Twenty Four Weeks - Episode 16 Part 2 - "Twenty Seven" (PG)

by James David Denisson

things in people that we never thought were there. I’m seeing Wade as he is, another lost and broken soul wanting something real, wanting a life that means something. Above all wanting to be loved and accepted.

  And that’s what I do. I stand and go to him. I put a hand on his shoulder and as I do he breaks. He’s crying without restraint, possibly for the first time in his life.

  “Last night, that was beautiful,” he’s saying. “I want that, with Chloe. I just want her, and no one else. I just don’t know how to do it.”

  This is what Grant was saying about speaking life into Wade and his marriage, how that one act that seemed to be without impact could slowly resonate in the lives of my friend and his wife. Somewhere life had started to blossom and now there was no stopping it.

  “Do you remember what you asked me last night?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says. “I was a little drunk.”

  “You said that you wanted to go to another marriage seminar with us.”

  “I did?”

  “Yep. And Chloe was on board. Why don’t we do that?”

  He’s nodding.

  “And maybe,” I say, “you should talk to some people, the both of you. You’ve got a lot of crap in there to deal with.”

  “I don’t know how you can be my friend,” he says, “after what I did to you and Quinn. I screwed you both up.”

  “Well,” I say, “it might surprise you to know that you’re not a complete bastard. That does make it a little easier.”

  Wade stops crying, or he keeps crying but starts laughing at the same time.

  “And it pains me to say it,” I continue, “but you may have done us a small favour. I’m not saying that what you did was right, but if you’d left Quinn and me to ourselves we’d have just screwed things up all on our own – and maybe there’d be no going back.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that I saved you both. And I didn’t get a word of thanks.”

  I grin at him. “Don’t push your luck,” I say.

  There is a film out that Quinn wants to see. We get some dinner after work and I take her to the movies. We sit in the back row like kids and eat popcorn and hold hands and make out. I can’t remember what the movie is about and that does not bother me in the slightest.

  We get home and she takes me by the hand and leads me to our room. She’s undressing quickly and I get the hint…

  “You’re so good at that,” she says catching her breath. “When did you get so good at that?”

  I breathe deeply. “I’ve had to kick my game up a notch, I think. I want to keep you in my bed.”

  She sits up suddenly. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Crap,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just saying that I want to be a better husband in and out of the bedroom, that’s all.”

  “Good answer,” she says with a wry smile, then resumes her previous position. “And you don’t need to worry. You’ll always have me in your bed.” And then she thinks. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you work out what was in your head stopping you making love to me.”

  I try to explain it. I don’t understand it myself, not really. I only know that it worked. I also suspect that there will be times when what has happened in the past will come back and hamstring me. I’ll deal with that when it comes up, and I know that Quinn will be right there with me.

  “This has been hard for me too,” she says.

  “In what way?”

  “Well... I had to forgive myself for what I’ve done. Then I had to get him out of my head. And...” She stops.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I should say. It’ll hurt you and I don’t want to do that straight after making love to you.”

  I take a deep breath. “I think you should. We couldn’t be closer right now, and that has another side that we have to accept. Because we’re intimate with each other again, that means that we tell each other things, even if they’re hard, even if they hurt. I want you to tell me things – what you think, how you feel.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  “Okay.” She steels herself. “I was having sex with two men. With you it was kind of an obligation. I mean I loved you, don’t ever doubt that. But the sex with Wade was the sex I was having without obligation and that was kind of better.”

  I close my eyes.

  “Damn it, Judd. I warned you about this.”

  “Keep going,” I say.

  She sighs. “It was hard not to think of him when I was having sex with you. I kind of needed it to get through it.” She shakes her head. “This makes me sound like terrible person.”

  I reach up and touch her arm, trace a finger along her soft skin. “It can’t have been easy having sex with a selfish ass.”

  “You weren’t that bad.”

  “You were having sex with Wade. I must have been. The whole thing just makes me sad. We wasted two whole years, time that we could have spent connected and happy. Instead we settled for something less, both of us, and look where it got us.”

  “It got us here, Judd.”

  “Yes. But surely there was a better way to get here than through all that hurt and pain.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to learn – how to avoid that in the future.”

  “And if we don’t get it right this time, what hope do we have.”

  “We will. I won’t let you go again. Just don’t give up on me.”

  I pull her to me, kiss her again, a habit I’m forming that I don’t ever want to lose. “Never,” I say.

  “Will this ever get easier,” she asks me.

  “One day.”

  “But it’s worth it, isn’t it? All that work and time? It’s worth it?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “This is important. I think this... this is the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

  And I hold her until the warmth of our sex has worn off and we start to shiver. We pull the covers over ourselves and sleep until dawn naked. I don’t remember doing that for a long time, not since those heady days of our youth, when we cared about nothing other than what happened between us on our bed. How I missed those days for so long, how I longed for them to return. But I was the architect of their passing, not time, not complacency. I allowed that feeling to leave us and when I think about sometimes I weep, sometime I grieve it more than the death of my father. Innocence left us behind and in its wake followed a kind of contempt, a cynicism for the things that really mattered. It took losing those things to realise that. That was another thing that I had lost – but it was also what I had gained. And even more, because in a sense that innocence had returned, but it was tempered with experience and, if I could be so bold to say, wisdom.

  Saturday

  We wake in the morning to the ugly realities of last night’s activities. Things don’t quite feel the same the following day. Quinn stretches, rolls over to me and kisses me. Her hair is a mess. Last night’s makeup is gone. She must have got up and washed her face at least. She pulls her naked, pregnant body from our bed and walks to the bathroom while I lay there, my hands behind my head, starring at the ceiling.

  It would be easy to think that this is the way we are now: we will make love all the time, fall asleep naked, wake with the promise of a greater life and a bigger love. But I know that life is not like that. I know things have their ups and downs. I’ve been in the valley for so long that I thought I would never see the sun again. Now I’m here, basking in its warmth, I cannot imagine a life without it again. But I know that those days will come again.

  And that is why we need to keep seeing the Uptons. We could say that we’ve arrived, we’ve patched up our leaking boat and we’re ready for the sea again, but that would be foolish. Storms come, seas rise, and our little patched boat cannot weather them, not yet. The dark days will come again, and our little light, a single candle, could be snuffed out with a single gust.

  I take my place in the shower after Quinn gets out. I did thin
k of getting in with her, but one thing she hates is me getting in the way when she needs to get ready to go out, so I let her have her time and her space.

  A couple of hours later and we’re on the road. It’s become a bit of a ritual, a habit of ours as we go to and from our sessions, that we don’t talk. I guess on the way we’re preparing for what is ahead, we’re going over in our minds the task that we were given. On the way back we process what has been said. And a lot is said, and it’s often hard, loaded with feeling and meaning. I guess this some unspoken agreement between us, and we’re holding to it. In our marriage we had many of those, and most of them were unhelpful, unhealthy, damaging. I want our new agreements to be better than that, and I guess this is one of the first of those.

  We sit in our usual places. Quinn has her legs crossed and her hands on her knee, I’m folding my arms across my chest but I’m wearing an easy smile. We’re both looking rather pleased with ourselves.

  “You’re both looking quite pleased with yourselves,” Grant rightly observes.

  Mary rolls her eyes.

  “We made love,” Quinn announces.

  I hold up a hand and give the Uptons a peace sign. “Twice,” I say.

  “Well done,” Mary says.

  “How was it?” Grant asks.

  Now I’ve heard that question several times when I was young. Usually it requires some sort of smutty response. That is not what is required here, so I need to think of my answer carefully.

  “Wonderful,” I say. “We reconnected at a deep level that we haven’t had in... in a long time.”

  “What about you, Quinn?” Mary asks.

  “I was