Just Give Me a Reason

by Rebecca Rogers Maher

  “Yeah.” He shakes some pepper onto his sandwich. “It takes a while to disentangle everything when you’re married to someone.”

  I nod. “That must be hard.”

  “Very. You ever been married?”

  “No.” I shake my head decisively. “Not for me.”

  “You sound pretty certain about that.” He takes a huge bite of his sandwich and chews with relish.

  I smile. “It’s not that I’m against it for other people, don’t get me wrong. Some people are very happy being married. It’s just not my thing. I know myself. I’d go nuts.”

  “How come?” He scoops up a fallen bit of egg with his fork.

  “You want the truth?”

  “Please.”

  “I like sex too much.”

  Tony colors a little and clears his throat. “People have been known to continue having sex while they’re married.”

  “Did you and your wife?”

  It seems like an obvious question, and not one that should embarrass him. We’re both adults, after all, and it’s only sex we’re talking about. But I forget sometimes that other people aren’t as comfortable about this sort of thing as I am. I look at Tony’s tight face and realize too late that I’ve crossed a line.

  “Sorry, Tony. That was—”

  “No, it’s okay.” He puts down the last bite of his sandwich. “I appreciate that you cut right to the chase about things. It’s just…I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t expecting to give a report about your marital sex life at the breakfast table?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “Not really, no.”

  “Let’s drop it, then, okay? It’s none of my business.”

  Tony looks down at his plate. Sadness moves across his face, which takes me aback. I didn’t mean to open a wound for him.

  When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “It’s just…you know what?” He looks up at me. “It was pretty…dry, yeah. For a long time.”

  I blow out a slow breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I tilt my head, watching him. “It’s not really okay, though, is it? That’s a tough thing to lose.”

  He goes very still. “Yeah.”

  “For both of you,” I say.

  “Yes.” He nods slowly. “She—Alexa—she had an affair in the end.”

  “Oh, man.” I wince. “That sucks.”

  He laughs a little at that. “Yeah.”

  “Did you at least go out and mess around after you separated? Have a little fun on the rebound?”

  He just looks at me. Then he shakes his head.

  My eyes widen. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  I huff out a laugh. “Well, no wonder you’ve got the hots for a pregnant lady. You’d probably want to fuck a penguin at this point if it came strutting into the room.”

  He snorts. “Did you just compare yourself to a penguin?”

  “Well.” I stand carefully to clear my plate. “I do kind of have the walk of one.”

  “Great. Now I’m going to be sexually attracted to penguins. Thanks a lot.”

  I shake my head. “You’re worse than me, with all my hormones flying around.”

  “Maybe.” He takes a deep, long breath. “But you know what? It feels good to just fucking talk about it. Like it isn’t such a big deal.”

  “Right.” Except that there’s that boyishness in his face now. That vulnerability. And it’s doing something weird to my midsection.

  I shiver a little and rub my arms with both hands. “It’s cold in here, no? Maybe I should start a fire.”

  “You know how to do that?” He goes to the sink, pours soap onto an orange sponge, and starts washing dishes.

  “I do, yeah. Want me to teach you?”

  He turns from the sink and smiles. His brown eyes are warm, his face relaxed and open. He’s wearing a navy sweater and a pair of worn-looking jeans, and suddenly what I want to do is come up behind him and press my body against his back. To feel the warmth of him. To wrap my arms around him.

  “Teach me to build a fire?” he says. “Cool, yeah. I’d like that.”

  “Okay.” I back away from him to the table, which I set to work wiping down. I take my time, finding every crumb. So that I won’t look up and see him there, calmly washing dishes like it’s something we do every day. Together.

  —

  Once breakfast is cleaned up, we go out to the woods in search of sticks. Neat stacks of logs wait on the porch, but a handful of dry branches will help get the fire started, along with a few pieces of twisted-up newspaper.

  We gather the kindling in silence. Except that every once in a while, when the breeze shifts, I think I hear Tony humming. I resist the urge to move closer. To hear him better, to feel him.

  Once we have all our supplies, I kneel in front of the fireplace and set the wood up in a pyramid. “You make this kind of cone shape,” I tell him, “so the fire burns slowly, from the inside out and the bottom up.” I feel Tony watching me carefully, and when I look up, I see the reflection of the first flames in his eyes. I breathe in sharply and look away.

  Before long, a fire is smoothly crackling, and Tony is half reclining in front of it, leaning into the warmth.

  “Pretty great, Beth. Thanks.” He closes his eyes, his body stretched out and relaxed. The sleeves of his shirt are pulled up, revealing the soft underside of his wrists, the palms of his hands. I think of those hands on me, of their gentleness and restraint.

  I know that if I stood right now and went to him, he would let me. It’s one thing if we both agree to be friends, to set sex aside and act like two controlled adults. But if one of us were to cave…if I were to cave, I know I could take Tony down with me.

  I could take him down hard.

  My body reacts to that thought like the kindling in the fireplace. It just…burns.

  I clear my throat and go to the couch.

  “You have something to read?”

  He opens his eyes. “Not really.”

  “You didn’t bring anything?” I make a face and settle a blanket over my lap. “How can you go away on a vacation and not bring a book?”

  “It’s not really a vacation,” he says. “I’m just—”

  I hold up a hand. “Are you at work right now?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then you’re on vacation.” I watch him carefully. “But if you don’t sit down and read, you’re going to find yourself thinking about the store, and then you won’t be on vacation anymore.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  I nod. “You haven’t been on vacation in a long time, have you?”

  He grins, embarrassed. “No.”

  “I’m going to find you something.” I stand and walk to the bookcase against the wall. “What do you like, fiction or nonfiction?”

  “Not sure.” He shrugs. “It’s been a while since I read a book.”

  I look at him like he’s crazy. Which he is. “That is extremely sad.”

  “I can’t even argue with that.” He shakes his head mournfully.

  Fortunately, Holly loves to read. I scan the spines on the bookshelf and pick out one about a failed expedition to the North Pole.

  Tony skims the back cover and shrugs, and then opens it and starts reading. It doesn’t take long before he’s engrossed. I crack open the mystery novel I’m reading, and the morning passes swiftly in companionable silence before the fire.

  Just before lunchtime, I look up and see that Tony has fallen asleep on the sofa.

  His dark hair is tufting up adorably on his head, and his mouth is slightly open. He’s turned to the side, so that his thigh is outlined under the blanket. I want to run my hand over it, to feel the shape of him. I want the freedom to explore his body without worrying what the consequences will be.

  I put my hand on my own belly instead.

  I have eleven weeks left until the baby comes. Once he’s born, I won’t have time—or energy�
��to think about the feel of any man’s body. Who knows how long it will be until sex becomes a part of my life again.

  Maybe that’s why my hormones are freaking out. They’re trying to get me laid before it’s too late.

  Tony is probably worse off than I am. I can’t imagine what his body is craving after having been shut down for so many years. If he were any other man, I might propose a solution that would benefit both of us. A mutual antidote.

  But I know, deep down, that Tony’s not that kind of guy. It wouldn’t be simple for him, or easy. He’s probably slept with one person in his whole life.

  I let that sink in for a minute.

  One person.

  It’s probably a sign of sexual starvation that I find this possibility arousing.

  But Lord. The things I could show him.

  I shake my head, because that line of thought is not helping at all. We are friends, and new ones at that.

  Nothing more.

  No matter how much I want it to be different.

  No matter how much I want him.

  I get up and leave him lying open and gorgeous on the couch, and go outside for some fresh air.

  It doesn’t help at all.

  I have no idea how I’m going to make it through this night.

  Chapter 9

  Tony

  After lunch, I teach Beth the dominoes game Ray and I used to play when we were kids, and then we read again for a while.

  I can’t remember the last time I spent a day in such abject laziness. I have accomplished absolutely nothing. Unless restraining myself from hitting on Beth counts as an accomplishment. Which I think it should.

  I steal a glance at her over the top of my book. Her long, dark hair is twisted into a coil over her bare shoulder. Her left arm, fine-boned and muscular, cradles her belly. In her right hand, above the line of small buttons at the top of her dress, she holds a dusty mystery book. She turns a page and promptly sneezes.

  “Salud.”

  She meets my eyes, and an electric shock goes though me. “Gracias.”

  I clear my throat. “You feeling okay?”

  “Yeah. A little stiff.” She sits up and stretches, and I deliberately look down at the book in my hands so that I won’t ogle her.

  “¿Quieres tomar el aire? We could go for a walk, take Alice with us.”

  The dog sits up, alert at the sound of her name.

  Beth smiles and reaches down to scratch her ears. “Sure. That sounds nice.”

  She goes to her room for a sweater, and I lead Alice out the back door to the yard.

  Outside, the sky is clear and sunny, but now that the storm has blown through, it’s cold. Alice strains forward on her leash, joyfully oblivious in her fur coat. When Beth emerges, though, she gathers her cardigan more tightly and shivers. I unzip my hoodie immediately and drape it over her shoulders.

  “You don’t have to do that.” She tries to give it back, but I reach up without thinking and hold the sides closed over her chest. She goes still, and I realize my hands are pressed against the swell of her breasts. I feel the rhythm of her heart beating, her intake of breath. It’s several seconds before I make myself pull my hands away.

  She keeps the hoodie on, though, and it does something to my heart to see her wearing it. Alice pulls ahead to the lane behind the house, and I follow, concentrating on the ground in front of me.

  We’ve made it through most of the afternoon without incident, and it really is better since we’ve acknowledged being attracted to each other. I can look at her directly now, for example, because I don’t have to hide what I feel. There’s no way that would have happened without Beth taking the wheel. On my own I would have suffered in silence, probably, until I couldn’t take it anymore, and eventually I would have fled back to New York City. And every future gathering with Ray and Holly would have been awkward and uncomfortable.

  It’s out in the open now, at least. But that doesn’t mean the attraction has gone away. It’s there, pulsing below the surface, and when I get too close to her it flares to life. I don’t know what to do about that. If we’re going to be friends, and I hope we can be, I have to find a way to put that fire out. Or else tolerate it somehow. But so far, it’s only getting harder. And the more time I spend with her, the more intense it gets.

  I look at her out of the corner of my eye. Her hand goes to her stomach and holds it gently, in that unconscious way women do when they’re pregnant. I remember Alexa’s hands on her belly like that, how full of hope we both were then. I think we believed a baby would bring us closer together. That it would fill in the intimacy that was missing in our marriage.

  It didn’t hurt us, I’ll say that. We both fell in love with our daughters. But having children didn’t magically solve the problem that we were never a good match. And it was too much pressure to put on our kids to ask them to do that.

  Walking in the cold woods now, watching Beth, a wave of sadness spills over me. For all the hope I used to have. For the sense of future promise that slowly collapsed into a sense of failure.

  Beth catches me watching her. Her hand stills on her belly. “Are you okay, Tony?”

  “Yeah.” I pause. There’s no harm, I guess, in telling her the truth. “It’s just…you know. Sometimes things hit you.”

  She nods slowly. “I get that. You want to talk about it?”

  I half smile. “I was just remembering, that’s all.”

  “Ah.” She kicks a stray pinecone out of our path. “You were thinking about Alexa.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she have easy pregnancies or difficult?”

  I match my pace to her slow one, even though Alice is trying to pull me ahead. “They were pretty routine. She’s an OB/GYN, did you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t. Smart lady.”

  I nod. “Yeah. She is. So she kind of knew the ropes with the delivery and all that. Plus there were a lot of people at the hospital who knew us, so we had plenty of support.”

  “That’s cool. Were the girls cute when they were born? Or were they all red and squished up?”

  I smile and let Alice stop to pee on a bush. “A little of both. They were small—six and seven pounds. Full heads of hair. And fingernails. I thought that was the wildest thing. Their nails were growing inside Alexa’s body, you know what I mean? Crazy.”

  She smiles. “That’s creepy.”

  “Yeah, the whole thing’s pretty creepy when you think about it too much. I mean, we think we’re so sophisticated and refined, you know? And then fully formed creatures come busting out of our vaginas all covered in God knows what, and it’s like, Oh yeah. Right. We’re actually animals.”

  “Our vaginas?” Beth stops and grins.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “What were they like, though? Your girls? I mean, did you love them right away and everything?”

  I stand still and face her, with Alice winding around my legs. “Are you worried about that? About whether you’ll…bond with the baby?”

  She lifts her shoulders and looks off into the distance. “I don’t know. I’m not really the maternal type.”

  “What is the maternal type, exactly?”

  “Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “Soft. Sweet. Someone who knows lullabies and nursery rhymes and understands what colic is.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and you won’t need to know what colic is.”

  “Maybe.” Beth wraps my hoodie tighter around her middle and starts walking again.

  “There’s more than one way to be a mother,” I say. “You don’t have to be Suzy Homemaker.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she says. “I mean, I really do know that. I guess I just…I can’t picture myself doing it yet. Or doing it well. I feel like the baby’s going to come and I’m going to be like, Who is this person? And he’s going to look at me and say, Hang on a second, where’s my real mother? The one who knows what the hell she’s doing?”

  “Your baby’s got a mouth on him,” I tell he
r.

  She laughs into the cold air. It makes me think of the wind chimes outside my window—sharp and sweet. She shivers again and I want to reach for her. To warm her. To warm myself, too, if I’m honest. To chase away the fear and regret that have slipped into our day together.

  But she wraps her arms around herself and turns back toward the house.

  “You know what I feel like we should make for dinner?” she asks.

  “What’s that?”

  “Grilled cheese.”

  I nod slowly. “Classic.”

  “And tomato soup. Holly probably has some in the cupboard.”

  “She does,” I confirm. “Saw it last night when I was cooking.”

  Beth quickens her pace. “Great. Maybe if I make mom meals I’ll feel like more of a mom. And you look like you could use a little comfort food.”

  “True enough.” I fall into step beside her.

  She’s quiet the rest of the way to the house. Halfway there, though, she takes my hand.

  I don’t know how to describe the heat that flickers through me then. It filters into my bloodstream and moves through my body like a slow-burning flame. It scares me, how good it feels to touch her.

  I don’t trust myself to talk. All I can do is take in the newly changing colors of the trees. And feel the pleasure of Beth’s hand move over me in waves.

  When we arrive at the house, she lets go and slips inside. I release Alice at the back door and sit on the steps for a minute to bring my body back under control.

  I don’t know how to process how it feels. What it wants.

  And I really don’t know how I’m going to make it through this night.

  —

  Beth works alongside me in the kitchen, buttering the grilled-cheese pan while I pour a couple cans of soup into a small pot. Once the sandwiches are warming, she steps back and leans against the sink counter. I look up from where I’m chopping carrots and celery on a cutting board, and she’s looking right at me. Into my eyes.

  She doesn’t say anything. But she doesn’t need to.

  There’s something cozy and intimate about this moment. Taken out of context, we could be any couple preparing dinner together after a day spent at home with our dog. The house is warm and suffused with rosy twilight, and the kitchen smells like sweet tomatoes and toasted butter.