He’s a piece of shit for doing what he did. I’m not making excuses for him. But I refuse to see the downfall of my marriage through a lens of narcissism. They say that love is a battlefield, but I wasn’t a warrior. I was a soft romantic; my armor was a firm ass and a full face of makeup. Silly armor for a silly girl. The war for love is fought by saying: You’re the one I want, you’re the one I need, you’re the one I’ll fight to keep.
Neither of us fought.
When you’re cheated on, you build a house around yourself. You build it strong. The walls are made of Never Again. The bricks—all the things you did right, the mortar—your anger. Divorce makes you live in a tall house because you put more effort into your grieving than you ever put into your marriage. That’s what we do as humans, we grieve harder than we ever tried and we build a magnificent fortress of hurt and self-righteous indignation. In front of this fortress is a garden where you grow your shortcomings. It’s a magnificent garden because that’s where you put all of your effort now. A garden of well-tended self-abuse. You water the shit out of your garden and it grows and grows. I grew a variety of things in my garden: bitterness, self-hate, numbness, self-pity, resentment, and defeat. I tended that garden with such detail, trimming and nurturing my personal hell until I couldn’t find my way out. And let me tell you, it’s a full-time job to hate yourself that much. Because once you start growing the vine of bitterness, it chokes anything healthy that begins to sprout.
I lost two years of my life in that garden. I grew it to a jungle. And somewhere in the middle of my personal jungle, I grew dehydrated. I was watering the wrong things, dying slowly. No one was coming to save me, no one knew how. And that’s when I realized that if I didn’t save myself, I’d not just waste two years of my life, but the whole thing. I burned it down: the house, the garden, the walls—and I came back to New York. I came back to my old job, I came back to face what made me run. I’m here; I’m different, but I’m here. And I’m here to tell you what I learned: fuck love, fuck marriage, fuck divorce, fuck walls, fuck anything that takes our ability to survive and to survive well. We will rise, and we will build a new house, not a fortress, but a house full of natural light, surrounded by a garden of forgiveness and self-love.
Welcome to F*ck Marriage. We’re going to make it out alive. I promise.
Chapter Nineteen
Satcher texts me before I leave the office for the night. He’s back in the city and asks if I want to meet for drinks to celebrate. I go home to change and meet him at the address he gave me.
“Your mom?” I say as soon as I see him.
“A true warrior. She was baking two hundred cookies for a church bake sale when I left.”
“But how is she in here?” I ask, tapping my head.
Satcher shrugs. “She has that silent suffering thing. I believe it comes with women of that generation.”
I grunt. It’s true. My generation plasters their suffering on social media, but our parents’ generation is quite the opposite.
“All we can do for someone like my mother is show up, that’s her love language. She will deal with what’s happened privately, in her own way.”
I nod.
“What is this place?” I ask, suddenly distracted.
Satcher grins. “It’s a temple of beer worship.”
“Named the Burp Castle?”
“Named the Burp Castle.” He nods seriously while I look around.
The walls are covered in murals of monks. When I look closer, I see the dark humor in the artwork. A ship burns, sinking into the ocean in the background, while in the foreground, a surprised monk floats on a barrel of beer as several of his monk friends are drinking cheerfully on a piece of driftwood nearby.
“No loud talking allowed. Whispering only by order of the brewest monks,” I read the sign and one of the bartenders looks up suddenly and shushes me. Satcher smiles at my expression.
“What the hell?” I say under my breath.
“Shh.” He leans down close to my ear and his breath tickles my lobe.
I pinch the closest piece of his flesh which happens to be his pec. Hard, there’s barely any skin to grab, but he yelps anyway and the bartender glares at us. If we are going to have a conversation in this place it will have to be whispered in each other’s faces. For a fleeting moment I wonder if that was Satcher’s plan, but then I laugh the thought away. Satcher doesn’t have to do sneaky things to get close to a woman; he could have anyone he wanted without the tricks a lesser man would need.
“There’s a table over there.” He juts his chin toward the back of the bar where a group has just stood up to leave.
“I’ll grab it,” I say. “You—” I poke him in the chest “—get the drinks…”
He winks at me and heads toward the bar.
I watch him from where I sit. The self-assured way he moves through the bar, wedging his way into a spot just vacated by two college girls. He lifts one finger and the bartender spots him right away. If I’d gone up to the bar, I’d have stood there for ten minutes before the bartender noticed me. Satcher has a presence. When he walks into a room, people look up wondering if he’s someone important. Within two minutes, he has our drinks and is making his way back to me. I eye the way his shirt sleeves are folded up to his elbows, exposing his tanned forearms. I take the drink he hands me, shaking my head.
“What?” he asks. “You have a look on your face.”
I don’t have to ask him what kind of look. I’m embarrassed. I was checking him out. I play with my necklace, touching the raised ring finger. His eyes move down to look at it and then it hits me.
“You got me this, didn’t you?”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “You used to always wear things like that, do you remember?”
“Yes,” I say. “Before I started dressing like Martha Stewart, apparently…”
We both laugh and then Satcher says, “What the fuck was that about anyway?”
I play with a napkin, folding it into a tiny square and then smoothing it out until he lays his much larger hand on top of mine to still me. I suck down some of my beer and puff out my cheeks, making my eyes big.
“When I started the blog I thought it would work in my benefit to look more mainstream.”
“Mainstream?” he repeats.
“Yeah ... you know, the leather and ripped jeans were unrelatable to my audience so I toned it down a bit.”
“Ugh!” I say when I see the look on his face. “Shut up, Satch. It’s important to be relatable. Boring. Floral print and whatnot…”
“You certainly had the floral print thing down…”
“I hate you,” I say, but there’s not enough conviction in my voice for either of us to believe it.
He laughs and it warms me right down to my toes, which I wriggle in my shoes. I shake my head, pressing back my smile.
“It wasn’t just your look that changed though, was it, Billie?”
“What do you mean?” Though I know exactly what he’s talking about.
He leans forward like he’s going to tell me a secret, and automatically, I bend toward him too.
“Once upon a time, a girl with fishnet stockings, a leather jacket, and black fingernails got high with me and danced on my kitchen table.”
“Until I broke the table ... sorry about that.”
“It was a nice table.” He nods, frowning. “And it died in an honorable way…”
I snicker.
“You went to parties just for the free food and booze…”
“I put on ten pounds that year.”
“You got a tattoo on your inner thigh that said: This way to paradise.”
“It cost me fifteen hundred dollars to have that removed.” I shake my head.
“You stopped owning who you were and became something else.”
“People evolve, Satcher. We aren’t supposed to stay the same.” I throw his words back at him, but he’s shaking his head before I’m even finished.
“Peo
ple evolve, yes. That’s healthy. But they don’t change everything about who they are unless they have a good reason, and Billie, you’re unrecognizable.”
I frown at how his words make me feel. When was it exactly that I traded my edge for a good corn chowder recipe? The blog—I’d started to change when the blog did well. I remember scouring other blogs, studying what they did that garnered the most readers. Then I reinvented myself to match the blog, instead of having the blog match me. I deflate, pressing my lips together as I stare at Satcher.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
“Do what?”
“Get sad about what you lost.”
“You just pointed out that I lost myself and you expect me not to be sad about it?”
“Well, maybe it’s time to find yourself again. Meet your old self somewhere in the middle.”
“Good advice.” I pick up my beer and drain it, then I shake my glass at Satcher. “Another.”
I don’t know how it happens, except I do. I was having a surprisingly good time: Satcher teasing me, me teasing back. At one point I jumped up to dance to a Billy Idol song that was playing while Satcher spun around in his stool to watch me. If I’d ever felt carefree it was now, in this bar, with this man. Carefree: the old me. Pre-floral print and the blog. Pre-Woods and Pearl.
Three drinks and two shots and Satcher is helping me up the stairs to Jules’ apartment.
“Are there no goddamn lights in this building?” he growls.
The tip of my shoe catches on the stairs and he steadies me. We reach the front door, and I lean against the wall as Satcher searches my bag for my keys.
“You can still see it, you know?”
He puts my key in the lock and turns it. “What?”
“My tattoo. This way to paradise.”
He looks startled for a moment and then his face breaks into a smile. “Fifteen hundred dollars couldn’t erase who you actually are.”
I shake my head. I’m not drunk-drunk, but I am drunk. The room sways around me as I step inside and flick the light switch. Nothing happens. I try another and the room stays dark.
“Power’s out,” I say.
I stand still in the middle of the room, swaying in the dark. I hate how when I’m drunk I feel everything. I thought getting drunk helped take your mind off of things.
“He left paradise.”
Satcher comes in and closes the door. He walks to the breaker box and opens it. “Who?”
“Woods, he left paradise.”
He shuts the box and turns around to look at me.
“Paradise lost. Poor Woods.” I crack up, then I start crying.
“It’s not the breakers,” Satcher says, walking toward me. “Must be the whole building.”
“I’m drunk and I’m afraid of the dark,” I say. I lift my hands to the ceiling and spin around. Satcher has to catch me before I hit the ground.
“Don’t forget dramatic,” he adds, righting me on my feet. “We can go back to my place. I’m not leaving you here in the dark.”
“Is this how it works? You lure a woman into your shiny bachelor pad with the promise of warmth and drink?”
“And dick,” he says, which makes me laugh until my stomach aches. “But no drink,” he finishes. “You’ve had enough.”
“I’m probably an alcoholic,” I admit.
Satcher has his back to me now as he grabs a duffel bag out of the hall closet. “Yup,” he says. “Probably so.”
I nod, grateful, wondering how he knew to look there. “Just let me grab some of my things.” I use the flashlight on my phone to grab pajamas and clothes for the next day, tossing them into the duffel. Then I make my way to the living room where Satcher is waiting. He’s scrolling through his phone and when he sees me, one corner of his mouth lifts. It’s so natural that I walk right into his arms and hug him.
“What’s this about?” he says into my hair.
“I don’t know. It just feels like you’ve been saving me since I got back to New York.”
“Billie, you are the very last woman who needs saving. One day you’re going to realize that.”
I doze in the backseat of the cab for the ten-minute drive. By the time we climb out of the elevator in his building I’ve sobered up and have the beginnings of a headache.
While he makes a snack, I wander into the bathroom to change into my pajamas. I laugh when I look down and see I grabbed my most grandmotherly pants and shirt combo, decked out in pink roses. I stuff them back in my bag and put on a T-shirt I brought instead. When I join Satcher in the living room, he eyes my legs and whistles low.
“I see paradise,” he says.
I bend at the waist and study my thigh. “No way,” I say. “You have to get really close to see it.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Billie.”
I straighten up and he laughs at my blush. Then I do something so completely unlike me. I lift my T-shirt over my head until I’m standing in front of Satcher in only my panties.
“Why just look?” I say.
I’m on my stomach, the soft down comforter beneath me; my fingers grip the material, making fists. I’m nervous but without the awkwardness. I’ve known Satcher too long to truly be out of sorts. He’s behind me. I can feel his heat on my skin. I turn my head to watch him, my hair partly obscuring my vision. He rubs warm palms down my back, putting pressure in all the right places so that I arch beneath his hands like a cat. When I feel like things can’t get any more intense, he grips my buttocks between his hands, kneading. I’m wet at his touch, and I turn my face away so he can’t see the desperate begging in my eyes. Gently, he takes hold of my ankle and pushes my leg up so that my knee is bent toward my chest. Then he releases himself from his pants with one hand, while a finger from the other slides inside of me. I blink hard, breathing through my nose, my chest heaving as I bite the insides of my cheeks. I’m squirming, unable to keep still as a finger works into me. He groans when he feels me, like this is the first time he’s touching a woman this way. As he works one finger then two inside of me, he bends down to kiss my shoulder ... my neck. I’m panting; the sound makes me ashamed and I try to quiet it, but when I do, Satcher twists his fingers in such a way that I start up again.
He smacks me hard on the fattest part of my ass and my eyes fly open in question.
“Lift your hips,” he orders.
I slide my leg straight to match the other, and with my face still pressed against the bed, I lift my hips slightly. I can feel him looking at me as he caresses my backside, running the pad of his thumb across the wetness between my legs until I want to scream, Hurry up! Hurry up!
I feel him position himself against me, but he doesn’t push in; it’s a hard pressure that opens me and promises to deliver.
I groan, wiggling my hips. “Satcher... ”
As soon as I say his name, he pushes into me; a drop and a slide so sweet and painful the rest of my words are cut from my lips and replaced by a gasp.
He drags in and out, lazy movements that rub along my throbbing muscles, making me shiver in anticipation of the next. And while he pushes and pulls—in and out, in and out—he massages my back, my shoulders ... hard when he pushes in and soft when he pulls out. I’m lost in the rhythm, the muscles in my body in ecstasy.
When I twist my head back to see him, his eyes are open and glassy, his tongue gripped between his teeth. He’s making a low humming in his throat. When he catches me looking, he smiles a sleepy, closed-mouth smile.
“Turn over,” he instructs me. “I want to see you when you come.”
I roll my body and he’s between my legs, lowering himself onto me. I close my eyes at the sheer pleasure of his weight. Running my hands along his arms and back, I wrap myself around him. In the five seconds it’s taken to turn over I am desperate to feel him inside of me again. He watches my face when he sinks down and fills me once more.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” I say. It’s not a rebuke, more of an observation.
Satcher has made jokes about never being caught without a condom.
“Do you want me to put one on?” His breath catches my hair and glides along my ear.
I hesitate. “No,” I say. “Do you want to put one on?”
“Not even a little bit,” he breathes. “I haven’t done it like this ... in a long time.” I’m conscious of his hands, his fingers, pressing into the softness of my lower back as he lifts my hips to meet his thrusts.
He starts to move again and my body responds instantly, opening up for him with a trust that scares me. This is Satcher: I don’t have to be scared of him. I know everything about him—good and bad. He’s been here all along, I think. Right in front of you and you almost missed him.
“I’m going to come hard.” His voice is raspy with pleasure, his eyes closed. “But first I want you to come ... on my dick. Can you do that, Billie?” He’s barely finished his sentence when I do. It was his saying my name in that voice of his that threw me over the edge. My legs clench around his body and I scream into his shoulder, lifting my upper body off the bed to meet him where he holds himself up to watch me.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “That was good.”
He laughs with his face buried in my neck, and I hold onto him as he moves harder.
There is pressure, and a pain so good my eyes roll back in my head when his whole body stiffens, his muscles tensing underneath my hands. I feel him come. I’ve never felt a man come before; but suddenly he gets even harder and I have to adjust my legs, opening them wider to accommodate him. With me spread out beneath him whimpering, he looks at me with a strained expression on his face.
I don’t hold back as I clench around his dick, lifting my hips to take all of him. I can feel his cum leaving his body and pouring into me. It’s one of the most erotic moments of my life.
F*ck Marriage Page 12
