by Jack Fisher
“It wasn’t.”
“But I—”
Mary placed a finger over his lips to silence him. Peter was overthinking the situation way too much for a man who’d just had sex. She couldn’t process everything about these feelings for him, but she could certainly prove that it hadn’t been a fluke.
“Maybe this will convince you,” Mary said.
In an act that coincided with another flash of lightning, Mary gave Peter powerful kiss that she hoped conveyed the necessary feelings to quell any lingering doubts he might have.
That should stop him from overthinking the situation. This is real. God help us, this is real.
What they’d just experienced was pure and genuine. For Mary, all those years she’d spent in the brutal cycles of addiction had finally culminated in that moment. Now, the cycle had been broken. For the first time in her life, she felt truly complete.
When she broke the kiss, Mary knew by the look on his face that it had done its job.
“Yes, Mary,” he said with the widest grin she had seen to date, “it definitely worked.”
Chapter Seventeen
#xa0;
When can an addict say they’ve been cured? Is it even possible? Is the very concept of addiction flawed to begin with?
These questions had been burning in Mary’s mind, but she didn’t have the energy to answer them. In fact, she didn’t have the energy to do much of anything after she and Peter had shared such an amazing experience.
It had become something of a blur after that final kiss. Mary hadn’t remembered saying much else after that. They’d slipped into a blissful daze, drunk on the new feelings, fallen back onto the bed, crawled under the sheets and shared more affectionate gestures.
They’d kissed, fondled and explored each other’s bodies. It had alternated between simple touching and full-blown foreplay. It had even led to a few additional sex acts. Mary had surprised herself, and Peter for that matter, but a lack of sex over the past year had created a lot of pent-up desire. Being the wonderful man he was, Peter was happy to help her release it. All the feelings and pleasures they had shared only heightened the overall experience. It eventually had gotten to a point where she’d made another stunning realization.
“Damn it, Peter. I think I’m in love with you,” she’d said.
Mary remembered seeing a beaming grin on his face when she’d said that. Then, he’d kissed her again and led to even more passionate expressions.
Throughout the sex acts that had followed, one sentiment had become clear. Her fate was now inevitably tied to that of Peter Rogers.
Eventually, they’d worn themselves out and had fallen into a light slumber. Mary remembered curling up next to him and feeling more content than she had at any point in her adult life. She would’ve been perfectly content remaining in this state. “Thank you, Peter Rogers. Thank you for making me feel so…complete,” were the last words she said before she fell asleep in his arms.
* * * *
She woke to the cold feeling of not being in Peter’s embrace anymore. Drowsy and still a bit sore, she rose to see Peter sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning back on his arms and staring out of his bedroom window. It was still raining outside, but not nearly as hard as before. He looked lost in thought but still very much content.
“Hey,” Peter said in a casual tone.
“Hey,” replied Mary, holding the sheets to her naked body. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“It’s still daylight out,” he teased. “You didn’t wear me out that much.”
“Guess I’ll have to try harder next time.”
“I know you will. You’re still a competitor.”
“That I am,” Mary said proudly.
This might be the most comfortable she had ever felt with someone after sex. She was downright giddy, like a kid who’d finally gotten to go outside again after being sick. With renewed energy, Mary crawled from under the sheets and embraced Peter from behind. He accepted the gesture and eagerly returned it by grasping her hands with his.
They were still naked. Having become so familiar with each other’s bodies, Mary felt no inclination to change that. She rested her chin on his shoulder and gazed out of the window with him. There was an eerie beauty to watching the rain fall. Even the thunder and lightning were strangely soothing and not just because it was ending a drought.
“You know, at some point, you’ll have to give me back my clothes. You don’t want me walking home naked in this weather,” Mary said.
“I’ll throw them in the dryer once the power comes back on,” Peter said.
“And if the power doesn’t come back on?”
“Then I guess you’ll just have to stay here at my place and remain naked for the rest of the night.”
“If that’s how it has to be, I’ll make do,” Mary said with a fake sigh.
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll stay naked,” Peter said.
“You don’t have to, but I know you’re too nice a guy to avoid sharing the burden.”
“It’s no burden at all. I wouldn’t avoid it if it was. You’re worth it, Mary…for all the right reasons.”
She had heard that kind of sweet-talk from men before, but she’d never believed it beyond a certain point. When Peter said it, Mary believed it implicitly. She even gave him a kiss on the cheek to show her appreciation.
He gave her hand a light squeeze to acknowledge her gesture, but he remained deep in thought. Mary could sense his mind racing. He didn’t seem conflicted, but something was clearly brewing.
“I normally don’t ask guys what they’re thinking after sex. They tend to find it annoying. This time, though, I’m genuinely curious,” Mary said.
“A lot of women I’ve slept with pretend to be curious, but I know you’re not,” Peter said.
“I’m not a fan of faking interest…or other things,” she said coyly.
“I wasn’t going to keep it to myself, anyway. I think this is something we need to talk about at some point. It might as well be now.”
“Naked, in bed and during a blackout? That’s as good a time we’re going to get,” Mary said.
Peter remained deadly serious. He might not have been conflicted, but this was clearly important to him. That made it important to Mary, too. Afterglow aside, they were in this together.
“I have a theory,” Peter said.
“About what?” Mary asked.
“About our addiction and why what we just did worked so damn well,” he replied.
“Then by all means…share it. I’ll even help you test it.”
“Not sure that’s necessary. I’ve been testing it in my head since I woke up. It’s not perfect, but it makes too much sense.”
He sparked Mary’s intrigue.
“Stop me if I say something stupid, but I need to talk this out. From what I’ve gathered, most people become addicted to something when it fills a need of sorts,” began Peter. “It doesn’t have to make sense. You don’t even have to know what that need is. It just needs to fill it.”
“That’s not stupid. Even hardcore addicts would agree with that,” Mary said.
“For some people, it’s drugs. For others, it’s gambling. For us, it was sex.”
“Was?” questioned Mary.
“Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself here, but bear with me, because this is where it gets tricky…and awkward.”
“We’re both naked. Awkward is a relative concept at this point.”
“Point taken, but I’m not talking about the kind of awkwardness that comes with being naked. I’m talking about the kind we don’t notice until it’s shoved in our face,” Peter said. “We both followed a similar path to addiction. We were in environments that gave us too many opportunities to pursue it. We were in a state that made us too vulnerable to avoid it. We let it get so bad that it took something extreme to give us that moment of clarity that every addict dreads.”
“I want to say that’s a hell of a coincidence, but it’s the basic s
tory behind every addiction,” Mary said. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it over the past year.”
“Then it’s the finer details that we need to focus on. It’s those fine details that made what we just did work so damn well.”
His tone shifted, not sounding quite as serious anymore. It was strange, but in a good way. Whenever Peter overanalyzed something, he often got too serious. Mary used to find that annoying, but now it might be the key to understanding this.
“Looking at it now, we know it wasn’t just the sex that we were addicted to. It was the way we did it,” continued Peter. “That brutal cycle we described… It was actually worse than we thought.”
“That cycle made us miserable and got people killed. How could it possibly be worse?” wondered Mary.
“It’s easy when you don’t see the forest for the trees. You described—in graphic detail, mind you—how you fueled this cycle.”
“You weren’t exactly subtle, either, Mr. I’m-A-Sexy-Firefighter,” Mary said.
“Very true, but beside the point,” he retorted. “When we did what we did, we thought we were doing it the way we should. I thought it was the best thing for a man to just let the woman be in charge during sex. That’s the only way I thought I could accomplish my goals.”
“And I accomplished mine by doing the same, but from the opposite end of the spectrum,” Mary said. “I still don’t know why I did it like that, but that’s how I did. I think we just proved that our logic was flawed.”
“That’s where my theory comes in. You see, I think inverting our approach to sex revealed something else. By doing something so radically different, we found out that what we had been doing before was…incomplete.”
That idea that she’d briefly considered earlier struck Mary anew. Just a few weeks ago, she’d lamented over the festering emptiness she had felt for the past year. That void had made the scars of her addiction feel every bit as bad as the addiction itself. Sister Angela and the program could only do so much to treat it.
Then Peter Rogers had come along, and for the first time in years, she hadn’t felt so incomplete. After struggling to cope with her problems, it was refreshing. She didn’t necessarily need an explanation, but it still couldn’t hurt to understand it.
“It all comes back to how we pursue our goals,” Peter said. “You and I are both big on goals—some might say to an unhealthy level.”
“Not going to argue that,” Mary said. “Not sure it makes for a functional theory, though.”
“It’s not the only variable, but it’s an important one to consider. When we’re young and horny, sex is a goal in and of itself. There’s really not much to it. That’s why it wasn’t that big a problem when we were teenagers.”
“My high school guidance counselor might beg to differ, but she also claimed I had no future in being a model, so to hell with her,” Mary said.
“The problem only came when we got older,” Peter said. “Our goals changed. They became more mature, as well, so to speak. That extended to sex.”
“You think we underestimated the maturity of a couple of horny twenty-somethings?” Mary asked.
“Actually, I think the opposite happened. I think we overestimated it.”
That surprised Mary. She gave him a curious look, but he remained serious. He’d never claimed his theory was simple or intuitive. Still intrigued, Mary gave him a chance to prove it.
“We thought we knew what we wanted and how to get it. We even got really good at it, as our many sexual conquests can attest,” Peter said.
“Some can attest more than others, I imagine,” added Mary.
“Very true,” he continued, “but the problem wasn’t the conquests themselves. The problem was that what we thought we wanted wasn’t consistent with what we actually wanted.”
“So, we didn’t really want what we thought we wanted? I’m a little confused,” Mary said.
“That’s a sign, in and of itself. You see, as we matured, I think we wanted more than mutual orgasms. I think we wanted the same thing that most people—as in most non-addicted people—want from sex.”
“Which is…” Mary said.
“Intimacy,” he answered.
On the surface, it sounded cheesy. It gave the impression that she and Peter had been callous with sex. Mary didn’t accept that at first. If anyone else had said that, she would’ve been insulted. The more she considered it, though, the more it made sense.
She thought back to some of the many men she’d been with over the years. While there were plenty of casual hook-ups, Mary recalled a few occasions where she’d let herself get passionate. Before today, she would’ve called that intimate. Now, in wake of what she and Peter had just shared, she could call those past experiences a lot of things, but she couldn’t call them intimate.
“This is where this crazy theory becomes harsh reality,” Peter said in a more distant tone.
“It’s hardly crazy. It’s already making more sense than I expected,” Mary said.
“That still doesn’t make the reality any less harsh. That need for intimacy really clashed with our desire to avoid any entanglements. I don’t know where that desire came from. For me, it might have just been me trying to be better than all the other guys who hooked up with beautiful women. For you? Well, I don’t want to speculate, but that stuff with your family might have played a part.”
“No need to get Freudian on me, Peter. I know what you mean. Does the reason really matter, though?”
“In the long run? Not really,” answered Peter. “Whatever our reason, we didn’t change our approach to match our desires. We wanted intimacy, but we kept pursuing the same shallow romps, ensuring we never actually got what we wanted.”
“I’m seeing the signs of that brutal cycle again,” Mary said. “We find someone, we have sex with them and we don’t get everything we want. Then we find someone else and do it again in the exact same way. We still don’t get it. Then, we try it again…and again…and again.”
“I noticed those signs, too. I guess that means we’re on the same page now. That means I can skip to the most critical part of my theory.”
The tone of Peter’s voice had changed, taking on a more emotional subtext. He shifted where he sat, turning around so that he faced her. Mary shifted as well so she sat with him near the center of the bed, atop the ruffled sheets.
In the dim lighting provided by the window, he gazed at her in a way that got her heart racing again. Mary did her best to calm herself, but only succeeded in part as Peter took her hands in his once more, conveying the very intimacy they’d failed to achieve before.
In him, Mary saw a man in the midst of an emotional epiphany. There was no more speculation. He had the glint of a man full of utter certainty.
“On this day—this crazy day when a record storm rolled through—we tried a different approach. We tried something other than the way that made us a couple of miserable, broken sex addicts,” Peter said with a hint of excitement in his tone.
“And it worked,” Mary said with a smile.
“You’re right. It did, but not just because it was so different. I believe—in fact, I’m convinced —that it worked because we did something we’d avoided doing for most of our adult lives. We placed our faith in one another.”
“Faith? I thought we just trusted each other to try a crazy idea.”
“Trust is basic. We can trust the chef at a restaurant not to spit in our food. We can even trust people to not do anything crazy during sex. To have faith in someone? Well, that requires more than trust. It also happens to be the key ingredient for intimacy.”
He released his grip on Mary’s hands and caressed her face. His excitement had turned to affection. Her heart rate jumped, this time in a way she could not temper. She had heard people talk about faith before. Sister Angela preached about it endlessly, so much so that she had tuned it out for the most part. The faith Peter described felt far more personal and far more profound than any theo
logy.
The power of that faith became clearer in his warm touch. She couldn’t grasp or quantify it, but it felt so real. Those feelings that had emerged with Peter during sex took on a whole new dimension.
“I placed my faith in you, Mary,” Peter said strongly. “Even before we had sex, I shared my burdens with you. I had every inclination to keep pushing everybody away, but you changed that. I made myself vulnerable with you. Then, you gave me a chance to make myself strong.”
“Which required a lot of faith on my part,” Mary said.
“Which is exactly what turns trust into intimacy,” he said with growing conviction. “By giving me control of our sex, you had to do more than trust. You had to believe that I would give you wanted…be it genuine intimacy or multiple orgasms.”
“And you succeeded…on both counts,” Mary said proudly.
“Beyond the success, we finally achieved something we had been missing—something we’d tried to seize in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons. The burden that drove my addiction? I see it now for what it really is. Because of you, Mary Ann Scott, I know what I want, what I need and why I need it. But most importantly, I know who I want to share it with.”
His touch became more affectionate. There was no stopping the emotions at this point, so Mary didn’t bother trying. Another lump formed in her throat as tears welled up in her eyes. It overwhelmed her, the way this man talked to her and the way he conveyed so many feelings. She finally began to understand the breadth of those emotions.
As she struggled to steady the flow, Mary slipped onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. Peter smiled warmly at her intimate embrace. A few quick flashes of lightning illuminated the extent of that intimacy, as if nature itself wanted to emphasize the feeling. Mary heard that message loud and clear. It inspired her to take yet another leap of faith.
“Peter, I think you’ve done more than enough to prove your theory,” declared Mary. “You can stop trying to convince me. I believe you.”
