One Life With Him

by CD Reiss

  She groaned. I spread her legs under her and pressed down on her lower back. Perfect. I kissed a raw welt, and she squeaked in pain.

  “None of that.” Though my words were cruel, I didn’t want her to hurt right then. She’d earned her pleasure.

  I squeezed a lump of the sunburn cream onto my finger. It was cool to the touch, and when I put it on the pink skin, she breathed easily.

  “Now,” I said, “we have a problem. Fucking you in the ass isn’t going to solve it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “First off, we need to drop the sirs and thank yous and all that shit until I say otherwise. We’re off scene. Verbally. But the ass stays up, or I’ll welt your welts.”

  “Fine.”

  “I want you to talk to me.” I dragged a mound of clear cream over the curve of her ass, watching it get smaller in the seam between her and me, disappearing into a cool coat.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Everything is fine. I think, just… I think I needed this. What you’re giving me now.”

  I ran my fingers on the inside of her thigh until there was no cream on them, and I slipped my middle finger between her legs. Her eyes fluttered closed.

  “You’re not fine. You’re wet as fuck.” I put my fingertip on her clit. “You’re so close I shouldn’t even touch you. But fine? You’re not fine.”

  “I am. I—”

  “You don’t tell your husband you’re not happy and an hour later tell him you’re fine because he fucked you hard enough.”

  I slid two fingers inside her. Wet didn’t describe her. She tightened around me, and my dick stretched my pants. I pulled my hand out and ran it over her clit again, front to back, touching every surface, waking it up.

  “Jonathan, I can’t talk to you like this.”

  “You don’t talk to me, period.”

  “I want to come.”

  “You’ll come.” I gingerly spread her ass cheeks. She looked as if she’d been fucked by a battering ram. Bruises were rising already, and she was deep red around the edges. I’d need to leave that part of her alone for a while. “Tell me.” I kissed her lower back while stroking between her legs. “Tell me how it’s been for you.”

  “I don’t want to. I don’t want to upset you. I just want you to be okay.”

  “I am okay, except that you’ve been closed to me.” I put three fingers in her, and she bucked. “Stay still. You can take your hands off the headboard.”

  She tucked them under her.

  I slowly removed my fingers. “Tell me one thing you think of that makes you worry.”

  She sighed.

  I put my hands on her thighs and kissed her clit. “Tell me.”

  “I love you.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  She paused. “And I wonder if you’ve taken your rejection meds.”

  “I know you’ve been checking the bottles.”

  “When I’m here.”

  “Exactly.” I gave her a long stroke with my tongue.

  She groaned but stayed still. Such a good woman. “I told you I’d stop traveling if you wanted.”

  “I don’t want.”

  “Why?”

  I sucked her clit because it tasted good and because I wanted to please her, but mostly because I didn’t know how to answer her question. She’d just accepted my encouragement and never asked why it was there. I felt the muscles of her thighs tremble and tighten.

  As if she spoke best on the edge of orgasm, she continued. “You throw me away. We have such a short time together, and you kick me out. Jonathan, if you don’t want me, let me go. Don’t stay out of obligation. Not for ten years of misery with me.”

  I pulled my face away. “Oh God, Monica. You can’t mean that.”

  I’d intended to torment her for as long as it took, then bring her to orgasm with my tongue until she begged me to stop. But she broke me with those words, and I changed the plan. I got on my knees and pushed her onto her back. Her hair made a ladder across her face, and I brushed it away. Her eyes were wet, and her face was creased from being pressed to the sheets.

  “I mean it,” she said. “That heart has ten years in it, and you can’t spend them with the wrong person just because you got married under pressure. It’s wrong.”

  “Would you have married me if I’d asked you under any other circumstances? If I’d taken you up to Mulholland and asked you under the stars, with a ring and a few nice words?”

  “I would have said yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I love you is why. But that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to stay now. Because you wouldn’t have asked. Not for a while.” I must have had a look on my face or made a sound that hit a button, because she blinked, and tears ran down the side of her face. “I’m not trying to make it about me, and I’m not looking for reassurance. But if you deny it…”

  “I’m not denying it. I would have asked you… I don’t know when. After a few birthdays. There are no rules for the way it happened.”

  “I want you to think about it,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About if this is what you really want.” Her voice was sober and cold. “If I’m who you really want to be married to.”

  “Goddess…”

  “No, I mean it. If you want to be together but not married. I just want you to have what you want. I want you to be sure.”

  I almost answered. I almost reassured her and told her how I felt about her. I almost made metaphors with the sky and stars, weaving threads of certainty into a gauze of confidence. But even if I got her to believe it for a second, she’d wake up wondering if I’d lied to appease her.

  So I kissed her cheek. “Will you stay?”

  She nodded, and I felt the insecurity in it. She’d never been insecure with me, and it unmoored me at the same time it filled me with a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time.

  I unbuttoned my shirt. She reached up and helped me, pulling it off and throwing it across the room. I got my pants off and stood over her naked body. Her magnificent tits were goose bumped, nipples hard, skin golden in the lamplight.

  “Spread your legs for me.”

  She did it, hitching up her knees. There was so much between us. I would have married her in an instant, under any circumstances, and as I wedged myself between her legs, I knew my job wasn’t to reassure her with pretty words or gifts but with actions. She’d believe it, or I’d die trying.

  I put her hands over her head and leaned on them. “Look at me.”

  Her eyes went wide, looking up at me. “May I come?”

  I pushed against her with the rhythm of slow torture. “Quiet now, goddess. Don’t ask again.”

  Her face went from pleasure to constricted concentration as she tried not to come. I fucked her harder. She pleaded with me without saying a word. Her face begged for release, her beauty crunched into pain.

  “Say my name,” I said.

  “Jonathan.”

  “Monica.”

  “Jonathan.” She cried it, sobbed, breaking herself into pieces to say it.

  “Come, my wife. Come for me.”

  She came in two strokes, arching and twisting. I held myself back until she’d finished, and I drank in every cry, every moment, every shudder.

  My purpose in life had been simple up until then. Live. Just live. Now I had a resolution. Love her until she believed it.

  Chapter 57

  MONICA

  Love was easy. Love, the way everyone else defined it, was the fun part. But every hell, every conflict, every bit of miserable anxiety in those first six months had been born of nothing but love. I’d thought that was my new life. Ten years of it at least, until his heart gave out and he had to find another. Then another ten. Or more. Or less. Or not. Or maybe. I was playing Russian roulette with God by being away so much, but I thought he wanted me away, and he thought I wanted to be away. I didn’t know whether to jump or crawl those first six months, then he came to the studio and fuck
ed me like an animal.

  The morning after he’d reclaimed me, with my ass aching and my cunt as sore as it had ever been, I woke up forgetting to wonder about his pills and his life. Just for a second. In that crack in my wall of concern bled something else I hadn’t thought about since Sequoia. It had needled me every time I saw Declan and disappeared behind the buzz of death seconds after Jonathan’s father left the room. Now that I thought of it, while in Jonathan’s arms with the sound of the ocean outside, I couldn’t go another second without telling him, even if it meant it was our last together.

  His eyes were closed, light lashes casting darker shadows. His chest rose and fell under me, and his scar was hard white beneath my hand.

  “Jonathan,” I whispered, hoping he was asleep.

  “Yes,” he answered, eyes still shut, as if he was wide awake and had been listening to my thoughts.

  I got my knees under me, the pain of every movement reminding me of how many times he’d brutalized me and how consistently I’d begged for it. “I need to tell you something.”

  He opened his eyes. Had they always been that green? Or was it a trick of the light and my fear of losing him?

  “Okay, go ahead.” He stroked the top of my breast.

  I pulled his hand away and held it in my lap. I paused. A hundred years passed, and he said nothing. Not a word of encouragement or doubt. I could have hanged myself in the amount of time he’d wait. As always, he was a patient man in all things.

  “When you were… I mean, you weren’t yourself,” I started, “and you were dying right in front of me. I thought you were second on the list for a transplant. It was like… I thought that was it.”

  His brow creased as if he didn’t understand what I was talking about. God, there were so many little details, and I wanted to tell this story fast and dirty so I could get it over with.

  “You hate your father already, so it’s not like this will make it worse. I went to him because I wanted something.”

  “What did he want in exchange?” His voice was hard and cold, and the implications of his assumptions justified the tone.

  “Forgiveness from you. Enough to get your mother back to him.”

  He put his hand over his face and rubbed his eyes. “That’s what that whole thing was about. I barely remember it. I was in and out of consciousness ten times in a minute.” He patted my hand then rubbed my fingers. “What did you want?”

  I balled my hand into a fist. I didn’t want his affection. I couldn’t bear to feel it stop when I put the pieces together for him. “So I saw Brad’s list. I didn’t understand how it worked. So I thought what I was seeing was… you were second, and I thought it meant you were going to die. It seemed like a guarantee. And Paulie Patalano was brain-dead and right on the fourth floor.” Unable to stand the weight of his gaze, I looked in my lap, where his hand rested in mine, our fourth fingers still circled by the cheap silver key rings. “I thought your father could get me access to Paulie’s room.”

  He moved his hand away, placing it at his side. I wished he’d slapped me in the face. It would have been somehow kinder.

  “Did he?”

  “He did. He’s very clever. And everything you said about him is probably right. But I was the one who went in Paulie’s room. I was going to do it. I was going to end him so you could get his heart.” I didn’t mention Jessica’s part. What I’d done was my choice and my responsibility. Now wasn’t the time to diffuse it with Jessica-shaped shadow play. “I knew what it meant. I knew that if my plan worked, you’d have a heart that you thought was stolen. You never would have felt right about yourself. I knew I was condemning you, in a way. And us. I knew you wouldn’t forgive me. I was ending us. And I should say I’m sorry, but I’d do it again if I thought it would save your life.”

  “You didn’t do it though.”

  “Brad texted me while I was in the room. He had a heart from that poor guy in Ojai. The one who jogs and hates spicy food apparently. So I didn’t have to go through with it.”

  He took my hand again and rubbed each finger as if considering their ability to do harm. “God saved you.”

  “You believe in God? You believe he’d step in and save me? And he’d kill someone to do it?”

  “God was in Brad’s text. I believe that. But swear to me, I mean, I don’t think that circumstance will recur, but swear to me you won’t ever consider something like that again.”

  “I won’t let you die if I can prevent it. I don’t feel right about it, and I won’t pretend I do, but it’s like how a soldier must feel when he kills the enemy. I’m sure it doesn’t feel good, but there wasn’t a choice. And if it comes to me not having a choice again, I’ll do it again.”

  I searched his face for distaste or foul rancor, and I found none. Then I looked for disquiet or emotional blankness, and I found none of that either. I couldn’t read him, even when he took my arms and pulled me forward onto him. I rested my head on his chest.

  “I have to tell you,” he said, “I’m scared of death. But you? You put death to shame.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you forgive me?”

  He took a long time to answer. I told myself it didn’t matter, that his forgiveness was beside the point when I had his love.

  “I fear you. I am in awe of you. I can’t forgive you for something you didn’t do.”

  I’d thought I was committed to him before. I’d thought I’d given him my whole heart and that I owned him completely. But I hadn’t. Maybe I’d spend the rest of his life realizing I’d never owned him, loved him, or committed to him fully. Maybe it was a matter of the changing acoustics of an ever-expanding heart.

  I kissed his scar, and he stroked my hair. I worked down his body and took his cock in my mouth. I wanted to eat him alive, swallow his forgiveness, absorb his compassion. I wanted to become him, to own his pain and kindness, his sadism and his maturity, holding it to myself in a drum-tight skin of gratitude.

  Chapter 58

  MONICA

  I usually had a dream. I was in Sequoia, but it wasn’t Sequoia. The hallways were narrower, the lights dimmer or blindingly bright—endlessly white and long. Doors everywhere, some locked and some ajar. In my right hand beat a throbbing, pulsing heart, dropping blood on the bleached linoleum. I only had as much time as the blood in the heart, and I needed to get to Jonathan’s room with it or he would die. Sometimes the hospital was empty, and I couldn’t find the room. Sometimes it was populated with people who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about or where I should go. Once, I dreamed the halls were lined with chicken coops, and Dr. Brad sent me in the wrong direction on purpose.

  Jonathan always died. I always woke up in a state of grief and misery, and he was either next to me or I was in an empty bed, looking for a way to call him without worrying him.

  The night after he reclaimed me in the studio, with every inch of my body stinging and alive, I expected to have that same dream, as surprising and terrifying as it always was. But it didn’t come. And not the night after, when he made me wait twelve minutes before touching me. Nor over the next week as he broke me, pushed me, hurt me until I was a puddle of emotional satisfaction. I never had that dream again, as if my subconscious was suddenly okay with the whole arrangement of my life and my conscious brain was the only troublemaker.

  He hurt me, but he didn’t bind me. When I asked him to, he spanked me for questioning him, but he still didn’t tie me up.

  I mistrusted this in quiet moments, but I let it go. He was too good, the same man he had been. Still wise and kind, still generous and funny, but with an added helping of scorching cruelty in bed. He’d scared the dreams away, and I was safe at night, but in the day, I still carried my anxieties. Even when I forgot to worry, I reminded myself that I hated grey and pale pink, that copper and blood had the same smell, and that the heart machine in the hospital
made the same beep as the timer in the coffee shop. My brain did its due diligence, creating panic as insurance against death.

  Jonathan had been more productive. Six weeks after he returned from the hospital, he started forgetting his anti-rejection meds because of the complexities of dosing, and his immune system started slipping because he wasn’t getting enough nutrients. Shortly after Valentine’s Day, he found out I’d been staying home to watch him. He’d sliced the air with his hand and said simply, “No.”

  He hired help.

  Laurelin was a nurse, which I normally wouldn’t hold against her. But I wasn’t behaving normally. She came to the house to interview in the afternoon, after a long line of women and men who’d spoken to Jonathan about what he expected, what he needed, and what they could do. They’d all smelled sanitized. I couldn’t sit in the interviews, because the hospital stink caused me so much anxiety I wanted to throw up. I told Jonathan I had to practice, but I peeked in on every interview, and every time he said one of them was no good, I felt relieved.

  But Laurelin didn’t smell like a hospital. Nothing about her reminded me of Sequoia. Her hair was the color of scrambled eggs, and her belly was rounded with the beginnings of her second trimester. She’d worked in the infectious diseases unit at Hollywood Methodist but couldn’t continue while pregnant. She smiled a lot, which they all did, but she seemed to be made of sunshine and she smelled of rosewater. When I met her, I felt as if a blanket had been thrown over me on a cold night, and I couldn’t imagine she would let anything happen to my husband.

  “Her,” I’d said. “You need to hire her.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “She’s pregnant. She’s going to take good care of you. I can feel it.”

  “What does taking care of me feel like?”

  “It feels like the only right and good thing. And she smells nice. And you like her, I can tell,” I said.

  “I think she might be bossy.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”