Separation Games (The Games Duet Book 2)

by CD Reiss

  I couldn’t clean all this up myself. I didn’t have the tools or the time.

  Putting down the paper towels and squirt bottle, I followed my husband’s path.

  Adam was sitting on the bed, leaning on the wall. It was shingled and painted with outdoor paint. When I put my hand on the doorframe, I noticed how thick it was and how it had a big hole for a deadbolt. The light from the wide window was a flat grey that made him an opaque silhouette.

  “It’s dark in here,” I said.

  “There’s a light switch in the hall.”

  I leaned out and found it. The switch clacked loudly when I flipped it. An outdoor light by the doorframe went on, bathing the room in yellow. The blue of the crocheted bedspread looked military green, the woods looked like cheap veneer, and the world outside looked dark and unknowable with reflections of us painted on it.

  “Yuck,” I said.

  “Piss was all the rage when I was a kid.”

  “Has that bedspread been sitting out for five years?”

  “Just got it out of the drawer.”

  I shut off the light, and we sank back into deep blue. The school globe looked rounder, the books and blotter on the desk looked more mysterious, and as Adam faced me, he looked more three-dimensional.

  I crawled onto the bed next to him and put my back to the wood siding.

  “Definitely got a nice indoor-outdoor thing happening,” I said.

  “They used to sit on this porch every afternoon. Watch the kids get home from school. Say hi to the neighbors. I remember them being happy on this porch. My grandmother brought Grandpa tea in the winter and iced tea in summer. If you look under the window, you can see the ledge where he rested the glasses. There’s still a ring in the paint.”

  I craned my neck, but though I could recognize that the little shelf in the front of the room used to be the ledge of the porch railing, I didn’t see the ring. It was too dark.

  “When they took me in, they just closed this thing up and chopped up the house to support me. It was what they did because that was what they did. Not an obligation. Maybe it was cultural. But they had no choice. I was their business. They were close to sixty when they took on a five-year-old orphan. Their entire lives revolved around me, but my grandmother’s life revolved around my grandfather. She did a figure-eight around the both of us. When he died, I thought she’d be free. I thought I’d offer to make the porch a porch again. She could sit on it and be happy.”

  “Why didn’t they just take this room out when you moved out?”

  “He got set in his ways. They had routines and God forbid one thing was out of place. She was miserable. But when he died, she went right after him. Like she forgot how to live.”

  The sun had set, and the streetlights came on. I didn’t press the point with him. Didn’t mention his grandfather’s dominance or how it had affected him. A car with a loud stereo drove slowly along the block to the Belt Parkway service road.

  “He pissed me off,” Adam said. “Sure. But by the end, I was pissed at her too, for letting him destroy her.”

  “But you loved them.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his lower lip. “And she could really cook.”

  “What was your favorite thing?”

  He smiled absently. “You’ll make a face.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Snails.”

  I made a face. “Ew.”

  “She’d make them in this big pot.” He flicked his hand to the kitchen, or wherever the pot was, as if he was visualizing it. “But only on my mother’s birthday, because she’d loved them. Every year in July. Ten pounds at a time with tomato sauce. We’d pick them out with straight pins, and Grandpa would grouse around the house. Like making something he didn’t like was a personal insult and not a way to honor my mother. It was the only thing my grandmother ever put her foot down about. It was for me. Because when I moved out, she stopped doing Mom’s birthday because of him.” He jerked his thumb back at the house as if his bossy grandfather was still there. As if he was physically connected to the stories made in the house.

  “Fuck him,” I said softly.

  “Yeah. Fuck him.” He took my hand, putting it in his lap as if it was finally home. “What are we doing?”

  “Screwing up.”

  “Like it’s our job.”

  “If you’re going to do something, I say, do it all the way.”

  He squeezed my hand. I was jarred by the way he looked in the direction of the window, but not through it. He didn’t look like the commanding Dominant who had been my partner for the past few weeks. He was as handsome as ever, and graceful and sharp, a leader and a decider, but not the same.

  He faced me. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

  The light from the streetlights glinted off one eye. His jaw locked, catching things he’d never say. He looked like a man I knew and abandoned. Manhattan Adam.

  “We can’t fix it,” I said, putting his hand in my lap, watching our clasped hands make a new form. I rubbed the outside of his thumb with mine, feeling its familiar shape, the strength of the knuckle, and the texture of his skin. “We have to build something new. And we can.” I looked up from our hands to his face.

  Could I make him feel my optimism? Could I take a piece of it onto a fork and lift it to his lips? Would they part? Would he let me lay it on his tongue? Would he chew and swallow, saying “I do. I do believe we can, I do.”

  He didn’t say that. He didn’t believe, but his lips needed to touch my belief and his tongue needed to taste my hope.

  I didn’t know if I kissed him or if he kissed me, but it felt like a first kiss, with full quivering that left me paralyzed by his nearness. The act of two tongues tasting each other was so intimate between strangers, so taken for granted over time, and so rarely was the wonder of it felt through to the bone.

  He was licorice. Fennel and leather. And he moved like cool water, reacting to my movements, countering with his hands and his mouth, wrapping me with his attention. The kiss was the sway of sex, the smell of it, the carnal desire without the promise of anything but another dance.

  He pulled me on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips as he pushed them into me. My body reacted as if the shape of his cock was new.

  I was blind. The world was pitch black.

  But him. In a tunnel of light.

  We pushed against each other. Our clothes got moved aside, unbuttoned where necessary and no more. We released our bodies from bondage and joined them. Right in the walled-in front porch built just for him, we made together what couldn’t be made separately.

  If only for that moment, in that bed, in that dusty old house. We built something as permanent as the night breeze. Something that would go away too soon but would return like the seasons.

  I forgot the latent desires and sexual exploration for a minute to look into my husband’s eyes and see all his anxiety, his growth, and his intentions. I saw everything he didn’t want anyone to see.

  He loved me. He was terrified, but he loved me.

  I closed my eyes. Felt the strength of his hands as they caressed me. Listened to his tender whispers. His movements under me were as familiar as the sound of my own voice.

  Manhattan Adam was still there, and he loved me.

  I wanted to cry but couldn’t. I was flayed, spread out, raw red, and bleeding. Reality was a serrated knife separating muscle from bone, sinew from skin. It cut away the truth of me from the truth of him.

  We were on perpendicular paths. We were crossing at a ninety-degree angle, and soon we’d be traveling on different axes.

  Manhattan Adam loved me, and I still didn’t love him.

  Chapter 25

  In my teens, I was infatuated with drawing. The idea of being an artist appealed to me, and since I was forgetful and flighty, I figured I must be the creative type. Music was a lot of work and required a lot of attention. So at fifteen, I signed up for a class at the East End Artist’s Studio.

  I sat aro
und a platform with twenty other teens. The teacher’s name was Len Bellinger. He sat on a stool in the center of the platform. He was big and bellicose with a pencil moustache and combed-back black hair. He held up a soup can and spoke in a European accent I couldn’t pin down to any single region.

  “What shape is this?” he asked.

  “A cylinder!” we chanted.

  “Correct. In the third dimension, this is a cylinder. But drawing is in two dimensions. So!” He slapped the can right side up on the stool. “What shape?”

  “Rectangle,” some of us said, unsure.

  “Yes. Now. If I do this… what is the shape?” He held the end up to Hanlon Speck, a foot from his face.

  “A circle?” he said.

  “Yes!” Len replied. He put the can in front of each of us, and each of us dutifully said it was a circle.

  “So!” He placed the can back on the stool. “To draw, you need to live in the second and third dimension. You need to see the circle and the rectangle. You need to know they both exist even if you don’t see them.” He bent his elbow and made a fist as if catching a fly midair. “You must hold opposite things in your mind at the same time, and you must believe them both.”

  Chapter 26

  He pulled onto the Gowanus and home to Manhattan. Traffic was light, and I was confused about my intentions and my feelings. I felt as if he was going too fast, and I didn’t know what I wanted out of him or the next four days. I didn’t know if he was going back to being a man who could train me, or if his needle had found the groove of his old self. I held onto the edge of my seat.

  He rubbed his bottom lip as he drove. Had he done that in Montauk? Even one time? I couldn’t remember. My eyes had been on the floor half the time, and the other half was spent getting my bearings around a stranger.

  “You’re looking at me,” he said with a smirk. Not the devilish smirk that betrayed plans for my body. Just a plain smirk on a devilishly handsome man.

  I turned to my window. He was in the reflection. A half mask of blue dashboard lights.

  “Sorry,” I said, apologizing for nothing.

  I’d never finished the drawing class. Never learned to hold two ideas in my head at the same time. Not about soup cans and not about men.

  “What happened back there, Adam?”

  “Back where?”

  How deep was I going to go? Was I really going to shred this thing?

  Yeah.

  I was.

  “What happened? In your old room?”

  He looked away from the road for a second, taking my temperature. “We fucked. Why?”

  “It was the old way.”

  “Diana.” His voice went deep and slow, but it wasn’t the voice that made me feel safe. “Did you think regular sex was against the rules?”

  “I want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Wrong answer. Wrong answer a million times. He was just rolling over. He was supposed to tell me that he’d fuck me how he wanted, when he wanted.

  Even as my anxiety grew from a pinprick to a full chest pain, I knew I was being unreasonable. I was expecting him to read my mind, and I wasn’t respecting his need for five minutes off from bossing me around.

  “You’re supposed to be training me. Twenty-four seven. That’s what you said.”

  He exited the parkway, eyes drifting past me as he looked behind him for traffic. We were right by the grey building with the white trim. The one he’d bought whole and sold in pieces.

  “Did you not want to have sex?”

  “No, I mean, y—”

  “Did I rape you?”

  “No!”

  “What’s the problem exactly?”

  “It’s…”

  “You think it has to be a power exchange every time?”

  “No. I… no, not that.”

  He pulled up to a metal gate and pushed a code into a panel. “What is it then?” The gate rolled open.

  I felt silly. I had nothing concrete to say. I had feelings and intuitions and assumptions. What was I supposed to say? It felt like you loved me, but you also seemed like the guy I wanted to divorce, so which are you? Because I need to know if I love you or not?

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Is that literal or rhetorical?”

  It was as if he’d read my mind.

  “Both.”

  He drove into the tiny alley behind the converted warehouse. It had a few reserved parking spaces that surely cost a fortune to rent. The loading bay had been converted into an outdoor eating area with strung lights and big doors leading inside. He parked in front of three garage doors.

  “Literally,” he said, “here.” He put the car into park and looked at me.

  I swallowed hard as if that gave a woman strength against a man who loved her.

  “Rhetorically? Fucked if I know.”

  He got out before I could respond, came around the front as always, and helped me out of the passenger side. He didn’t make eye contact, but walked to the garage door.

  “Adam!”

  “What?” he asked over his shoulder, not looking back around.

  This was the man with half his attention on me. This was the man who patted my shoulder when I was in pain. The one who made love to me like a nice guy.

  I leaned on the garage door so I could see his face as he put in another code. I was in his sight, but he didn’t look at me. He was all avoidance and internal energy. Locked away like the crown fucking jewels. Had it been being in his old house? Had it been the memories of his grandparents? The vanilla fuck? Had his love for me turned him back inward?

  “Step back please,” he said as if speaking to an employee.

  I got off the door, and he yanked it up. I was assaulted with the smell of old grease and liquid chemicals. Adam flicked on a light. The garage had room for one car, and it looked to be under a tarp. Adam walked around it, unsticking Velcro tabs, then he whipped the tarp away.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “That’s exactly the word,” he replied, rolling up the cover.

  “What year?”

  “’67. V8. 450.”

  The Mustang’s paint was perfectly red. Not too blue. Not too yellow. The interior was clean white leather and exposed by the convertible top, which had been removed entirely. It had been placed on a ledge by the four wheels, which hung on the wall.

  “I took it when the garage started leaking and put it up on blocks. Uncle Bernard never knew. But hell if I was giving up this car.” He ran his knuckle along the side. “I figured since you had the Jag, I might as well use this one.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  It was a great idea if we were divorced. If we were together, it was stupid to have two cars in the city. We had the money to keep two cars, but we didn’t drive enough to make putting the wheels back on the Mustang sensible. And what was the point of having a car like that if you didn’t take it out?

  Or the point of having a husband who only loved you when you didn’t love him?

  If this man standing in the flood of yellow light was Adam, we were getting divorced because I didn’t love him even though he loved me. I could love the man in Montauk, but this one? No.

  I wanted to love him more than I wanted to be loved.

  I felt empty without that love. Crippled. A speed machine drained of gas and up on blocks for the preservation of its uselessness.

  “I can’t…” I stopped myself. I had an end to the sentence, but not the one after it.

  “Can’t what?”

  Deal.

  Decide.

  Understand you.

  Leave you.

  Be with you.

  I couldn’t fight to be loved and be true to myself. But I could fight to love.

  I dropped my bag and took off my coat, which I threw on the hood of the car. The cold air bit my skin and my nipples tightened.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t make a move toward or away from me.

  I
dropped to my knees, keeping my eyes on the concrete floor and my hands to the side. I heard his soles against the floor’s grit, and his shoes came into my vision.

  Bending at the waist, I put my hands flat on the floor and my forehead between them. My hair spilled around his shoes. My heart thrummed. I stayed still, even as I panicked. On my knees, unable to see him, I wasn’t protected. I was vulnerable to emotional hurt. But I didn’t know how else to say what needed saying. That I needed him to be Montauk Adam. I needed his control and his dominance. I needed to love him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Whatever you want.” My breath hit the floor, and dust blew back up against my chin.

  He moved. Grit scraped. He walked far. Then near. To my left. To the other side of the car.

  “What if I want you to get up?” he asked from far away.

  “I’ll get up if it pleases you.”

  “What if I don’t know what pleases me?”

  I had a moment of confusion, then I remembered my husband of five years. The man who was afraid to do what he liked to do because he didn’t want to lose me. What had he done when he was fearless? When losing me was a foregone conclusion?

  I brought my hands around, and with my forehead still on the floor, I unbuttoned my pants and pulled them down, exposing my ass. The shame of it was overwhelming. To talk to my husband by showing him the ways he could fuck me was a deep humiliation, and the only option I had.

  The garage door was wide open, and I could hear the hoosh hoosh of the expressway. He came around behind me. If he told me to pull up my pants and get in the Jag, I was going to cry, because if I couldn’t reach him with this, we were finished.

  Doubling down, I put my hands on my cheeks and spread them apart.

  He moved. I felt it but couldn’t see him. He did it slowly. He knew I was in a dark tunnel. I knew why. To keep me unsure of my own choreography. The garage door rattled down, cutting off the coldest of the wind and revealing the rumbling white noise of a heater.