by M. E. Carter
“I don’t know if we’re gonna make it, Victoria,” I finally say quietly.
“Why not?”
“I love him so much. He’s been my best friend for over ten years. And I have no doubt he loves me unconditionally.”
“So then what’s the problem?”
“I think… I think a marriage can’t be based on love. It has to be built on trust. How can I trust him again?” I feel the tears coming, but I refuse to cry. “How can I trust that when he goes out of town for his job, he isn’t falling back into the same patterns? And even if he doesn’t go looking for it, how can I ever trust that one of his teammates won’t bring around some young hottie with no morals? He isn’t the only one doing this. It’s so many of them. And he didn’t just have an affair, Victoria. He has never been faithful to me. Ever.”
“I can see that. But my question is, can you forgive him?”
I think for a second and she just lets me sort through my thoughts. “I think I didn’t know the depth of his own grief until yesterday, and that moved me toward forgiving him. Like I’ll get there eventually, even if I’m not quite there yet. And if I can get there, then maybe I would give him another chance. But I’m so afraid. I miss him so, so much. You know we have two beds in our room here and we’re not sleeping together. But just hearing him breathe while he sleeps… I’ve missed that sound. I’ve missed how comforting it is just knowing he’s there, with me. So part of me wants to just let it go, bury my head in the sand to all this drama, and take him back, no questions asked.”
“And the other part?”
I sigh. “The other part wonders how I’ll be able to function when I don’t know where he is or who he’s with. How can I live like that? With unanswered questions about his whereabouts just lingering over us? How many more pieces of myself can be broken before I disappear forever?”
“Can I ask you a question?” she asks, as she rubs her hands together, dropping excess crumbs onto her plate. I nod. “You’re a conflict avoider, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t like to debate politics or religion. You’d prefer to ignore hard topics than go through the fighting or conflict it takes to resolve them.”
“I guess. I don’t know if I’d say I avoid conflict as much as I just prefer not to get involved with unnecessary drama.”
“So then why did you go looking for answers? What was it that triggered your suspicions?”
I have to think about that answer. I’m not sure there was any one thing. I think maybe I just always knew.
“Ohmygod,” I breathe. “I think I always just knew.” My eyes snap up to hers and she watches me intently as the truth reveals itself. “I always knew and instead of calling him out, I just pretended it would go away.”
She smiles at me like I’ve finally realized what she knew all along. “Look, I know this conference is hard. Really hard. But don’t close yourself off from it. I am, by no means, giving him a pass. He is the bad guy in this situation. But you have your own work to do if this is gonna work.”
“But that’s the thing,” I say, as I stack our plates on top of each other to make more room on our table. “I have no idea if any of this is going to work at all.
Victoria helps me clean and wipes her side of the table with a napkin. “No one says you have to decide right now. We have a couple more days. Do the activities. Observe his reactions to the activities. Reflect on how you got here in the first place and if you can ever move past this on an emotional level. There’s no right or wrong answer, Mariana. It’s just the answer you can live with.”
I nod in agreement, but my mind is still swirling. That’s the biggest question of them all… what is the answer I can live with? I just don’t know.
The click of the door closing behind us sounds unusually loud compared to the silence between us. It was another hard day of therapy, and we’re both emotionally spent.
Anne had us all write a letter to our spouse and then read it to each other. In the letter, we had to apologize for our part in the downfall of our relationship. Then we had to outline what we’re going to do different from now on, and how. The hardest part, though… the hardest part was having to write what behaviors I will and won’t accept from Mari.
That one pretty much stumped me. It would be one thing if she was anything other than perfect. The only thing that I could come up with is I want her to focus on herself more. Her entire life has been about giving, and I want her to allow herself to receive more. To accept compliments and believe me when I say she’s beautiful. She struggles with that. She always has. And I made it substantially worse.
“Um, I’m gonna jump in the shower.” She takes off her shoes and slips her flip flops on, not wanting her feet to touch the hotel room carpet. She’s always been worried about getting athlete’s foot. She’s always been smart like that. “Do you need to use the bathroom before I do?”
I shake my head. “No. Thanks. Go ahead.”
As she grabs her night clothes and makes her way to the bathroom, I climb onto my bed and lean against the headboard, silently staring at the popcorn ceiling.
She wasn’t happy that the hotel was booked and could only give us one room, even if it did come with two beds. Even with us sleeping on opposite sides of the room, I’ve felt more at home than I have in months. Hearing her breathing when she sleeps, smelling her when she walks by, knowing she’s within arm’s reach… it’s been healing to me. And wounding at the same time.
I miss my wife more than I ever have before.
I shoot up little rocket prayers asking God to help her to forgive me. I grew up going to mass with my grandma every Sunday, so I know Mari has her own free will and even God won’t force her to do anything, but it’s all I’ve got. So that’s what I pray for.
Her letter to me during the session wasn’t unexpected, but it still broke me. Despite her reservations about having her humiliation on display, she bravely stood inside the circle of people and bared her soul.
“Santos, I have spent so much time blaming you for the downfall of our marriage, and while technically it’s true, I’ve done my share of bad things, too.”
She takes a breath and pushes her hair out of her face before continuing.
“I think I always knew what was going on behind my back. I’d heard the stories of the women who would go to afterparties. I’d seen the newspaper pictures while you were on the road, with strange women following behind the team. Deep, deep down in my gut, I think I knew all along. I just didn’t want to know. So instead of facing it head on, where we could push through it years ago, I avoided it. I pretended it didn’t exist. And now… here we are. Still having to face the thing I tried to avoid. Only doing so with children along for the painful ride. That’s my fault. I did that.
Her hands are shaking and she can’t even look at me. But she keeps reading.
“From now on, no more denial. No more hiding from the truth, no matter how painful I’m afraid it will be. Because it is so, so much more painful when it goes on for too long. And now, on top of the grief that I feel, I have so much guilt over the pain our children are feeling, too.”
I feel like a knife has sliced through me at the thought of our kids. She’s right. They have been so amazing during this transition, but they haven’t gone unscathed. Theo… he barely knows me. The girls… they can barely sit still when we FaceTime. It’s all so normal for their ages, but I would be right there in the middle of it if we had only faced this sooner. If I had faced this sooner.
“If this is going to work, if we are going to make this work, I need total transparency from you. Access to your emails and phone and social media, so when I’m feeling nervous or frightened, I can put my fears to rest instead of allowing my imagination to run wild. No more parties. At all. Ever. And I need you to cut as many ties as possible with the friends that do go to parties. No more hanging out with Nate. No more hanging out with Darrin. No more.
“Even through it all, I ha
ve never stopped loving you, and I know I won’t. Ever. Not even under these horrific circumstances. But I know now that loving you isn’t enough. I have to trust you. And without total transparency and an overhaul of who you spend your time with, I won’t be able to.”
I agreed with everything she said. Complying with her list is a no-brainer for me. I’ll do every single thing she asked of me… more if I need to win her trust back.
The crazy thing is, I spent so much time building comradery off the field with my teammates, and now I don’t really have anywhere I fit. I can’t hang out with Nate and Darrin because they like to party and have no boundaries. I can’t hang out with Daniel and Christian because they’re tight with Rowen. And Rowen is a package deal with Tiffany.
It’s ironic that I’ve spent a lot of years building friendships with people who have all lifestyle choices on the team, and yet, in the end there’s really no one I can be friends with at all. Not if I want my life back.
Steam billows into the room when Mari opens the bathroom door. I glance over and my eyes widen.
Mari comes out of the bathroom, fresh from her shower, wrapped in a bath towel. She comes toward the bed, never taking her eyes off mine. I sit up, unable to look away from her. Is she doing what I think she’s doing?
Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath, and drops the towel to the floor.
“Mari,” I whisper in reverence to her. It’s been nine months, nine months since my wife has bared her body to me. She’s just as beautiful as I remember.
Tan skin, large breasts with large brown areolas and dark nipples, still heavy from so many months of nursing our babies; wide hips that balance out the baby-pooch she’s been complaining about since her first pregnancy; pink stretch marks that I’ve kissed a million times because they remind me of where my babies lived before I held them for the first time; dark, neatly trimmed curls between her legs.
She’s so beautiful. I can’t blink. I won’t look away. I don’t want to miss a moment of this, with her… with the woman who owns me down to the depths of my soul.
She gazes at me with her brown eyes. “I miss my husband,” she whispers.
Slowly, afraid I’ll scare her off, I move to the edge of the bed. I reach out and take her hand, pulling her toward me. “I miss my wife.”
She puts her hands on my shoulders and moves them up to stroke my face. Looking up at her, I realize I’ve never felt anything so comforting in my life. Slowly, she licks her lips. Then she leans down and kisses me gently on the mouth. I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her as close to me as I can.
She breaks away from my kiss and runs her fingers through my hair. “Please, Santos, please make love to me.”
I can’t help the smile that crosses my face. But quickly, it turns into a look of determination. I run my hands down her thighs to her knees and back up again. She gasps as I run my fingers through her soft curls, sliding my hands up to her breasts. Slowly, oh so slowly, my hands reach their destination. She groans as I pinch and tug on one nipple, mirroring the same movements my tongue is doing to the other. I slide one hand down her back, over the curve of her ass, and lift her knee up so one foot is on the bed.
“God, I love you,” I say, as my other hand travels down to the apex of her thighs. She smiles at me until my fingers run over her core. She moans as I insert one finger, then two, inside her and move in slow circles. Her eyes roll back and her breathing picks up as her hips move in time with my fingers.
I’m so hard, I could explode from just watching her face in the moment. I want desperately to be inside her, but I’ve missed her so much, missed us so much, missed this so much that I can’t pull away to do anything about it.
Her eyes open and she looks down at me. A small smile graces her lips before she leans down and kisses me again. This time, all bets are off.
I barely register how we end up in the middle of the bed or how I end up naked. All I know, all I care about, is reconnecting with my wife. Starting over and committing all of this to memory so we can have more moments like this and less of the moments that led us here.
Gazing in her eyes, I hover over her, waiting for her to make the next move. She doesn’t disappoint. Running her hands down my abs, she takes me in her hands and situates us so I’m right where I want to be.
“I love you, Santos,” she breathes, as I push inside her. “I love you so much.”
I see the tears before they fall from her eyes, and I kiss them away as I thrust in and out of her. “I love you, too, baby. I love you. I never want to lose you again.”
I continue whispering reassurances to her as I pick up the pace… reassurances I should have always said, and always lived.
I feel my heart pound and my breathing becomes rapid, the low hum building in my throat. But the hum never comes. Instead, a sob escapes my throat as I come harder than I ever have. I feel her body tighten around me as she also finds her release amid tears.
We continue to cling to each other and weep as we come down from the high and my thrusts become slower. We continue to weep in forgiveness and cling to each other with relief as we lay in a tangle of sated limbs. We continue to cling to each other long after the tears stop. And we continue to cling to each other as we fall into a deep sleep, for the first time in months.
I got my Mari back. And I will cling to her for the rest of my life.
It’s our last day at the conference, and I, for one, am relieved. The website wasn’t kidding when it stated it’s an intense five days. I’m almost surprised I made it through.
Santos and I walk hand-in-hand into the conference room and head straight for the coffee. It was a long night.
He releases me to go talk to one of his new therapy friends, and I continue to the java. Victoria, who is standing in front of the cups stirring her own liquid gold, quirks an eyebrow at me.
“Looks like someone had a good night. I don’t think I’ve seen him so relaxed the entire time we’ve been here.”
I smirk. “No comment.”
“Ah. So does this mean you’ve made up your mind about what to do?”
I sigh and dump some creamer into my coffee, avoiding her gaze. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. One night of hot sex doesn’t make up for anything, ya know? I just missed him. And I think I needed that connection with him again.”
“I get it. None of us are here because the choices are clear. But I support you no matter what. I hope you know that.”
“I do. Thank you. Make sure we get each other’s numbers before we go, okay?”
She smiles and squeezes my hand before taking a seat next to Drew. He immediately puts his arm around her and kisses her on the forehead. They look so much more content and happy than they did the first day we were here. It makes me glad to know they’ll probably make it.
“Ok everyone,” Darryl, the director, calls out, quieting the room. “This is the last exercise we’re going to do before we have a nice, celebratory group lunch. So let’s go ahead and break into our groups.”
The noise level immediately rises as people drag chairs into their designated areas. Santos smiles as he carries two chairs, presumably one of them is for me. We sit and he grabs my hand, kissing my knuckles before turning his attention to Anne. I don’t pull away.
“Congratulations, everyone,” Anne begins. “You’ve made it to the final day. I know it’s been hard on you emotionally, mentally, and possibly even physically. You should be very proud of yourselves for pushing through.”
I look up at Victoria and she winks at me from across the circle.
Anne continues her speech as the rest of us brace ourselves for our final exercise.
“Before we begin, I just want you all to be aware that the energy you’re feeling right now, it will go away. You’ve been running on a lot of adrenaline the last few days, and typically you will crash once you get home. If you have children, you may want to plan at-home activities for the next day or so. If you don’t, prepare for a lot of naps.”
Several people around the circle chuckle.
“When you all came here five days ago, we said we were going to give you the tools you needed to make the best decision for your relationship. For some of you, that means giving your marriage another chance.”
Santos squeezes my hand tighter.
“For some of you, that means keeping things the way they are while you continue with therapy. For others, it means ending this relationship with the skills you need to make it as amicable as possible.
“All of you have probably decided which one of these scenarios is best for you, but does your partner know? We need to make sure you both are on the same page. So we’re all going to stand up and move the circle in a little closer.”
We all rise and move closer to each other.
“This close-knit circle represents a barrier to the rest of the world,” Anne explains. “None of the others groups can see in. We can’t see out. It’s sort of a protective layer, if you will, where we can feel more free to say what we feel.”
I notice that she’s right. There’s something comforting about these people surrounding each other. Like they’re protecting not only our privacy, but our emotions as well.
“Why don’t we have Drew and Victoria come up and share first?”
The give each other a shy smile and move into the circle, facing each other.
“Victoria,” Anne coaxes, “Look Drew in the eye and tell him where your thoughts are at and what you plan to do.”
Victoria bites her bottom lip momentarily before looking at her husband. “Drew, I know I’m a little bit crazy. I admit to it. And your addiction to spending freaks me out. I’m terrified of being poor again. Terrified that you’re going to make us all destitute. But I love you. You talked about joining a group for people with money addictions and doing some sort of money management class with me. I want to do those things with you. I know we can make this work.”
