Then Came You

by Kate Meader

  An angry Grant is interesting. And hot.

  I know he’s hurting. I told him I’d given up on us because I assumed he was disappointed in my failure to give him a child. Maybe it was a cop-out. That time is a blur—a wave of pain and misery that even now I can’t adequately elucidate the sharp, pointed whys and why-nots. What is it they say? Hurt people hurt people, and back then that’s all we seemed to do.

  One day a couple of years ago stands out, one when I thought we were finally getting somewhere. The front door to our home opening and closing sent a wave of panic through me. My husband is home.

  “Aubrey?” Grant appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, his eyebrows raised quizzically. He put down his travel bag. “What’s going on?”

  What’s not going on? The oven chose this perfect moment to beep…no, not the oven. The smoke alarm! My first instinct was to yank open the oven door where the roast I’d slaved away on all afternoon was cooking. And cooking.

  Bad move. It just sent smoke billowing out into the kitchen.

  Grant grabbed a dish towel and waved it below the smoke alarm, then flipped the switch on the circuit breaker. He placed his hands on his hips and gave me a pitying look.

  “You’re making dinner?”

  I pinned a smile on my face. Cooking was not my forte, which I suspected was a disappointment to Grant, who had hoped for more from his wife.

  “Don’t sound so shocked. I wanted to surprise you.” Meanwhile the surprise was burning to a crisp. With oven-gloved hands, I took out the tray and placed it on the counter. There was no resuscitating that mess.

  “Damn, I thought I was being so careful.”

  He put an arm around me, and it felt strange enough for me to freeze up for a second. Sensing my reaction, he dropped his hand.

  It had been two months since our world had cleaved in two. On one side of our union I lay, barely able to operate. On the other, my husband waited for me to become the woman he’d married. I didn’t cook as a rule, so this was probably not the best way back into his heart, but I wanted to try something different. Something not hardwired in my brain as reflective of our new normal.

  He picked up a steak knife and poked at it. “Dead as a doornail, Bean. Nice job.”

  “Oh, shut up.” I tried to enjoy his teasing. “How was your trip?”

  “Uneventful.” He’d gone to New York to take a deposition from a client who couldn’t come to Chicago. Frankly, the couple of days apart felt shockingly easy. Guilt wracked me at the thought that I’d enjoyed this break from the man I loved more than anything. But it had been a break not so much from Grant as from the me I was around him, alternating between Ms. Mope and a desperate nymphomaniac. I wanted what we had, and my husband insisted on treating me as if I’d just had a death in the family.

  Which made him a good person and me a monster.

  “Pizza it is then,” he said with a wicked smile, and in that moment, I thought: We’ll be fine. “I’m going to take a shower. You okay calling it in?”

  “It’s the least I can do after messing up my romantic dinner plans.”

  His brow pleated at the mention of romantic dinners. That was usually his job, and here I was usurping his authority in the arena of woo.

  “Off you go!” I shooed him away.

  Forty-five minutes later, we were chomping on pizza, trying to pretend everything was the same as before it happened. As if we were just Grant and Aubrey, lawyer super couple, blessed and beloved.

  I’d read everything there was about miscarriages and how I was supposed to react. The consensus was that there was none, but I still suspected I was getting it wrong and not following the grief playbook to the letter. What was hardest was the idea that I was at the mercy of my body and it had betrayed me.

  It had. been my body’s job to bring this being safely into the world, to be the vessel that carried him or her. And this body—this fragile, weak, corruptible mess of flesh—had failed.

  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to not kill the baby lying inside you.

  I wanted to get us back in sync, back to where I called the shots. Grant could help by treating me and my body the way he had before. I didn’t want this sadness weighing me down. Returning to the banality of before—where we fought and fucked and felt—was my new mission.

  After pizza, we settled in to watch a movie, and I exhaled in relief: we were back. And when my hand went to his chest as the movie credits rolled and slid further to the waistband of his sweatpants, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  “Grant,” I whispered against his neck as I cupped his half-hard cock.

  “Bean.” He took my hand and moved it up to his abs. Away from where I needed it and where I thought he needed it. We hadn’t been intimate since the night of the miscarriage, when we’d had sex before going out to dinner. Me tempting Grant in that red dress he loved so much, him unable to resist.

  Before everything changed.

  Sensing my disappointment, he said, “Kind of tired. Long day on the road.”

  “Of course!” I offered a bright smile that affirmed I was okay. We’re okay. This is nothing more than a bump.

  Except he’d been tired the week before and hadn’t used travel as an excuse. As that thought wound around my brain, I decided, Screw this.

  “I can’t help but get the impression you’re just not that into me anymore, husband.”

  He shot up, visibly affronted. “What? That’s crazy. I’m just tired. If anything…” He stopped.

  “If anything…”

  He swallowed. “If anything, I’d prefer we talked more about what happened, about how we feel before we go down that road.”

  “What is there to say? It happened, Grant. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Really?” The word was shot through with disbelief. “You don’t have any feelings about it? Anything you want to share? About your pain, your grief, your loss?”

  Why was it my pain, my grief, my loss? This notion that I needed to unburden here because my hurt supposedly had higher value than his offended me. This wasn’t just my problem because the baby had once been tethered physically to me. Or maybe I was too annoyed with Grant’s rejection to see what he really wanted: for us both to be honest.

  My Yankee practicality rose with my ire. “Can’t we just take the pain and grief as a given? Skip the steps and move on to the healing?” And what I meant was the sexual healing.

  He looked at me like I was a frigid-hearted automaton, incapable of the minimum necessary to show true human feeling. But I felt numb, and I suspected I would feel unnumb again only if Grant stopped treating me with kid gloves.

  “I’m trying to help here,” he said with strained patience.

  “There’s only one way you can help, Grant, and it’s not with your folksy southern charm.”

  His face became a mask then, a complete blank to my casual dismissal of his ability to use words, the weapons of his trade, to fix this. I didn’t need long speeches about the baby that would never be born. I needed to be lusted after.

  But it wouldn’t be happening tonight. Exasperated, I stood and went to our bedroom. Alone.

  Months and years later I realize that I did him wrong. I need to rectify that.

  He comes out of the bathroom, wearing only sweats, and by God, my libido goes hello! I’m such a weakling for that thickset body. He walks over to the window and peers out.

  “Storm’s a rager,” he mutters.

  I don’t like the sound of that. “We’re going to be able to get out, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, we’ll be fine. Bathroom’s free.”

  Prepared for supplication, I sit on the bed. Something has to give, and I’m starting to realize it needs to be me. “About what happened back at the di
ner?”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it. Back then—two years ago—I shut down. And you were so lovely to me, all the time. So gentle. And I didn’t want that. I wanted the rough-and-tumble of teasing and fighting and battles in the courtroom, with sex our reward.”

  “Aubrey…” He rubs his mouth. “How could we just pretend it hadn’t happened? Did you think we could just fuck our way back to normality?”

  I lift a shoulder, overcome with my sheer stupidity. “Yeah, I—I did.”

  “Baby, that was never going to work, not when…”

  “Not when what?”

  He passes over my question. I feel as if I’ve missed something important, some insight into Grant’s psyche, which has always been so focused on my pain and not his.

  “You didn’t fail me,” he says, though I think he wanted to say something else. “I know that’s what you thought. and I know I didn’t handle it right. Telling you we could try again.”

  “It’s something people say. The doctor said it.”

  “But it’s not what you needed to hear, as though what we lost could be easily replaced.”

  Yes. That’s what it sounded like. Like the baby we’d formed wasn’t formed enough to love or protect or even mourn.

  “We both made mistakes.”

  He nods, then smiles tentatively as if trying it out. It’s like sun after the storm, and I absorb it like a thirsty sponge.

  “Better get some rest so we can head out early tomorrow and hit Boston around lunchtime.”

  “Okay.” I get ready for bed, conscious that a half-naked man is stretched out on the sofa, which is really more of a love seat. His feet dangle over the armrest, the whole thing can barely contain him.

  “Grant, you can sleep in the bed if you want to.”

  “Fine here.”

  “You’ll never get any sleep on that sofa.” I place a pillow to my left side, the separation we need. “Just get in, Georgia.”

  Resigned, he stands and rubs a hand over his chest. He used to do that a lot, not to tease or titillate, just a habit. Grant’s always been a very tactile person. Not me—I can’t even recall a hug from my mother or father that wasn’t done under sufferance. We’re not that kind of family.

  At the side of the bed and with his back to me, he pulls down his sweatpants, and lo and behold, let us testify to the glory of Grant Roosevelt Lincoln’s ass. The man has a perfectly sculpted form, beautiful rounds cupped lovingly by black cotton. All the parts of me that should be affected go into overdrive—my breasts, my stomach, my thighs, my feet. Yes, my feet! I am tingling everywhere.

  Then there’s his back, beautifully broad with bite-me muscles. He doesn’t work out much, either. Just runs, and swims, apparently. And then the lovely vista is gone, replaced by another, his chest as he lies back, his arm behind his head. His pecs are lightly furred, and my fingers develop an itch.

  He catches me staring. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I turn off the light on my side of the bed.

  In the dark, he switches on his e-reader. “Will this bother you?”

  “No, not at all.”

  I’ve always liked to watch him read, and now is no different, like this is us and how we used to be. I pretend it’s normal until sleep takes hold of me.

  Chapter 11

  Grant

  I wake up in a cold bed.

  My hand moves to check the space to my right past the pillow barrier, where she should lie. Nothing.

  I sit up, my heart thundering. This was common in the old days. She didn’t want me to hold her unless it would lead to sex. I’d held too tight and cursed us.

  But this night—this whole trip—is different. Something happened in that diner. We’re not back to Grant and Aubrey, but we’re somewhere different, a possibly useful detour.

  I listen for sounds from the bathroom, but all I hear is the wind. Standing at the window, I peer out into the dark void, searching for movement and finding nothing. My heart is booming like a rocket around my chest.

  Where is my wife?

  A gentle thud grabs my attention, so I put my head around the bathroom door. The night-light gives it an ethereal glow, and lookie here, if it isn’t the dumb cat standing on his hind legs in the sink, gazing at himself in the mirror. That pirate is so fucking weird. I imagine he’s pumping himself up, telling his reflection he’s the best cat there is and it doesn’t matter what the other cats say.

  “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

  “M#%&*!”

  I take a look in the mirror, trying to see what the cat does. All I get is me, this fucker I’m tired of. I’m not sure how I imagined this trip, but amazing blow jobs and angry sex in diner restrooms wasn’t it. Will I have to shatter Aubrey into a million pieces before I can put her back together again? I don’t have it in me to be cruel; hurting her is like lopping off one of my own limbs.

  Cat makes a throaty-scratchy sound, so I pick him up and take a seat on the toilet.

  “What ya think, Cat? Momma gone to raid the inn’s kitchen?”

  “M@*#$!”

  “Yeah, I’m worried about her, too.”

  A sound makes me jump. Aubrey stands in the doorway of our room, her red coat and boots dusted with snow, her eyes bright with the cold. Snow White on a mission.

  My relief at seeing her safe emerges raw from my throat. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Shush. Not in front of Cat Damon.” She comes in and shuts the door. “Couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”

  “I woke up, and you—shit, Aubrey, it’s a storm out there.” The cat jumps down, so I stalk over to Aubrey and go to unbutton her coat—then realize that it’s already open, draped over her shoulders because of the sling, and the front of her sweatshirt is damp. Which meant she was outside in the snow with her coat open.

  I pull that damn coat off her shoulders with a vengeance. “Don’t do that, Aubrey. Just. Don’t.”

  Her silver eyes spark in recognition. “Oh. You thought I was gone.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “I came back.”

  She would walk around the garden at night or go for long drives after it happened. By then we were sleeping in separate rooms, so I’d stand at the window of the guest room, watching her circle the fish pond, waiting for the headlights to tell me she’d returned.

  Tonight her body is a block of slippery ice. I place my hands on her shoulders, then roughly palm her upper arms.

  “Grant,” she says, but I ignore her, bent on my goal to make her warm. Make her whole. Make her mine.

  “Grant,” she repeats. “I’m okay. I just wanted to feel the storm, to absorb some of its crazy. My grandmother used to take me out in the middle of Nor’easters so I could experience true power.”

  I stop my vigorous rubdown. “You never told me that.”

  “Gotta keep some mystery, Georgia.”

  “You’re freezing.”

  “I’m alive.”

  She is, her body thrumming, her eyes frost-bright with it. “I’m sorry. For everything I put you through. For all the hurt I caused you when I shut you out.”

  “Bean, you don’t have to do this.”

  “I do. I need you to know that I was wrong. I know this half-assed apology doesn’t make it right, but—”

  I cut off her half-assed apology with my mouth on hers, stamping it with all my need and want. Here she is giving me what I want to hear—absolving me of my sins—and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand for her to take on that blame.

  Our mouths grind together in a sinuous slide of pent-up desire now blasted wide open. Shrapnel, shrapnel, everywhere. But I can take the blows because each one makes me feel alive again. I get what she means about the power of
the storm. In truth, it’s the power of us.

  “Need—need to touch you,” she gasps, her hands running point over my chest, mapping all the old haunts she used to love. I let her, then grip the hem of her sweatshirt.

  She raises her hands in surrender, and I help her remove the shirt, careful not to pull at her casted arm.

  Bared to me at last.

  She is as beautiful as the first moment I saw her. More so because she’s been through so much, and her goodness still shines through.

  My hands, brain, and dick are on the same page: touch her everywhere. I’ve thought about this for years, how it would be when I get the full Aubrey experience again. I would run my hands over her pale body with reverence, let her know how much I appreciated every inch of her. I would take it slow.

  Fuck that.

  Like a wolf in heat, I grasp her ass and pull her into me, squeezing her plump flesh. No gentle workup, this is rough because that’s what I am with Aubrey. I’m a beast.

  “Missed this,” she murmurs. “Missed you.”

  All I can do is growl and take her mouth again, thrusting my tongue while I grab ass like a grab-ass pro.

  “Get on the bed.”

  “Make me,” she shoots back.

  Oh, it’s on.

  I push her onto the bed and push down my briefs. I’m so hard it hurts, but I don’t touch myself yet.

  That honor will go to her.

  Instead I take her left foot and pull off her boot and sock, then the other. Next the sweatpants, still damp from the storm. Outside it’s raging, and inside it’s going to get cat-five any minute.

  She’s spread out before me in those panties that look like shorts. I kneel in between her thighs, paralyzed by my desire for her. She’s still this tiny, fragile thing, and I want inside her so badly, but I worry I’ll hurt her all over again.

  She sits up on her elbows. “Grant, I need you.” Her hand wraps around my cock, hard and ready for her, and I close my eyes to savor and shake.