by Leddy Harper
I vaguely heard the sound of a zipper and rustling of clothes, but it was hard to hear past the panting breaths between us. His was hot on the back of my neck as mine escaped into the air. I could vividly feel his hands on me, burning me with his touch. I heard his grunt as he pressed into me roughly, filling me up until I felt completely consumed by him. I was well aware of the gasp that left my lips as his momentum pushed me forward onto the table and left my head hung between my shoulders.
His body stilled as he let out a string of curses. My heart started to race with panic as I thought he had come to his senses, waiting for him to flee. I wasn’t sure if what we were doing was right or wrong, but either way, I knew I couldn’t have handled him pulling away and leaving at that point.
I pushed into him more, feeling his grasp tighten around my hips. Eventually, which was probably no more than ten seconds, he pulled almost all the way out before slamming back into me again. He was rough, careless, animalistic, but I didn’t care. I needed it. If this was how he’d release his anger, then I would take it; I would take it all.
“Fuck, Edie,” he panted between us and the anguish in his voice flooded my ears. It filled my soul and erased every ounce of excitement that had consumed me.
I could no longer concentrate on the friction between us or the feelings he elicited from my body. The only thing running through my mind was the fear of how it would all end.
He was with Beth, and although we were still married, I hated the thought of infidelity. It was a stupid thought since he had technically committed adultery with Beth, but that’s not the way it was. I had given him up; I had allowed him to move on and find happiness with someone else. And since he’s done that—moved on—it meant what we were doing was wrong. But I couldn’t find the words to make him stop.
His movements were rough—the clear definition of fucking—and I wasn’t getting much physical pleasure from it. But it was the emotional pleasure that kept me from ending things. I had craved his touch for too long, yearned to feel him inside of me again, and I wasn’t ready to give that up quite yet. Even if I would crash and burn in the end, even if my heart would turn black as coal and disappear like ashes in the wind once it was all over with. I didn’t care. I only cared about having him for that one moment in time, hoping it would be enough to last me forever.
I felt his lips on the back of my shoulder, leaving behind a wet spot that turned cold in the air. Words left his lips and I wasn’t quite sure what they had said, but I had convinced myself that they were “I love you.” He could have very well said, “I hate you,” but chose to believe differently and allowed my mind to fall into itself, pretending that I was in the midst making love to my husband. The truth was far from that, though. Donnie and I weren’t making love—we were fucking. It was probably as visually stimulating as watching a two dogs mate, but in my head, it was more than that. It was beautiful and long overdue. It was two people reconnecting and putting the past behind them.
If only that were true.
His body had turned rigid behind me, pumping in a few more times before I heard the exasperated sigh leave his lips and land on my skin. It was so unlike him. In the past, he would never finish before I did. Even when I was large and pregnant and achieving an orgasm was almost as hard as winning a presidential race, he would do what he needed to in order to give me pleasure before he took his own. The fact that he let go without even once touching me hurt. Realization crashed into me like harsh waves on the beach, knocking me over and leaving me suffocating. He was only reacting on impulse. None of this was because he missed me or needed me.
No. It was nothing more than a mix of tequila and testosterone.
He pulled away, leaving me cold and leaning against the table all alone. I heard the faint sound of a zipper again just as a cold wetness ran down the inside of my thigh. He left me in more ways than one. I quickly righted myself and bent down to pull my shorts back up. Once I turned around, I noticed he was gone. I ran inside just in time to hear the front door slam closed. That was the moment I had lost it. Falling to the floor and curling into the fetal position, I gave in and cried until I had no tears left in me. And then I pulled myself together and made my way to the empty bedroom, collapsing on my air mattress and giving in to sleep.
* * *
I felt myself slowly being pulled from the darkness, realizing I had begun to wake up. But there was a presence in front of me that I could feel deep in my bones. It’s that feeling you get when you know someone is watching you. So I opened my heavy and slightly swollen eyes and allowed them to adjust to the morning light that shone into my room.
A shivering and scared looking little boy stood in front of me. I jumped from my curled up position, not giving a second thought to the aches in my back and neck, and moved closer to him, taking his hands in mine.
I knew right away it was Gavin. I no longer had an issue telling them apart. Gavin was quiet and reserved, loving and full of warmth, whereas Mikey was spunky, goofy, loud, and had more creativity in his pinky finger than I had in my entire body. But it was Gavin that stood shivering in front of me, tears leaking down his face from his wide, blue eyes.
“What’s going on, buddy?” I asked in the warmest voice I could find with the lack of sleep I had endured.
“I had a assident.”
I looked down to his pajama bottoms and noticed the dark spot that ran down the insides of both legs. “Well then, let’s get you out of these. Did you want to take a bath in Mommy’s tub?”
He didn’t answer; instead, he looked at the floor and continued to cry and shake. I stood and led him into my bathroom, away from the other kids, and turned on the water. After I stripped him of his wet clothes and helped him over the lip of the tub, I sat next to him and ran a washcloth over his legs, giving him a moment to calm down.
“What’s wrong, Gavin?”
His chubby face began to scrunch up as more tears fell in fast streaks to the bathwater below.
“Hey, baby, it’s okay. It’s just an accident.”
“Mikey says I can’t sweep here anymore,” he cried, “anymore” coming out like “anymoah” with his little toddler lisp. I wanted to smile at it, but refrained, knowing he needed my comfort more.
“No, buddy. That’s not true. You can sleep here anytime you want as long as Daddy says it’s okay. Mommy used to have accidents all the time. All we have to do is wash the sheets and then your bed will be like brand new. It’ll be like it never happened. Right?”
He nodded, slowly starting to calm down.
Once his tears were mostly dried up, I picked him up out of the tub and wrapped him in my towel, carrying him out of my room. I was stopped as soon as I stepped out of my doorway, noticing Donnie standing in the living room.
He took one look at Gavin, noticed the red eyes, and immediately questioned things. “What happened? Why is he upset?” His anger was directed at me, as if I had something to do with his son crying.
“Don’t worry about it, Donnie. I’ve got it taken care of.”
He didn’t have a chance to say anything else before Mikey came barreling into the room, yelling, “Gabbin pee-peed in his bed.”
“Mikey!” Donnie yelled.
I set Gavin down and whispered in his ear to go find some new clothes in his drawer and that I’d be in there after a minute to help him get dressed. He scurried off with the towel that was three sizes too big for him dragging on the carpet behind his little feet.
“I’ve got this,” I told Donnie in a quiet tone.
“No, I can handle my own son.”
I gave him what I’d hoped to be a death glare, hoping it was enough to shut him up.
But it wasn’t. “I’m the parent—”
“Donnie, this is my house.” I couldn’t take any more and interrupted him. “I will do the parenting to our children in my house. You can have that role across the street. I can handle this.”
“Do you even know how?”
I bent down and smil
ed at Mikey, shoving Donnie out the front door and closing it behind me before any of the kids could follow. “Stop being a jackass! Yes, I know how to be a parent, let’s not forget that I am one. I may have been absent for the last couple of years, but I was a parent prior to that. I know how to handle my children.” My voice was harsh and full of fury, finally finding my inner mama-bear.
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t fucking worry about it,” I gritted out through clenched teeth with my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Go back to doing what you were and let me handle the kids.”
“I replaced this window and the one in the kitchen already. All I have left to do is your bedroom window,” he said, finally conceding.
I nodded and opened the door again, finding the room empty. “Okay. I’ll take care of them while you finish the window.” And then I headed straight back to the boys’ room.
Mikey sat on the edge of his bed, waiting quietly as I finished stripping Gavin’s sheets. He knew he was in trouble without me having to say one word to him. I’d stayed quiet, waiting until I could give him my undivided attention, so I wasn’t sure why he acted so worried, other than fearing the unknown.
I kneeled in front of him, taking his tiny hands in mine. “Mikey, why would you tell your brother that he wouldn’t be able to stay here anymore? That really upset him.”
“Nana says you dispeared because we was bad.”
I could feel my eyes grow wide on my face, wondering what things Donnie’s mother had filled their heads with. I pulled him closer to me and wrapped him in my arms. “No, baby. You weren’t bad. And that’s not the reason why I left. Mommy was sick and needed to get better for you.”
His hand reached out and touched my forehead. “You’re warm. You’re feeling better.” I couldn’t help the smile on my face as a tear slipped from the corner of my eye.
“Yes, baby. I’m feeling better. And I feel better every day I’m with you and your bother and sister. You three make me better. It doesn’t matter how many accidents your brother has, you guys are always welcome here.”
Livvy came barging in the door and interrupted our moment. “I’m hungry. Can we have breakfast now?”
I dumped the sheets into the washer and started it before heading to the kitchen to scramble eggs with Livvy. She made the toast while I worked at the stove. The boys laid out a blanket on the floor for a picnic and then sat there, waiting for their food to be placed in front of them. It was my dream come true. Sleeping under the same roof as my babies and then waking up to them, taking care of them the way only a mother could. For the first time in God knows when, I was happy.
That happiness quickly dried up once Donnie came back into the room. The kids had just sat down to eat, all four of us gathered around a blanket where a kitchen table should’ve been, eating our eggs and perfectly browned toast, thanks to my assistant chef, Livvy.
“Come on, kids. It’s time to go,” he said as he waited by the front door.
I stopped them just as they all started to get up and turned back to Donnie. “No. We’re eating. I will bring them back home once we’re done.”
“We have plans today, and they need to come home with me so we can get ready,” he argued with a hard look on his face.
Again, I ushered him out the front door, wondering if this was how it would be for the rest of my life—Donnie starting a fight with me in front of the children, leaving me no choice but to drag him outside to give him a piece of my mind.
“You will not do this, Donovan Leery. Do you hear me? They are eating their breakfast. You can wait until they are done, or you can go home and I will bring them back once the food is gone. But I will not stand here and let you drag them away because of some issue you have with me.”
“Issue?”
“Yes…issue! You’re so damn hot and cold all the time. It’s not fair to drag them through that. All that’s going to do is confuse them even more. It’s like you’re purposely trying to make them question how they feel about me. Let them figure it out on their own.”
He scratched his chin and then ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not acting hot and cold with you.”
“Yes you are,” I said, not giving him a chance to finish his argument. “You yell at me and push me away. Then you invite me over for dinner and we have that…that moment in the kitchen, whatever the fuck that was about. Then you take me out to the sandpit and beg me to let you go, crying that you can’t move on without my permission. Fine, I get it…you’re pissed as hell at me and need me to back away. As soon as I do that, what does Donnie do? Oh yeah, he comes over here and fucks me like an animal on my back patio. Hot, cold, hot, cold…that’s what it is. But nothing was chillier than you leaving me while your come was dripping down my leg. Fuck you, Donovan. Fuck. You. You want cold? I’ll give you cold. You want me out of your life? Fine, I’m gone. But those kids inside? They’re mine as well, and I’m not giving them cold or giving them up. Deal with it. I’ll bring them home when they’re done.” I turned and walked back inside, slamming the door behind me before he could even get a word out.
I went back to my happy breakfast with my loving children, pretending I didn’t just blow up at their father twenty feet from where they sat. It would be hard, I knew that much, I just wasn’t prepared for how hard it would actually be. There was nothing like learning as you go.
Twenty minutes later, I walked my children back to Donnie’s house as I had promised. It was hard because I wanted more time with them. I wasn’t ready to send them back. I had dragged breakfast out for as long as I could, even getting them to help me clean it up so that I could have just a few more minutes with them. But I knew I had to take them back, and if I waited much longer, Donnie would be knocking down my front door.
The front door swung open before we even reached the sidewalk. He must’ve been watching for us. All three kids began to run toward their father, talking over each other about breakfast and their new clothes. Donnie smiled at them and then ushered them inside. He didn’t follow, though. Instead, he closed the door softly and squared himself with me as I approached. I didn’t linger behind to talk to him, all I wanted was to say goodbye to the kids, but he didn’t give me that chance.
“Last night was a mistake,” he ground out just before I made my move to leave. “It shouldn’t have happened. Call it acting hot and cold all you want, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I had a moment of weakness that I can assure you won’t ever happen again.”
I took in a deep breath, steeling myself against his emotionless tone. My eyes met his, hazel to ocean blue, and the words froze on my tongue. I couldn’t find it in me to respond to what he had said.
“It was stupid, Edie. It was stupid of both of us,” he started again when he realized I wouldn’t give him anything. “I mean, I don’t know where you’ve been. I don’t know anything about you. Just please tell me you’re clean. That’s all I’m asking.”
Blind rage filled me, worse than earlier during breakfast. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Donovan? Are you seriously asking me if I gave you some disease?”
“I don’t know who you’ve been with or how many,” he argued, cutting off my rant and filling me with even more anger.
I stepped closer to him and narrowed my eyes. “You want to bring up sexual partners? Fine. I’ll give you a number…one. One person, Donnie. That’s the number of partners I’ve had my entire life. Considering I gave my virginity to you, I’m sure you can figure out who I’ve been with, and then you can tell me if there’s any chance of having an STD. So…what’s it going to be? Should I be worried? Because I know your number is higher than mine, by at least one.” I meant Beth, and I had known her long enough to know she had been a little free with herself in her youth.
His eyes grew large as he stared at me, trying to decipher if what I’d told him was the truth. “So you’re saying you weren’t with anyone while you were gone? Not one person?”
“So…last night…”
“Was the first time I have had sex since the night before I left. And I’ve got to say, you made it real memorable, Donnie.” The sarcasm rolled out of me, revealing my true feelings about the situation.
“You went on dates, though…right?”
I shook my head. “No. Aside from the men I worked with at the small grocery store in town, I didn’t even speak to another man. You have it in your head that I left here to be young and wild. That I moved away to be single and have fun. No matter how many ways I tell you that I didn’t…no matter how many times I try to explain that it was never about that, you just won’t listen. You won’t believe me. Fine, I get it. I hurt and betrayed you and you can’t possibly see it as anything other than what you’ve built up in your head over the years. I can’t change that. I can’t fix the damage I’ve caused. And to be honest with you…I don’t care to waste the energy to do that with you. All I want are those kids inside. That’s the only thing I care about putting energy into. Speaking of which…they’ve asked me to tuck them in tonight. I’ll be here at eight.”
I spun around, not bothering to take one more look at his stunned expression as I made my way back home. I didn’t care if he had anything else to say to me. His words were nothing but pain to my ears and a knife to my heart. I couldn’t spare another minute dwelling over the way he viewed me. It was a lost cause.