Wounds of Time

by Stevie D. Parker

  He paused to gesture toward me. “Most importantly, though, a special thanks to my beautiful wife, who put up with my 3 a.m. emails and Sunday conference calls. Babe, you’re my rock. I love you,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone!” he concluded, raising his glass in toast position.

  Tom’s wife, Christina, leaned over to me. “I am so jealous of your marriage! The two of you are like the real-life Barbie and Ken.”

  “Thank you. I’ve been with him since I was sixteen!” I said. In reality, though, sometimes it felt more like I’d been stuck with him since I was sixteen.

  I stood as he walked back over to the table and kissed me. Everyone was clapping. He was so good at shooting shit that if he ever decided to quit his job and move to Hollywood, he would have no problem landing an acting career. He only called me beautiful or said he loved me during his speeches. He was so believable that even I could almost believe him for a second. He sat back down at the table.

  “Want to dance?” I asked him.

  “No way,” he said.

  He hated dancing. I would always try to convince him that a slow dance was basically just moving to music, but he never budged.

  “Look up Vince, eighty-five percent of the company is on the dance floor,” I said.

  He looked up at the dance floor. “Yeah, and seventy-five percent of them look like idiots,” he replied.

  It was a good thing we’d never had a wedding. I didn’t know what he would have done when the bride and groom were expected to dance.

  The second we got in the car, the show was over. “I wasn’t impressed,” he said.

  “With what?” I asked.

  “The steak was too well-done to be called medium rare,” he complained.

  The truth was that if it wasn’t the steak, then something would have been wrong with the pour of his drink or a comment some poor drunk broker said to him. Or the service. There was always something wrong with that event.

  VINCE

  I laid in bed that night, restless. It was almost 1 a.m., and I couldn’t sleep—I couldn’t stop thinking about that night in the kitchen with Samantha. What had happened wasn’t something that usually turned me on. She’d made me feel so inexperienced that night when I’d walked in and saw that—whatever that ball was in her mouth. Granted, we didn’t really talk often, but lately, she seemed to be going out of her way to be extra silent.

  The bigger question on my mind, though, was what had gotten into her? She couldn’t even stand me, so I doubted she was attracted to me anymore. And then out of the blue, she was talking about us beating each other. Sex outfits? Stripteases? “Santa Baby”? Seriously, of all the songs in the world to pick, she had to pick the one that reminded me of meeting Sarah. The song that she had stripped to that night?

  I had full intentions of sleeping with her that night when she came out in that trench coat, but the song just freaked me out. Did she somehow know about Sarah? Was she testing me?

  I stood and walked into the master bedroom. Samantha was still up, sitting in bed reading a book. “Hey,” I said, entering slowly. She put the book down on her lap and looked up.

  “Hey,” she responded, taking her reading glasses off and placing them on the night table.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m afraid to ask, but what are you reading?”

  “Don’t worry—nothing crazy, a murder mystery,” she answered.

  I took the book out of her lap. “I think you should really stop reading.” I laughed. “Also, I think I should probably make Amanda check into my life insurance policy tomorrow.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No need to waste your assistant’s time with that. Don’t worry, Vince. You’re still more useful to me alive than dead,” she teased.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened in the kitchen the other night?” I asked.

  Her mouth drooped, and her cheeks turned red. “No, not particularly,” she replied. “As a matter of fact, if we never spoke about it again, I would be just fine.”

  “I just want to explain….” I started, but she cut me off.

  “Nothing to explain, I told you to do it rough, and you did.”

  I looked down. “Did you like it?” I asked, still not looking up.

  “I mean maybe the first part, but the second—no, not even a little bit. Did you?” she said.

  “I mean, it was okay. I didn’t dislike it, but it’s not something I would necessarily want or need. You know that already, you’ve asked me that a million times,” I answered honestly. “Look, I just wanted to let you know you looked amazing tonight.”

  She tilted her head, confused.

  “You asked me how you looked before we left, and I said really good,” I said. “When I was giving my speech, I saw the way you looked at me when I called you beautiful and realized I don’t tell you that enough. So, I just wanted to let you know that you are truly beautiful,” I explained, looking directly into her eyes.

  I took the reading glasses off the night table and put them back on her. “Actually, I think I kinda like the glasses too.”

  She slid up on the bed and leaned into me. “How much have you had to drink tonight?” she asked.

  “Probably not enough, I can’t sleep. I was actually going to go make one now. Do you want one?” I asked.

  She said okay, and I went down to grab a bottle of wine. I returned to the room with the wine and two glasses.

  “Since when do you drink white wine?” she asked. She knew me too well. I always preferred red. I couldn’t even remember the last time I drank white.

  “I don’t. But it’s your favorite, and you hate when I smell like scotch, so I’m am making an exception,” I answered, winking at her.

  I poured her a glass, and we sat in bed, drinking the wine. I needed something to take the edge off. I knew I needed to sleep with her and was truly afraid I wouldn’t be able to.

  We sat there, awkwardly drinking the wine together. She seemed just as weirded out by the idea of sleeping with me as I did with her. “Is there anything different you want to try?” I asked her, afraid of what she was going to reply. After walking into that room with her with that ball gag in her mouth, I could only imagine what else she read.

  She took her glasses back off and put them back on the night table. She thought for a minute. “Maybe on the loveseat?” she suggested, leading me there.

  I sat down and she sat on top of me, her arms around my shoulders. As we began kissing, I tried so hard to get into it. I removed her nightgown as she moved up and down on me, thinking maybe that would help. It was taking me a while to reach the point of climax, which made me even more nervous—that’s what had started this whole mess. So, I picked her up and carried her back over to the bed. I threw her legs over my shoulders, put her back on top of me, turned her over—nothing was working. I could tell she was getting impatient.

  Finally, I closed my eyes and pictured Sarah. Pictured being in her apartment, on top of her, inside her. When we were finished, we didn’t say much. She rolled over, back to me, and went to sleep. I stayed in bed for a few minutes before returning to the guest room. I experienced more guilt over thinking about Sarah during sex than I even did over actually sleeping with her. Samantha really was beautiful—too beautiful to have a man picturing someone else.

  Christmas Eve approached. Sarah found it comical that I still wanted to meet on the roof and have our wine and our dance. Why wouldn’t I, though? That was our tradition now. Plus, how could she be my “Christmas Fairy” if I didn’t see her on Christmas Eve? The kids were going to be home from school on break, so except for our Monday afternoon rendezvous, the next two weeks were going to be hard for me to get out of the house.

  I met her at the club at our usual time. As I walked her to our nook and then opened the bottle of wine, Sarah looked over toward the corner, where we’d done the deed for the first time.

  “Imagine someone has us on cam
era?” she asked.

  I handed her the glass. “I’d pay to watch that tape. I bet we’d make great porn stars.”

  She put our song on, and we danced. I never looked forward to dancing so much in my life, didn’t even care how cold it was. When we finished the dance, we sat back down, holding hands and drinking our bottle of wine. I rubbed her hands in mine to keep them warm.

  She looked at me, a little dreamy-eyed, and said, “Tell me about your first love.”

  I chuckled. “That’s what you want to know about, my first love?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Okay.” I launched into storytelling mode “My first love… Well, she was hot. REALLY hot. Gorgeous, in fact. When I would see her no matter what kind of day I was having, she made it better. And when she left, I got this feeling right in the pit of my stomach that I already missed her. My stomach literally hurt.”

  Sarah smiled at me. She really liked the story. She was very into romantic stuff, which I was okay with. I wasn’t typically a romantic guy, but with her, I would be whatever she wanted. I couldn’t help but say corny things. That’s just what she did to me.

  “How old were you?” she asked.

  I thought about it for a second. “Forty-one,” I replied.

  She playfully hit me on the chest, suddenly realizing I was talking about her. “Not me, idiot, your first real love,” she said.

  “You are my first real love,” I insisted.

  She gave me a skeptical look. She didn’t believe me. “That can’t be true. You’re married—what about your wife? You don’t love her?”

  Now that was a harder question to answer. I sat for a second and tried to put my thoughts into words.

  “Yes, I love my wife,” I said. “But it’s different. We didn’t fall in love and get married like most couples do. We were young, really young, and she got pregnant super-fast, within the first few months. We barely knew each other when we got married. We joke about my ‘super sperm’ now and how it molded our paths. We love each other, sure, but we kind of grew to.”

  She didn’t seem to like that story as much. “How’d you meet her?” she asked.

  “Oh, well, I was a pretty cool twenty-two-year-old, believe it or not. And she had these beautiful green eyes. I was instantly attracted to her”.

  “Green eyes, huh?” She laughed. “I see you have a type.”

  “You know what? I never realized it, but you’re right. I guess I do,” I said, looking into her green eyes. “There’s just something about a girl with green eyes. She’s Irish like you, too, but most people think she’s Spanish. Anyway, I don’t tell people about this, but I was a baseball player and one night after winning a game—”

  She interrupted me. “A baseball player? Like a real baseball player?”

  “If by real, you mean professional, then yes. I played in California.”

  Her eyes grew wide and she smiled. Now she was curious. “What position?”

  “Catcher,” I replied.

  “How does a baseball player become a stockbroker?” she asked.

  Valid question. “I’m not sure how much you know about baseball, but to be a catcher, you have to have a really strong arm. Be able to throw a ball to second base squatting like this,” I said and demonstrated the position for her. “One night in my second season of playing, after going out with the guys, I was driving my car on the freeway, much faster than the speed limit allowed and much drunker than I was supposed to be. Totaled the car. Sucked, nice car too. I broke my right arm in three different spots. Luckily, I didn’t kill myself or anyone else. The only thing I killed that night was my baseball career. Even if I’d ever be able to throw that hard again, which was a long shot, the league wasn’t having it. They kicked me off. I had some bullshit degree that really served no purpose for anything because I never thought I would have to do anything other than play baseball.”

  I shrugged and continued. “You know how teachers are with jocks, I passed classes even when I shouldn’t have. Now, I had a wife and a toddler son at home and no backup plan. They revoked my license; I couldn’t even drive for five years. My uncle was a broker in New York City. He told me he’d be my sponsor, help me get my Series 7. So, we moved. It turns out, I ended up being really good at being a stockbroker.”

  Sarah looked amazed. “That’s an incredible story! Do you miss playing?”

  I took a deep breath. “Every day of my life. I played softball for a while when I came to New York, but it’s not the same.”

  “Does your son play?” she asked.

  “No,” I laughed. “He could care less about sports. Real Brainiac, into science and reading, intellectual stuff. I have no idea where he came from. Both my kids are abnormally smart. I truly have no idea how that happened.”

  Our bottle of wine was empty, and time was running out. I needed to get home. I hated leaving her. We kissed for a little while, and then she waited with me as I hailed a taxi. As she started walking away, I turned around.

  “Hey, Sarah,” I called out.

  She turned to look at me.

  “Just wanted you to know that my stomach is already starting to hurt.”

  And there it was—the smile I dreamt of seeing every day.

  Sarah’s birthday was in February. I wanted to take her somewhere special. I suggested a place I knew of in Jersey, so the chances of running into someone I knew were slim. We weren’t able to ever go out or do real couple things, so I thought this would be nice. Just so happened, her birthday fell on the third Wednesday of the month, so it was easy to say I was going to play poker. She was real street-smart, living in New York practically her whole life. Wanted to know the exact kind of car I was showing up in beforehand. I could literally see her calling me on her cell phone from my rear-view mirror.

  “I’m in the silver Porsche one hundred feet in front of you,” I said, laughing. I guessed caution was a good quality.

  She came over and slid inside. “Wow… Nice car!” She inspected the interior, checking out the sound system and touching the soft leather seats. “I was always a sucker for a guy with a hot car.”

  I started pulling out. “And I was always a guy with a hot car, so see we’re meant to be together,” I replied.

  “Where do you park this thing?” she asked.

  “I have a four-car garage not far from the house I rent,” I replied.

  “What other kinds of cars do you have?” she asked, intrigued.

  “I have a Cadillac, which is the family SUV, and a classic hot rod that only goes out on occasion, mostly to car shows. Oh, and my wife has a Mercedes that she rarely drives but said she really needed to have,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “You must have quite the house,” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s nice.”

  That was a great night. We went to a nice seafood place in South Jersey. The restaurant had a nautical theme, as if you were sitting on a ship. You could smell the fish broiling the second you walked inside, there was a raw bar and live lobsters in a tank. We had a table by the window overlooking the shore. Sarah loved my black button-down, said I looked good in dark colors that matched my hair. She looked amazing.

  That seafood place was the first real public place we had ever gone to together. She was very sophisticated at the fancy restaurant, knowing all the right questions to ask. I ordered the same bottle of wine that we drink on Christmas Eve. I bought her a Louis Vuitton bag. I didn’t really know what to get her, but all the other women in my life seemed to like stuff like that, so I figured the purse was a safe bet. It was.

  We had a really good conversation that night. Not about the past, not about our current situations, just about regular things any couple would talk about: politics, movies currently playing in the theaters, our week at work. I asked her what she was doing for her birthday, and she was excited to tell me that Isabel was able to get her and her friends into the new trendy Asian fusion restaurant downtown. I knew the plac
e, and she was right; it was hard to get into. The food was great though—I’d been there a couple of times already.

  By now, we’d been “dating” for over a year. We were beyond all that first date type banter. When we got up to leave, she tripped, and I caught her fall.

  “Remember I saved you! Tipsy or heels?” I asked her, laughing.

  “A little of both,” she admitted, holding my arm as we went to the car. Right before she got in, she put her arms around my shoulders, and under the moonlight, her eyes seemed even greener.

  “I had a really good time with you tonight, thank you for saving me,” she said.

  As I was driving home on the Garden State Parkway, she started rubbing the inside of my thigh. I looked at her and smiled. “You can’t touch me like that, you’re going to turn me on,” I warned.

  “Would that be a bad thing?” she asked.

  I didn’t think she was serious until suddenly, she was leaning toward me over the armrest and opening my pants. I let her, shocked at what was happening. Then, she started to go down on me as I was driving.

  “You’re going to make me crash,” I said.

  She started going faster. Suddenly I was in panic mode. I was trying so hard not to lose control of myself or the car. Finally, my attention went to the rest stop on the side of the road. I pulled over and desperately tried to find a secluded place where I could release myself without worrying about killing both of us. I stopped the car, pulled her head up with my hand, and ordered her to get out of the car.

  She didn’t have much time to get out before I lifted her onto the hood of my car. She wasn’t wearing stockings this time, so I just had to shift her panties over to the side. Holding her legs around my waist, I entered her right there in that deserted lot. I think that memory might have trumped the rooftop one. Penetrating her, on my car, out in the open where anyone could have caught us—that turned me on more than I could have ever imagined.

  When we were done, I just stared at her, almost speechless.

  “Wow, oysters really are an aphrodisiac, huh?” I remarked. “You drive me fucking crazy.”