A Great Big Love

by Alona Jarden

  "I see you didn't have many honest chats with guys before, Michelle. For us, sex is always an option." He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out another condom in its packaging.

  "You're hopeless." I grabbed the pack from his hand, ripped it open, and ruined its contents demonstratively. "Why on Earth should I have an honest chat with a man when all you have to say is that you're interested in sleeping with me?" I kept to myself how that literally never happened.

  "I thought you like the way I'm making you feel. I thought you loved hearing how much I find you attractive."

  "That's not what I meant when I said that!" I felt the need to explain my position. "But the truth is that I actually do like to know that." I smiled. "Yet I'll never admit it to your face," I added, "except that I did just now." I smirked awkwardly. "I take it back. You're a sexist pig!"

  We continued talking for quite a while. I was surprised that I didn’t just sit there and listen as I knew so very well to do. I actually spoke and shared my opinions with him. I told him about my life, where I came from, how I grew up, and went on and on, feeling he really was paying attention to me.

  "So, what do you say?"

  "About what?" I got confused for a moment, wondering if I'd missed something in our recent conversation as I knew I had disappeared into my thoughts every now and then.

  "Maybe we could sleep together just a little bit?"

  "Do I look like someone who knows how to do just a little bit of anything?"

  "Hmm… That sounds like a sexual innuendo."

  "It's not." I felt the blush coloring my face.

  "I don’t know, Michelle. Now it even looks like a sexual innuendo." He pointed toward my redness.

  "I'm not innuending anything. I'm saying that if I'm doing something, I go all the way with it. There is no 'a little bit' for me." I remember us laughing, but I don’t remember much more of that breakfast other than us drinking a hell of a lot more.

  I remember him saying he had to kiss me again, I remember how he got up and stumbled around the table until he supported me while I made my clumsy way to standing up, and I remember his criminally soft kisses which made me feel like I was the most beautiful woman on Earth.

  I have a vague memory of an illogical request that came out of my mouth, but mostly I remember how I scratched out every line I set for myself, and I remember the big smile that was painted permanently on my face.

  Blurry images and moments come up when I try to think about everything that happened next.

  I definitely heard his breathing close to my ear as he pulled my shirt off. I remember him not rushing his hands anywhere and lowering his kisses from my neck to areas I hadn't dared to look at for years.

  I remember lying on my back, I think it was on the couch. His tongue swirled around my nipple, his moans of pleasure flattered me more than any other word he had said before, and the touch of his hands on various parts of my body leaving rivers of goosebumps I prayed would never go away.

  "Remember to be gentle with me, Michelle." A shiny white smile accompanied the last sentence engraved in my memory from that indoor picnic, and other than that, there was only a black hole of held sentences and speculations.

  I opened my heavy eyes a few hours later to the darkness around us. Morning was long gone. It was early evening, and my head was pounding badly.

  A few empty bottles of wine sat on the dining table, the large pile clothing we pulled off ourselves with the burst of drunken passion were scattered on the floor, and a very large man was sleeping on my carpet, naked.

  He looked so calm and peaceful, while I wasn't sure if him being there made me nervous or blissful, so to be on the safe side, I burst into tears.

  Damn him.

  Once again, he made me do something I said I wouldn't.

  God damn him!

  Chapter 16

  Don

  "Michelle?" I called her name when I couldn't find her anywhere around me. "Michelle? Anyone home?" I kept hoping she would answer, but I was there alone.

  It was so strange to wake up in a house other than my own. Almost as strange as the idea that the night before I had entered someone else's body other than my wife's. That is, my late wife. I mean… Someone who wasn't Sarah.

  Oh, screw these definitions!

  The place looked like a fraternity club after a rave. The empty bottles of wine stood on the table alongside the scraps of food that were scattered everywhere. The sofas had moved from their original positions to the sides of the room, the decorative pillows were casually thrown in every direction, some of the dining room chairs were upside down while others were on their side and my brain banged so hard against my skull, that I almost couldn’t bear it.

  The night was over, and a quick peek at the wall clock hinted that it was nine o'clock the following morning. I assumed Michelle had gone out to buy some groceries for breakfast or something of the sort and hoped she'd return soon. I quickly lifted myself off the floor, washed my face in the bathroom sink, and tidy up the house to which she would return as much as I could.

  An hour later, I was willing to admit that she probably wasn't going to come back anytime soon. By then, I had managed to bring the kitchen to a cleaner state than before. I re-arranged the living room furniture so that more people could watch the TV and due to my boredom, I also repaired some of the kitchen cabinets doors that came out of their hinges and didn’t close properly.

  Just as I took my phone in my hands with the intention to call her, I saw that she sent me a text message earlier, and its content left me speechless.

  "Hi, Don,

  I was going to thank you for a dream picnic, but it's hard for me to do that right now. In my wildest dreams, I dared not imagine that something like this would ever happen to someone like me, but it did. That dream picnic turned into a nightmare of a morning."

  I had to stop reading her message halfway through. I rubbed my eyes a little and couldn’t figure out what the hell was she talking about. Could she have been sending this message to a different Don about a different dream picnic that gone bad, since there was no way she could have just described what we shared as a nightmare. Even taking into account the headache that must have burdened her too that morning, I couldn’t understand why she opened her message in such a way and continued with my confusing read.

  "You have the ability to change my mind. I knew that and I assume you knew it too, but you shouldn’t have used it to have your way with me while I was drunk and unaware of what's going on around me."

  I swallowed hard, completely stunned by the direction she chose to wander off to in her assumptions about last night.

  "I wish everything would have happened differently. I wish you'd respected my request and taken things slowly. I wish I were strong enough to say no to you in a way that you understood it, since I truly meant it and I wish I had the courage to tell you all these things face to face, but since all these prayers I just wished for haven’t come true so far (and will also probably not come true in the future), I have no choice but to write this message and demand that you stay away from me."

  I wondered if I should keep reading what seemed to be the most delusional thing I ever read or if it was pointless. I didn’t force myself on her, but she seemed to think that I had. In the end, my increasing curiosity pushed me to continue reading her disappointing words.

  "I woke up with unbearable feelings. It's clear that I don’t fully remember what happened between us, but I know that something did. I know something happened, and I know I wasn’t clear-minded enough to agree with it happening. When I was, when I could still say what I did and didn’t want to happen between us, you promised we wouldn’t have sex, yet I woke up and discovered that we did.

  I'm angry, hurt, shocked, but most of all, I realize now that I can't offer you what you're looking for.

  I'm not interested in someone who thinks I should be drunk for him to put his hands on me.

  Maybe someday, after being more complete with mys
elf, I could be like that with someone wholeheartedly and clear-minded, but after what happened between us last night, it seems that that someone won't be you. I don't want to be anyone's 'project.' Even if it's for a good cause.

  So I'm out, Don. I’ve gone to Noel's, and I'll stay here tonight.

  I'll be back tomorrow, after ten o'clock in the morning. Please be sure to leave my apartment and my life before that.

  By the way, you have nothing to worry about. I'm not going to press any rape charges against you. So, to sum up, thank you and goodbye.

  Michelle."

  "What the fuck?!" I read aloud just as I heard her bundle of keys rattle in the front door lock.

  My initial instinct was to hide. I even thought about jumping out the window so that she wouldn’t see I was still there, but the absolute clear fact that I had done nothing wrong led me to pull out a chair from the dining area, which I had neatly arranged, sit down and wait impatiently until she noticed I was still there.

  "You can wipe that smile off your face. I saw your car is still outside."

  I didn’t care for the way she chose to greet me. "Hello, Michelle," I said dramatically. "Please sit down. I want to talk to you a little bit."

  "Don, I'm asking you to respect my requests."

  "I did. Last night. Now it's your turn to honor mine." I gestured toward the chair in front of me. "Sit down."

  "Last night? What happened last night has nothing to do with my requests, and you know it."

  "Fine, don't sit down. Please tell me, if this sentence sound familiar to you? 'Now that sex is off the table, can I tell you something? I don't think I can let anyone touch me. At least not while I'm sober.' Does that ring any bells, Michelle?"

  "It does not, and it also doesn't sound like anything I would ever say." She suddenly blushed. "At least not while I'm sober." I could see that she immediately realized that her addendum used exactly the same wording as I quoted.

  "And how about the following sentence? 'If this is going to happen between us, I'm going to need a lot more than a few glasses of wine.' Do you remember saying that?"

  "It's… No! You're not going to mess with my head, Don. I'm sure I didn't say such a thing." She immediately returned to speaking resolutely, but I could tell she was no longer convinced of the way she thought things happened last night.

  "Sit down, Michelle." I pointed firmly to the chair again, and this time, she came around. "I'll leave soon, just as you asked me to. I'll leave your apartment and your life, but only after I help you remember what happened between us."

  "I do remember... parts of it... Some pictures and bits of clips that keep coming back to me. I remember enough to know that we slept together, and you promised that wouldn’t happen."

  "That's not good enough. I need you to remember everything, Michelle. Not bits of pictures, not in little parts that come back to you, not what happened at some point in the evening, everything! I need you to remember everything just as it happened last night, and then I'll go away."

  "I remember enough." She crossed her arms angrily. "Enough to know that—"

  "You were reluctant to drink the first glass of wine, but I managed to convince you."

  "That I remember."

  "You said that you better not drink it, yet you smiled, took the glass, and sipped it until it was empty of your own free will."

  "I remember that, but one glass of wine is not what made me blackout, Don." All of a sudden, she smiled, and I assumed another memory of the magical moments we shared came back to her. "Oh, damn, you're a real idiot. I just remembered something. I told you about the doctors' recommendations, and you asked if there was an exemption that prevented me from riding you wildly all night."

  "That does sound like something I would say, and if it helps you feel any better, even though you haven’t shown me any medical document that excused you from doing that, I let it go."

  "You can make jokes, but what happened here isn’t funny, Don." She struggled to stifle a smile that threatened to sneak onto her face. "It still doesn't justify how you—"

  "I'll continue," I interrupted her. "You didn’t drink the second glass of wine immediately. We talked a lot while you sipped at it. You explained that you're a big girl who doesn’t get drunk easily and then told me about the previous experience you had with that university asshole."

  "I told you about that?!" She was obviously shocked.

  "In great detail, Michelle. You told me about the experience and how it made you feel. I greatly appreciated the exposure. When I asked why you agreed to go to bed with him, even though you knew you were just a win in a dare for him, you said you wanted to feel the touch of a man who desired you."

  "Shit. I must have really told you about that."

  "You did. Look, I know I'm an idiot. I know that most of what I say is nonsensical and that I’m seldom serious, but I'm not a liar, Michelle. When you said that all you felt was a horny guy taking advantage of you, my heart broke in two. You shed some tears, took the bottle, and poured both of us the third glass of wine."

  "Oh, wait..." She rolled her eyes inside her head as if trying to look at the memory cartridge that suddenly charged in her mind. "You told me that I shouldn’t... Oh, no!"

  "Oh, yeah." I smiled, though I didn't enjoy a single moment of that conversation and continued. "Now you're getting closer to remembering the full picture. Remember how I told you that you shouldn't overdo it?"

  "My God, I do, Don. I'm so sorry…" She murmured, and despite the fact that I could clearly see she was filled with remorse, I couldn't stop.

  "I told you it wasn't right to drink so much. I explained to you that if you get drunk, you won't be able to stop yourself from—"

  "Raping you," she completed and continued on her own. "You said that if I get drunk, I won't be able to stop myself from raping you." She completed the exact sentence I told her.

  "Yet here we are, Michelle. Miraculously, that's exactly what happened." I laughed out loud and looked directly at her. "Do you remember what happened next?"

  "Unfortunately, yes." She exhaled and shook her head in discontent.

  "You were crystal clear, Michelle. You raised your glass in the air before you sipped it. You were perfectly sober, and you declared that you had something to ask of me."

  "I asked you to help me experience how it feels when a man touches me with genuine passion. I asked you to be that man."

  "And you weren't drunk when you asked it, Michelle. You were amazing! You were brave, liberated, feminine, and so attractive, but you weren't drunk. You asked me to make mad passionate love to you, and then we both got completely shit-faced."

  "Don, I..." She paused for quite a while.

  "You drank one glass after another and another, and I asked you to stop."

  "I couldn't bear the thought of what we were going to do while I was sober, Don."

  "And now…" I stood up. "Now that I see how my sexual performance didn't leave a strong impression on you, I will do as you requested in your text message and get out of your life."

  "Wait, no. Everything is coming back to me." She buried her face in her palms, and it was clear that her baseless accusations were weighing on her. "I was the one who said that in order to enjoy it all, we needed to drink a lot more. I said that. I got you drunk, not the other way around."

  "Well if you remember that, my job here is done." I gathered my car keys, stood up, started to make my way to the exit, and was sorry to see that she flinched when I stroked my fingers on her shoulder. "You asked me to leave your apartment and your life, and after what happened here this morning, I have to respect myself enough to respect your request."

  "Don, wait. Don’t go." She looked at me. "I was wrong. Everything I wrote was wrong. I just couldn't remember what happened, that's all."

  "You know what?" I turned around when half of my body was already outside the door. "I read your message maybe five or six times. You wrote three prayers to the universe, accompanied by the words 'I wish
' and it’s important to me that you see how all three of your wishes came true. You wished for things to have happened differently, and as you now know, they definitely did happen differently from how you imagined them. You also wished I would honor your request and take things slowly, but now you know that that's exactly what I did last night. I even tore up the condom pack demonstratively while declaring that sex wasn’t an option for us, but you were the one who requested me to speed up the pace. Your last wish was for you to have the courage to tell me all that face to face, so I stayed here to talk to you instead of fleeing, thus, helping you make your third wish a reality. Now it's my turn to wish for things from the universe, Michelle. I wish you hadn't fought the idea that someone genuinely likes you so hard."

  "Hold on… Listen—" I wanted to stop and hear her out, but the words kept coming out of my lips so freely.

  "I wish you didn't cringe every time I touch you or even when I mention the possibility of me putting my hands on you. I wish you didn't complete the puzzle pieces so shockingly and build such a dark and disgusting picture of what happened between us instead of asking me about it, and you know what? I wish that someday you'll be able to do all of that, but it probably won't be with me."

  "Don, I'm so sorry." I managed to hear her murmur quietly before closing her apartment door and exiting her life.

  Chapter 17

  Michelle

  "Stop tormenting yourself about what happened with that Don idiot," Noel complained. It had been more than a week since he left my life, and yet he remained the main topic of our conversation, and Noel signed her words with her consistent conclusion, "You have nothing to feel bad about. You did just fine, and he's a jackass."

  "I don't think either of us fits the definition of 'fine' as far as what happened between us, yet he wasn’t the one who made absurd allegations while I—"