by Megan Walker
Jenna gasps and moans as I play her with my left hand, the way she likes. As her gasps grow more desperate, I pull her tight against me, rubbing rhythmically against her until I come against the soft skin of her ass. I quicken my movements until she spasms and cries out, and then softens against me.
My breath catches in my throat. It’s not enough. I’m not ready for this to end. My voice is hoarse in her ear. “Let me go down on you.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have to. You already—”
“Please,” I say. “I want to.”
Jenna hesitates, and then nods. I can tell by the way her body writhes against the sheets as she shifts to her back that she wants this. She’s self-conscious about being the only one enjoying it, but she’s not, not by a long shot. I kiss the inside of her knee, and her legs fall open. As I work my way up her thigh, she gasps and moans with urgency, even though I’m hardly doing anything yet. I kiss the place where her leg meets her thigh and look up at her.
“Is this really okay?” I ask.
A smile tugs at her lips. “As long as you want to.”
Do I. I lower my mouth and begin, my tongue lighting against the softness of her skin. Her hips shift, her legs falling to the sides and then moving rhythmically, and I time my movements to them. Touching her, listening to her, is more than enough to get me hard again, and when she comes again, I don’t waste any time. I crawl up over her, rubbing myself against her, and she reaches up and pulls me inside her. We’re together—really together—and I whisper in Jenna’s ear how much I love her, how much I need her, that she’s all I want in the world. It doesn’t last long, but this time we finish together, like we used to, crying out as one, and as we hold each other in the aftermath, I rest my head on her chest, feeling the glow of coming down with my wife.
That was so good, and if it’s not exactly like it used to be, it felt no less beautiful, no less satisfying to me.
“I love you,” I tell her, and she echoes it back.
And even if it solves nothing, I’m so, so grateful we still have that.
Sixteen
Josh
There’s not an overwhelming amount of space in my Porsche, but I refuse to let Ty hold the pan with the rattlesnake on his lap, even when he tries to persuade me that he can keep the lid on tight. Instead, I wedge it between us on top of the parking brake. We’ll just take it to the bottom of the neighborhood. Just far enough away that I don’t feel like I’m infecting my neighbor’s yard with a very small rattlesnake that might leap out at one of their children when they tumble in the yard with their dog.
Not that I’m chummy enough with my neighbors to actually know which ones have children. Or dogs, for that matter.
“Isn’t there some kind of surgery you could do to remove the fangs?” Ty asks as he buckles into my car. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to have a ten-year-old in the front seat, but I don’t have a back seat and since Anna-Marie doesn’t drive, we don’t have a second car. I’ve always thought we’ll get one eventually, when we have kids.
If we ever have kids.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I doubt there are a lot of veterinarians who want to operate on a rattlesnake.” Can snakes even be sedated?
There’s a question I never thought I’d have cause to ask.
“Maybe you should Google it,” Ty says. “Because a de-fanged rattlesnake would be a really cool pet.”
“I’m not keeping the snake, and your parents aren’t going to let you keep it, either.” I drive down three streets to the road that winds out of our subdivision, and then drive across to a parking lot near a drainage canal. The lot is dark, and I see the giant white sign next to the entrance a half-second too late.
Bump.
Oh, shit.
We hit the speed bump too fast, and the car jolts and bottoms out. I cringe at the sound of my very expensive car frame scraping against the concrete.
The glass pan clanks down onto my parking brake, and I slam to a stop.
“Oh, god,” I say, opening my door and moving away from the pan. “Tell me that didn’t break.”
“It didn’t break. But it opened.”
I stare at Ty. He’s sitting there, holding the blue silicone lid, looking into the pan.
“Get out of the car!” I yell at him, and his eyes widen, and then he does. We both stand outside, staring at the pan.
Which, though I know it contained a snake when we got in the car, now very much does not.
I swear loudly and walk around the car to the glove box to get my driving gloves again. I use them to extract the pan and then poke around the gear shift.
“Oh my god,” I say. “There’s a rattlesnake lost in my car.”
“Oh!” Ty says. “I know what we should do. We should get a bunch of crickets and put them in a snake trap. That would get it.”
I have neither a snake trap, nor a bunch of crickets, nor any desire to leave my car in this godforsaken parking lot while we wait for the snake to decide it’s ready to eat. I poke around the floor and the seat cushions with my gloves, but the snake must have found a crevice to hole up in, because it’s completely disappeared.
I look at Ty, who has climbed up on my hood and is staring down through my windshield into the car. I want to tell him not to do that, but at least he’s not going to get bitten from up there.
“We need to call your dad,” I say.
Ty shrugs. “Why?”
“Because I need him to pick you up.” I feel terrible for interrupting Felix and Jenna, but I’m supposed to be bringing Ty home in twenty minutes, anyway.
I gingerly use my gloves to extract my phone from the car and then take a deep breath before I dial Felix.
I don’t know how I’m going to explain this.
“Hey,” Felix says. “You guys heading over?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m having some . . . car trouble. I know I said I’d bring Ty home, but could you come pick him up?”
“Sure. I’ll leave now. Are you still at home?”
“No,” I tell him, and I give him the cross streets to the parking lot. “You’ll see us. We’re behind the enormous white sign warning of a bump.”
“Yikes. I’ll be right there.”
He hangs up, and I spend the next half hour unbolting the seats from my car and wrestling them out, all while listening to Ty’s extended explanation of why a rattlesnake might make a good pet, and the ranking order of pets in general. When Felix drives into the parking lot—slowing down appropriately—I am shaking my head at the bottom of my car angrily.
“Yeesh,” Felix says, looking at my detached seats. “Looks like some car trouble.”
I give him a disgruntled glare. “I know you need to get back to your family. But for the love of god, first will you help me find the baby rattlesnake that’s gotten loose in the bottom of my car?”
Felix blinks at me. “You’re joking.”
“He’s not, Dad!” Ty runs in a circle around the car. “Anna-Marie found the snake and then Josh was going to pick it up but then he realized it was a rattlesnake only it didn’t have a rattle and then I told them that babies don’t have rattles and then they Googled it and it was true. But then Anna-Marie tried to catch the snake in a pizza box because she thought Josh left her and then we lost the snake and I rode the furniture around while Josh looked for it and then Anna-Marie found it and then we caught it in a pool net and put it in a baking pan and we were going to let it go because Josh said you wouldn’t let me keep it even if I could get it defanged but then we drove over that bump and it got lost in Josh’s car.”
Somehow, despite the running, he manages not to take a single breath during this entire utterance. Felix looks at me, and I rub my forehead. “Yeah. That’s pretty much what happened.”
“Okay,” Felix says. “I appreciate that it’s bad there’s a snake in
your car, but I don’t know what I can do for you. I’m from Brentwood, man. I’m not exactly an outdoorsman.”
“I said I would climb in and find it,” Ty says. “But Josh won’t let me.”
“Yeah, no,” Felix says. “Hey, why don’t you go sit in our car and Google good ways to catch rattlesnakes.” He hands his phone to Ty, and the kid skips over. Felix looks at me. “He’s not going to get porn from that, is he? I mean, there’s not some other definition of rattlesnake I’m not thinking of?”
“We already Googled it extensively. I think you’re in the clear.”
Felix and I both stare at the partially dismantled car, neither one of us inclined to go rummaging around in the many dark crevices a baby rattlesnake could have wedged itself in. “I don’t think I have any gloves,” he says. “Can I call you a tow truck?”
I sigh. If I tell Anna-Marie I lost a snake in my car, she’s never going to ride in it again. “No. Just help me get the seats back in. I’ll do the reaching down below, and after we get it put back together, I’ll drive it back to my house. Probably the snake will crawl out overnight, if it hasn’t already. And tomorrow I’ll take it in to get detailed.”
“Sure,” Felix says. We’ve got one of the seats lifted back in and I’m trying to tighten the bolts correctly without leaving my wrist open to a rattlesnake strike when Felix must find me to be a sufficiently captive audience. “Long night, huh?”
“You could say that. How was your date with Jenna?”
“Good,” he says. “Really good, actually. We got to really talk for the first time in a long time. I think things are going to be better.”
“That’s good,” I say, and I mean it.
“Sorry your night hasn’t gone as planned. It doesn’t sound like Ty caused the problem, though?”
“Not unless he snuck a rattlesnake into our house.”
“I very much doubt it,” Felix says. “How are you and Anna-Marie doing?”
I struggle with one of the bolts under the seat. “Not great. But I think I’m too upset to talk about it.”
Felix hesitates, still steadying the seat. I finally get the bolt tightened, withdraw my thankfully-unbitten arms, and sigh. It’s true that I don’t want to talk about it, but if past conversations are any indication, I’m going to tell him anyway. Might as well get it over with.
“Ben talked to Wyatt and Wyatt agreed that Ben wasn’t enough for him. When Ben was telling me this, he somehow got fixated on whether or not I would choose Anna-Marie over him in an apocalypse scenario, which obviously I would, but I’m not going to say that to my friend who just got his heart stomped on. So then Ben goes and tells Anna-Marie that I’m doubting my love for her or something, and she believes him, and I think the rattlesnake loose in my house might have been less of a threat to my family than I am at this moment.”
“Jeez,” Felix says. “Do you need to go get a drink or something?”
We lift in the second seat, and this time I have a better idea what I’m doing getting it back in. It occurs to me now that the snake might be inside the seat, which would put Felix’s hands and most of my arms in danger, but at this point, I just need to get this done and the car back home. This snake doesn’t seem to be interested in showing its face. Or its fangs.
“You don’t drink, do you?” I ask.
“Not alcohol. But I drink soda. And water.”
“Maybe coffee?” I suggest.
“No,” Felix says. “Weirdly, I don’t drink coffee, either.”
Huh. “I’m guessing that’s a religious thing, because everything I’ve heard about recovery meetings leads me to believe they serve coffee.”
“Yeah,” Felix says. “Sometimes the ones I frequent add hot chocolate for me.”
I get the seat back in and give one more cursory look over the car, giving the snake one last opportunity to make itself known. “Honestly, I need to go home and talk to my wife. Rain check?”
“Want to grab breakfast tomorrow? I think my call time is nine o’clock.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “I’ll text you the address of the place I’m dropping off my car. Maybe you could give me a ride to work?”
“Done. And sorry about the snake.”
“Not your fault.” And unlike the rest of my problems, I don’t think I can quite take full credit for that one.
Seventeen
Anna-Marie
It takes me a while after Josh has left before I start to do anything useful. I instead spend nearly half an hour sitting on the couch in the den—which is now moved so it’s diagonal to the wall—with my head in my hands. I know I didn’t handle that well, any of it. I’ve never been particularly great at dealing with wildlife showing up in my house—something Shane could attest to, after the bat incident—but that extra jolt of terror definitely didn’t help me be less of a bitch at Josh. And yeah, I’m kind of pissed he won’t stand up to Ben and make him follow a couple of very simple rules, but really I shouldn’t doubt my husband’s love for me just because drunk Ben is tossing around doomsday questions.
I’m still a little hurt Josh wouldn’t just say it, though.
I get up and start pushing the couch back. Damn, this thing is heavy. I consider waiting for Josh to get back to help me, and then the part of me that is embarrassed at my reaction to the snake decides to just buckle down and put more back into it. I am woman, hear me move a futon-couch.
I feel some satisfaction at getting the couch back in place, though there’s a good chance I’m going to be hurting for it tomorrow. It’s nice to put something back together.
And yes, I’m not so dense that I don’t realize that this, and my obsession with the couch stain, is all just some metaphorical need to fix whatever the hell is broken with Josh and me. A week ago, I would have said it was the infertility, and that alone. That’s enough, isn’t it? We both want this so bad, and to be honest, neither of us are great at dealing with not getting what we want—we’re the type that’ll just fight harder for it.
But there’s only so much control we have over me getting pregnant, and fighting for it seemed bound to inevitably turn to fighting about it.
That makes sense, if a crappy kind of sense. And even though any fighting Josh and I do sucks for both of us, I know that, ultimately, we’ll figure out a solution. That we’ll put us first, because that’s what we do. But in the meantime, it’s making me scared and crazy and kind of bitchy—and not even just to Josh and Ben.
I actually lost it at my co-star Ron today—he of the overpowering cologne that makes him smell like an eighth-grader at a dance in New Jersey. I full-on yelled at him, in a total June-Blair-level diva fit, that if he didn’t back off with the body spray right before our make-out scenes, I was going to take the can and shove it so far up his ass he’d be burping the smell of pre-teen desperation for weeks.
I really think it’s time for me to quit.
I sigh and start moving the coffee table. I’ve got that back in place just as Josh walks in. He sets the empty baking dish and lid on the end table.
“You don’t have to move all the furniture back,” he says. “I can do it.” He still sounds pissy, and it instinctively triggers the same tone in me.
“Yeah, well, clearly I can too,” I say, gesturing to the world’s heaviest futon couch as if I didn’t nearly throw my back out pushing it into place. “So it’s okay.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” he says, avoiding looking at me, and pushing the armchair back with such force he practically flips the thing first. “I just meant I’ve got it.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” I tug a little too suddenly on the end table, and the decorative candle and two copies of Vogue slide off, and nearly the glass dish, too. I swear under my breath. Josh bends down to reach for the candle and I grab it first.
Are we seriously competitive cleaning right now?
Josh’s expression is still drawn tight, but at least he’s not trying to catapult furniture anymore.
“Yeah, kind of,” he says after a beat. He turns his glare from the armchair back to me. “By the way, the person I would pick is you.”
I don’t love being the recipient of that glare, but hearing him actually say that does give me a little wash of relief. I don’t think I would’ve doubted that in the past, but the way things have been lately, maybe I just needed to hear it was still true. “I know,” I say.
He shakes his head. “You really thought I would abandon you to the snake. Make you take care of it by yourself.”
The hurt in his expression is so much harder to take than the pissiness. I try to remember my head space from that moment. “I didn’t really think you’d abandon me, no,” I say. “But I didn’t know where you went, and I was scared and—” I look down at the floor. “I felt stupid for freaking out so much, and I wanted to show you I could get the snake.”
He folds his arms. “Are you sure you weren’t doing it to get back at me? So if you got hurt, I would feel like shit?”
There’s a spike of hurt that he would think I’d do something like that, but the way he asks it isn’t pissy or defensive. More like he really wants to know.
And, really, what if on some level I did?
I consider the possibility. “If so, it wasn’t conscious. I have a healthy fear of snakes.” I pause, biting at my lip. “And moose.”
His lips tug up in a smile. Remembering, like me, the time we nearly got trampled by an enormous moose in Wyoming when we were having sex in the woods. “Yeah, I’m afraid of moose too.”