by Nancy Madore
“She should have been honest with you,” Sandra said, even as she silently wondered, was she, herself, being honest with Joe? There were always so many little acquired injuries to her heart that she nursed in private. With Joe—or was it the same with all her lovers?—she felt the need to tread lightly, carefully picking her battles, for fear of losing him altogether. But where did that leave them?
“Yeah, well,” he said softly, and Sandra knew that he had shared as much as he was able to. She put her arms up around his neck and pulled him toward her. She felt all at once safe and secure in the warmth of his embrace and she sighed happily. She felt more certain than ever that she was the right woman for Joe.
Joe’s breakthrough, as Sandra came to think of it, marked another change in their relationship. Joe became noticeably happier, laughing more and drinking less. This, in turn, made Sandra more secure within their relationship, giving her the confidence to pour even more of herself into it. These positive aftereffects lasted several months, during which Joe appeared to get stronger even as Sandra seemed to get softer.
But after those months had passed, it once again appeared to Sandra that she and Joe were settling into a pattern of being together that, although comfortable and pleasant, offered no real commitment or permanence. He still refused to discuss their future together. He seemed to think that saying “I love you” was the end-all to relationships. Sandra yet again found herself feeling dissatisfied with her relationship. As was also a pattern for them, Sandra allowed these feelings to build up until she could hold them in no longer.
“Why do we never make plans for the future?” she asked him one day.
Joe looked at her. Did she imagine it, or did he actually cower away from her? On his face was a look of genuine frustration. His body language seemed to be saying, “God, not this again.” At least that’s the way Sandra perceived it, and she suddenly felt the buildup of resentment within her begin to bubble.
“It’s a pretty simple question, Joe,” she said, her tone full of condescension. The constant struggle to achieve even the tiniest advance in their relationship left her feeling utterly disillusioned and cynical. But these feelings actually seemed to empower her now, and she was struck with a strange sense of irony as she moved right up under Joe’s nose and stood her ground with her back held rigidly straight and an expression of utter disgust on her face. When she spoke, her voice was dripping with sarcasm. “I mean, it’s not like I just asked you to come up with a brand-new theory for solving integral equations, is it, Joe? No, no, I’m not forcing you define the elements of an isosceles triangle either, am I?” Sandra was practically out of breath when she completed this tirade, but somehow it had made her feel better. She realized vaguely that she had no idea what she had been talking about, especially in regards to the isosceles triangle, although, in the back of her mind it dimly occurred to her that an isosceles triangle had only one element she herself could identify, and that was that it possessed two sides of precisely the same length. What struck her most was that she had thought of the isosceles triangle at all, let alone the way it had smoothly glided off her lips as if she spoke of it every single day. What was she—in fifth grade—when she last thought about an isosceles triangle?
All this was a tiny and fleeting undercurrent of thought scurrying along the edges of Sandra’s mind, but at the forefront there remained the source of her anger, and she would let nothing distract her from it.
Joe, meanwhile, looked bewildered. Perhaps he, too, was momentarily stumbled by the unexpected reappearance of the isosceles triangle.
“All I asked for,” Sandra went on, “was a little information—no—a little hint about where I stand.” Her sarcasm quickly metamorphosed into sarcastic martyrdom. “Not that I have the right to know anything about my own future, I guess,” she said in a long-suffering tone of voice. “Why should I? How dare I ask the all-wonderful, all-desirable Joe to explain his intentions? No, I guess I’m just supposed to keep sucking his cock until something pops off in his big head instead of in his little head.”
In spite of himself Joe laughed. He knew when her sarcasm became funny she was close to the end of her outburst and then he would be able to reason with her.
“Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it?” she said. “A big joke.” Her outburst was winding down as Joe predicted it would, but something was different about this time. She looked at him with tired eyes. “Why don’t you want to be with me in the future?” she asked him.
“I never said that I didn’t,” he told her.
“Yeah, but you never say you do, either. And we never make any plans. Your refusal to talk about it is clear evidence that you don’t want it.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“Then tell me now. Do you or do you not want to be with me in the future and…like…someday…marry me?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“So the answer is no!”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t say shit. What is the answer now, at this moment? If you had to make the decision today, would you marry me?”
“No,” he said. She looked at him, shocked, and he felt compelled to continue, to explain. “At this moment, I would not. But if things were to change…”
“Change!” she suddenly screamed. “Change? Is that what you’ve been waiting for? Change? You are waiting for things to change?” She laughed hysterically at this. She continued to laugh even after the tears came. “I bet you are waiting for change,” she ground out between her teeth. “Why the hell not, when I’m the one doing all the work? I guess I’ll have to try harder, right? Yeah, that’s it. I’ll try harder and you can continue to evaluate how well I’m doing.” She had moved away from him while saying all this, wandering around the room, picking up random items and throwing them in the middle of the floor.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, noticing that all the items on the floor were his.
“Things aren’t going to get better, Joe. Sorry to have to be the one to tell you that.” She continued to rummage around and collect more of his belongings to add to the growing pile on the floor.
“Look, Sandra, there’s no need to…”
Sandra stopped in front of him and flipped open her cell phone. “Don’t make me call 911, Joe.”
“What? Sandra, come on!”
“Get your shit and get out, Joe, now, this minute, before I dial the numbers.” She held one finger poised over the number nine on the dial pad.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“I just figured out that the payoff is never going to come, Joe,” Sandra said with a smile. “Would you believe it took me this long—what’s it been? Eight or nine months? To figure it out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the things that I want out of life. To be with a man who is certain that he wants to be with me. To be married. To have security. You keep dangling these things over my head like a carrot, but come to think of it now, why would you ever give me these things? You are getting all the things you care about right now. Yeah. You want a girl who won’t cheat…you got that. You want good sex…you got that. And you want someone you can talk to who cares about you…you got that.” She laughed again. “Waiting for things to change, my ass. The only one who wants change around here is me.”
Joe seemed genuinely stumped and it suddenly occurred to her that he might not have led her on. It probably never even occurred to him that she was expecting a payoff for all her hard work, or that the desired payoff was a loving relationship that developed into a trusted partnership. He seemed to really be thinking they were simply having a good time.
Joe bagged up his possessions in silence. He seemed genuinely surprised by Sandra’s attitude and behavior. He didn’t feel that he had misled her. What made her think he would be staying forever anyway? It was her who said he would only be staying until he settled things with his other house.
Later that nig
ht, after Joe had dumped all of his belongings in the same hotel he had taken up residence in after his split up with Elaine—in the same room, too, as it turned out—he found himself back on the same bar stool he had occupied the night Elaine dumped him, too. He ordered the usual round of drinks, back to back, for the first hour or so until the pain was numbed enough so that he was able to ignore it. Only then did he bother to lift his head to glance around the room and take in his surroundings. There was a woman at the end of the bar who was watching him with interest. He tried to smile at her but his neck failed him in that instant by suddenly giving out, causing his head to flop idiotically onto his chest. He felt dizzy, but after much struggling he managed to haul his head back up straight and hold it steady so that he could look at the woman in the corner again. This time his head remained upright as he flashed her his most attractive smile. But he needn’t have exerted himself quite so much, for she was already on her way over.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Currently living and working in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Nancy Madore achieved enormous critical acclaim with her debut, Enchanted: Bedtime Stories for Women, which hit several bestseller lists and has quickly become a fan favorite. A feature writer for local newspapers, Nancy is also in business with her son and is working on her fourth collection for Spice Books.
ENCHANTED AGAIN: More Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4242-5
Copyright © 2008 by Nancy Madore.
All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Spice Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Spice and Colophon are trademarks used under license and registered in Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
www.Spice-Books.com
