by KT Morrison
These days she didn’t even want to mention it. Wouldn't dare talk about Odie to him other than what was happening to her in the present. Wouldn't dare talk about a paternity test. He’d made his thoughts clear. And just like that day where she’d stood holding their baby while her loving husband had painted a tree that would protect her, and she realized the enormity of the What ifs? these days she was thinking it again. What if?
She couldn’t go upstairs.
“I don’t want to either,” he said.
She walked back through, said good-bye to the home that had made her happy for so long. Her hand rifled through her bag at her hip, looking for her tissue. They stopped in the kitchen, Geoff slinging his satchel off and dropping it on the kitchen counter. He snapped the clasps open and he drew out the paperwork. Something he could’ve mailed, something that could have been done separately, but she’d begged him for this closure. Mad as he was at her, he’d agreed.
Wordlessly, he pointed out the places she needed to sign, even though they’d already been marked with colourful stick-on arrows. The pen shook across the page, her hands trembling, a tear blotted the paper and she quickly wiped it away. Cap back on, she slapped it on the pad of papers and she turned from him and walked to the light spilling in through the window across the table where they used to eat. She dabbed at her face and blew her nose. When she was composed, she turned to him, saw him getting his satchel over his head. She said, “That it?”
“That’s the end of it.” He stood with his hands thrust in the front pockets of his jeans.
She said, “Can I walk through your studio?”
GEOFF
He opened the door for her and let her into the dim space that had once been his studio. It was bare save for the leather couch in the corner. He’d had no room for it in his new place, if he wanted to crash or get his thoughts together he would just lay on the bed. He already had the other couch from the family room set against the wall under the window of the apartment. Sometimes Winslow would take naps on it.
Her heels echoed in the cold hard place, now so sterile with no furniture, nothing in it to suggest all the great things that had happened in here. Her hands covered her face as she walked to the centre of the room and he followed her in, the door closed behind him with a resounding airtight bang.
“We had some good times here,” she whispered, turning then to look at him, her eyes wet, threatening to spill over again.
He came to her side, hands still in pockets, his body heavy with the same dread he knew she must feel. “I had the best times of my life here, Nia. I was so happy.”
“I was too. I’d never been happier ever in my life.” The tears gave way and she bent, hands covering her face, laughing and sniffling. “Ahh” she sighed, drawing in a shaky breath. “Wh-what do you think the new owners will do in here?”
He said, “They’re going to turn it back into a garage.”
“What?” she said, her face devastated, her eyebrows high and hurt. She covered her neck with her hands. “Geoff, they can’t. Just put their dumb dirty cars in here?”
“That’s what I heard,” he told her.
“All the work we did? You did. This room was filled with so much life...”
“It was.”
“God,” she said, doubling over, “I didn’t know this was going to hurt so fucking much.”
“You wanted this.”
“I know. Thank you for coming. I know it’s not easy for you either.”
“No, it’s not. But I said good-bye to this place a while ago.” He didn’t want to, but he put his hand on her shoulder. He swore he wouldn’t, but her pain was killing him. Her body fell against him, and her hand came up to rest over his.
She said, “Will you hold me? I’m so sorry, I just want you to hold me.”
“Nia...”
“Geoff, please, don’t let me hurt...”
“I don’t want you to hurt, Nia.”
“Please, just put your arms around me.”
He sighed and he bit his lower lip. Part of him did secretly want her to wallow, but confronted, he couldn’t do it. “Come here,” he said and he let his arms go around her waist, his chin settling in her shoulder. Her back was to his chest, and they faced the door they came in.
“I don’t want this to be over,” she said.
“It is, Nia. It’s over. It’s sold.”
“I feel so empty. Empty, but like a pit, and someone is shovelling broken glass in, filling me up with—”
“Shh-sh, Nia, don’t. You can’t change it. It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“All of it, Nia. The way it was...”
“Geoff...”
“We can’t go back.”
She sank limp against him, her body gathering weight, her strength waning, and it was too much to keep herself up. He was holding her from falling.
“I’m sorry, Nia.”
She whispered, “You don’t love me any more?”
“I don’t know, Nia. What do you think?”
Her hands caressed his, joined over her tummy. She ran her long fingers over his clasped hands, dragged her nails across his skin. “You remember when you gave me that strip-tease?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Remember? I sat on the couch and I gave you a little beat and you came to me...”
“I remember...”
“You were already naked...”
“I know.”
“I think about that sometimes.”
“Do you? Why?”
“I think about you all the time.”
He laughed, offended somehow, and his grip relaxed. She clenched his separating hands and she held them against herself. “Don’t, Geoff. Don’t let me go.”
“What do you want, Nia? What do you want from me?”
She stood quiet, her back pressed to him, her hands gripping his against her stomach, stopping him from releasing her.
“Do you hate me? I don’t want you to hate me.”
“I don’t, Nia. I don’t.”
“Oh God, Geoff, I dream about you, I dream about you every night. I dream that we’re still together.”
His eyes welled with tears, hearing the pain in her voice. “Don’t, Nia, please don’t.” He pressed his chin tighter into her neck, felt her beautiful hair tangle in his long beard.
“You’re still my husband. We’re married, Geoff. It’s okay, please, baby, please, baby, please, just hold me tighter. Squeeze me...”
“Fucking...Nia,” he cried and he squeezed her. He screwed his forearms across her, pulled her against him even though he knew he was hurting her. She wanted to be hurt. He wanted to hurt her. She wanted to know his pain and he wanted to show her. He squeezed her and he cried in her hair. She grunted and chortled, struggled for breath, but she didn’t struggle. She took his punishment and she begged for more.
“Squeeze me,” she wheezed, “squeeze me so hard you don’t hurt...”
He crushed her til his arms shook. Tears streamed onto her shirt and down her bare collar. She grunted and bent, she heaved stertorous breath. He released her, he let her go, and she squirmed in his grip, turned herself to face him and she slunk her arms around his neck.
“Please, please, baby, whatever you do, please don’t hate me.”
“I don’t,” he sobbed, “I don’t.”
Her hand clasped his, her slender digits curling over the back of his hand and holding it to her chest, over where her heart would beat. She looked in his eyes, and at this range, point blank, so close he could hear her blinking—it ruined him. Tore his new scaffolding down. He’d been re-building after the storm and Nia wiped it away with a fresh hurricane tearing in from the coast. He’d only been in the eye.
She kissed him, quickly, urgently, with unambiguous passion. He sobbed into her mouth. Her hands gripped his shirt in tight fists and he couldn’t push away when he tried. Those soft lips were home and the touch of them set off a fireworks. Polaroid flashes of what was. T
he things he’d always wanted, given to him; his Nia on an altar in laughable white, buying this very house, making love to her so they would conceive, bringing his weakened wife home with Odie swaddled against her chest. Each flash brought a swelling of his pounding heart. Her familiar feel under his hands, her Chanel in his nose, the sound of her hair as it brushed the fabric she wore—it was everything to him once. He would have done anything for her. Did anything for her. His day started with Nia, ended with Nia—in between it was Nia.
The padded front panel of his old leather couch knocked him just below his knee and he tumbled into the overstuffed cushions with his wife on top of him. Didn’t even realize she’d walked him back; he was so lost in the nostalgic spate her mouth had drawn. Her light body squirmed on top of him, her arms clutching, her legs climbing his thighs. It felt incredible to have her against him, feel her weight press him.
But he couldn’t.
“Stop, stop, stop,” he whispered around her wet twisting mouth. He had to take her face in both palms to hold her away. Fear and worry trembled in her eyes as she stared into him with shaking parted lips. “Don’t, Nia. I can’t do this.”
NIA
There was hesitation in his eyes. The curves of her lips pressed to his in gentle osculation. She would persist forever. Geoff didn’t fight her. Lips started working again and she felt the wet of tears between their cheeks. Her hands clutched his face like he clutched hers. Their mouths twisted and rocked on one another. A steel bolt had formed, pressed into the low plain of her belly, and her hips eagerly impelled.
Reluctance had seized him. Frozen the man she loved into awkward restraint. Her hips rolled with urgency, undulating against his prominent arousal. She needed him desperately. His hardness excited her like it never had before. It elated her to feel him again, to feel his excitement for her. She took his hand, her left grasping his right from her cheek, and thrust it up under her poncho, under her shirt, and against her bare skin.
That fine hand of his coddled her breast through her bra and she couldn't wait to feel it unsnapped. To feel his warm skin against hers. Geoff squeezed her, uncertain at first and she pressed his hand closed with her own.
“I can’t, Nia...”
“Yes, you can, Geoff, you have to...”
“Stop, Nia...”
“No, Geoff...don’t stop, baby,” she said and she drove against him, felt that steely hot tip of his against her belly button.
“Mm,” he moaned, his lips pinching together over her bottom lip and tugging on it.
“That’s it, baby, Geoff, make love to me...”
“This is wrong, Nia...”
“I love you, Geoff, it’s not wrong,” she sighed, her hands going through his hair.
“Stop,” he shouted and he took her by her shoulders and the look in his eyes pained her.
GEOFF
“You’re my husband...”
“We can be friends, Nia, maybe. Sometime.”
“I can’t be your friend, Geoff...”
“You can’t? You can’t be my friend?”
“It hurts too much. I haven’t seen you as a friend in the longest time. I used to say you’re my friend, but you’re more than that. You were the love of my life. I can’t go back to being just your friend.”
“It’s over, Nia,” he said.
“Just kill me,” she cried, her tears dripping onto his face, “just fucking end me, Geoff, kill me...”
He gripped her hot neck and he watched her face twist in dreadful unending sorrow.
“Don’t, Nia...”
She howled a long dying animal sound, something primal, mournful and desperate. Veins and cords stood out in her elegant neck. She broke his heart, her pain crushed him, twisted his insides so tight he was tearing apart.
“Baby,” he cried, “baby don’t...”
“Geoff, I love you so much, please...”
He kissed her. Kissed her to end her pain.
Her hands caressed his beard, smoothed him eagerly back and forth, taking the solace he was giving. Ending her pain.
She gripped his cock through his jeans.
“Whoa, no, Nia...”
“I need you, Geoff, I need you,” she cried.
“Nia, please,” he said as her hand clutched and squeezed his cock, lower then, grabbing his balls.
“Baby, I’m dying without you,” she whispered in his ear.
“Nia, I can’t…”
“Geoff, God,” she cried into his ear again, her tears slipping along his cheek and tickling into his ear canal.
“Nia, no,” he said. He twisted under her, but she had his jeans unbuttoned now, her two hands pressed between them, working his zipper down.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re hard, Geoff. I feel it, I feel you’re hard. I need you so much, baby, don’t leave me.”
“I fucking...don’t,” he cried, “stop it!”
She was straddling him, sitting up, looking down, her hair hanging around her face and dangling to him. She pulled her tights down her thighs.
“Nia, God, Nia, no, no, no,” he said, looking up at the woman who he’d loved. The head of his cock poked out the waistband of his jeans and she gripped it in her fist.
“I’ll die if you don’t, Geoff, I’ll die if you don’t. Fuck me like you hate me, just fuck me...”
She threw herself on him again, her lips coming to his. He resisted, pursed them but he couldn’t pull away. She kissed his hollow cheeks, his nose, his eyes, squirming her lithe frame all over him, squishing his hardness with her tight belly. Her poncho and shirt were pulled up and he could feel her hot olive skin against the belly of his cock.
“Oh, Nia,” he sighed.
“Do it, Geoff, fuck me,” she said, and she looked in his eyes and he lost himself in there. So much between them, so profoundly good and so much that was shatteringly bad. He gasped looking in her eyes. He saw their life together in there. He saw himself.
She tossed herself to his side, her back to him, threw her hair over her shoulder, her eyes there again watching him, quivering. “Geoff,” she whispered.
She pulled her skirt up and he saw the bare curve of her rump, her legs bent, her tights pulled down to just above her knee, the black fabric pressing her skin tightly there. “Fuck me, Geoff.”
“Nia, no,” he cried, but he turned. His face swelled, he sobbed, his breath came hot. He put his cock inside her. The place that was his. His pussy forever and ever he once thought, the place that he’d desired for so long. Had earned. Had lost. When he sunk himself inside her she gasped and she cried and she grabbed his hand and she squeezed it to her chest.
“Oh, thank you, Geoff, oh baby, oh I need you so much, baby...”
“Nia,” he grunted. He fucked her from behind. The two of them on their side in the room and on the very couch where the journey down this path had begun. But it was their path. And what had destroyed them had already occurred. Something buried, something eight years past. Their journey unearthed it like a curious archaeologist bent by desire no matter the Pharaoh’s Curse. Discovering his wife’s passions had exposed who she was. Who she was in the present, but who she was before. Eight years ago. Eight years ago she’d been bad, but for the years since she’d been good. But she’d held a lie. That action worse than the event that launched it. She’d lied, and lied, and lied. Every day for eight years.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” he screamed and he thrust himself into her. He shoved her cunt face into the cushion of the couch and she roared in terror. Not from what he was doing but what she’d done. She’d ended them. Ended them before they'd really begun.
“I fucking hate you,” he yelled in her ear, driving into her, steely hard and on fire. He grabbed her throat and fucked her into the cushions, making her grunt and struggle. Her hands thrashed, not to stop him, but to grip him. Her hands clutched his arms, supporting him, wanting his love or his hate—anything he had to give, she wanted it.
“Nia,” he sigh
ed and he hugged her. He put his arms around her and lifted her up from the couch, still sliding in and out of her. She was limp in his arms, crying, her hair over her face. “Nia,” he cried again and he held her to his chest. She turned then and she kissed him. He took her mouth and he took her tongue, and in a few moments, he stiffened and he drove deep and he came inside her.
“Oh, Geoff,” she gasped. “Oh, I feel it, oh, you feel so amazing. Oh, baby...”
She clutched his arms to herself tighter and she pressed her cheek to his.
His orgasm was lost. It never thrilled him. He ejaculated inside her but there was no pleasure.
NIA
“Wait, Geoff, don’t go,” she whispered, feeling his weight coming off the cushion. She turned and he was leaving, hoisting his weight off the couch, his expression frightful.
“Geoff,” she said, and she held his forearm but he pulled it from her nails as he stood. His penis stuck up wet against his belly, pinched by his underwear. “Please, stay,” she said.
He shook his head no, eyes wide and mouth agape in that terrible beard. “Oh no,” he whispered.
“Geoff, please,” she said and she rolled, her tights around her knees, posed for him, gave him her kindest and warmest face. “Lay with me,” she said.
“Fuck,” he gasped. He clutched his head on both sides, sagging at the knees, crouching and doubling over. “No,” he shouted. Bolted upright, tucked his penis away and he zipped up his pants, staring at her with wet eyes.
Her hands covered her mouth as she watched him. He spun, looked around, saw his satchel where it lay on the painted concrete floor of the place he’d spent so much joyous time. “No,” he shouted again. He snatched the bag from the floor and flung it over his shoulder. He turned to leave out the front door, the one that led to the alley. Stopped, turned his head down to her. “Fuck, Nia,” he said, his eyes tearing. “Nia,” he whispered again, then he fled.