by C. C. Morian
Her phone was on the counter, the message indicator lit. A text from Richard. Trembling, she read it. ‘That would be great. I have something to talk to you about as well.’
Shit. What could it be? Something at work? Another whole sequence of conversations ran through her head. What did you want to talk about Melissa? You first, Richard. And he’d tell her about some problem or other with his boss, or even worse, something good happening, a raise, and then he’d say, Now what did you want to talk about? Then she’d be stuck, having to tell him, ruining the moment, maybe ruining everything.
Or she’d chicken out.
The sound of a car pulling into the driveway froze Melissa. This was it. Normally she wasn’t afraid of much at all—the things most people feared rarely fazed her at all. She had bungee jumped. Eaten weird foods. Even cliff dived. She wasn’t really a thrill seeker, she was just confident. Even speaking in front of a large audience didn’t bother her. But for one of the few times in her life she felt unsure of herself, not knowing exactly what to do.
Yet the confident part of herself kept reminding her that something was wrong with her marriage that had to be fixed. Vern, insufferable as he was, had been right about one thing: she needed something. Maybe Vern had been right about more than that, but she wouldn’t let herself think of that now.
Either their marriage had to change, or Melissa had to. The alternative was to always wonder, to always know there was something missing.
She turned on some music, something soothing. It didn’t do much for her nerves but she hoped it would set a tone.
Which wine? Staring at the bottles her mind suddenly went blank, escaping. That’s how Richard found her, seemingly absorbed in an intense scrutiny of wine labels.
He had to repeat Melissa’s name twice before she looked up.
“Are you okay?” His voice was soft, concerned. Melissa was immediately struck by how different he spoke to her than had Vern, the biker even now intruding on her. Richard, caring, wanting to help, but in some ways helpless to give her what she needed.
She couldn’t turn to face him, not yet. “No, just deciding on which wine would be better.”
Richard was by her side, just standing there in the kitchen closer to her than he had been in days, a reminder of the physical space they shared.
“Can I help?” he asked.
And there it was, the invitation, the opening she needed, she just had to admit it, tell him what she desperately wanted. Screw the wine! I need you to take me! I need you to know what I want, what I need, and give it to me, not ask me!
Like Vern had done.
Was it fair to compare them? Especially to compare the best of what Vern offered to everything that Richard was, all the while ignoring the loathsome part of Vern?
If only you could create a man out of puzzle pieces.
She hated herself for being so selfish. Handing Richard the corkscrew she said, “Why don’t you decide.” She looked up into his eyes, which held their usual intensity, a look that others found distracting but she had become accustomed to. Richard’s eyes were actually more intense than any man she had been with, stronger than Vern, and even Marcus; they held her, they were what saw through her, it was how he read her, why she could not lie to him.
And yet—the force in his eyes didn’t carry to the rest of him, his thoughts were gentle, his heart kinder and more caring.
How unfair life could be, that her mind could be excited by this, but her body could not. Not in the way she wanted.
You could learn to love someone, she thought. Not be in love, but at least love. But it was impossible to learn to lust for someone.
Melissa watched her husband as he opened the wine, sure with his hands. Not an artist, but competent. The way he made love. All his motions correct, everything where it should be, working, and yet the whole thing a little mechanical, as if he had read it in a book.
Except, she had to admit, the few times recently, when they had used Richard’s fantasy; then it had been different, not wildness and utter abandon, but far more passionate.
He filled the glasses, handing one to her. Melissa took a sip, not really tasting it, something else was not right. Then she realized that Richard hadn’t glanced at his phone, hadn’t looked at the mail, hadn’t done any of the things he normally did when he first got home.
Melissa had been so preoccupied with her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed his tenseness.
“Is everything okay?” she asked automatically, the very question that she dreaded he would ask her. “Something at work?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean, everything at work is okay. But I’ve got something else I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you say you had something on your mind?”
Here it was, just as she had pictured it, the scenario playing out. She prevaricated. “Let’s go sit and relax a little. I’ll just keep the dinner warming.”
Melissa turned down the cooker and took a few moments to gather herself before heading into the living room. Richard was in one of the easy chairs. She sat on the sofa, facing him. He was sitting stiffly, his wine on the coffee table, waiting expectantly.
It had the feeling of a business meeting.
She wanted him closer, if they were going to talk about anything personal, it shouldn’t really be like this, even this little distance a great gulf. But would the confession of her betrayal seem any less horrible if they were closer together?
“Why don’t you come and sit near me,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
“What? Sure.” Richard got up and moved to the sofa, sitting not next to her but at the other end. Still some distance, but it was better.
“I—.” They both started at the same time, stopped, then both said, “You first.”
Melissa laughed, the confusion and formal politeness a small break in the tension. Now was the time to just come out with it—
But Richard spoke first. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us, about our—problems. There. I said it. Our problems.”
Melissa heard the words but it took a moment for them to register; she had been concentrating on what she was going to say. This wasn’t what she was expecting.
“I know you are really unhappy,” Richard went on. “About more than the sex. I guess I’ve known it for a long time. I’ve been avoiding it, thinking it would go away. Or just wishing it would. I’m sorry.”
Melissa was shaking her head, feeling his anguish, seeing it in his tense posture. “I’m not unhappy.”
Richard’s eyes bored into her, that power again, and she tried to meet his gaze, but even as she fought to do so she felt herself shrinking back into her end of the couch.
“Melissa.” His voice was full of knowing.
She tried to deflect him. “Maybe we’ve had a few issues. What couple doesn’t?”
“It’s not what you thought it would be, is it?”
And with that, he had captured it all.
She tried one last time. “It’s just me. I just need to—recalibrate.”
Richard smiled, but it was a sad smile. “That’s so like you. Trying to take the responsibility. It’s one of the reasons I love you, because you take responsibility for your actions.”
Melissa started, her eyes widening, wondering if Richard already knew. Of course not, he wouldn’t have started the conversation this way. Or was he giving her a way out? No, he wouldn’t have brought up the whole topic of responsibility. But when she told him about Vern, he would think she would, or should, be responsible for what she had allowed to happen.
She reached for her wine to hide her apprehension. “You can’t expect to be the only one to take responsibility. This—whatever we are dealing with—certainly isn’t your fault.”
Richard’s eyes widened. “I don’t care whose fault it is! I just want to fix it. I know you are unhappy. I just don’t know how to fix that.”
Maybe it was something that couldn’t b
e fixed. The thought came to Melissa unbidden, but she pushed it away. She wasn’t willing to go there yet. “Things are a little better lately,” she said.
“You mean we’re having more sex.” His voice was flat, a statement of fact. “I know. But look what it took to make that happen. I have to think about you with other men to get us in the mood.”
“To get you in the mood,” she said, instantly regretting it, her words much harsher than she intended. She saw the pain on his face, her words stinging more than if she had slapped him.
Melissa’s first thought was to apologize, but she was suddenly angry. It wasn’t all her fault. She wasn’t the one who needed his fantasies, she didn’t need to be thinking of other men. She just needed Richard to be—
Someone else.
The hopelessness of it engulfed her. She made a sound, like a sad laugh. What could she have been thinking? That the man she had known for all these years, the man she had married because he wasn’t someone like Marcus, would magically turn into someone else?
Her reaction seemed to confuse Richard. Maybe he had been expecting an apology for her harsh words. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Or everything.” Melissa gulped her wine and set the glass down, noticing that Richard had barely touched his. Without asking she picked up his glass.
“I wonder if a relationship is like wine,” she mused, staring at ruby liquid. “There’s one magical moment when it has all the promise in the world, but you never know what it is going to be like until you open the bottle. It can be bad, or wonderful, or surprising, or just okay. Our relationship has never been bad. We’re both too smart to have made the mistake of getting married if that had been true.” She had fallen into Richard’s conversation mode, clinical, holding her emotion at bay.
“A lot of wines get better with age,” said Richard, with just a hint of a lighter tone, trying his best.
“Ours isn’t,” she said. “It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better.”
“And that isn’t acceptable to you, is it?”
Melissa should have been crying, and Richard should have been at least emotional, but here they were, talking as if it were somebody else’s life. Maybe this was her way of staying sane, at least for the length of this conversation.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Honestly I don’t. But you are right, if you ask me today if I am completely happy I’d say no. I can’t tell you if that feeling will go away. I can’t tell you if it is a matter of unrealistic expectations on my part. I can only tell you what I feel.”
Richard surprised her by reaching for her hand, and then pulling her toward him, taking her in an embrace. It was a little awkward, half reclining on the couch, but it felt good, comforting, loving. Why wasn’t this enough?
His voice was quiet, soothing. “Admitting the problem is the first step. That’s true for both of us.”
She buried her head against her shoulder, and she could feel the tears coming. Her whole world coming apart. “I know. I just don’t know what to do next.”
The music had ended, the house completely quiet. They stayed that way for quite a while, in the melancholy embrace.
Richard waited until she had stopped crying, then finally broke the silence. “I need to ask you something. Please be honest. What is it that you feel is missing? What is it that we don’t have?”
Melissa hesitated. How to answer that? Was this really the time to be brutally honest? What could she say, that she needed more passion, and more than that, more thrill? More spontaneity? More wild, out of control sex? Could those things be created? Or were they just there, or not there?
She moved her head so she could look directly at him. This wasn’t the time to be hiding. “It’s hard to explain. It’s just different from what I expected.”
“Or what you wanted?”
“Not exactly. Not all of it. Most of it is just fine. In fact, most of it is great. You are a good man. I’m lucky to have you. You work hard. You support me emotionally. You never second guess anything I do. We’re partners, we make decisions together. And most of all, I trust you implicitly. I can’t tell you how important that is for me.” Melissa shook her head. “When I list all the good things, I feel like an idiot for even thinking there is something missing. Most other women would kill for someone like you, for a marriage like we have.”
“But—,” he prodded.
“It’s not fair to even say it,” she said, meaning it.
“You said we are partners. Is it fair to keep it from me? It affects me too. I can’t be happy if you are not.”
“I know. I realize that. But that doesn’t make me feel any differently. I feel it’s selfish, for me to have this long wish list, a wish list that might be so unrealistic, so impossible.”
Richard was quiet for a long time, and Melissa wondered what he was thinking. She had chosen her words carefully, trying not to place blame, but she knew if she were on the receiving end of those words she would feel that it must be her fault, that it wasn’t the marriage, it was something she was doing wrong. A typical man might not think so, but Richard wasn’t typical, at least not in that respect.
When he spoke it didn’t even sound like him, it was as if the words he must have felt forced to utter had to be disguised, or in someone else’s voice. “Do you wish you had married someone else?”
Melissa put her hand against his cheek, cradling it, trying to soften the blow. “Not in the way you think. Not someone in particular.”
Richard kissed her hand, nodding like it was what he had expected. “It is me, then. Something I’m not giving you.”
“No, no. No! You can’t say that. It might just be something we haven’t created—something we haven’t yet been able to create, together.” Melissa took a deep breath. “You have to admit, you must be missing something too. I think you’d want to be with me more, physically, if that weren’t true.”
“That isn’t it,” he argued, his voice rising. “You think I don’t want to be with you more? To have more sex? It’s because I know I’m not measuring up to what you want, what you expect. I can’t face it. It freezes me.”
She pulled back, confused. “What are you saying?”
“I can’t be what I’m not. I can’t be what you need in bed. I tried. But I’m so not what you want that you probably didn’t even notice. I don’t have the capability. It’s not in me.”
Melissa squinted in confusion. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I’ve been thinking about these fantasies I’ve been having, about you with someone else. I’m not blind. I may not know exactly what you want from me sexually, but I do know you in other ways. Admit it, thinking about other men turned you on.”
Melissa felt her eyes slide away and forced herself to look back at him. “Maybe that was because I saw how excited you got.”
“Even if that was part of it, and even though I am grateful to you for even saying it that way, you can’t fool me. You got aroused. So there’s something you were thinking about that’s missing from what we are doing. And I realized that I was getting excited because of just that—that I was finally giving you what you wanted. Even if you weren’t thinking of me.”
Melissa wasn’t ready to give in so easily, this was dangerous territory, and not the kind of danger she liked. “It might have been just the newness of it, the surprise. You talking about sex. Talking dirty. Doing something different. Something new.”
“Another maybe. But let me ask you this. Are there other men you have been with who have given you what I have not? Men who have totally satisfied you sexually?”
Melissa was shaking her head even before Richard finished. “We said we’d never talk about the specifics of our sex lives with other people. Neither one of us were hermits or virgins when we got married. I know you slept with women, you know I slept with men. We don’t need to go into particulars.”
Richard pressed on. “So this—ideal you have about what we are missing, it’s more than som
ething sexual? If it is, tell me what it is, and I’ll leave it be.”
Melissa had no answer to that.
“You see?” Richard said.
He wasn’t accusing her, or sounding triumphant. Just another fact that Melissa could not deny.
Richard went on, it sounded like he had thought this through. “It is something physical. And I never have thought you to be a wide eyed girl, with some dreamy vision of a romance novel hero in your eyes. So whatever it is that you feel is missing, it’s not some guess, it’s a reality. Which means it is something you’ve experienced. With someone else.”
His eyes were burning into her, his shoulders tense, sure of his conclusions, but still, Melissa thought, hoping she would deny it.
If she did, Richard would know she was lying. She trusted him, she said that and she meant it. If he lied to her it would destroy whatever they had. There would be nothing to rebuild on. She knew he needed to trust her the same way. He’d be crushed if she lied.
And crushed if she told him the truth.
“The women you were with, they couldn’t have all been the same in bed,” she said. It was the best she could do, skirting the answer.
“Of course. A lot of differences. Some were better than others, and I’m sure they thought the same of the men they had been with.” Richard reached for her hand again. “And sometimes there was just more compatibility.”
“So you see what I mean,” Melissa replied. “Just because someone has a certain set of experiences with one person doesn’t mean they will have them with everyone.”
He smiled. “You’re avoiding the issue. I’ll help you.” Gently he said, “It was Marcus, wasn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.
Melissa shook her head, something protective in her trying to deny it, even as she was whispering, “I’m sorry.”
Richard cradled her hand in both of his. “Don’t be,” he said, and he seemed to mean it.
Melissa felt the tears coming again, but she fought them off. “It would really help me now if you said you had the same experience, that there was some woman who was better than me in bed.”
