hand in mine.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, as we went inside.
He lounged on the bed, reading emails on his phone. “Okay,” he said, now very distracted in his work.
When I got out of the shower, he had dozed off. I sat on the bed, took the phone off his chest, and nudged him slightly.
“Vince, wake up,” I said.
He opened his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Then, I slid my robe off and, in my bra and panties, climbed on top of him. Rubbing myself up against him, I started kissing him again. His hands held my hips, and he guided me back and forth on him. He was visibly aroused. He lifted me off, rolled me onto my back, and removed my panties. His fingers plunged inside me while his tongue stroked its way from my neck, down my chest, down my stomach, and in between my legs. He wasn’t especially passionate, but he was skilled. If there was one thing he excelled at, it was getting me off with his tongue, and he knew exactly how I liked it—with his right hand holding my breast.
As I pushed his head against me, he squeezed my breast a little harder. It had been so long since I’d had a man do that. I was so turned on; I couldn’t control myself. Before long, he’d brought me to orgasm. Then, he climbed on top of me and thrust inside. I felt every thrust like I’d never felt one before. Everything about this was so different than what had happened with John. Vince was the perfect size for me; he knew exactly what to do to turn me on. It was so comfortable, so familiar. So much better than some stranger I barely knew.
I was really getting into it when suddenly he was about to orgasm. He yanked away and, well, made a mess all over me and himself.
“Shit.” He jumped up to get a towel from the bathroom, and then rushed over to clean the mess off of both of us.
We stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling while my mind whirled. Almost twenty-four years of marriage and never, not once, had he pulled out. I was in complete shock.
Finally, he broke the silence. “Was that weird?” he asked.
“Um, yeah, a little,” I replied. “Something new you learned? If you pulled out twenty-four years ago, we wouldn’t even be here now.”
Another awkward silence followed.
“I mean, you’re forty, I’m forty-six… you don’t want to get pregnant again, do you?” he asked, turning his head to look at me.
I glanced at him and realized at that point; it didn’t matter what I wanted. I wasn’t even thinking about stuff like that, but he was, and he was making sure he didn’t tie himself to me or us for any longer than he had to. My excitement turned into fear. If he was thinking along those lines, that meant he was thinking of leaving me. I’d never even imagined a life without him. We’d grown up together. I truly believed death was going to do us part, not another woman.
I didn’t answer him. Suddenly, all I could picture was him and his girlfriend. Was he “intimate” with her? I had accepted years ago the fact that he might cheat, but until now, I’d never really pictured it. The thought of his tongue on someone else made me feel disgusted that I’d even kissed him. I rolled over and went to sleep without saying another word.
A few days after we returned home, I was walking through the living room to get a glass of water from the kitchen when the picture hanging on the wall caught my eye. I stopped and went over to look. There was me and Vince smiling, ten years ago, back when we thought everything was okay. We were young and didn’t know any better—had no idea that everything was not okay. Everything was never okay. This wasn’t what a marriage was supposed to be. We’d been so caught up in fighting the world together that we never stopped to fall in love. We were cheated out of romance. We went straight from kids to adults, without experiencing everything we should have or could have.
I changed my mind and opened a bottle of wine instead. I poured a glass and sipped, still staring at that picture. Then, my engagement ring grabbed my attention. I stared at the huge diamond on my finger and suddenly felt tears trickle down my face. I didn’t even know why I was crying. It wasn’t like I was unhappy; I just wasn’t necessarily happy, either. What should I do? I couldn’t be single again, not in this new world. I wouldn’t be able to online date, and I didn’t think I would ever be able to walk into a club again. I felt like I
was losing my mind.
VINCE
Three weeks had passed since we returned home from Aruba. By the way I was running that night, you’d think I was being chased down the streets of New York City. I ran so hard, and so fast, I could barely breathe. I felt like I was having a breakdown. I stopped on the pier and looked up at the sky. Now I really couldn’t breathe. I really thought I was having a heart attack.
I’d avoided seeing Sarah for three weeks. I missed her so much—I needed to see her. While showering that next morning after sleeping with Samantha, it had hit me. An enormous amount of guilt. I felt dirty, like I’d cheated on her. This wasn’t normal; this was bad. I felt like I was cheating on my girlfriend with my wife. I had to do something. I couldn’t keep denying Samantha sex, but also, I couldn’t feel like this whenever I slept with her. Samantha and I hadn’t really spoken since we’d come home. She barely even looked at me. That whole pulling out thing had really gotten to her. Meanwhile, I was afraid to look Sarah in the face.
I held my chest and stared up at the moon, like I expected it to give me some sort of cosmic answer. I started frantically shuffling through my playlist, searching for that song. The song she sang in the show right when her character was breaking up with her lover. Such a great song, about everyone wanting what they couldn’t have. Was that it? Did I want her so badly because I couldn’t have her? I listened to her words, her voice. Singing to me. Right then, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to leave her. I needed to end my marriage.
I picked Sarah up at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday night. I couldn’t wait to see her; it felt like an eternity since the last time. When she got in the car, she wasn’t her usual bubbly self. She seemed kind of sad. I kissed her and started driving.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, where are we going?”
“Steak house, it’s really nice. They make great seafood too. They have that octopus you like,” I replied.
“Was it hard to get into?” she asked.
Wounds of Time Page 18
