by Lisa Regan
She tried to be sensible, but while she was trying to put aside the schoolgirl euphoria he inspired in her, he draped himself over her, a snake coiling around its prey. His mouth began finding every bare inch of her skin, kissing softly, his tongue flicking, sending pleasurable tingles through her. She succumbed, pushing her concerns about the affair and D.J.’s neediness into her mental Deal with It Later drawer.
“So tell me,” D.J. whispered. “What’s your favorite color?”
He gathered information from then on, peppering their lovemaking with so many questions, Leah felt as though she were being interviewed or taking a survey on some dating site. She had no idea what he was going to do with all of the information he was cataloguing in his brain. Did he really need to know that her favorite type of food was Mexican? It wasn’t like he was going to take her out to dinner. Did he need to know that her favorite flower was a carnation? It wasn’t like he would or could ever get her flowers. But she answered his silly, schoolboy questions, all the while trying to figure a way out of this … she dared not call it a relationship. This entanglement.
The longer it went on, the more he insisted on knowing about her, the more insatiable he became. Not just for more inane facts about her, but for her body. What went on between them had lost all traces of lovemaking and degenerated into mere fucking, returning to the rutting type of sex they’d been having before she tried to break it off with him. He appeared every night, jumping on top of her and pumping into her with the relentless force of a freight train. It became unpleasant. He did things she didn’t like, and he never asked if they were okay. It was as though he thought interviewing her afterward made it all okay. She started to wince at his touch. She didn’t want to do it anymore. It was too dangerous, too stressful, and too hard on her body.
Then there was the biting.
The first time he did it, she howled, more from shock than pain. Instinctively, her hands pushed him off her. Chest heaving, she felt along the rounded contour of her shoulder for broken skin. It was intact, but sore and tender. Awkwardly, she hefted herself off the table and planted her feet on the tile floor. D.J. stood a couple of feet away, completely naked, staring at her in confusion.
“What the fuck?” he said.
A flush started at the roots of her hair. She stared at him as though he were a complete stranger—which he was, really. He’d given her his phone number the night he asked her about her favorite color, but she’d yet to use it. She couldn’t risk it. She didn’t know this boy, didn’t know what circumstances had brought him here from somewhere that Rachel only vaguely referred to as “back East.” Her voice trembled when she said, “Don’t do that. I don’t like it.”
A hand closed over her breast. He pushed her back onto the table, his knee forcibly spreading her legs. “You don’t like it when I mark you?” he whispered, his voice teasing, but with a low undertone of menace.
His chest was rock hard beneath her hands. “No, I don’t. I’m serious. Don’t do that anymore. I don’t—I don’t like it.”
He pushed inside her. Her breath was gone. In her ear, he said, “I know what you like.”
But she didn’t like it any longer. Any of it. She just wanted it to stop. It was all too familiar. This man doing whatever he wanted to her whenever he wanted to do it, in her own home. The place that was supposed to be her sanctuary. It didn’t matter what she said, what she wanted or didn’t want. She had to take it. Wait for it to be over. Then clean herself up and stuff it all into her This Never Happened compartment.
It was making her sick. In fact, she came down with the flu for the first time in fifteen years. It was that day that she had finally had enough. It was a weekend. Jim was off fishing. Rachel had come over to borrow some children’s Benadryl, taken one look at Leah, and immediately herded Peyton and Hunter out the door.
“I’ll take all the kids to the zoo. You just get some rest.”
Leah had been so happy. So blissfully happy to be completely and utterly alone in her misery. She lay on the couch in mismatched pajamas and a thick, baby-blue fuzzy robe. A nest of used tissues surrounded her. Cough-drop wrappers littered the floor beside the couch. She was taking a swig directly from the bottle of NyQuil when D.J. appeared in her living room.
“No,” she said simply, her voice hoarse. Her throat felt like she had swallowed a pack of razor blades. She held up a hand, waved him off. “Go away. I’m sick. So sick.” Her head fell back onto the couch cushion. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open. Hands tugged at her pants. She batted them away. “No. Please. I’m sick.”
Hot breath tickled the nape of her neck. D.J. said, “I know what will make you feel better.”
“What will make me feel better is sleep.”
“Not today.”
What followed was one of the worst days of her life. She was too weak, too sick, and too exhausted to fight him off. Even when she cried and pleaded with him to stop, he ignored her. He used her. There was no other way to describe it. He took her clothes off, positioned her in all the ways that he wanted, and fucked her like he was trying to win some kind of contest. She was a rag doll. She was so relieved when he finished quickly, thinking he would leave, but he didn’t. He stayed. He was young and virile. He could get it up several times in a matter of hours. Through her delirium she remembered how she used to take pleasure in this fact. This time, her body felt like a giant bruise, and every touch intensified the pain a thousandfold. When he finally finished, what seemed like an eternity later, he left her without a word, naked and bruised. She had never felt more like an inanimate object in her life. She didn’t matter to him. Perhaps his threats of suicide had just been a ruse to keep her from ending things. She wished she had never entertained them at all.
She managed to pull her pajamas back on, but landed on the floor, which was where Jim found her an hour later.
“Leah,” he said, his voice sharp with urgency. “Are you okay?”
Sobs erupted from her body as he lifted her onto the couch. “I’m sick,” she cried. “Jim, I’m so sick.”
He stared into her face, his bushy brows kinked with concern. “You look like hell. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
She gripped his arms, fear seizing her. No one could see her like this. “Please, no. No hospital. I just need my bed. I just need to be left alone.”
Jim looked around the room for the first time. “Where are the kids?”
“Rachel has them. Please, Jim. Just take me to bed.”
“Let’s get you cleaned up first. How about a bath?”
She couldn’t think of anything more inviting than a hot bath, but then he might see the bite marks that D.J. had left on her. “No,” she said. “I mean thank you, but right now I just want to lie down.”
Within moments, he had her tucked into their bed, a cool, wet washcloth across her forehead. “I’ll make you some tea,” he said.
She caught his arm as he stood. “No,” she said. “Please. Just stay here with me. Just lie down next to me. Please, Jim.”
Without protest, he kicked off his shoes and lay down next to her. Leah’s hand crept across to his side of the bed until it found his. She laced her fingers through his. “Thank you,” she said.
For the next few days, Jim fussed over her—cooking for her, bringing her meals in bed, taking over the child care with help from Rachel. He stayed home from work to tend to her. For the first time since her daughter was born, Leah slept the days away with total abandon and watched whatever she wanted on television. Jim’s constant presence at home kept D.J. at bay. Her husband seemed to enjoy her newfound clinginess. At night, after the kids were asleep, they lay in bed together talking like they had when they first started dating. As soon as she felt better, Leah initiated sex with him, subtly encouraging him to touch her and move in ways she had discovered she liked. Their lovemaking was slow and deliberate but also more passionate than it had ever been. She relished Jim’s light touch after having been handled so roughly by D.J.
&nbs
p; In the dark, he never noticed the marks the boy had left on her.
A week later, D.J. came back. She was ready for him. She used her scary mommy voice to tell him that it was over—for good this time—and that he was no longer welcome in her home. She braced herself for his backlash. For the begging, the tears, the threats of harm to himself. But it never came. He simply stared at her, his eyes dark and stormy, his silence so palpable, it felt like another person in the room. He spun on his heel and left. The slamming of her back door caused her to jump.
She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. It took two weeks, but she finally heard from him again. This time it was a series of text messages.
You think you’re the only bored housewife I fucked? Talk to your neighbors.
I gave all you bitches syphilis.
Good luck explaining that shit to your asshole husband.
This development was completely unexpected. Leah had been prepared for him to threaten suicide again. She had even been prepared for him to threaten to tell everyone they knew. To out her. But this … she was not prepared for this. Was it true? Had he really been sleeping with multiple women?
Of course he had.
She had been a fool to be so easily manipulated by him—not to mention that she’d been stupid enough to have unprotected sex with him the entire time they were carrying on. A birth control shot didn’t protect against STDs. Her gynecologist had made a point of reiterating this fact to her each time she’d had the shot after Hunter was born. Each time she bristled at how ridiculous it was for the woman to even bring that up. Leah was as straight, narrow, and vanilla as they came. Her records clearly showed that. She’d never have to worry about STDs. She was a faithful wife, a loving mother.
Except that now she wasn’t.
Now she was a liar, a cheater, and a colossal idiot. She wasn’t an unwitting participant in a hidden camera show, she was just one of a long list of conquests. Had those conquests really been her neighbors? Or was he just saying that to upset her more? Did she really have syphilis? What else had he given her?
She went four days without sleeping before breaking down and making an emergency appointment with her gynecologist. Once there, she couldn’t bring herself to tell them that she had been having an affair. It would go in her records. There would be an official admission somewhere, even if no one would ever see it. So when the doctor asked her why she wanted to be tested for STDs, she blurted out that Jim had had unprotected sex with another woman. She wept through the invasive exam, ignoring the pity in the eyes of the staff. She had to know if D.J. was telling the truth.
She didn’t have a sexually transmitted disease.
She was pregnant.
The greasy lubricant the doctor had used during the exam made her crotch stick to the paper covering on the exam table. Shifting only made the paper rustle and tear. Leah clutched the ends of the equally fragile paper gown over her breasts. “That’s not possible,” she told the doctor. “The shot, the birth control shot—I can’t get—”
The doctor’s smile was both pitying and condescending. “Your shot was due to be repeated two months ago. We called you several times but you never called back.”
Stunned, Leah stared at the woman. The doctor kept talking—something about prenatal care and due dates. Leah heard nothing. The words kept swirling in her mind: “two months ago.” Right about the time of her D.J.-induced brain fog.
She had no memory of getting dressed or checking out at the reception desk. Somehow, she ended up in her vehicle with an appointment reminder card in one hand that said she was due back at the doctor’s office in one month.
Pregnant.
They’d told her the due date. She used the calendar on her phone, counting the weeks up, and was horrified to realize that the baby could be D.J.’s or Jim’s. She’d never stopped having sex with her husband. Of course, she’d had sex with D.J. almost every day during that time, sometimes multiple times a day. The odds were in his favor, not Jim’s.
She tried to concentrate on her chest moving up and down, on her breath going in and out of her body, because it felt like she couldn’t get any air. Unfocused eyes took in the other vehicles in the parking lot coming and going, giant blurs of color. Women walked to and from the doctor’s office. Some were visibly pregnant. Others were mere teenagers, just starting out. Probably there for their first exams or because they needed birth control for the first time. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and her vision slowly came back into focus. She watched a young girl with luxurious, straight brown hair flowing down her back exit the office, a brown paper bag clutched in one hand. An older woman followed behind her. As they got closer, Leah could see the resemblance. Mother and daughter. The mother said something, and the daughter tipped her head back and laughed uproariously.
Leah’s hand pressed into her chest. She thought of her own mother, and for the first time, she truly understood why the woman had killed herself. Leah had always hated her. First, for allowing Leah’s father to do so many terrible things to all of them, and then for abandoning them altogether. Why hadn’t she stopped him? Leah always wondered. Why hadn’t she stood up to him? Called the police? Pressed charges—just one time? Why hadn’t she done everything she possibly could to protect her children? Why hadn’t she packed them up and fled? Why hadn’t she stayed with her children? Why hadn’t she seen things through? Why hadn’t she tried? It had seemed so cowardly and yet so fitting that her mother should simply wrap a rope around her neck and instantly get a free pass. No more pain. No more struggle. No more agonizing over whether or not to do the right thing. No more abuse. No more torture. No more.
Leah was worse than her mother. Her mother had found herself in an impossible situation. Getting out of an abusive marriage was not a simple thing. Her mother had had so many things going against her. But Leah. Leah had everything going for her. She had just chosen to throw it all away. Didn’t that make her worse than her mother? Was she destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps? Was that what this was about? Had she unwittingly sabotaged herself? Was it purposeful, on some subconscious level? What had she done? What was she doing to her children? She’d been so angry for so many years, blaming her mother for ruining her life, but here she was, actively ruining her children’s lives, just in a different way.
She felt her old feeling of hopelessness like a hollowness in her stomach. Like her belly was filled with air—so full that there wasn’t room for anything else, least of all nourishment. At that moment, the thought of absolute nothingness, the prospect of no more, was so tempting that it shook Leah to her core.
“I’m not my mother,” she muttered to herself, which meant she had to make this work.
No one knew about the affair. She would deal with D.J. if he came back, but the entire thing would be stuffed into her This Never Happened drawer. The baby was Jim’s. She wouldn’t entertain any other possibility, even in her own mind. No one else would ever have reason to question her. No one would even believe that she would have had an affair. That was the beauty of having lived a postcard life up to that point. She had built trust. Besides, not all children were carbon copies of both parents. If this baby looked different, Leah could call on her parents’ sides of the family. She only had a couple of grainy photos of her folks. No one really knew what they or their parents had looked like. She could do this. She could pretend that the whole entanglement with D.J. was simply a bad dream.
It almost worked.
She found out from Rachel a few days later that D.J. had gone back East. For months, as the baby grew inside her and she moved on with her life, she waited for a call or a text from him, even sometimes thought she heard him sneaking in, but he was gone. She and Jim and the kids fell into a peaceful rhythm of work and day care and preparing for their new arrival. By the time she started to show, Leah dared to feel almost happy. Just a little. She’d done something wild, crazy, wrong, and horrid. She’d made a mistake, but it was over. She would simply learn from it. She wo
uld move on. Her Christmas-card life would remain intact.
But then a few weeks before she gave birth, D.J. came back.
She thought she had seen him coming and going from Rachel’s backyard, but when she asked Rachel—casually, of course—if he was back, Rachel said no. Then one day, Leah was doing dishes after the kids had gone to bed when she heard his footsteps. Either he wasn’t as stealthy as he had been or she had just learned to identify the sound of him approaching. Her heart started pounding so hard, she could feel it pulsing in her temples. Little Tyler tumbled in her stomach. She turned to see D.J. standing just a few feet away, looking thinner, but as model-like and gorgeous as ever in a fitted blue T-shirt and torn jeans.
“You’re not welcome here,” she said, trying to keep her voice firm and not betray the panic she felt. She had grown so large with this pregnancy she could barely climb steps. There was no way she could endure his advances—not that she had any desire to anymore. The thought of him touching her made her physically ill. But she needn’t have worried.
His eyes fell from her face to her burgeoning belly. Confusion gave way to something she could only describe as disgust. He grimaced as though he had smelled something rancid. For a split second she thought she saw tears gather in his eyes. He gestured toward her. “You … you got fat.”
He said the word fat in a broken whisper, as though he were in great pain and it hurt to speak.
She almost laughed. Had he never seen a pregnant woman before? “I’m pregnant,” she said.
His eyes went from her belly to her eyes and back to her belly. “Preg—you mean you’re having a baby?”
Something in the way he looked at her stomach—the way most people looked at cockroaches or dog excrement—made the hair on her arms stand up. She curled both hands around her belly. Tyler pushed a tiny hand against the inside of her distended abdomen. “Yes,” Leah said. “A baby.”
“That’s why you left me.”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t leave you. D.J., I broke things off because what we were doing was wrong. We were hurting everyone—my husband, my kids, your aunt—”