But I’ve been on my medications for a long time now, and I’ve made great strides. I’m finally ready.
When we get back to our house, I’m nearly shaking with excitement. I can’t wait to see Matt’s face when he discovers what my real gift is. He will be so thrilled.
Matt parks the car in our driveway, but doesn’t get out of the car immediately. He stops for a moment, then turns to stare at me. He reaches out and touches my chin gently with the back of his fingers. “Can we go up to the bedroom now?”
I smile. In the time I’ve been with Matt, he’s never made me feel like anything less than the world’s most desirable woman. Considering I have been outright called a “cold fish” by at least one man in the past, it’s no trivial feat.
And after all these years, I find him just as sexy as I did back when we were just coworkers who occupied adjacent cubicles—and I used to fantasize about the impossible dream of being something more to him.
The truth is I still fantasize about him while I’m at work.
“Soon,” I say. “I just want to show you something.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Show me what?”
“Something you’ll like.”
“Really?”
I nod and shove him playfully in the direction of his driver’s side door. “Yes, get out of the car!”
Of course, I have to get out first so Matt can push my seat forward and grab his wheelchair from the back. I’m not one to be in a hurry usually, but right now, I wish he didn’t take quite so long to get out of the car. Not to say he takes that long, but he can’t just hop out like I do.
I dart ahead to open the front door, but I let Matt enter the house first so he gets to see my surprise. I watch his face, getting a thrill at the way his eyes widen.
“Holy shit…”
I beam at him. “You like it?”
He’s gazing up at the seventy-five inch HD smart TV that is now mounted on our living room wall. I’ve seen him ogling these televisions online, and he’s even brought up the possibility of getting one, but I resisted because I knew it would involve a major reorganization of the living room. I have had the living room in the exact same configuration since I moved in here, save for moving the couch a few inches to allow more space for Matt to maneuver his chair. I was not enthusiastic about changing anything else in the living room, but I knew how much he wanted this television.
Matt is gaping at the rest of the living room. “Everything is different…”
I nod eagerly. “I had Jake over earlier while you were at work. We took measurements to make sure your chair would still fit everywhere. He helped me move everything and mount the television.” I hesitate. “But it’s not hooked up or anything. He said you could handle that, right?”
Some of the shock has faded from my husband’s face, and he grins at me. “Hell yeah I can.”
I knew he could. Matt loves fiddling with gadgets. While I am an extremely proficient coder, he could take a computer apart and put it back together with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. Hooking up the Smart TV will be a breeze for him.
“So you like it, right?” I ask, because he hasn’t outright said so yet.
“Christ, I love it.” Without warning, he grabs me and pulls me into his lap. I laugh and cling to his neck so I don’t lose my balance. “This is incredible, Anna. I can’t believe you did this for me.”
I lean my head against his neck. “Well, I got a very good deal on it, actually.”
“Not just the TV but…” He waves his hand around the room. “The whole living room. You changed everything.”
“Yes…”
It was hard for me. I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t hard. I had to throw out a bunch of my belongings because there was no longer room. I moved an entire wall of photos. After Jake and I shifted the sofa ninety degrees, I had to run upstairs and take a Xanax. Even now, looking at the room, I feel uneasy. If I start thinking about it, I’m sure a cold sweat will break out in the back of my neck. So instead, I cuddle closer to Matt.
“It was worth it,” I tell him. “For you.”
He kisses me then, one of those long, luxurious kisses that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but now makes me tingle delightfully all over my body. I want him. So, so much.
“Do you want to go upstairs now?” I breathe in his ear.
He hesitates for several seconds before grinning sheepishly. “Uh… would you mind if I messed around with the TV for, like, half an hour?”
As much as I wanted to show Matt the other surprise I’ve got waiting for him in the bedroom, I can only laugh. I’m really glad he likes my present.
Chapter 4: Matt
I end up messing around with the new TV for about an hour and a half. I know—I’m the biggest loser on the planet. Why the hell was I fiddling with a TV set when I had a gorgeous wife who wanted to get me into the bedroom?
In my defense, it’s an HD Smart TV. With over eight million pixels. And a spatial scaling engine. I mean, I couldn’t go to bed without at least hooking it up to my Xbox and seeing what it was like to play a game on it.
Anyway, I eventually came to my senses and now Anna is in the bathroom, preparing some sort of other surprise for me. I’m simultaneously blown away by how awesome she is and also guilty I didn’t get her a present that took her breath away.
Before Anna gets out of the bathroom, I open the drawer on the bedside dresser where I keep my medications. I don’t keep my meds in the medicine cabinet like a normal person, because it’s just a little high for me to reach, and I figure I’ll end up knocking one of the bottles into the sink at some point.
I have six bottles of pills in the drawer. One is the muscle relaxant that’s supposed to help with the spasms I get in my legs, although it barely helps. Another prevents bladder spasms, so when I have to go to the bathroom, it isn’t quite so urgent. I swallow both of those pills with the glass of water I keep on the dresser.
The next two bottles are Tylenol and Percocet. So here’s the deal: I sit basically all day. I also spend more than half my waking hours hunched over a computer screen. And I use my hands and wrists to both push my chair and to type. All that means the chance of not being in some kind of pain at the end of the day is virtually nil. Right now, the pain sits between my shoulder blades—a dull ache that turns into a sharp jab when I use my arms to shift my position in my chair. It’s not great, but it’s tolerable, which means I don’t need the Percocet. I opt for the Tylenol, like most nights.
The next bottle is a medication I don’t take anymore. It’s an antidepressant. I started taking it about a month after I started using my wheelchair full time. I was ashamed to be on it, but I really needed it back then. Badly. But after moving in with Anna and then getting married, any residual depression I’d been feeling vanished completely, so I got myself off it. One less medication to have to worry about. Sure, I have bad days here and there. But not anything I can’t handle.
The last bottle is Viagra.
That one I need. And will always need. Yeah, I feel like a loser being thirty-four years old and needing to pop a pill to get it up, but there it is. And that’s not to say I can’t get it up without Viagra, because I can sometimes, but it’s not reliable. Without it, there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll have trouble, and nothing is un-sexier than failing to get hard enough to penetrate your wife. And even with the Viagra, there’s some chance I’ll have trouble, but it’s not too common. Usually, I’m okay with the Viagra.
So I take one now. It’s our anniversary, after all. I want to be ready for whatever surprise Anna’s got for me.
After taking my pills, I transfer from my wheelchair into our bed. I pull my undershirt off over my head and drape it on the back of my chair to wear it later, so now I’m wearing nothing but my boxers. I’m propped up against the pillows, and I glance down at my chest, trying to see it as Anna will when she comes into the room. Yes, we’re married so it’s a done deal, but that does
n’t mean I don’t want to look good for her. I mean, she’s really hot, so I want to look at least decent.
My chest is good. Maybe even better than good. I don’t manage to make time to work out much anymore, but I do everything with my upper body now, so I have muscles I never had before. Objectively, I think I’m okay in that department. And from the neck up, I’m also okay. Women have mostly liked the way I look.
From the waist down, there’s nothing too terrible either. My legs aren’t muscular, obviously, but they’re not stick-thin either. Even though I can’t move them, I’ve still got some muscle tone. Only problem is since I don’t have any strength in my legs, when they’re lying out in front of me like they are right now, my ankles turn in and my feet hang down and knock against each other. I don’t like the way it looks, considering I’m attempting to be sexy for Anna.
I move my legs so they’re lined up next to each other, my knees and ankles now touching. But somehow that looks worse. Artificial.
I sigh and just throw the blanket over my legs so they’re completely covered.
Better.
I nearly doze off waiting for Anna to get out of the bathroom. Christ, she takes forever in there. I don’t even know what she’s doing, aside from brushing her teeth, brushing her hair, washing her face, and swallowing her own pills. I get a sudden urge to yell at Anna to ditch the birth control pills. Tell her let’s make a baby tonight.
But I get the feeling saying that would kill the mood.
It turns out it’s worth the wait when I see what she’s wearing. Anna peeks her head out of the bathroom door and gives me a nervous smile before coming out into the bedroom. She’s got on nothing but a lacy red bra, and instead of panties, she’s wearing…
What the hell is that?
“What are you wearing?” I ask her as I struggle to sit up straight in bed and get a closer look.
Anna grins at me. “They’re edible panties.”
Whoa.
She’s wearing what is essentially a G-string made out of rainbow-colored hard candies. I stare at her in those edible panties, and feel myself getting hard, even though it’s too soon for the Viagra to have kicked in.
“I have the coolest wife in the world,” I manage.
She laughs and shakes her head.
“What?” I say.
“I think,” she says, “this is the first time ever that anyone has ever called me the coolest anything in the world.”
“C’mere,” I say.
She climbs into bed beside me, but all I can think about is eating those candy panties off her. Maybe I didn’t buy her an enormous TV or drape myself in edible boxers, but I can sure as hell make her scream tonight. I’m determined.
After we make out for a few minutes, I transfer back into my chair to have more leverage to eat these panties off her. She lies on the bed, spreads her legs, and I take a minute just to look at her. Sometimes it floors me this woman is my wife. She’s so freaking sexy. I know she wishes she had more curves or bigger tits, but she’s wrong—she’s perfect.
I lower my head to examine the edible panties. The candies are the same kind that are on those string bracelets they give out during Halloween. I remember liking those as a kid. These edible panties are bringing back memories.
I choose a pink candy and dig my teeth into it. I bite down, except to my dismay, the candy doesn’t give. I bite a little harder, but no luck. I roll the candy back in my mouth to try to bite it with my molars, but the candy is holding fast. I try a second candy—a blue one this time, but it’s equally rigid.
Shit.
“Anna.” I lift my head. “These candies are too hard. I’m going to break my teeth on these things.”
“Really?” She props herself up on her elbows. “You can’t bite through them?”
I shake my head regretfully.
My heart skips a beat as she removes the panties entirely. She tries to chomp on one of the candies, her brow creased in a frown. I can tell she’s not having any better luck than I did.
“Well,” she finally says, “they were only seven dollars on Amazon.”
“That’s okay.” I tug them out of her hand and toss them on the floor. “As long as they’re off, right?”
Anna grins at me. “I love you, Matt.”
I place my hand on her knee. “I love you too, Anna.”
I may not have bought Anna an expensive TV, but I make her very, very happy tonight.
Chapter 5: Anna
In the last two years, my older sister Lisa and I have been spending a lot more time together. Lisa and I were close as small children, but by the time she reached her teenage years, she decided I was “too strange” to spend time with. Then she took the path of getting married and having children, while I chose to focus on my career. We had very little in common.
But now that I’m married like Lisa is, we at least have that in common. Our lives aren’t as different as they used to be. Matt, a software engineer, doesn’t seem like he could possibly have much in common with Lisa’s husband Jake, who is employed as a mechanic, but the two of them will chat about sports and seem to root for similar teams. So when we have dinner together, Matt and Jake enjoy themselves.
Today I came to Lisa’s house for lunch, which means that I made sandwiches for us, as well as for her two boys, Jayden and Luke. Jayden is nine years old and quite a nice boy, actually, even though he picked all the lettuce out of the sandwich I made him. Luke is two, and he didn’t care for the turkey and Muenster cheese sandwich at all. He picked it apart into its components, ate a hole in the center of the cheese, and threw every last bit of lettuce on the floor.
Now the lettuce is just lying on the floor of Lisa’s kitchen. And she doesn’t seem to care in the slightest.
When something like that bothers me, I have a little mantra I recite in my head. It keeps me from popping Xanax like Tic Tacs:
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is strong.
I have a husband who loves me very much, and I love him.
I know the last one has little to do with germs and infection, but it calms me down to think about Matt. Still, there’s only so much I can tolerate. Food on the floor is ridiculous.
“Lisa,” I say. “Luke dropped the lettuce.”
She laughs. “There will be plenty more on the floor before he’s done. Don’t worry. Anna, you don’t have to clean it up…”
But I’m already picking it up with a paper towel. What if someone steps on it and it gets ground into the floor? What if I step on it? Tell me, how can you leave food just lying on the floor? Matt would never do such a thing.
“Maybe you need to increase your medication dosage?” Lisa casually suggests as she unstraps Luke from his booster seat. She ruffles his wispy blond hair, pops a pacifier in his mouth, and allows him to toddle away.
I know Lisa is trying to get a rise out of me. She’s trying to act like I’m the unreasonable one for not wanting food on the floor.
“Kids are messy,” she says. “It’s a fact of life.”
I shrug and drop back into my seat. Lisa might tease me about my medication dosage, but prior to my current pill regimen, I used to spend at least an hour cleaning Lisa’s house every time I visited. If not for the medications circulating through my blood stream, I would have the mop out and would be doing the entire kitchen floor as we speak. And look at that sink full of dirty dishes—I would never have been able to let that go.
“You have to learn to live with a little mess,” Lisa says. “After all, what are you going to do when you and Matt have kids?”
I shake my head. “Matt and I aren’t going to have kids.”
“Oh really?” My sister raises her finely plucked eyebrows. She has time for her eyebrows but not her kitchen floor. I don’t understand her priorities. “Not that I think it’s a bad idea, but does Matt know this?”
I feel a tiny twinge of panic in my chest. There’s a bottle of Xanax in my purse that I try not to use unless I
absolutely need it. I don’t need it now. “He and I are on the same page.”
“Really?” Lisa’s lips curl into a smile. “That isn’t what he said to Jake.”
Luke trips over his own tiny feet and falls onto the floor. He’s so short that it isn’t a bad spill—not like the ones I saw Matt take before he started using his wheelchair all the time. But Luke’s pacifier pops out of his mouth and he wails, drool dripping from his soft pink lips.
Lisa bends over and scoops the pacifier up off the floor. She hands it to Luke, who pops it back in his mouth, mollified. I stare at my sister in horror.
“You gave him a pacifier from the floor?” I gasp.
She laughs. “Well, he already eats Cheerios off the floor. Why not?”
“Oh no.” I reach over and pluck the pacifier from my nephew’s lips. That poor child! The floor of this kitchen is absolutely disgusting—people walk on it. There’s probably rotting food on it, based on the display I just saw. I won’t let Luke have a pacifier in his mouth that was just on that floor. He could die!
I empty a large glob of dish detergent into my hand and start scrubbing at the pacifier. Luke is wailing again without his pacifier, but I don’t feel one bit bad about it. He’ll have to wait for a clean pacifier. He doesn’t know better than to eat off the floor, but Lisa should.
“For Christ’s sake, Anna,” Lisa says. “It’s clean.”
Lisa doesn’t even know what clean is. Nothing in this house is clean. But when I get done with this pacifier, it will be safe for Luke to put in his mouth.
Except when I finish cleaning it, I still feel uneasy. The floor is so dirty. It can’t possibly be enough to simply clean the pacifier with soap and water and expect it to be clean. It will be in his mouth.
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is strong.
I have a husband who loves me very much, and I love him.
No, it’s not working. I have to sterilize this pacifier.
Baby Crazy (Matt & Anna Book 2) Page 2
