I stood in the kitchen like a complete rube. I suddenly couldn’t remember the recipe for mom’s chicken soup. I knew I was panicking, knew it was over the top, but what the fuck, I couldn’t help it.
I grabbed the phone and a pot. Mom answered on the third ring. “Hello son…”
“Mom, Olivia’s sick, how do I make chicken soup again?” She didn’t answer and I had to yell her name out. “Keep your shorts on, I was just trying to figure out who this is on my phone. You’re gonna make her chicken soup?”
“It’s not like I haven’t made it before.”
“Well, yeah, for the kids. I don’t recall you ever making it for Melissa.”
“That’s because whenever she got sick her mother overran my house and took over, now tell me what to do.”
She walked me through the first steps until it came back to me. I threw some chicken in the microwave to defrost and chopped the vegetables while she stuck her nose in my shit.
I guess that’s the price I had to pay for her assistance. By the time I hung up the phone she’d swindled me into Sunday dinner this weekend with the kids and Olivia. Yeah!
All I need is for Melissa to hear this shit and all hell’s gonna break loose. Those two never saw eye to eye on shit. But mom, for all that she’s only met my girl a handful of times, already seems to have warmed up to her.
I checked on her while the soup was cooking and she was fast asleep. I felt like ten kinds of an ass for the way I’d treated her when she walked through the door.
But now that I had some time to myself I took that shit out and looked at it. I left the bedroom door where I’d been standing watching her and headed back to the kitchen.
I sat there watching the fire under the saucepan as my mind went around in circles. We haven’t known each other long enough for anything heavy. Have we?
I already have one fucked up marriage under my belt, I can’t do two. Though the thought of Olivia and I going through a similar situation burned a hole in my gut. I got up and paced around the room like a caged animal, throwing around pros and cons.
No matter what I came up with, it all came down to one thing. I can’t live without her. I just can’t see it. How the fuck did that happen? I wasn’t afraid when I asked Melissa to marry me. I’m scared shitless now.
Somehow I know that if I fuck this up I’ll never recover. When I look ahead, she’s there. When I think of all the shit I have to look forward to with my kids, she’s the one I see standing beside me.
And then I thought of the last time they were here. How she spent hours playing dress-up with my little girl. How the two of them, put on a show for me, and my boy.
How my kids went to sleep with a smile on their faces that night. Telling me, how much fun they had. How that night I made quiet sweet love to her in our bed while everything I loved was under my roof. Fuck!
Richard
She was sick for three harrowing days. The antibiotics helped a little and I kept her hydrated. The kids kept her company all day Saturday while I went to the shop and then on Sunday the four of us laid in bed all day watching crap movies. Kids!
By Monday she was coming around and I was about ready to fuck a knot in the wall. I’m not used to going without unless she’s on her period shit and lying next to her fever warm body every night was hell on my dick.
Monday we saw the kids off to school and she had about a half an hour before she had to leave. She was eyeing me, I was eyeing her, and then I tackled her and took her down. Right there at the damn door.
She laughed like a loon while I tore at her clothes and mine. Her laughter became a sigh when I slid into her nice and easy. “Damn I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Kiss me.” It was the slowest sex we’ve ever had and fuck if that shit wasn’t intense. She’d zapped my ass for sure. I don’t know when she pulled it off or even how. But I know by the fourth stroke I knew I was fighting a losing battle.
There was no rush, nothing else intruded as we came together in a dance unlike any we’d shared before. And just as I felt her tense up around my cock for the first time, a strange thought struck.
I’ve never been this happy with anyone. Never felt the depth of emotion I feel for her, with her. I’d married someone else, someone I can say without regret that I did not love half as much. How could I not make her mine?