by June Gray
I hummed along his length, sliding my tongue on the underside of his shaft. He held on to the edge of the counter, his entire body strained.
I put my hands on his thighs, feeling his hard muscles bunched up under the palm of my hand. I took him deeper, sucked him harder, hearing from the changes in his breathing pattern that he was already getting close.
“You’re too good for me, Elsie,” he said with ragged breaths. I bobbed faster to prove him wrong and all too soon, he was groaning louder. He threw his head back and arched his back, his entire body taut as he came into my mouth.
Afterward, tears stung my eyes unexpectedly as I looked up at him only to find him facing away from me. Even after what I’d done, he couldn’t even look at me, couldn’t even bear to touch me. It was in that moment that I realized Henry was lost to me.
6
Henry flat-out refused to go to the spa. In the end, I went by myself—not bothering to even invite a friend—and welcomed the peace and quiet that a day alone afforded. It was just too much effort to spend an entire day pretending to be happy.
I had a pregnancy massage, and even though I didn’t really care for them, a manicure and pedicure.
“Would you also like a haircut and color?” the uniformed lady asked as I sat with my nails under a drier.
From across the room, I could see my reflection in the mirror. With the lines on my face softened by my blurry eyesight, I realized I’d looked the same for the past several years. My hair was long and hung in loose curls around my face. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had it colored.
So even though it wasn’t part of the package, and even though I knew it would probably cost an arm and a leg, I accepted the offer. It was definitely time for a change.
“Girl!” Kari said the next Monday as soon as she saw me walk in the door. “You look faboo!”
I grinned. “Thank you, I feel faboo.” With my shorter do that ended right below my chin and new maternity clothes—a bump-hugging dress that was a little bit sexy and a little bit demure—I felt almost like a different woman.
Kari touched a lock of my hair. “Love the highlights! It really opens up your face.”
“The stylist said the exact same thing.”
“I know my stuff,” she said with a wink. “What does Henry think?”
“He hasn’t seen it yet. He came home from a swing shift this morning and was sleeping when I left. He’ll see it later at our appointment.”
Conor walked past us at a fast clip, a folder in his hand, but did a double take when he saw me. He gave me an appreciative thumbs-up before continuing on his way.
All day people commented on my new look, and I’d have to admit, I was vain (or was it insecure?) enough to take it all in. I thanked everyone for the spa gift once again, and though it may sound shallow, that little bit of ego boost went a long way in buoying my mood.
—
Henry was almost late to our doctor’s appointment. He was absent during the blood-taking and waiting process and only just walked in the door as my name was being called.
“Sorry,” he said, pressing his hand to the small of my back and kissing my cheek. “I overslept.”
“You would have regretted it if you missed this appointment,” I said once we were in the exam room. “Today’s the day we find out the sex, remember?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
I turned my back and slipped out of my dress before donning the paper robe, a little shocked he hadn’t said anything about my hair yet. Henry had always been observant—once he even noticed when I switched detergent brand—so to have him ignore my new haircut was a little disconcerting. I sat on the edge of the exam table and willed him to look my way, to really see the new me, but his eyes remained fixed on a poster on the wall depicting the stages of fetal growth.
We waited in strained silence for long minutes before Dr. Harmon finally entered, bringing with her a computer on a wheeled cart and a sense of relief. She asked a few questions from her chart and examined me before finally getting to the exciting part, to what Henry and I had been waiting for since that pink plus sign.
Dr. Harmon had me lie down before squirting some warm goo on my stomach. Then she pressed what she called the transducer on my stomach, using it to spread the jelly around my abdomen.
Henry remained in his seat, his hands clasped between his knees, as the image of a fetus showed up on the screen. This was the first time we’d seen the baby in its entirety—with little hands and feet, with its beautiful little face—and it stole the breath from my lungs with each perfect little part that the doctor pointed out.
“Breathe, Mommy,” Dr. Harmon said. “Baby is okay.”
She took snapshots on the screen, pressing and sliding the transducer in different positions on my stomach to get a better view of the baby. Finally, she stopped and used the mouse to draw a square around something on the screen. “There it is,” she said, pointing to the three faint lines. “It’s a girl.”
My heart swelled and I craned my head to look at Henry, to bask in this moment with the man who’d wanted a baby girl since the beginning, but he didn’t seem at all affected by the news. By the glazed look in his eyes, he looked downright bored.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and focused on the image on the screen instead, giving our daughter at least one parent who was overjoyed to see her.
At the appointment’s conclusion, we walked out wordlessly to the parking lot with five printouts of the ultrasound in my hand.
“So I’ll meet you at home, then?” he asked, fishing for his keys in his pocket.
I gaped at him, wanting to shake him by the shoulders and ask him what the hell was his problem. He’d been hoping for a girl all along—hell, he’d been referring to the baby as a girl since day one—and now that it had been confirmed, he didn’t seem at all moved by the news.
“Yeah, sure,” I managed to choke out.
After he rode off on the Harley, I sat in my car for a long time, gazing at the black-and-white photo printouts. “I’m sorry, baby girl,” I said, placing a palm against my stomach. “Your dad is just preoccupied right now. He wants you. I know he does.”
I cried in the privacy of that car for the baby we had, the baby we’d lost, and their father, who’d apparently lost his bearings.
—
That night I dreamed of Jason. It had been so long since the last one that it was like a happy reunion of sorts. We were running together in Earlywine Park in Oklahoma, enjoying the sunshine on our skin and the crisp air in our lungs.
The oval track seemed endless as we ran and ran, but eventually we stopped. Jason looked down at me with a smile and said, “How’s it going, Smellsie?”
Even though I hated that nickname he’d given me in Virginia, back before we even moved to Monterey, I laughed. I basked in his presence, standing in the shadow of my big brother. “I miss you so much, Jason,” I said, hugging him. Even in my dream, I remembered his scent. “I wish you were still here.”
“Me too.”
“Things would be so different if you were still around.”
He gave me a noogie but the look in his eyes was warm. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”
“But Henry—”
“Give him a chance.”
I remembered then that Jason had asked the same thing of our dad, back when Henry had just entered our lives and had yet to prove himself.
“I’m trying, big brother. I’m trying.”
When I woke up the next morning with the space empty beside me, I held on to my brother’s words—however imagined they may be—and hoped that he was right.
I had to believe in that because hope was all I had left.
—
I came home late one night, tired and cranky. Some files had corrupted for a website and it had to be rebuilt from scratc
h. It had been a long, stressful day and my sciatic nerve was aching by the time I walked in the front door.
I took off my shoes and walked into the kitchen, enjoying the cool tile against my swollen feet. I was considering just making mac and cheese for dinner when I found Henry sitting at the dining table with a beer in his hand and a gun on the table in front of him.
I froze. “Wh-what are you doing?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t betray my fear.
Henry never took his eyes off the Glock. “Contemplating this piece of metal.”
“Okay . . .” I pulled out a chair and cautiously took a seat across from him. The look on his face was foreign to me, the once familiar face of my husband now that of a stranger.
“This was the gun that helped me kill that bastard,” he said in a voice that drew goose bumps on my arms.
“It was the gun that saved people from a homicidal maniac,” I said.
“Did I kill him on purpose? Could I have done anything differently so that the end result wasn’t two deaths?” He picked up the gun and flipped it over in his hands, his fingers running along the rough surface of the handle.
I forced the fear down, reminding myself that this was Henry. He would never, never hurt me. “I think you did what you thought was right.”
He held the gun and placed his finger on the trigger, his face a horrifying mask of detachment. He might not have it in him to hurt me, but that didn’t mean he would never hurt himself.
I stood up so fast my chair almost fell over. “Stop it, Henry!”
He gave me a weary look and released the empty magazine. “It’s not loaded.”
I held out my hand. “Give me the gun.”
He glared at me. “No.”
“Give me the fucking gun!”
He stood up, clipping the gun back in his shoulder holster. “This is my duty weapon. It’s a felony to take it from me.” He started out of the room. “And possession of a stolen firearm is a class-three felony, punishable by up to twenty years in prison.”
“Henry!” I shouted at his back.
He turned around, wiping a palm down his face. “I’m so tired of fighting, Elsie.”
“And what? You think I enjoy this?”
“I think you’re overreacting.”
I sighed and walked closer. “Henry, don’t you see that you’re losing me?” I asked, lifting his hand up to my cheek.
But his eyes remained cold chips of ice. “That’s fine, right? Because then you have an excuse to go running off to that Irish asshole and fuck him instead.”
Stunned, I lifted my hand and slapped him across the cheek, causing his head to jerk to the side.
“Do it again,” he ground through his teeth, his eyes transformed into two burning coals in their sockets. “Hit me again.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going to indulge in your desire for self-harm. If you want to hurt yourself then leave me and the baby out of it.”
He narrowed his eyes and turned on a heel. In several long steps, he was at the front door, opening it.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Where?”
“Just out.” Then he slammed the door.
—
I woke up with two arms, hard as steel bands, holding me so tight I found it hard to breathe. In that half-conscious moment, I didn’t know what was going on, why it was that Henry was trying to crush me to death.
From a faraway place, I realized that this was it: Henry had finally snapped. The emotional burden he’d been carrying had proven too much and he was now going to murder me in our marital bed.
But I’m not about to go down without a fight.
I grabbed his arms and tried to pull them off me, but his muscles just hardened underneath me and wouldn’t budge. I kicked at him with my legs, connecting with his thighs. “Henry. Stop,” I gasped in mounting panic and clamped down on his arm with my teeth.
His hold finally loosened and I realized that they, along with the rest of the man himself, were trembling. I quickly scrambled away, turning on the bedside lamp to find him lying on his side, his face and torso covered in sweat.
“I’m sorry,” he said, getting up onto his knees and making his way over to where I stood shaking at the side of the bed. His blue eyes were pleading as he approached me, his arms outstretched. “I just needed to hold you.”
The pain in his voice broke my heart; I had no choice but to lean forward and let him wrap his arms around me. He gathered me close and laid me on the bed, his head bent into my neck as he took in ragged breaths.
“What is it?” I asked, running my fingers through his hair, hoping it would calm him. “Did you have a nightmare?”
“I don’t want to talk, Els,” he said against my skin. “I just need to hold you and make sure you and the baby are okay.”
I clutched him tighter to my chest. “I wish I could help you, Henry,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “It’s killing me seeing you like this.”
Without preamble, he slid his hand down my side and slid my panties down my legs, and used his feet to slip them off completely. Then he lifted my thigh and pushed into me, retreating and pushing until he was completely seated in me.
I moaned at the sensation of his cock buried inside my sensitive walls. I gripped his ass and pulled him closer, squeezing him and enjoying the fullness. He stilled, his muscles relaxing, and sighed. I remembered then what he’d said a long time ago, that being joined with me was the only time he’d found peace to calm the hurricane in his head. If this act would help him heal, then I would gladly give it.
“I love you, Elsie,” he said over and over to the same rhythm as his hips. “I need you.”
I rolled on top and straddled him, leaning over to ease the lines on his forehead with my kisses until his eyes closed and his mouth relaxed. I slowed the pace, intending to keep him inside me as long as humanly possible, soothing the savage beast with long, languid strokes.
“Elsie,” he murmured, his palms sliding up and down my sides.
I continued rocking my hips while brushing my fingers through his hair, moving as gently as possible. It wasn’t long before Henry’s arms drifted back down to the bed and the lines on his face eased.
Finally, when he had fallen completely asleep, I went to the bathroom and wept.
7
My father always taught me never to back down from a fight, that if challenged, I lift my chin and face my aggressor. But what I’ve had to learn on my own is that, sometimes, when you find your back against the ropes, you have to fight dirty in order to survive.
And fight dirty I did. I wasn’t proud of it, but I was cornered. One night, while Henry was asleep, I took his cell phone and downloaded a tracking application onto it, hiding it in a mess of other icons so he wouldn’t notice.
It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I would do it again in a heartbeat rather than sit idly by and watch my husband slide away from me.
That was how I came to be sitting in my car on East Colfax on a Friday night, staring at a building painted a dark mauve that appeared almost black in the dark. The windows too were painted over but the light above the door and the people walking in and out of the front door indicated its busy nature. Above the door was a small sign that read HITCHES & BOES.
“Henry, what are you doing here?” I checked my phone again to make sure I had traced Henry to this exact location. There were many things I no longer knew about my husband, but he still never struck me as someone who would go to a biker bar.
I got out of the car, carefully eyed the dark street, and crossed the road. In the bar’s small parking lot were numerous motorcycles lined up in neat little rows. I tried to search for Henry’s, but it was impossible to find in this sea of leather and chrome.
Shivering from what I was about to do, I wrapped my leather jacket
around my stomach—hoping my pregnant belly wasn’t too obvious—and walked up to the door. Without the presence of a bouncer, I was able to walk right in.
The smell was the first thing to assault my senses—the thick, pungent aroma of sweat mixed in with whiskey and smoke. The bar’s interior was exactly as one would imagine a biker bar to look: all dark wood with a long bar that spanned the room, a pool table, and even bras hanging from the ceiling. But the patrons were not all leather-vested and bearded, with chains hanging from their belts. In fact, almost half the room was made up of people dressed in nice shirts and slacks or even dresses, like in any bar in Colorado.
It took a few moments for me to gather the courage and make my way into the dark place. I felt so conspicuous, imagining that anyone who looked my way would be able to tell that I was out of my element, a pregnant woman in a seedy bar looking for her wayward husband. If I managed to look anyone in the eye, I’d bet I’d see pity in their faces.
I walked around the room in search of my elusive Henry, but couldn’t spot him. Convinced he wasn’t here, I was starting back toward the front door when I noticed a tall man with broad shoulders and dark hair sitting at a table by the far wall. He had his back to me and was seated with another person, a beautiful Asian woman with straight black hair and a delicate, exotic face. She was dressed in a halter-neck top and tight denim skirt and had her hands on his shoulder as she talked.
My stomach lurched at the sight, wishing the man with the strong jawline and olive skin was not the same one I was married to. But of course, wishes never come true. Not in places like this.
Henry was not shaking her hand off, but was in fact, leaning toward her in deep interest. I stood transfixed as he whispered something in her ear then reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed some cash to the woman, who counted it quickly then nodded. She stood up, took his hand and led him away, the crowd easily parting for her and her customer.
I stood there, watching them go, with my mouth agape. I honestly couldn’t tell you what was going on in my head at that moment, only that I was paralyzed. My body had gone completely numb—perhaps it was a coping mechanism because surely the pain would have been enough to end me.