Questions

I’m typing this with the smell of him still on my fingers. My skirt is pushed up around my thighs, my hair’s a mess, mascara smeared. He’s the cause of it.

And I want him to remember, I want my image to be in his vision, filling up his mind. I almost feel bad about it. But I’ve waited so long for this, for him… And dammit I’m not going half-hearted here. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to halfway do anything, especially not this. Not him.

I know we’ll have time to talk it all through, to unpack the memories, to compare our stories, to finally say every single word we haven’t been able to say. I know we’ll be able to linger over those conversations, to unwrap them one at a time like gifts at Christmas, now that he’s here. Now that he’s here and he’s not another woman’s man. I know we’ll talk through it all, relive every moment, hold each other while we unpack our guilt and fear and regret. I can already taste the syllables on my tongue, I can already imagine the rise and fall of his chest as I lay my head on him and listen, feel his skin naked against mine while he tangles his fingers in my hair and answers every single question I’ve ever had about him.

There have been so many.

But I also know that when I’m with him I can’t think about much of anything except his body all over mine, his arms around me, his hands touching me, his cock inside me, his mouth all over me. So maybe we won’t have those conversations. Maybe we’ll just fuck until we die, and what a way to go, honestly. I would be fine with that.

I keep remembering when we met. Oh god, what a mix of emotions when I think about it. We were both married. I was trying too hard all the time to be good. A good wife, a good mom, a good person who did what I was supposed to do, even if it meant cramming who I really am into a smaller and smaller and smaller space until I could barely remember myself. There’s nothing like the chronic exhaustion of daily life with little kids and endless bills and, oh yeah, a manipulative, disconnected, unfaithful husband to really wear you down.

Then E showed up at my second job, the only good bar in town. I was chatting with the regulars about the rodeo coming up, and he just walked right in, all muscles and clean lines and deep eyes. There was enough weekend noise and rodeo visitors in town that the first time I saw him didn’t register, honestly. I was distracted with a hundred things. Sure, I noticed him sitting there, looking good. But that’s part of the job. He didn’t make much of an impression. I didn’t go home thinking about him. He was just another man, and the men in my life hadn’t done too much to deserve my favor, so I let my gaze slide over him and I let my mind wander to more important things, like my grocery list and the overdue car payment. If my eyes lingered for a few seconds on his filled-out shoulders or his crinkled smile, well… It was a moment of objective admiration. Nothing more.

And I genuinely liked his wife. Well, she’s not his wife now, I guess. But I liked her when we met. I felt a little sorry for her. She was so earnest, so hopeful. She stood there with her long shiny hair draping perfectly and her arm around his trim waist and told me why they’d moved there, about her dreams of a peaceful life, a simple life in the country. I wanted to tell her right then: Get out while you can.

Rural doesn’t mean simpler, not at all. A lot of times it just means bored and desperate.

But I hated to be the one to burst her bubble. Turns out someone else was already making plans of his own, so I didn’t have to take that job anyway. I let her talk, I asked her questions, and we found common ground. She’s fun. I still like her, and I think in a different life she and I could have been really great friends.

But that’s not what happened. Bored and desperate is what happened.

I was bored and desperate… Bored and confused and desperate and trapped. I just wasn’t admitting it to myself yet. There was so much chaos in my life that I didn’t think of boredom as a possibility. How could I be bored when I had three little kids, when I was working nonstop to keep us afloat, when my husband needed constant attention, when I had to work so hard to ignore his awful behavior or clean up the messes he left in his wake? I’m not proud of the fact that everyone in our small town knew he was cheating on me way before I did. It’s not like it was hard to figure out, you know? And I’m an intelligent person — smarter than he is, by a mile. But this sort of thing, it’s not about your intelligence, it’s not about how booksmart you are, and it’s not about your observational skills or analytical capability. It’s about your survival, and what you let yourself see. I couldn’t let myself see what was going on, not at the time. The kids were little, our financial situation was terrible, our lives were so intertwined, and I was just so fucking exhausted all the time. We’d married too young and I felt like all I’d done for the last decade was work to keep us alive, to make sure our little family survived. I was tired and heartbroken over what my life was like, what my marriage was turning into, but I had no idea how to survive without him. It took both our paychecks to pay the bills, and it was still close. We had no buffer, we had no savings, and as far as I could tell, I didn’t have any other options.

So that’s what things were like for me. And then he came sweeping into town, with his muscled body and his perfect, dark sense of humor and his beautiful wife and kids. And of course, of course, I wanted to fuck him. And I knew that I couldn’t. 

I watched him and his wife interacting. I noticed how they were with each other, how they talked, how they touched or didn’t, how they paid attention to each other… or didn’t. Jealous? No, not really. I didn’t want to be her — I didn’t want to switch places. In fact, I wanted them both to be happy. And I wanted to be happy. It kind of seemed impossible for everybody though, so for the most part I ignored my own feelings, as usual. I stuffed my own desires down as far as I could, and tried to work with the hand I’d been dealt.

But it was tough. We were together so often. Everything was cracking at the seams by that first summer. 

He’d moved to town on the tail end of winter, and spring came slow and wet. Our kids were around the same ages, and we were one of the few families in the area not deeply entrenched in the same way of thinking as everybody else… so inevitably our families were hanging out all the time.

I’m a watcher, an observer. I think I got this way because I never felt like I fit in as a kid, and a lot of things didn’t make sense to me. I grew up in a small town, and it seemed like everybody knew the rules but me. I watched and I tried to figure them out. It became a habit, to observe others, to notice the little habits, to look for what was underneath the surface.

It didn’t take me long to see that this shiny pretty couple wasn’t in love, not at all, and probably hadn’t been for a long time. They seemed to like each other — they laughed together and got along most of the time. Or seemed to, anyway.

I mean, sure, we all have little arguments and moments of tension.

One time I stopped by to drop some camping gear they wanted to borrow and overheard the two of them arguing. I dropped the gear by the garage and left. But first I walked to the kitchen door, and heard them inside through the open windows, heard his voice pleading, heard her crying. I froze at first, just a reaction, but then… look, I won’t pretend — I stood there and listened, okay? By this point, I was getting off to fantasies of him on a regular basis. I was curious. It had been obvious to me that something was off with the two of them, but I couldn’t figure out what. They didn’t hate each other — that much was clear. And it didn’t seem like the same nightmare situation I was living in, when one partner is committed and in-love — or at least, used to be — and is heartbroken because the other one isn’t. 

So I stood there and I listened and heard him ask, “Why don’t you want to try?”

“We did try,” she said. “We tried so much and I just can’t anymore. I just can’t.”

“I know you’re scared,” he said. “But are you really okay with this? It’s not a real marriage, it’s not even a real relationship. If you don’t trust me and you don’t love me, I don’t know how to get past that if we can’t at least try to work on it. Together.”

She was sobbing and they were both silent for a minute. Then he said, “I made the biggest mistake of my life when I cheated on you. The biggest mistake of my life. And I want you to be able to trust me, and I know it will take time, but please,” and his voice broke here, “Please at least let me try. Please try with me. I can’t rebuild this alone. Please do it with me.”

It was silent for a minute, then she said, “It’s too late. It’s too late. I can’t.”

I could hear the pain in her voice. I think that’s what kept me from getting angry later on.

“So we’re just going to be roommates?” His voice was so deep and strained and God help me, I started getting wet. I felt like such an asshole… frozen outside their kitchen window, eavesdropping on this private conversation, and wanting to fuck him so damn bad.

“Yes,” she said. “We’re going to raise our kids and keep things stable for them.”

I took off then. It was too much… It was too much information, too much overload, and I don’t know why hearing all that turned me on so much but it did. I went straight home to my bedroom — it was the middle of my day off, the kids were in school, no one was home. It took me about 10 seconds to come, so hard… and about 2 minutes to recover enough to do it again. I kept thinking about him and how his voice sounded. Deep, rough, raw with emotion and need. And I felt guilty and horny and all twisted up at the same time, because I knew how she must have felt, how it must have hurt…. But I also had no idea what it was like to have a partner who was really trying to undo the damage, who was actually sorry. My own husband, by this point, was making the rounds of the small-town women. He didn’t care how it hurt me. And by now, it had been going on so long it didn’t really even hurt anymore.

I guess that’s why I wasn’t surprised when his wife was next to get my husband’s attention. He always had his feelers out for likely targets, for women he could charm and seduce and discard. She was lonely, she’d been hurt, she was new in town. The perfect target. 

None of us should have been surprised. I wasn’t. I wonder if he was, when he found out, when he caught them together. Maybe he did know, and didn’t care? 

I don’t know. That’s one of the questions I have, one of the questions I’ll ask him at some point, when I get enough of feeling his hands glide across my breasts and slide down my legs and reach around to grab my ass. Once I get enough of that, I’ll stop and ask a few questions. Not that it matters… it’s just nice to have the whole story.

That was a weird year, when his wife and my husband started fucking. That was what helped me make up my mind and finally divorce the bastard. Not because it was his wife — honestly, the cheating was so continual that it didn’t even matter anymore. No, what changed was that my ex started talking about her. Not only was he not trying to hide it, he actively wanted me to know. He was gloating about how he’d beat me down so low that I would accept anything, and keep doing my best. And that’s when I decided he was exactly right. I would keep doing my best, and my best was clearly not him.

When the divorce was final and I was free to move, I took the first good job offer that came my way and got myself and my kids out of that town. It wasn’t hard to leave my ex behind. He’d never been involved as a dad, and he’d killed whatever feelings I had for him long ago. 

It was strangely hard to leave E behind, though - we’d managed to stay friends despite the weird circumstances. It didn’t surprise me to hear that they left town, too, not long after I did. I knew the simple-life fairytale would implode eventually. 

He didn’t mention that part of the moving away was also due to their divorce. 

That dumbass. When I realize that it’s been three years and we could have been fucking this entire time? Why the hell didn’t he call me right away? 

That’s another question I’ll ask, next time I see him. Tomorrow. 

But not until I’ve spent hours licking my way all over his body. 

Not until he’s undressed me so slowly that I scream with anticipation. Not until I put my hands on his naked shoulders, and leave scratch marks on his back while I kiss his chest. 

Not until I trail my fingers down his perfect abs to his waistband. 

Not until I unbuckle his jeans and reach inside to grab his cock, hard and eager for my touch. Not until I straddle his face and feel his five o’clock shadow rubbing my inner thighs while his lips suck on my labia and his tongue circles my clit until I scream. 

Not until he slides his hands on my hips, and reaches up to tease my nipples, and slowly pulls himself over me and stares in my eyes. Not until I feel the perfect length of that hard cock slide into my wet welcoming pussy that’s been waiting for him so long. Not until he gets a little more comfortable and rubs that gorgeous dick all over my face and lets me use those little drops of precum as lip balm. 

Not until he flips me over and growls and reaches under me to grab my tits while he breathes heavy into my neck and guides his cock between my legs and feels how wet I am. 

Not until he pushes himself into me over and over and over until we both forget everything that led up to this moment and just lose ourselves in the skin and smell and touch and taste of each other.

Then… maybe then I’ll ask some questions.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich