Oliver and Erica

by Desiree Span

  She held me for as long as I needed, until I was able to pull myself together again. She cradled my head in her hands and dried my tears, brushing back my hair, whispering comforting words. Then she pulled my face closer and kissed me softly. First my forehead, then my eyes and cheeks. With her hands still on each side of my face, she then took my mouth, like she had done so many years ago.

  I felt an overflow of emotions of sadness, despair, love and sheer happiness of having her here, and I dug myself into her embrace. I took off her damp coat and all the other obstacles between me and her skin. And she desperately undid me of my black, grieving garments. Without searching we found the old sofa and it was there where I made love to her, devouring every inch of her body, giving the remainder of my soul to her. And she consumed me, taking away any slight possibility I had left of ever getting over her.

  * * *

  She lay there snuggly in my arms for what seemed like blissful eternity. Her head was resting on my chest and I could still taste her on my lips, feel her heart beating and hear her breathing. And I didn’t dare move, afraid of breaking the only moment in which I had a shred of hope — more so, the illusion — that she could once more be completely mine. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes and tried my best to memorize her scent, her taste, and every detail of the moment.

  “I’m sorry... for all of it,” she then whispered, breaking the silence. “I wasn’t there for you when you lost your son. When you most needed it. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, I was so angry with you and then with myself and I felt extremely hurt. But that’s no excuse.” She sighed. “And then later, well, I wanted to call or write to apologize, but too much time had passed and I was too ashamed.”

  She lifted her head, her braid falling over her bare breast, and looked at me intensely. She ran her hand over my cheek and then my hair. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?” she asked.

  “You are here now and that’s what matters to me,” I said, and I pulled her back in toward me and kissed her passionately.

  I could take my time now. The desperation of my hunger for her had slightly been calmed down. I positioned her underneath me and while I hovered above her, placing my hands on both her sides, I teased her by licking her neck, nibbling her ears and tasting her breasts. I continued down her stomach, leaving a wet trace behind, and then I kissed the scar on her pelvis — a symbol of her motherhood. I went down further, and kept on teasing her with my mouth, until her yearning peaked. She cried out softly, with her back arched and her fingers tangled in my hair. And then I made love to her once more, long and slow. I just couldn’t get enough of her.

  * * *

  After we had made love, she slowly put on her clothes and told me she was here for a week or so and staying with her parents. I told her she could not leave without us seeing each other again and she smiled and nodded.

  * * *

  We agreed to meet two days later at a place that lay outside town and had a dozen or so cottages, on the edge of a forest. It was low season therefore the place was empty and I had no trouble making reservations. The cottage had a bedroom, a bathroom with a tub, and a kitchenette adjoining a cozy living room with a fireplace. At the end of the living room one could reach a small terrace through sliding doors, and from there we could appreciate the beautiful view of a lake surrounded by majestic trees.

  I stopped on the way for provisions at a mini-market and arrived a little early. I picked up the key at the reception desk and drove toward our cottage, where I was now waiting anxiously for her.

  What if she didn’t show? What if she had regretted everything and didn’t dare come? I had already put our provisions in the kitchenette cupboards and mini fridge and was pacing around nervously when I finally saw her coming up the drive way in a rental car. She parked next to my car, stepped out and as soon I opened the door for her she flung herself into my arms and gave me a breathtaking kiss, which led to us making love as if it was for the first time. All this time I felt ecstatic and was still not able to believe she was actually here, with me.

  That night I made a fire in the fireplace while she poured us both a glass of wine and then she cuddled next to me on the couch. I wrapped my arm around her and there we sat quietly, both in thought, contemplating the crackling fire.

  My laptop was on, softly playing music, when the most beautiful tune filled our room. Erica closed her eyes for a second and smiled.

  “This song has always reminded me so much of you,” she said while slowly opening her eyes and she lovingly placed her hand on my cheek.

  I turned my face inward and cupping her hand with my own, I kissed the palm of it. “I’ll never be able to make you understand how much I’ve missed you,” I whispered.

  With the nostalgic melody playing on the background, I made love to her again, and with the warmth of the fireplace glowing on our bodies, she fell asleep in my arms.

  She gave me three unforgettable days. We hiked in the forest, cooked meals together, took long baths in the tub and spent the remaining time in bed. We talked for hours; laughed and cried, about everything and nothing. As if desperately wanting to make up for all those lost years.

  But then on the morning of the fourth day, just at the break of dawn, I felt her slip out of my arms and step out of bed. I instantly felt a knot in my gut, for I knew that this was the end. The end of whatever it was that we had had these couple of days. I could hear her getting dressed so I turned on the light on the dresser beside the bed. She looked at me and gave me a weak smile, while she finished dressing. The whole time I didn’t say a word and I was glad she didn’t either, for I was afraid that she might ask me to pretend this hadn’t happened or to forget about it all.

  I stood up as well and got dressed.

  “Do you want to eat something before you go?” I asked quietly, trying to stall.

  She shook her head and avoided looking at me while she finished packing the few belongings she had brought with her. When she was done she put on her coat and walked over to me. She looked up at me and gently caressed my cheek. This was it. She was leaving. Again. I took her hand from my face, kissed it and held onto it, squeezing it lightly.

  “If there’s such a thing as a soulmate, then... then it’s you. You’re my soulmate, Erica, and I have never stopped loving you,” I said. And I knew my declaration of love wouldn’t make a difference in what was the inevitable. But I needed to say it. She needed to know that through all these years she still owned my heart.

  She took my face in her hands and kissed me tenderly on the lips. “I have to go home,” she whispered sadly, her lips against mine. She then slowly turned away from me, but when she was about to leave out the door, she walked back to me and hugged me tightly. With her head buried in my neck she said, “I love you too. I love you so much, Olly,” and with every word she tightened her embrace. And then, she looked up at me once more, pressed her lips hard against mine one last time and was gone.

  * * *

  I never really understood why I didn’t stop her, run after her; convince her to stay. I knew that if I had tried, really insisted, she might never have left. But I guess it was the way she had looked at me when she told me she had to go home; home to her husband and her children. She had silently pleaded with me to let her go. And I did, knowing that without her I would be miserable forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ERICA

  2015

  * * *

  “Do you still love me?” he asked solemnly.

  I was staring at my hands. They were folded on the kitchen table. It was 11 in the morning and we had been sitting at this table for the past three hours. It had been torture, but also a relief; a relief to finally be talking again.

  Jan looked at me with sad eyes and it suddenly struck me how tired he looked; as if defeated. He ran his fingers through his hair, sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. A gesture I had seen way too often these last weeks.

  * * *

  It had been three weeks sin
ce my father had called me to give me the sad news of Peter Blake’s passing. I had told Jan it was a good friend of my dad that had died and that he would appreciate it if I was there. But deep down the truth was that I had gone to see him. To see Oliver.

  Eight years had passed since Jan and I had argued over me never mentioning Oliver before, and his name had not come up afterwards. But still I had deliberately not told Jan who exactly it was that had passed away. I guess I just didn’t want him to disapprove of me going. He had been so helpful and had tried his best to get me a flight as soon as possible. He had arranged for the kids to stay with his parents while he drove me to the airport, and he had lovingly kissed me good-bye. And then I had gone and hurt him in the worst way possible.

  I had come back from the States and as soon as I was home and Jan and I were alone, I took a deep breath and confessed my infidelity, sparing him the fact that we had actually spent three whole days together. I felt terrible because Jan didn’t deserve this, and I felt terrible because I had no regrets. In fact, I felt I was a terrible person, period.

  I wanted to tell Jan the whole story. Of how Oliver had lost a child and now his father. I wanted to tell him of Oliver’s grief, and that I had gone because I wanted to be there for him. And that it had honestly not been with the intention of sleeping with him; that it had just simply happened. But, even in my head this sounded like crap and I could completely understand if he never forgave me. But still, I tried to persuade him to at least give me a chance to explain.

  But Jan wasn’t interested in reason or explanations of any kind. I had betrayed him, our marriage, the girls; well, just about everyone and everything we had cherished as a couple. He didn’t even yell at me. He just grabbed his coat and walked out, slamming the door.

  I waited up for him that night, but in vain. The next day he sent me a message letting me know he needed some time. Time to think. And two long days went by for him to finally come home. It was around 10 p.m. when I heard his key turn and the door fall shut quietly. I was sitting in the living room and felt my stomach turn nervously. I could hear him hang up his coat and lay his keys on the tray that sat on a side table in the hall. And then there he was. He walked in the living room and sat down on the sofa facing mine. He looked terrible and smelled like cigarettes and strong liquor. Jan didn’t smoke and he barely drank.

  I felt like yelling, screaming and slapping him in the face. How could he just disappear on me like that? Leave me worried sick, wondering about his whereabouts. How could he just stay away, and what about the girls?

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even ask him where he had been or if he was okay. I felt I had lost that right the moment I slept with Oliver. So I just sat there and waited for him to start talking.

  “I’ve been trying to... well... I guess, understand what the hell is happening. And to be honest, I just can’t. Because I can’t possibly find any excuse, or twisted logic in what you’ve done to me... done to us,” he said stammering through his sentences. “It’s like... I don’t even know you.”

  I tried to say something, but he held up his hand, shutting me up. “Please, let me finish!” he said. “I simply just don’t understand. I realized that it all comes down to this: I can either accept the fact that you did this or I can’t.” He stared at me, his eyes red, his face unshaven, his shirt wrinkled. He was a mess.

  “And, what have you decided?” I whispered.

  “Well that’s just the damn thing, Erica. I can’t decide. Because if I don’t accept it, I will lose my family and everything else I love. But my head, and certainly my heart, isn’t ready to accept this,” he said angrily with tears in his eyes.

  I almost didn’t dare ask, but I had to. “Uhm, so what are you going to do?”

  “I... don’t know.” He paused for a while and swallowed visibly. “I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going to bed,” he said quietly, and he stood up and walked out the living room.

  I listened to him walk up the stairs and I knew he had gone to see the girls sleep, for I heard him shut their doors as quietly as possible. I then heard him walk down the hall and into the bathroom. I stood up and turned off all the lights and followed him up the stairs.

  I opened the bathroom door and a cloud of steam welcomed me as I walked in. I could see his tall silhouette under the hot shower. He was leaning against the wall. His head bowed, his shoulders hanging and his eyes shut. He just stood there, washing away all his misery.

  It broke my heart to see him like that, to see what I had done to him. I took off my clothes and stepped in the shower with him. But he turned his back toward me, his arms stretched and hands spread against the wall; his head still hanging, the water pouring on his head and down his face; never opening his eyes.

  I took the bottle of shampoo out of the rack and poured some in the palm of my hands. I then rubbed my hands together to make lather, stood on tiptoes and started washing his hair.

  I expected him to pull away but he didn’t, so I kept on massaging his scalp. His back was still toward me, but he had slowly tilted his head up for me to be able to somewhat reach from behind. I finished washing his hair, then reached for the sponge, put some of the foam on it and worked my way down his back, massaging him all the way down to his ankles. I then slowly came up again and stopped halfway to deliberately focus on sponging his backside and then his manhood. I immediately noticed the effects of my massage and couldn’t help feeling a bit relieved that I could still arouse him. Did it mean that there was still hope for us?

  Suddenly he turned around, grabbed me by both arms and lifted me up to my feet. We stared at each other for a fraction of a second and I couldn’t make out what he was thinking. His expression was blank. I then, carefully, tried to kiss him but he jerked his head away and abruptly turned me around. With my back toward him, he grabbed my hair a little too tight, pulling my head back. And there, in the shower, with my hair clutched in one hand and my breast firmly in the other, he pushed himself inside of me and took me; hard.

  There was no feeling in his actions; no passion, no caresses, and he didn’t tenderly whisper loving words in my ear when it ended. He was just claiming back what had been taken away from him. He just fucked me, came fast and then he shoved me aside. Hastily, he cleaned himself up under the shower and stepped out. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it around his waist, and before leaving the bathroom said, “You can’t fuck your way out of this one, Erica. I’ll be sleeping in the guestroom from now on.” And as he shut the door, I burst into tears. And that was it. After that he didn’t speak to me, let alone touch me again.

  * * *

  He slept in the guestroom every night, left for work at the break of dawn and came back late in the evening. And there were nights when he didn’t come home at all. On the weekends he would take the girls and disappear for the day. And sometimes he would send me a short message on Friday simply stating: I’ll be back with the girls on Sunday.

  I had no idea where he ate or where he would disappear to. After three weeks of this I had had enough. This couldn’t go on any longer. This was either over or we had to at least try to fix it. But this silent treatment was just unbearable.

  So on a Friday night, I waited up for him and when he finally came home from work I was sitting on the staircase, blocking his way, just in case he fled upstairs as he had done every night.

  “We have to talk,” I said, as soon as he closed the door behind him. He looked at me, kind of surprised.

  “I’m tired, Erica,” he said and tried to pass by me.

  “I understand, but we either talk now or put an end to it, Jan. I can’t do this anymore... I just... I just won’t,” I said, standing up and putting my hands on my hips.

  “I see,” he paused. “But I’m exhausted. So you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure? You aren’t going to run off to, God knows where, as soon as the sun comes up? Or disappear for days?” I said, exasperated. “I know what I did hurt you immensely
, Jan, and I can’t ask you to forgive me, but this thing you are doing... punishing me by ignoring me... refusing to talk to me... it... well, it has lasted long enough. Make a choice, Jan. Talk to me or this is over. ’Cause I’m done!”

  Jan looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in weeks. He then sighed deeply and, as if he had just made up his mind, said, “Okay. I’ll bring the girls over to my parents first thing in the morning. We’ll be alone. We can talk then.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I took a step to the side, giving him free passage.

  And as he walked up the stairs he softly said, “Good night.”

  Those two words had never given me such feeling of hope before.

  And there we were, at the kitchen table, and we cried and shouted, but we finally talked. And then the question arose, the one I had been expecting for weeks.

  “Do you still love me?” he asked. And the answer was yes, of course I loved him. For the past fifteen years he had been my best friend, my partner and the father of my children.

  “Of course I do,” I reassured him.

  But in my mind that wasn’t the issue here. The question I was trying to answer for myself was: Is it possible to love two people at the same time — for your heart to belong to one and your soul to another? I knew Oliver had been and always would be a part of me, but until three weeks earlier I had accepted the fact that I would spend the rest of my life without him and had ignored the heartache that caused. Over the years, his memory had become like this old tune of the past you can’t get out of your head and you catch yourself humming from time to time. You then wonder how long you’ve been singing that song unintentionally and realize it’s been forever. But now Oliver’s song wasn’t a tune I unconsciously hummed anymore; it was once again, a loud, ear-deafening symphony.