My little internal tongue lashing was pissing me off so much that I almost got up and left, but my son was too excited to have me there, so I ignored his mother and played with him. She tried taking him into her room to get away from me after his bath, but I wasn’t having it.
“Why is he going in there? I’d like to see my son before he goes to sleep for the night, seeing as how I have so much missed time to make up for. I have no plans on ever being anywhere as intimate as a bedroom with someone like you, so please stick to places where I can reach my son, thank you.” I hated that she didn’t answer me, just nodded her head, kept it down, and went back to the nursery.
I gritted my teeth and folded my fists in anger. She was acting the way she used to when we first met. Timid, like a grey rock, in fact, that’s what I used to teasingly call her. I’d never met anyone before her who went out of their way to be nonexistent in a room full of people. It’s especially rare in my experience, for someone who looks like her.
My ex, for all that I hate her guts, is the most exceptionally beautiful human being I’ve ever laid eyes on. She has the kind of soft beauty that you could just stare at for hours on end without pause, and her body, that perfect svelte shape that having my son, hadn’t changed much except in the chest area. From what I can see beneath the baggy clothes she was back to wearing, her body was still as slender and perfect as I recall.
No, don’t go there. I pulled back from going down that slippery slope and went back to wondering what had happened to all the hard work I’d done to drag her out of her shell. It had taken months of me working with her one on one since she was terrified of going to a therapist and she’d made great progress.
I’d gotten her to see her worth and that as my wife, there wasn’t much she couldn’t do or have. It was obvious that she’d been taught etiquette somewhere, and all the right manners to fit into polite society. I didn’t get the feeling that she came from a poor background, which at the time hadn’t mattered to me. All I cared about when we first met was making her mine completely.
Maybe I was a fool for accepting her every word for believing her when she said that she had no family to speak of. I’d come to the conclusion from the things she’d said that her life had changed drastically after her dad died. In my mind, I’d blamed that for the reason for her reticence and titmouse attitude. Though she never said how her dad died exactly, she’d given away enough for me to decipher that he’d taken his own life.
I can only imagine how something like that would affect a young child and how, without the proper care, those feelings could linger in one so young. I was even more convinced of it when she started to change under my care and affection. I fell in love all over again with the new, more confident her. Not that I didn’t already love her quiet, shy reserve. But a self-confident Giselle just shone.
So what happened in the two years since she left me? What could’ve sent her scurrying back into her shell for cover? I had nothing to go on, which meant there was no way for me to answer that question, so I chose to put it aside for now. I followed her into the nursery to continue torturing her and walked my ass right into a trap.
I came up short in the doorway at the sight of her sitting in the rocker feeding my son. There was a tumult of emotions running rampant in my chest at once. Awe at the beautiful sight of mother and child in such an intimate setting, a kind of warmth that I was here to see it, quickly followed by disdain because I’d missed so much of this. None of that overshadowed the instant hard-on I got just standing there watching her, though.
It wasn’t the first time my body has responded to her since she came back, but it was the strongest. I hate this shit, hate that she can still make me feel…anything. Still make me want her even though I hate her more than I’ve ever hated anyone or anything before.
I started to make my escape since she hadn’t seen me as yet, but then she cupped the back of his head as she gazed down at him. There was such tenderness in the move that I felt that shit in my core. How could she show such kindness to my child if she hates me? Isn’t it a foregone conclusion that if a woman hates the father of her child, then she would hate said, child?