by Lola StVil
“Why don’t you go and get freshened up and stop distracting me before I burn dinner?” She laughs.
I back off, my hands up.
“Your wish is my command,” I say. I wink at her. “And maybe after dinner, I’ll be the one giving the commands.”
I see a flash of lust in her eyes, and I almost go to her and grab her. There was a time I would have. We’d have fucked right here on the kitchen floor and not given burned potatoes a second thought. But things are different now somehow. The look fades from her eyes, and she gives me a sad smile.
Did she want me to go to her and ravish her and I didn’t? I feel like she’s slipping away from me, like there’s a wall between us that I can’t knock down.
“I won’t be long,” I say, heading for the door. “Do you want me to open some wine when I come down?”
“Sure,” she says.
Is this what we’ve come to? The twins have been gone less than a week, and where their chatter and laughter should be, now there is only silence and this awkward atmosphere that I don’t know how to burst through.
“Falcon,” Elle says as I leave the kitchen. I look up, feeling a spark of hope. “We need to talk when you come back down.”
The hope is gone. I don’t know what exactly she wants to talk about, but it sounds serious, and I suddenly don’t want to hear what she has to say. I don’t want to listen to her telling me she’s fallen out of love with me. I can’t bear it.
She seems to see my uncertainty, and she smiles, a natural smile this time.
“Relax, Falcon. No one is dead or anything,” she says.
I force myself to return her smile. Is she telling me the truth? Or is our marriage dead?
I go upstairs and jump in the shower and change into shorts and a T-shirt. I sit at the end of the bed thinking about my Elle, my gorgeous Elle. I don’t know what the fuck this thing between us is, but I know this; it ends tonight.
I’m going to go down there, kiss her, and fuck the life out of her. I’m going to claim her pussy all over again, make her remember that she is mine now and always. I’m going to make her come so hard she forgets her own name. And then I’m going to do it all again.
I’ve been neglecting her; I see that now. I’ll find a way to cut back on the hours I work. I’ll find some problem solvers to work with so I can take a step back. And I’ll come home in the middle of the day and fuck my wife. I’ll remind her how good it used to be. I’ll show her how much I still love her, still desire her.
My cock is hard just thinking about what I’m going to do to Elle when I get down those stairs.
“It’s ready,” she calls up the stairs.
Not as fucking ready as I am.
I get up and march purposefully down the stairs, ready to take her. I go into the dining room, and she stands there beside her chair, on edge. She is nervous, jittery, but she looks excited too. Does she know what I’m going to do to her? Is that it?
I take a step toward her, but before I get close enough to touch her, she blurts it out.
“I got a job today.”
She’s not fucking excited by me. She’s excited at the prospect of getting away from me.
“Oh,” I manage.
I sit down in front of the plate she’s piled up with lamb, potatoes, and vegetables. It looks and smells fantastic, but I’m suddenly not hungry.
“Is that all you can say?” she asks, casting her eyes down as she takes her own seat.
Come on, Falcon; sort it the fuck out. Just be goddamn happy for her. Do you want to lose her?
“Sorry,” I say. “I mean congratulations. I just wasn’t expecting you to find something so soon, and you took me by surprise that’s all.”
Has she been secretly job hunting while I’ve been at work and brought it up now because she found something? Is my wife fucking lying to me?
I force the thoughts away and force myself to smile. Elle doesn’t seem to notice the smile is fake. Is it because she no longer cares one way or the other?
I want to ask her all of these questions, but I’m afraid of the answers. I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life. I mean, I was a champion fighter for fuck’s sake. I could have been killed during one of those fights, and they never fazed me. But this? This is something else entirely.
“Look, I know you’re pissed off about this, but you could at least pretend to show some interest,” Elle says.
She pokes at her dinner, pushing it around the plate rather than eating it. I am doing pretty much the same thing.
Just stop being a fucking dick and act like you give a fuck about her.
“I am pissed off about it, but I’ll get over it,” I say, hoping that’s true. Hoping she sticks around long enough to make it true. “Tell me everything. Where’s the job? What will you be doing?”
“It’s in sales,” she says. I open my mouth to protest, and she raises her hand, cutting me off. “Relax. It’s not cold-calling, and it’s not door to door. It’s business to business by appointment only, and the firm works with huge corporate firms.”
I raise an eyebrow. She knows me so well. Her words make me feel slightly better though. It sounds like she’ll be dealing with professionals rather than scumbags. This leads me to another worry. What if someone catches her eye? Someone who makes her feel how I once made her feel?
I need to stop thinking like this. I’m driving myself fucking crazy.
“Sales. Hmm, I think you’ll be good at that. People like you instantly,” I say.
She smiles.
“That’s what Franklin said. That you have to sell yourself and the product then sells itself.”
“Franklin?” I ask.
“My boss. Franklin Ludlow.”
“Ludlow from Magnet?” I demand.
She nods, ignoring my tone.
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“I know him alright. He’s the biggest fucking sleazeball in the city.”
She rolls her eyes. She thinks I’m just trying to persuade her not to take the job again.
“Seriously, Elle. You have no idea how many women he’s paid off to save himself from having sexual harassment charges filed,” I say.
“I find it hard to believe that any woman who has genuinely been sexually harassed would accept money to shut up about it,” she says.
“And that shows just how little you know about swimming with the sharks,” I say. “In the corporate world, money talks. These women take the money and shut their mouth because they fear they’d never work again if they rock the boat.”
“You’re being paranoid, Falcon. Listen to yourself,” she snaps.
That does it.
“I’m not fucking paranoid, Elle. I’m just not naïve. You’re not taking that job. End of discussion,” I shout.
She shakes her head.
“I already took the job. I start on Monday. And if you don’t like it, then you can suck it up, because this is fucking happening. You think you can just sit there and tell me what to do? Well, you can’t. Not anymore.”
“I don’t get you, Elle,” I shout. “You wouldn’t come and work for me because it’s patronizing, and yet you have no issues taking a job you’ve been offered simply because your ass looks good in a skirt?”
Her face falls, and I know I went way too far. I don’t know how to make it right. My cell phone rings and I snatch it angrily out of my pocket, ready to cut the call off.
“Are you seriously taking a call now?” Elle snaps.
I nod. “Yes. It’s Keira.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ELLE
I hold my hand out for the cell phone, and Falcon hands it over. I press answer.
“Hi honey, is everything okay?” I ask.
“Everything’s great, Mom. I just wanted to check in,” she says.
Hearing her voice, her excitement feels like a stab in the heart. The twins are having the time of their lives, and our world is falling apart here. I hope there’s a world for them to come back to
. I feel a lump in my throat, and I cough, trying to dislodge it. Tears sting my eyes, and I know Keira will hear them in my voice if I stay on the call.
“Listen, honey, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m right in the middle of cooking dinner. I’m going to hand you back over to your dad, okay?”
“Okay, Mom,” she says.
I hand the cell phone back to Falcon and move into the living room. I need a moment to clear my head.
I am angry that Falcon thinks I am so fucking useless that I can only get a job based on the way I look. It hurts me to know he thinks that. But at the same time, he’s just saying what I have been wondering about myself. I am hugely underqualified for the job, and I did get a weird vibe off Franklin.
I should be sensible and call the whole thing off, but I feel like I can’t do that now. If I do, it’ll look like I’m only doing it because Falcon said I have to. I have something to prove now.
To Falcon, to Franklin, and perhaps most importantly, to myself. I mean, is it so bad that Franklin thinks my ass looks good in a skirt? Even in the corporate world, sex sells. So maybe that’s why he took me on, but I’m going to take that job. And I’m going to make damn sure that’s not why he keeps me on. He’s going to keep me on because I’ll show him I’m good at the job, that I’m not useless.
Most of my tears remain unshed, and I swipe angrily at my cheeks, brushing away the few that escaped. I’m not going to sit here crying over this. I’m going to show Falcon I’m strong enough to do this.
He comes in, the call finished.
“Jody and your parents say hi,” he says.
He comes and sits beside me.
“I’m sorry for the way I handled that, Elle,” he says.
His tone is calm, collected, but I can hear that he’s fighting to keep it that way.
“I get that you want a job, and I’ll support you. But not with him. Promise me you’ll turn the offer down and find something else,” he says.
I feel deflated. All of my joy at a good salary, the respectable job at a big firm is gone, leaving behind bitterness and resentment. He’s giving me a way out, but I’m not ready to take it. He can dress it up any way he wants to, but the fact remains that he doesn’t think I can do this. I shake my head.
“And what happens when I find another job, and you have some invented issue with the boss there?” I say.
“It’s not like that, Elle. Look, think about it rationally for a moment. How are you qualified to sell tech solutions? You’ve never done sales, and you know nothing about tech. You don’t even have a fucking Twitter account because you say you don’t get it.”
“I don’t need to know tech. I need to memorize some sales scripts, that’s all,” I say. “I need to be the person that fixes problems, but someone else does the actual tech stuff.”
He shakes his head.
“Okay. Say you come to me and I tell you I need a multi-platform marketing strategy that targets men in their forties with disposable income. What are you going to offer me?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read the material yet. But I will know. Or do you think I’m too fucking stupid to learn this stuff?” I snap.
“I’m just trying to make you see the truth of the situation,” he says.
“You want the truth? Here’s some truth for you. I’m taking that job, Falcon, and I’m going to be damn good at it. And if you have a problem with that, well I’m sure you can learn to live with it. Or not. Honestly, I’m past caring right now.”
CHAPTER SIX
FALCON
Her words finally get through to me. I’m not going to lose Elle because she takes a job, even if it is for that scumbag. I’m going to lose her because I’m so damn overprotective I’m suffocating her and she’s going to walk away.
I usually don’t like ultimatums. But this doesn’t feel like an ultimatum. It feels like Elle has given up on me. On our marriage. I can’t let that happen. I have to do whatever it takes to make her see that I love her and I only want what’s best for her. And I have to let go a little and let her make her own mistakes, no matter how much that scares me.
“Look, it’s late,” I say. “We’ve both said some things we didn’t mean—”
“Have we?” she interrupts.
“Well, haven’t we?” I say.
I know I did. And I pray to fucking God she did because if she really doesn’t care one way or the other whether I stay or go, then we’re done, and I can’t handle the thought of not being with her. Of not being able to hold her, to kiss her, to fuck her.
She shrugs.
“I guess. But I did mean it when I said I’m taking the job.”
“Let’s just talk about it in the morning. It’s late,” I say.
She shakes her head.
“You’re still not hearing me, are you? There’s nothing to talk about. I’m taking the job. I know you’re not happy about it, but I’m doing it anyway, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t want to spend the weekend arguing about it. So let’s just not talk about it, okay?”
“Whatever,” I sigh.
“I’m going to bed,” she says.
I nod and follow her upstairs. We get ready and crawl into bed. What I wouldn’t give to reach across the gap and touch her. To pull her into my arms and caress every inch of her, to make her feel every part of her body coming to life. But somehow I just can’t do it. I’m afraid she’ll push me away. The gap between us is less than a foot, but it might as well be a mile as we sit in silence, her reading a magazine and me reading a book, both of us avoiding the elephant in the room.
There was a time when we talked about things. Everything. We made joint decisions, we discussed the pros and cons. Now it’s come to this, and I know why. I know it’s my fault. Somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about things. I didn’t realize it then, but I see it now. So many times there was a decision to be made, and I just made it, and Elle went along with it. Now she’s making her own decisions, and I see it. I see how fucking frustrating it must have been for her all these years.
I don’t know how to tell her any of this though. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry and I get it, and I just want her to be happy. I don’t know how to take back the hurtful things I said and tell her I support her no matter what.
Elle sighs and puts her magazine down. She flicks off her lamp and lies down, her back to me. I try to concentrate on my book, but it’s like it’s written in a foreign language. It’s just not going in. I look at Elle, the curve of her hip, her slender back. I realize her shoulders are shaking slightly. She’s crying.
“Elle? Are you alright?” I ask.
She sniffs loudly.
“Yes. I just miss the girls,” she says.
She’s lying. I made her cry, and I fucking hate myself for it. I wish we could have a do-over of today. A version where she tells me about her new job and I smile and encourage her and say all the right things. She wouldn’t be crying now, she’d be screaming my name as I made her come.
I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I don’t want to accuse her of lying about why she’s upset. I think one more argument right now could push us over the edge. Instead, I go along with it.
“Me too, honey,” I say. “The time will fly by, and they’ll be back before we know it.”
They’ll be back, and once more they’ll be the band-aid that holds us together.
I can’t bear this. I can’t stand to hear Elle crying. I have to make this right. Somehow. I turn my own lamp off, dropping my book to the ground. I wrap my arm around Elle’s waist. I think I feel her stiffen for a moment, but she relaxes quickly, and I think I imagined it. At least I hope I did.
My cock stiffens as her ass presses against it. I can’t help it. Even now, her touch sets me on fire, makes me want her. I start to move my hand lower, trailing my fingers down her stomach. She grabs my hand, stopping me from moving lower, but she doesn’t push me away. She just holds my hand, clinging tightly to it, and even though she isn’t responding
to my touch how I would like, her grip gives me hope.
We lie in the darkness, clinging to each other’s hand, clinging to the hope we still have left. I wait until she’s asleep and then I kiss her shoulder and whisper into her ear, finally daring to voice my fear now she isn’t awake to tell me that’s exactly what she’s going to do.
“I’ll do better, Elle. I swear. Just don’t leave me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELLE
To say the weekend was awkward would be a fucking understatement. I knew Falcon wouldn’t be too happy about my job, but I didn’t expect him to react in the way he did. I expected him to resist a little, but the way he tried to forbid me from taking this job riled me more than I thought it would.
If someone had told me it would go the way it did, I wouldn’t have even thought about taking the job, but once I had, and once Falcon made it clear he thinks I’m nothing but a pretty face and a tight ass, I knew I had to do this.
We spent the weekend pretending everything was okay. Going on with our days like normal. Falcon popped into the office for a couple hours, and then we went out and had lunch. We spent the afternoon quietly ignoring each other, each of us going to say something and then changing our minds. Eventually, he did speak up. He asked me if I wanted to go out and I said yes although I didn’t really.
We went to a loud bar, the kind where you go to drink and dance and not communicate. We got tipsy and went home. We should have made love then. We should have had a session to rival all sessions, but once we got into bed, it was like Falcon was afraid to touch me.
It was my fault. He tried to touch me on Friday night, and I stopped him. At that moment, I just needed to be held. I thought he knew that, but it seems he took it as a rejection, and now he’s punishing me by rejecting me right back.
We spent a hungover Sunday lazing around watching movies. Anything to fill the silence that is growing between us. Typically, we endure hangovers in bed together, cuddled up and watching movies in bed, fucking and dozing. But not yesterday. We watched movies in the living room on opposite ends of the couch, not touching, barely daring to look at each other.
