With This Ring, I Thee Bed

by Alison Tyler

  Charlotte washed a wineglass for the third time, her mind drifting to the big event the next day. The invitation had read “Charlotte and Oliver Duncan request the honor of your presence as they reflect on their life together and renew the vows they took twenty-five years ago.” The first part was accurate—there had certainly been a lot of reflecting lately—but the renewal part was for show only.

  The renewal ceremony had been the girls’ idea. In typical twin fashion, Sarah and Caitlin had doubled up on her and somehow talked Charlotte into this farce. Meanwhile, their older brother, Matthew, had made some heartfelt speech to Oliver about this being the last time all of them would be together until he got back from Iraq in a year. It was too much and Oliver and she had been helpless in the face of their children’s request for a big celebration.

  Thankfully, the girls had kept their promise to plan the whole thing, dragging their good-natured brother along in the process. Charlotte just didn’t think she had it in her to contribute more than her presence to this event. She had agreed with Oliver that there was no reason to tell the kids about the divorce until Matthew got back from Iraq. It was probably the only thing they agreed on. They had to be separated for a year, anyway, and with Matthew overseas and Sarah getting ready to head off to grad school at Berkeley, and Caitlin transferring to the London office of her advertising agency, there would be no need to tell them anything until the papers were signed and everything was finalized.

  A year. Now that they had both agreed to the divorce, a year seemed like an awfully long time to wait to get on with her life. But Virginia law was specific about the terms, and unless one of them wanted to claim abuse or adultery—which neither of them would or could—they were only legally separated. Well, they would be after tonight. They had to spend one more night under the same roof before going off on their “second honeymoon.” They had told the kids their destination was a surprise. Charlotte didn’t know what Oliver was intending, but she was heading up the coast to Maine. Alone.

  She figured she might as well get used to it. At forty-six, she had never really been alone. She’d gone from her parents’ house to a sorority house to setting up house with Oliver. It would be strange having no one to answer to. Strange and exciting. And lonely, a small voice said, but she pushed it aside. She set the wineglass on the rack to dry next to the others just as the front door opened.

  Oliver came in and leaned against the counter, watching her as she washed serving dishes for the buffet. “Where are the kids?”

  “Out running errands,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “They said they’d bring pizza home later.”

  “It’s good to have them all home, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, feeling hot tears behind her eyelids. “First time in…what? Two years?”

  Oliver nodded. “Yeah, I guess. That Christmas before Matthew joined the marines.”

  “Time flies.”

  “Twenty-five years went by in a flash,” he agreed. “Have you written your vows?”

  She stiffened her shoulders. “Not yet. You?”

  He took a sip of her iced tea on the counter. “No. Anything I write seems like a lie.”

  “Sorry it’s so hard to think back on the good stuff,” she said, her voice sharper than she intended. “I know the feeling.”

  “Fine. The decision was your idea,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

  She whirled on him, smacking a casserole dish hard against the counter in the process. “I haven’t forgotten anything, Oliver. I haven’t forgotten the nights you worked double shifts or the medical conferences that took you away for days at a stretch or all the soccer games and dance recitals you missed because of work.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I was a bad father and a bad husband. But you liked the lifestyle, didn’t you?”

  They’d been down this path so many times before, they had worn it into a rut. “I would have liked my husband home. With me.”

  “And now the kids are grown and they have their lives and you want one, too.” The edge of bitterness in his voice wasn’t something she often heard. Oliver was a workaholic and total A-type personality who didn’t have time for regrets.

  “I want us both to be happy,” she said, meaning every word.

  Oliver took the glass dish out of her hand and slammed it down on the counter hard enough to shatter it and send glass shards flying. “You don’t know the first thing about what I need to be happy,” he said, oblivious to the fragments of glass that dropped around their feet. “Make yourself happy, but don’t presume to know what I want.”

  He stalked out of the kitchen, leaving the shattered remains of the dish for Charlotte to clean up, much as the shattered remains of their relationship had been her job to resolve. The front door slammed behind him, leaving her alone. Again. She shook her head, blaming herself for provoking him, and then being angry for assuming the blame.

  “I didn’t break it by myself,” she whispered as she tucked her long hair behind her ears and bent to sweep up the glass.

  She finished washing dishes just as a crack of thunder made the lights flicker. Dashing around the house closing windows before the rain came, she caught a glimpse of white tossing about on the wide lawn. The girls had spent the morning making about a dozen elaborate bows to tie around the deck posts and now they were destined for the lake. Charlotte slipped out the back door and took off after the fluffy bows as the wind picked up and sent them fluttering just out of her reach. The sky opened up and let loose with a torrential downpour just as she snatched up the last bow before it could slip down the incline to the lake.

  Since it was closer than the house, Charlotte ran down the dock toward the boathouse with her arms full of white fluff. She was drenched in seconds, her blouse clinging to her and her skirt flapping wetly around her knees. It dawned on her that the boathouse might be locked, but no, the padlock hung open on the door. She slipped inside and slammed the door behind her, piling the bows on a decrepit iron table nearby. The boathouse smelled of decaying wood and motor oil and the musty scent of neglect.

  A crack of thunder shook the small wood building and she let out a shriek.

  “It’s only thunder.”

  A second shriek followed the first as she whirled around toward Oliver, who was sitting in the rowboat they used to take out on the lake when the kids were off with their friends. He sat propped against some patio cushions that had been relegated to the boathouse, along with a lot of other junk. Lounging there like that, in his golf shirt and khakis, with his sandy-blond hair falling over his forehead, he looked so much like the frat boy she fell in love with that she shook her head to dispel the image.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  He shrugged. “I needed to be alone.”

  She saw the bottle propped between his legs. “You’re drinking?”

  “Sure, why not? Seems like a good occasion to get drunk,” he said, taking a slug from the bottle. “A mighty fine occasion to tie one on.”

  “But…you don’t drink.”

  He gestured at her. “And you don’t go barefoot, but here you are. We’re two peas in a pod.”

  “One has nothing to do with the other,” she said, wringing out her wet hair and pushing it over her shoulder. “I’m not sitting in a dark boathouse getting loaded. I just didn’t have time to put on shoes.”

  “You always make time to put on shoes before you go outside.”

  “What, exactly, is your point?” she asked, wondering just how drunk he was and whether it was worth having this argument.

  He seemed to consider her question for a long time. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what my point is? You’ve always been good at that.”

  “You’re insufferable.”

  Charlotte considered going back out into the rain, but another ground-quaking roll of thunder, followed by a crack of lightning that lit up the entire boathouse, made her change her mind. She wasn’t afraid of much, but she’d always been afraid of th
understorms.

  She expected a retort. The beginnings of yet another fight. Once the divorce was final, there would be no reason to fight anymore. Maybe that’s why they seemed to be fighting even more often lately. Time was running out.

  But instead of another poke at her flaws, Oliver asked, “What happened to us?”

  She rested her head wearily against the door. He had no idea how many times she’d asked herself the same question. With a resigned shrug, she said, “We just fell out of love.”

  Oliver surged up out of the rowboat quicker than she could have thought possible. He was standing in front of her in a heartbeat, one hand braced on the door behind her head, the other still gripping the liquor bottle. He leaned in close enough so that she could smell the whiskey on his breath and see his green eyes dilated in the gloom.

  “Do not speak for me,” he growled at her. “Maybe you fell out of love with me, but I never stopped loving you.”

  Her heart felt as if it was ricocheting around in her chest. She had never seen Oliver like this before. She knew it was just the alcohol talking, but it made her stomach do a little flip-flop to hear him say he still loved her.

  She’d been hurt enough and wouldn’t fall for it again. “Whatever, Oliver. I didn’t have to twist your arm to visit the mediator for the divorce.”

  “The divorce was your idea.”

  “And you seconded that emotion, remember?”

  He took another pull off the whiskey before setting the bottle on the table covered in bows. “I’m not going to keep you tied to me when you don’t love me.”

  Despite her intentions not to engage him in a fight, she was getting angry. “You don’t love me, either.”

  He leaned into her then, his erection pressing against her lower belly. It was a shock to feel his body against her, at once familiar and strange. It had been so long. She could feel her body responding, softening. She put her hand against his chest, tangling her fingers in the nubby fabric of his golf shirt and feeling the steady, comforting thud of his heart beneath her palm. She wanted to fall into his arms and forget the real world just outside the door; forget the divorce papers upstairs in Oliver’s briefcase, just waiting for their signatures.

  “Feel that?” he whispered in her ear, his breath tickling the hairs at the nape of her neck. “Don’t tell me I don’t love you.”

  She found her resolve then. Flattening her hand against his chest, she gave him a firm shove. “That’s not love,” she said as he took two steps back. “That’s just a hard-on and you just want to get laid.”

  He wouldn’t be deterred. He caught her by the wrist so she couldn’t get away—as if there was anyplace for her to go. “How long has it been, Charlotte?”

  She knew he was asking because she never forgot anything. Not a birthday or anniversary, not a special event or holiday. She never forgot a fight and she never forgot a makeup romp between the sheets.

  “Eight months. It was last year, right before Thanksgiving.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’s the last time we had sex, but that’s not what I want to know. I want to know when was the last time you really enjoyed it? When was the last time you were out of your mind with passion for me and not faking your way through it?”

  She gasped, a flush of heat creeping into her cheeks. “How dare you denigrate our sex life like that?”

  He didn’t waver. “How long, Charlotte?”

  Pushed to the breaking point, she forgot about taking the high road. “Remember that weekend trip to Charlottesville?”

  He cocked his head. “The winery tour weekend?”

  She nodded, watching the expressions flit across his face. Confusion, anger, shock. But he’d asked for it.

  “That was—what?—five years ago?”

  “Six.”

  He didn’t need her to push him away; he rocked back on his heels all by himself. “Six years since I made you come? Six years since you enjoyed being in bed with me? Damn, woman, why didn’t you divorce me then instead of being miserable for so long?”

  She blinked back tears. He was making it sound worse than it was. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe she’d been justifying things for too long.

  “I wasn’t miserable,” she said softly.

  “You just didn’t enjoy sex with me.”

  She’d hurt him. Maybe that’s what she’d intended and what he deserved, but now she wished she could take the words back. She reached out a hand, not quite sure what to do with it, and settled with grabbing the front of his shirt as if she could keep him from falling over the edge.

  “It’s not about sex,” she said. “That was just a symptom of the problem.”

  “And I had no idea.” He shook his head. “What a joke. My memory isn’t as good as yours, but I seem to recall some pretty impressive performances of yours.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Until now.”

  “I didn’t even want to hurt you now!” She jerked on his shirt for emphasis, which only served to bring him closer. “But you pushed me too far.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. “I know. I just wanted…”

  She felt self-conscious standing there with her hand balled in his shirt, but she couldn’t seem to let go. “You wanted what?”

  “I wanted to get some emotion out of you,” he said, his voice rough. “Just something to let me know I’m not the only one feeling so fucking raw.”

  “You’re not,” she whispered.

  A long roll of thunder rumbled over the boathouse, rattling the door at her back. One minute she was pressed to the panel, the next she was in Oliver’s arms. Kissing him.

  She couldn’t have said who initiated it. But twenty-five years of marriage had made them a bit like magnets—at least when things had been good between them. If they stood too close, they just naturally gravitated toward each other, fitting together so naturally and perfectly she had often wondered how they had ever had awkward, fumbling moments.

  Crooking her arm around his neck, she brought his face down to hers, deepening a kiss that had started out tentatively and was now spreading like heat lightning through her lower belly. He tasted like whiskey and Oliver, his lips and tongue so familiar and yet somehow different. Different because it had been so long—years—since they kissed like this? Different because he tasted of alcohol? Different because they weren’t a couple anymore, not really? She didn’t know and she didn’t care.

  Oliver hauled her up against his body, his erection pressing insistently against her hip as he twisted her long, damp hair around his hand. She hooked a leg around him, shifting so that the bulge between his legs pressed against the softness between hers. She moaned into his mouth, almost embarrassed by this show of wantonness. At least he had the excuse of alcohol. What was her excuse?

  Still holding her close, Oliver spun her around and walked her back to the rowboat. She bumped against the solid weight of it and wobbled, steadying herself against his chest. He unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off her shoulders. Her nipples pebbled under his thumbs as he cupped her breasts and stroked them through the thin fabric of her bra. She threw her head back and moaned, her damp hair trailing down her spine.

  She felt as if she was watching the two of them from a distance, knowing she would regret this later. But she didn’t have time to change her mind, because Oliver was laying her down on the cushions in the boat. It smelled musty and the cushions were too thin to protect her from the hardness of the hull, but it didn’t matter as he pushed her skirt up over her hips. She gasped when he palmed her crotch through her panties, her entire body going rigid with the shock of being touched like that after so long.

  “I’m going to make you come,” he whispered hoarsely, skimming her panties down her damp legs. “I’m not going to stop until you come for me.”

  It was a promise. It was a threat. It was Oliver spreading her thighs with his big hands and lowering his mouth to her wetness. It was the tremor that coursed through her body as his tongue flick
ed her swollen clit for the first time in so long even she couldn’t remember the last time. She gripped his hair, hair too long to be respectable for a man his age, a doctor with his prestige, but just long enough for her to tangle her fingers in it. The perfect hair for a lover between her thighs, lapping at her pussy, promising to make her come.

  Thunder rumbled around them and rain lashed at the grimy little window above, but Charlotte closed her eyes and gave herself over to the feeling of Oliver’s mouth. She raised her hips and pulled his head closer, rewarded when his tongue dipped inside, swirled her wetness on his tongue and dragged it back over her clit. She whimpered low in her throat to encourage him, too quiet for him to hear over the sounds of the storm, but still he licked and swirled, teased and nibbled, driving her higher.

  Had it once been like this? she wondered fuzzily, feeling out of control, on the edge of some great explosion. Had he been able to coax her to passion so fast, so easily? She couldn’t remember, not now when he was using the flat of his tongue to torment her, dragging it slowly up between her lips and over her clit. Again and again he licked her, until she was arching her back and moaning, thighs clenched around his head. His beard stubble scraped against her sensitive skin, but it only added to her pleasure. She quivered on the precipice of her orgasm, every muscle taut and humming with the need for release.

  And then he stopped.

  He took his mouth away and she looked down to see why he was denying her, a sudden fear that this was some sort of punishment making her heart pound. He met her gaze, looking up at her from between her thighs. His position was so incongruous she would have laughed if she hadn’t been so aroused.

  “I promise to make you come every time we make love,” he said.

  “What?”

  He didn’t respond because he was busy lapping at her again, bringing her back to that peak that had slipped away. She was there again in an instant, gripping him just as tightly, making sure he didn’t stop this time. Not now, not when the sensations were spiraling out from her pussy, her stomach muscles tightening in anticipation.