“I worry about you,” Sam said. For some reason, with his gaze on her and her hand in his, she felt her eyes start to moisten in the corners. Must be the hormones kicking in.
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“You used to love creating so much. It made you so happy.”
“Different things make me happy now.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, what about you, Sam?”
“Different things make me happy now, too,” she said. And that, at least, was true, but saying it felt like a stab in the back. What used to make her happy were the simplest things they did together: evenings out in the temperate Portland air, stopping by the ice cream place just off UP’s campus and splitting something that was all chocolate and peanut butter. Getting a pizza and curling up with a movie on his filthy couch, lying with her head in his lap. Walking campus together, feeling as if summer were endless, smelling cut grass and lying under a tree to watch students throw Frisbees. Taking her car to the self-wash, spraying each other with the pressure nozzles and going home wet. Today, though, Sam’s friendships at work made her happy. Professional growth made her happy. That happiness was real, but none involved Zach.
He nodded. A sigh passed between them, each of them thinking the same things. There was a fog over the table, of doubt and nostalgia.
Zach gave her hand a firm, final, meaningful squeeze and sat back.
“Now we’ll have a baby to be happy about,” he said. “Together.”
She forced herself to smile. “Yeah, we will.”
“It’ll be like that time we took dance lessons,” he said. “Something to do together.”
“Like jogging.”
“Like building a birdhouse.”
“Exactly like building a birdhouse,” she said.
“If your vagina could build us a birdhouse while you’re at it, that would be great.”
“So my vagina’s building the baby?”
“I just like talking about your vagina.”
“You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you? My vagina, I mean.”
“That plus a birdhouse.”
“And there’s a baby in there somewhere, too.”
“In the birdhouse? Or in your vagina?”
“One of the two,” said Sam, wanting to giggle.
“I can’t think about that baby right now,” said Zach. “I mean, I’m still excited and all, but you’ve distracted me with talk of your vagina.” His eyebrows drew together. “Have you ever noticed how if you say ‘vagina’ enough times, it starts to sound like a nonsense word? Vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina … ”
“Do you mind?” hissed the woman at the next table who’d given him the disapproving look earlier about his sparkling bottle of contraband non-alcoholic hooch.
Zach gave her an apologetic look. When she turned back to her table, he leaned forward and whispered, “She doesn’t like me talking about your vagina.”
The comment was so immature, so random, so very Zach that it surprised a snort out of Sam. She was finishing a mouthful of sparkling faux-champagne, and it dribbled from her lips, pooling on her bread plate.
“I’d like to get in on that a bit later, actually,” he said, now more serious.
“My vagina?”
“Oh yes. There’s a new party moving in there, and I’d like to get in a few more times.”
“You can have sex right up until the end,” she said. “That’s more than ‘a few more times.’ Saying it made her tingle. Their sex life hadn’t suffered much — they hit the sheets a time or two per week in a normal, friendly rhythm — but this was the most boyish he’d been about it since … well, since probably before they’d been married. Their sex now was mature and respectful and good, but back then it was awkward and playful and almost stupid. Zach cracked jokes during, threatening to break the mood with every step.
“I meant a few times right in a row. Like this.” He picked up a breadstick, made an O shape with his other hand, and slid the breadstick in and out. The woman from the other table looked back, then said something to her companions.
“So that’s how it works,” she said.
“Essentially. Except at the end, I’m going to want to unload some baggage right there on the living room floor.” He pointed across the table. “Here. Hand me that ranch dressing and I’ll show you.”
Sam slapped at his hand when he reached, then the grin returned to his face and she could feel an answering smile lighting hers. The people at the next table were whispering and staring, Zach was laughing and she was, too. It was like when they used to date, when they were two college kids with their lives spread before them.
It felt good. And why couldn’t it continue to feel good? Lives drifted; it was inevitable. She’d stopped being a journalism major and had become a journalist. Zach had stopped being a brooding collegiate art student (well, an artist first and a reluctant art student second; school was something from his parents’ and friends’ agendas) and had become a graphic designer and occasional art hobbyist. Graduation changed people, like new jobs, moves and marriages. They were different than they’d been, but it was okay. They simply had to course-correct.
The move was still new. In another six months — and certainly by the time the baby arrived — Zach would adjust to his job, and she could goad him into spending more time with his art. All she’d have to do was be honest. Right now, Zach thought he was doing right, sitting beside her. She had to help him see that the best way to make her happy was for him to create, and that the only way that would ever happen was if he spent some time alone. She could do that, and he would get it. He’d go back to creating, work his crap design job by day and be the artist he was meant to be by night. In a few years, who knew what might happen?
Any life had ups and downs, Sam had vowed to stick with her husband through both. Six months in a new city wasn’t enough time to judge. They’d equilibrate — not automatically, but with hard work — and finally, the nagging in her gut would go away.
Sam had been so nervous this morning. But sitting across from Zach with the people at the next table gawking, snorting and chuckling like they used to, she decided this was a good thing. It would be a cliché to believe a baby would save her marriage, so she kept the idea at arm’s length. Of course, a baby wouldn’t save her marriage. Not that her marriage needed saving. Sure they’d been fighting and sure things had been strange, but that was normal. Growing pains. The baby would act as a catalyst, focus them back where they should be focused. Give them a common goal. Something to work on together. Like the proverbial vaginal birdhouse.
Sam barked laughter, trying and failing to clap a hand over her mouth to stop it. This time, heads looked over all around the room.
“Sam?”
“I’m just thinking of how stupid you are,” she said.
“Thanks. I mean, a guy can never hear that enough.”
She gave him her sly, little smile, feeling a spark of the old beginning to pollute the troublesome new. Yes, things were going to be just fine.
CHAPTER FIVE
Present Day
“Fuck me,” she said.
Zach felt his stiff cock get stiffer. Sam wasn’t typically talkative or expressive during sex these days, hearing her say something so blatant was incredibly hot. As hot, in fact, as she looked in her green dress, clinging to all the right curves in all the right places. He knew she wasn’t wearing a bra; that became obvious when dinner conversation turned playful and her nipples started poking at the fabric. He wondered if she were wearing panties. He’d watched her walk to the bathroom but couldn’t tell. Weren’t panties like news? No news was supposed to be good news, so it seemed likely that no obvious panties might mean no panties. It was probably just his dick thinking; he’d never known Sam to be a no-panties girl. She could be dead sexy, but was seldom a minx. She’d make his head explode in the bedroom, but in most cases (and of course, there had been a few doozy exceptions), she kept her antics to t
he bedroom.
“Say it again.”
Instead of saying it again, Sam let Zach push her against the closet door. She mashed her lips into his as the cheap, hollow thing battered against its frame. Sam was a covert sex fiend. It was hard to rev her engine without direct fiddling, but when it happened, she burned hotter than hot. The way she was talking and instigating rough kisses meant this would be a hell of a ride.
Her hands went to his pants. For the occasion, Zach had worn a belt. She tried to get it by feel, but couldn’t manage. She looked down, and his mouth missed her. He waited for her to figure out the belt and return to kiss him while reaching down to stroke his cock, instead she slid down him like a fire pole, squatting in front of him as her hands pawed long lines on his chest. She went to her knees, turned Zach around, and pushed him back so he was against the closet door. She turned her blue eyes up. Her hands stroked lower, made broad movements over his slacks. He stiffened beneath them. Her long, delicate fingers opened his belt, then unclasped and unzipped his pants. She looked back up, and their eyes met. His black belt flapped open on each side of her elegantly-piled curls.
Her hand rubbed him through his boxers, cupping his bulge and gripping it hungrily.
“I love you,” he said.
“The moment seems to call for something dirtier,” she replied.
“I just wanted to say it. I love you.”
A strange look crossed her eyes. She blinked and said, “Well, I love you, too.” She stood, trancelike, and walked to the edge of the bed. Zach stood with his back to the closet door, cock raging in his pants, unsure what had just happened. At first he thought she might spread her legs and give him a show, then he realized her eyes were wet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sam, what?”
“I’m just emotional. Hormones, I guess.”
He crossed to the bed, warring with a husband’s desire to comfort his wife and a man’s desire to have her back on her knees, taking his cock in her mouth. He sat and put an arm around her. His open pants mocked him.
“Usually, ‘I love you’ is a good thing,” he said.
“Of course it is. It’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” That was his word, not hers.
Sam leaned sideways, wrapped her hands around his chest. “Yes, beautiful. I love you, Zach. You’re my world.”
“Um … ”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For this. I don’t know what it is.”
“Hormones. Like you said.”
“I guess.”
“The hormones picked a bad time,” Zach added.
Sam laughed, then sniffed.
She lay against him for a moment. He fought the feeling in his gut, a bit disgusted with how male he felt. Sam had never looked better. Her light-brown hair had a shine even in their shitty apartment’s winking overhead lights. Her neck was smooth and long and tan. From above, he could look down and see how it peeked below her green dress, going on forever in long expanses of flesh that he longed to run his fingers across. She was canted just so, allowing him a view down into her cleavage. Sam’s breasts weren’t large, but they were the most perfect set he’d ever touched. He wondered if they’d change with a baby. He supposed they would. He was cool with that. The rest of Sam would change, too. And he was cool with all of it. Her face was elegant and would remain so; her manner could be playful and would stay that way; her heart was pure, and Zach could imagine it no other way. Even through their past few rough months, he’d never stopped admiring her for who and what she was.
“I’m totally cockblocking you,” she said.
“Without question. But it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No worries. And on a completely separate topic, do you mind if I go into the bathroom for a few minutes? Don’t be alarmed if you hear some light rattling. I’m thinking about cleaning the air ducts.”
Sam laughed. But again, Zach was serious. Women didn’t understand that for men, sex and love weren’t always separate and were usually connected, just not in the same way as they were for women. Women complained that men had sex on one hand and love on another, but it was never that way for Zach. Sure, he could screw a girl without loving her, but loving a girl made him horny.
Truth was, they hadn’t held one another like this for months — and instead of settling him down, it was revving him up. Like back in the days of their casual touching … which, more often than not, led to less casual touching. It wasn’t just the sex, it was the intimacy. Sam used to lay her head on his chest or lap when they were watching TV or reading. They’d engage in spontaneous, long hugs — when one intuited that the other needed it or just because. But since the move, that had mostly stopped. It had nothing to do with a lack of affection … not in Zach’s mind, anyway. He was simply tired. Not physically, but a sinister species of soul-tired. He’d felt recently drained and filled with malaise, and that left him with nothing — for art in his studio, himself with a good book, or Sam. There was a time when he’d been so full of bliss that everything around him was touched. But that time was in the past.
The warm, smooth, beautiful woman lying across him, close in a way she hadn’t been since their brighter days together, was only making his situation worse.
“You didn’t want to move here,” she said.
He laughed. It wasn’t a cruel laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. Of course he hadn’t wanted to move. They’d fought about it for weeks. Portland was vibrant and alive. All of his friends were there. So were his creative peers. Guys like Walter, who had already made three careers with two phone calls. And she wanted to move to Memphis? Worse: She wanted to move for a journalism job? Sam was a talented writer; Zach was actually jealous of the emotion, spirit, and soul she could imbue in a piece of writing. He’d met her as a journalism major, but had always hoped it was only a fallback, that Sam would try her hand at expressing pure talent first. The job offer burned that bridge. It was a good offer at a good salary, and that was the problem. Good was often the enemy of great, and if Sam took the good job with the online newspaper, that would be the end of her chance to be a great artist. Sam didn’t see it as a conceit. For her, it was a victory. So, she’d wanted to move, and that desire was strong enough to trump even the guilt she’d seemed to feel at pulling him from Portland. He could have stayed, of course, and she’d halfheartedly suggested that he do so, but they had both felt the damned-if-you-do nature of their reality. The best thing for Zach — just Zach, by himself — would be to stay in Portland. Memphis was best for Sam. Their marriage needed them in the same place at the same time, so there was no way to win.
“I didn’t want to make you move,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not, though. You’re suffocating.”
“I’ll be okay. Honest. I just haven’t found my roots yet.”
“Are there roots for an artist in Memphis?”
“Of course.”
“An artist like you?”
He sighed. “I don’t know, baby.”
“It sucks,” she said.
“It doesn’t suck.”
“I know how miserable you are. You were happier in Portland.” Sam looked up at Zach, her big, blue eyes moist. “Do you think we made a mistake?”
“If we’d stayed, you’d have felt like I feel now.”
Shit. He wasn’t supposed to say that.
“So you aren’t happy.”
“I’m happy being with you. I want to be where you are.”
She shook her head. “That’s not an answer, Zach. This can’t be all about me.”
“I’m all yours.” He tried on a smile, found it ill-fitting.
“You should have stayed in Portland.”
“It wasn’t an option. We weren’t going to get a divorce.” The word felt like a knife, so he tried to dull it with, “Never.”
She sighed, gripping him tighter.
It
had been an option, though. That was the most horrible part of it all. They hadn’t tried to figure the logistics of a long-distance relationship, as doomed an effort as that would’ve been. The options were to stay married and together, or go their separate ways and get a divorce. Because in truth, distance had grown even before Sam’s offer. The move was easy to blame for their recent awkwardness, but the move was merely an accelerant. If they were honest, both had to admit they were changing. Growing up. It was no one’s fault, and that made it so insidious. Couple’s counseling couldn’t prevent you or your spouse from growing up.
He pulled them apart, gently, allowing Sam to keep her hands around him, moving to meet her eyes. He said, “This is a happy time.”
She nodded.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Not to be a guy about this, but I think this is pregnancy stuff. I’m not dismissing it, or calling you an overly emotional woman or anything like that. I’m just saying the reason you’re on about this stuff, now, with good news between us, might be chemistry.”
Sam swallowed. “I know.”
“I won’t tell you to get over it. But don’t get worked up, OK?”
“You’re so cute when you’re trying to backpedal.” Sam smiled, blinking tears from her eyes.
“Hey, I have to protect myself. Men get in trouble for these things. Say … you’re not on your period, are you? I hear periods make broads all bitchy and sobby.”
“Again, you display a stunning knowledge of female biology.”
Zach made his eyes hard, earnest. “I’d never have stayed behind without you. I’d rather adjust here, even if it takes time, than leave you. And I am adjusting. Carl at work paints. We were talking about it a few days ago, actually.”
Together Apart: Change is Never Easy Page 4
