Cherry Blossoms: A Losing His Wife Novel

by KT Morrison

  Geoff and Odie going to New York was not a surprise. Being on Winnie wasn’t entirely a surprise either. There had been a text earlier in the day, urging her to not take her eyes off Winnie this afternoon. The show had already been taped that morning, would air at four. She’d texted Why? Wanting to know what was the excitement. Honestly, also pained that she wasn’t part of it, whatever it was. Text from Geoff came back JUST WATCH!!! The all-caps and multiple exclamation marks giving away that she was texting with her daughter and not her estranged husband. Geoff and Odie and Winslow and Connie and Kelly and Trish were all in New York City. There was a launch party for the Laetitia Lily book at some fancy restaurant she’d never heard of. Googled it, and her jealous stomach twisted even tighter. So she sat on her couch and texted with her old family from her studio apartment. Them from the halls of Rockefeller Center, her from sweltering Downsview—her family having times they would remember forever. Without her. She didn’t deserve to complain. She wouldn’t. She was used to suffering.

  She watched Winnie. She’d become fixated on those final images of Geoff and Odie—just before Odie launched into her Mashed Potato when the band started up. Fixated on that moment of pride in her husband’s face. It started as a heartwarming feeling, then the more she watched it the more difficult it became, the more it tightened her ribs and constricted her breath.

  Geoff’s face. The pride, the joy. The love he had for that little girl with her tumbling raven-black hair. He didn’t care who her father was. She was his daughter, and she would be his daughter forever and ever. No matter what a DNA test would say.

  She held a dogeared and unopened letter on her chest. She’d played with its edges many nights since it had arrived in the mail two months ago. Sat and stared at its blue and red logo, nucleic acid double helix. Ran her fingertip along its official yet modern font. Always putting it away in a drawer and trying to forget about it—until the next time she couldn’t sleep or she was feeling sad. Knew today she would do the same. Wondered if there was a day she would ever have the courage. Her fingers drew a complete circumference around its feathering edges, feeling whatever was within, feeling its What ifs, feeling its dense black weight. Solace or demise. Both of enormous and equal weight. Purgatory was safe.

  A booming knock on her apartment door made her jump even though it was expected. She got up, made a listless shuffle to the front hall. There was an Ikea cabinet there by her empty coat rack. Glass doors with three drawers underneath. Top drawer opened and the truth was buried in the rear, back in its quiet sepulcher.

  The knock pounded again, compressing her ears in the small vestibule.

  “I’m here,” she said, “I’m coming. Don’t you have a key?”

  The door was opened, Rocco in the carpeted hall, two pizzas on one arm, a paper bag with Cokes and appetizers in the other.

  “You knew I was coming. Make me get my key?” he said walking in past her.

  “Sorry,” she said to his back as he made his way into the living area. “You knock so fuckin loud.”

  “I texted you. Just flip the lock you know I’m coming.”

  “I was watching TV. Odie was on Winnie.”

  He set the pizzas and the bag down on the coffee table between the couch where she was sitting and the flatscreen. “Oh yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

  “Jesus, Rocco. Biggest daytime show out there.”

  “Like Oprah?”

  “Yes, like that,” she said. She went to him, the two of them coming together standing in front of the couch. Her arms went around his waist and he kissed the top of her head.

  “What did she do?” he asked her.

  “I’ll show you. Watch it with me.”

  When her face went up to him, he bent and they kissed, their lips pressing lightly. He was finished work on the hottest day of the year, dusty, dirty, and his maleness was overwhelming. Powerful enough to hurt her eyes. Coming from his armpits, his T-shirt, from between his legs.

  “Fuck, Rocco, you stink. Go have a shower.”

  “Let me eat first,” he said.

  “Get in the shower—I don’t want you on my couch.”

  She distanced herself and he laughed, kept a grip on her waist. “Come with me,” he said, slipping a hand down the back of her yoga pants and squeezing her naked ass.

  “You just here to get your cock sucked?”

  “Yeah, I am,” he smirked, a finger slipping between her cheeks.

  “Get in the shower, please. Make it quick, I’ll get plates.”

  His hands came off her and he opened a pizza box, grabbed a sagging piece of authentic Tutto Carne, disappeared into the bathroom in her bedroom.

  She padded her bare feet into the kitchen and pulled down two plates, got some straws out of the cupboard opposite. The shower hissed from the bedroom, heard the splashing around his feet.

  She was pretty sure he was fucking another girl these days. Only saw him now once a week, maybe less. He’d text, bring dinner, they’d fuck, he’d leave. She didn't think she was the only one he was giving it to. She liked his company. Even just once a week it was nice to see him.

  She got back on the couch, put her glasses back on so she could see the TV, put the plates out by the pizza boxes and cued up the segment on Winnie.

  Rocco came out of her bedroom in some loose shorts and a T-shirt. Stuff he kept in her dresser’s bottom drawer. He was barefoot and had a towel cowled over his head, one hand up and running it over his wet hair.

  “Hey, you need anything?” he said, dropping on to the couch next to her, his weight thrusting her up.

  “Need anything?”

  “You good?” he asked her, hands on his thighs, towel wrapped around his neck like a scarf now.

  “Yeah, Rocco. I’m good, thanks,” she said, pointing the remote at the TV. “I’m good on my own.”

  He grunted and he slapped a few pieces of pizza onto his plate.

  They watched Odie on Winnie. Rocco roared with laughter at her. Didn’t say a thing about Geoff. Didn’t acknowledge that Geoff was on a big TV show as a companion to a music legend. When it was done, he said, “Ha, play it again.” She watched it again with him.

  “Fuck. That girl,” he said.

  “She’s my life,” Nia sighed.

  His arm was over the back of the couch, he watched her. She sat, finishing another piece of sausage pizza, the soles of her feet on the sueded leather, her knees drawn to her chest.

  “You cryin?” he said, looking around her glasses like there was a glare on them.

  “No,” she said. But she was. It felt like happiness, but it wasn’t. She didn’t know what it was.

  He took both her ankles in one hand and he drew her legs across so they were over his lap. He rubbed her ankles with his tremendous thumbs.

  “I’m going up north hunt moose in October...”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I wanna take Odie.”

  “Rocco,” she chuckled, picturing how that would go over with Geoff.

  “I mean it. My boys are too young. She got the outdoors in her blood, tell me she don’t.”

  “She likes canoeing—”

  “It’s mostly camping.”

  “Until you kill something. Dino going?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me the truth, Rocco. Is Dino—”

  “I swear. Just me. Me and Odie.”

  “I mean, I’ll ask,” she said, staring off, shaking her head, knowing the answer. “I’ll ask him, but Rocco...”

  “Just ask him,” he said.

  “I will.”

  “He’s going to have to come to grips at some point.”

  She rolled her eyes. “With what Rocco?”

  He shrugged, his shoulders sliding up and down against the back of the couch. “You know.”

  She took her feet back, got to her knees on the cushion next to him and tossed her crust to the open box. “Can we not? Can we not right now?” she said.

  She lay herself onto his
chest, his arm going around her waist, his hand covering her whole lower back. Her lips kissed his, keeping him quiet. Her left hand fell to his lap, found his cock behind the silky fabric of his drawstring shorts and fondled it.

  “You stay tonight?” she whispered.

  “Want me to?”

  “Stay. You don't work tomorrow. I just want to sleep with someone. I want someone in my bed.”

  “You be a good girl for me tonight?”

  “I’m always good for you.”

  “You be good? Do what I say?”

  “Yeah. You’ll stay?”

  “Show me. Show me what a good girl you are.”

  She squeezed his cock hard, pulled on it, feeling it gain some size. “You wash it for me?”

  “I washed it.”

  “You clean it good? Get under your foreskin?”

  “You check for me. Check and see.”

  Her kisses travelled his neck and he lifted his chin. His big cock gathered life in her grip, flopping less and less, bending, but not folding. Her hand slipped under the waistband and she gripped his bare hot skin now, stroked him some more. His thumbs hooked in the waist and he eased the shorts down, his hips coming right off the couch so he could get them off. She held his cock while he did, and when he settled he gripped his own balls and pulled them up, dropped them so they lay in the seam of his two pressed thighs.

  “Mm,” she said, “want me to suck on those balls? Want me to suck on them like a good girl?”

  She got herself between his knees, her own on the rug under the couch. She kissed his balls, her pouted lips pressed on them, but his hands came down and he held her face and looked in her eyes. He didn’t say anything, caressed her cheeks under her eyes with his thumbs. It was like he was going to say something, but then he finally opened his mouth, he said, “Yeah. Suck them for me.” He let her go, took his balls in his big hand, gripped above them so they sagged over the edge of his knuckle. She sucked them. Sucked them hard until he groaned, bit them lightly, let her teeth drag over them, hard enough they squished under her pressure, flattening between her bite. She kissed and licked, and when he let them go she took one in her lips and she pulled back far enough that he could look in her eyes with it still in her mouth.

  She kissed her way up the middle of his stiffening cock. Her tongue pressing and flattening wide along the thick cable that thrust up from between his legs, spreading his balls to either side. That cable felt so good when he fucked her. His wide cock stretching her to her limits, breaking her wide. She kissed up his shaft, her lips puckering and tugging at the loose skin around his glans. Pulled it back with her fingertips, while he watched from above. She watched that skin turn it itself inside out and peel back over his engorged cock head. It was such a big thing. Such a beautifully shaped and sculptured feature.

  She plunged it in her mouth, let her lips glide over its swooping shape, let it fill her mouth. Got him wet, smelled his clean smell, deodorant in her nose, soap on her tongue, let him stiffen in her mouth, stroking with one hand as his size cambered in her grip, then used two hands as he grew turgid. Once aroused he was too much for her mouth and she sucked on just his tip, playing with his foreskin, rolling and peeling, her hands going up and down his shaft. His hands grabbed her upper arms roughly and he pulled her up to his lap, her knees bent, her bare feet bobbing. He was so strong.

  He plopped her down, legs straddling him, his cock hard but laying across one of his thighs. He ripped her shirt up. She was braless and it made her breasts jiggle. When he threw it free she covered her arms across herself because Rocco like it when she was difficult.

  “Let's see em,” he said.

  She said, “No.”

  “Fuckin show me those tits, Nia.”

  She bit her lip, let her arms fall, watched him as they were revealed. He grabbed her nipples between thumb and forefinger and he rolled them too painfully. She hissed and he pulled them, making her breasts come away from her body, their round shape skewing to a point. “Ow, sss,” she hissed. He let them go, they fell and bounced. “Ow,” she said again, her own hands coddling them, soothing away the hurt he’d left her with.

  “Get over there,” he said, and he gripped her side and flung her from him, onto the cushions against the far end of the couch. She lay on her side, topless, only in her tights, her knees came up and she watched him over her shoulder, an arm covering her breasts again. He pulled his shirt off, sat there naked and brought one leg up, bent, laying flat on the couch, his frightening cock bouncing on his thigh, wagging with stiffness.

  “Watch me,” he said. He masturbated for her, and she watched that garish thing in his hand. His hands were massive and it still looked big in his grip. He stroked himself hard. Rock hard. He watched her feet. She knew he liked them. So she scrunched them up for him. Curled her toes and wrinkled the soles while he jerked off. She pinched the nail of her little finger between her teeth, watching him through her half open eyes.

  “Don’t come,” she whispered.

  “I’ll come if I want to.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You like watching me?”

  She nodded.

  “Turn around. Don’t look at me. Lay on your stomach.”

  She obeyed, turned her body on the couch and lay with her bare breasts pressed on the leather, turned her face to the side, staring at the back of the couch. Her knees bent, her feet coming up and crossing over one another, bobbing somewhere over her rump.

  “Put your face in that cushion, get on your knees.”

  She did what he said. Pressed her face into a blue, knitted cushion wedged against the arm of the couch. She walked her knees up towards her chest, her ass bent and pushed out towards him, behind black tights.

  “Peel those down. Show me your pussy,” he growled.

  So she did. Her hands extending behind her, slipping under the fabric of her pants and sliding against her smooth skin. Pushed the tights back, peeling over her rump, riding the round swell of her ass then slipping down the backs of her thighs. She slipped the Lycra down til they bunched up at her knees, her right hand slipping across her sex to give it a wipe while she did, like a magician’s slight of hand. Her nails scratched lightly against the skin of her thighs and she listened to the wet sound of Rocco’s foreskin as he jerked himself off looking at her pussy from behind.

  “Open it for me,” he said.

  Sucking his cock had made her pussy wet and she felt her slick folds under her fingers. She stroked the flesh because he was watching. Running the underside of her fingers along her slippery surface.

  “Open it wide, Nia.”

  She spread her folds, had to grip them between her fingers she was so wet. She pulled her labia apart, let him see her pinkest part. She bit her lip feeling a rising arousal from her brutish lover’s treatment.

  “Wider, Nia. Put your fingers inside.”

  “Oh, Rocco,” she sighed, doubted he could hear her. She slipped a middle finger into herself. Felt her heat and her wet. Ached for penetration now.

  “Two fingers, Nia. Fuck yourself with two fingers.”

  She complied. Slipped her two middle fingers inside herself and slicked them in and out. Her wet sounds rose above the sound of Rocco’s wrinkling membrane.

  “Open it. Nia, open it. I wanna see your guts.”

  “No, Rocco,” she said.

  “Wide, Nia. Open it.”

  She bit her lip harder, slipped two fingers in from her other hand and then eased herself open for him.

  “You got the nicest pussy, Nia. That pussy ruined me.”

  “Fuck it then.”

  The sound of his stroking stopped. He said, “Touch your asshole for me.”

  Her fingers slid easily over herself. She’d spread her wet all through her folds. Could feel a warm trickle on the inside of her thigh. Her finger glided up and circled her anus.

  “Slip it in,” he said.

  She let it plunge. Let her middle finger gradually slip inside he
r.

  “The other finger too.”

  She withdrew, bunched the two middle fingers of her right hand and slipped them inside, drawing a painful gasp from herself with her intrusion.

  “That’s it, show me how you fuck yourself. Show me how deep you can take those fingers.”

  She showed him. Let her fingers penetrate deeply while he watched. Heard his cock stroking resume.

  “You still wear them, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Your rings,” he said.

  “I’m married.”

  He laughed, one loud burst that she felt travel through the couch. “Craziest married woman I ever saw. See what I’m seeing here, married with your fingers up your ass for me.”

  “Whatever,” she said into the cushion.

  He was behind her now. Up on his knees, the heat from his body against the back of her legs. His cock was dropped across one cheek, hot and hard. “Tell me you want my cock in your married pussy.”

  “You like it? Like it cause it’s married?”

  “I like how it’s so hungry for my cock even though it’s married. Leave your fingers in there,” he said as she slipped them slowly out of her anus.

  He crouched over her, his chest against her back. He was at her ear, breathing on her, smelling like soap and cologne and garlic. “Beg for it. Beg for my cock, Nia.”

  “Fuck it, Rocco. Put your cock in it.”

  “Love this cock, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Love it so much you gave up your family for it.”

  “Rocco, don’t...that...”

  “You love it...”