Authors: C. P. Stringham
“They made up by the end of the afternoon,
but Gram did whisper to Mom that Sammy probably saved us all from another of
Aunt Susie’s dry cakes,” I said with a laugh.
Chris helped himself to more lemonade,
drinking greedily from the cup. Haying in the heat did that to a person. It
was back-breaking work with the sun beating down on you the whole time while
you loaded and stacked the sixty pound bales. When the wagon was full, you
took the bales back to the barn, unloaded them onto the elevator, and then
stacked them in the haymow before heading back out to the fields and doing it
all over again.
I cleaned up from our picnic. Leaving only a
wedge of blueberry pie on a paper plate with a plastic fork for Chris. Instead
of giving it to him, I decided to tease him.
“Is that your mom’s blueberry pie?” he asked
as I dug the fork into it.
“Yep, and it’s the last piece,” I replied.
“Are you going to share that with me or am I
going to have to take it from you?” Chris leaned forward and looked fully prepared
to follow through with his threat. He was twice my size after his first full
year of college; tall, broad shouldered, and muscular.
I looked at him slyly and then held the
forkful out for him to bite. He opened his mouth, I inserted the fork, he closed
his lips on it, and I pulled it away. I continued to feed him that way until
it was gone. We went quiet and stared at each other. The only sounds coming
from nature and the early revelers letting off a few fireworks somewhere in the
distance. I moved towards him first. Closing the space between us as my heart
beat madly in my chest. When our lips met, it was pure bliss. His tasted of
blueberries.
So much had changed between us over the past
year. Changed with me in particular. With Chris away so much, I’d learned to
appreciate him more when he was home. He was polite and generous and always
attentive. And when we were together, I found myself feeling the same strange
way every time. It was only stronger when we were alone. I was pretty sure it
was the same way for him since he was fairly concerned about us not “getting
carried away” all the time. At first, I agreed with his restraint. But now, I
wanted more. I wanted to share something with him that I’d never shared with
anyone else. Something my body seemed pretty certain of was that he would be
the one capable of taking the constant ache of longing away. Nothing was worse
than being with him and kissing and feeling his hands all over me and then
ending it. Ending it didn’t even sound like an appropriate word choice for
what happened. Ending it would imply an outcome was reached when, in fact, it
was cut off beforehand. And that sucked. Breathing fast, heart beating as if
it were about to come out of my chest, and this hot, tingling feeling between
my legs. It was like a sickness that kept getting worse the longer it was
ignored.
Chris lowered me down onto the truck bed
against the blankets we had set out to watch the fireworks. As he lay on his
side and propped his head in his hand, his eyes searched mine. He put the
brakes on again and reminded me about the fireworks. But I didn’t care about
fireworks anymore. I untied the bow at the back of my neck and peeled the
halter-style bodice down in the front exposing my bare breasts to the warm
night air.
It wasn’t the first time Chris had seen them
and yet he seemed to understand what I had in mind. “Jenny, do you know what
would happen if your daddy came home and found us out here?” he reasoned
softly.
“They won’t be home for at least an hour or
more.”
“And if they leave early?”
“Chris, I’m ready. Aren’t you ready?”
He ran his free hand over his face and
chuckled. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Apparently I’m a lot more afraid of your
daddy than you are.”
“I want to be with you in the closest way
possible. I think about it all the time,” I told him candidly. “I don’t want
to wait. I’m 18. You’re 19. We’re old enough.”
He reached out and placed his shaky hand on
my breast cupping it as I enjoyed the feel of his skin on mine. “We need to
wait, Jenny. Wait for it to be special.”
“But it
will be
special. No matter
when it happens.”
“I thought maybe we’d wait until we were
married.”
“That’ll take forever, Chris,” I responded
like a spoiled child.
What I did next surprised me. It just went
to confirm my convictions. I reached for his belt and, even with his murmured
request to stop and think about what I was asking him to do, tugged it open. I
knew that what I was doing had the desired effect I wanted on him when his
breath caught as I freed his arousal from his jeans.
“I don’t have anything with me,” he told me
as I held him and the length of it grew and pulsed in my hands once unconfined.
“Don’t try and tell me that, Christopher Reed
Gardner,” I brushed off. “I know for a fact there’s been a box of rubbers in
the glove compartment of this truck for the past six months. You got them over
winter break. A box of 12 and there’s one missing out of it. I bet the one
that’s missing is in your wallet. If it isn’t, you have some explaining to
do.”
“You’re too smart for your own good, Jennifer
Rose Sloan.”
I answered him with a kiss. Before long, the
two of us were rolling around in the back of his Ford and building up the
momentum of a runaway freight train as Def Leppard’s Hysteria played over his
cassette stereo system. The blood coursed through my veins at such a hard,
fast rate. It was as if the actual volume had increased tenfold. Every nerve
ending was on high alert and savoring, craving even the simplest of touches. And
then, what I’d wanted, happened.
Afterward, as he held me tightly in his arms,
I asked with a frown, “Do you think it’s always going to hurt so much?”
He placed a kiss on my shoulder. “Of course
not.”
“Did you…did you like it?” I asked equally
concerned with his experience.
“God, Jenny, do you have to ask?” he
chuckled. “It was incredible. You’re incredible.”
And it did get better as time went on. So
much so, neither of us had to ask, only anticipate and please.
Present Day
I was positively starved that morning. The
first thing I did was make coffee. I then fixed up a plate with a few crab
quiche appetizers and a wedge of lemon tart. No sense letting the food I’d
prepared go to waste. I set out for the lounge chair on the front porch
carefully balancing my plate and mug of coffee while tucking my Louis L’Amour
book under my arm.
The early morning sun was reflected on the
lake making my decision to sit outside all the more worth the extra effort
involved. The neighboring cottages weren’t too far away. I could hear a dog
barking to my right and a woman’s voice as she hollered for it to stop.
I sipped coffee in between bites of food.
Thankful for the distraction from my life the book was giving me as I worked
through 25 pages before Chris came outside. He’d just showered and left his
hair to air dry.
“Thanks for making coffee. It hits the
spot,” he told me as he sat on the porch railing wearing khaki shorts and black
polo shirt.
“No need to thank me. You know me and my
morning coffee.”
“Was that a nice way of saying you made it
for yourself?”
I looked up from my book and regarded him
indifferently as I said, “If that were the case, I would have only made enough
for myself. As it is, I made a full pot.”
“True. You’re right.”
I sipped from my mug, took a moment to think
about how I wanted to broach something unpleasant, and then decided I’d be
direct. “You told me earlier you weren’t ready to end things, but let me ask
you something,” I posed. “When was the last time we made love?”
“I thought you said it wasn’t about sex?” he
said accusingly.
I took a deep breath to collect my temper.
“I didn’t say
sex
, Chris. I said the last time we
made love
,” I
chided. “And don’t look at me like that. You know there’s a difference.”
He hung his head down and replied, “I…I don’t
know.”
“In two years, it’s been nothing more than satisfying
a basic need. No emotion involved. And even that hasn’t come about in over six
months,” I admitted feeling completely vulnerable. “When did it stop being
about our…souls connecting? Do you remember that, Chris? It was like
breathing to us before.”
“I remember.”
“And while I say it isn’t the reason why I’m
unhappy, it has to be considered a part of the whole problem in our marriage.”
“This is the sort of issue we need to talk
about,” he said softly. “This is why I wanted this weekend. It isn’t too
late, Jen. Not for us. I don’t want to lose you.”
I set my mug down no longer interested in its
contents. My nervous stomach churned at the very thought of the upcoming subject
matter. “Chris,” I started and dove into the obvious, “I was with another man,
in the biblical sense, not once, not twice as you thought, but three times.”
He tapped his knuckles against the railing as
he digested my confession. I watched, with great emotional difficulty, while
he gathered himself together. His jaw clenched tightly as he stared off at the
lake. I wondered if I’d finally gotten my point across that things were
irrevocably broken. Or who knows? Maybe he was thinking about how easy it
would be to kill me and weigh my cheating body down for a burial in the lake.
“I’m willing to move beyond that.”
“Chris,” I let my voice trail off.
“What, Jen? Christ, you’re not making this
easy,” he choked out. “You told me you didn’t love
him
. Do you? Were
you lying to me?”
I swallowed uneasily and then said, “No, I
haven’t lied to you about that. I’ve been honest.”
“Then it shouldn’t matter as long as we still
love each other,” he reasoned. “We can fix this.”
“You know, I’ve always been one to find
complete distaste in the statement ‘it was only sex’ when I’d heard others use
it, but here it is, it was
only
sex with Steve. And here’s some more
brutal honesty. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed having another man’s full attention.
I enjoyed feeling wanted and attractive and the goddamn center of his world
even if it was only temporary.” I used both of my shaky hands to wipe fat, hot
tears off of my cheeks. I sniffed and murmured, “Temporary’s better than
nothing at all.”
This time, he was the one to walk away. I
watched as he headed up the tree-shaded drive and, with the full head of steam
he seemed to have built up, figured he’d reach the Canadian border by
lunchtime.
I knew that what I said was cruel. But it
was also reality. No matter how many times he insisted we could work it out,
my infidelity would always be at the back of his mind and, eventually, it would
eat away at him. It was already eating away at me. I had been so unhappy, felt
so unwanted, for so long. My behavior broke every moral rule on marriage I’d
ever had. I hated people that did what I’d done. I wasn’t so puritanical to oppose
divorce. It made sense that some people in a marriage changed so much over
time they didn’t see eye to eye anymore. Making each other miserable. And
then there were the ones that never knew each other well enough before heading
into their lifelong commitment together. Stuck in a relationship they truly
never belonged in. In those two cases, divorce was the best option. Divorce
and then move on.
I truly didn’t fit into either of those earlier
categories. No. I was in a third group; the group that stomped on marriage
vows and trust and respect without a thought or care spent on how their actions
would affect their spouse. It made me hate myself for what I’d put Chris
through by cheating. The fact that he knew when it happened, almost precisely,
was the worst. No matter how unhappy I was, hurting him in such a way was
unconscionable.
He returned nearly an hour later. Hands in
his pockets and a pensive look on his face. I was where he’d left me. On the
porch with my guilt to keep me company. I clutched the book in my hands
nervously. A book I wasn’t able to read in his absence. Too caught up in my own
thoughts. Wrestling the demons I had invited into our lives. Into our failing
marriage.
He settled himself on the rail again. “Jen,
this feels wrong,” he said with a shrug of uncertainty. “All of it.”
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and I’m glad you’re finally seeing it,
too.”
“No, you don’t understand
what
I’m
saying
,” he replied tersely. “I can’t imagine my life without you and I’m
not willing to throw away what we’ve built together.”
I scoffed at his comment. “Please. You’ve
been derelict from the life we’ve built. Need I remind you of all the times
your job’s come first? Really, Chris. It would be funny if it wasn’t so
tragic.”