“Yes,” she said. “We had that really good conversation the night before the bachelorette party...”
“And then we had sex the night after. So why is one of those things a bigger deal than the other? Because it seems to me, the sex is actually why we’re here.”
“It seems to me that that is an instructive lesson in the nature of sex, and what it can do to a relationship. So I’m thinking that we don’t do that again. That’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, no sex. Because sex caused a whole lot of problems.” She felt herself getting warmer and warmer each time she said the wordsex, and she would really like to be done with that. But she had to act like it didn’t matter, because she had to act like maybe they could be friends, because she needed that to be true and real and what was going to happen, because she had to get some control in the situation. She didn’t have any, that was for sure.
And she needed it. That was one thing about grief. It had kept her isolated. But it was her grief to deal with and nobody else’s, so while people were occasionally on hand to try and be there for her, it was essentially an all-by-yourself sort of thing.
And... She preferred that. This was joint. A partnership. With a man whom she didn’t actually have a relationship with. Yes, she had long-standing avoidance of him because of her desire to see him naked, and then they’d talked, and she found that she quite liked him. And then they’d had sex, and she had found out she quite liked his body. But this was different. They had to be different. She clung to that image in her mind. The soft, sweet maternal life. Where she sat in a rocking chair and held the baby, and felt complete. Yeah. She tried to sit with that. For as long as possible.
“We’re going to share custody of the child. And have to see each other. And right now, this feels good. It feels companionable.”
“Companionable?” The way he asked that, low and flat and gravelly so that it echoed between her thighs, made a liar out of her, but she couldn’t afford to let him know that.
“Yes,” she said. “Pleasant, even. Why shouldn’t we be able to share breakfast with each other? We should, right? This would be ideal. You could come over, we can have a meal. We get a family dinner sometimes. We could share custody, but also share a life.”
“There’s a thing for that. It’s called marriage.”
“No. That’s disastrous. If we get married we’re going to need very specific things from each other. It’s going to be about us. This needs to be about our child. And so... No arguing. No sex. None of that.”
“No sex.”
“No.”
“You’re cool if I go have sex with other people?”
She ground her back molars together. “Totally fine. I have no claim on you. We are going to be aModern Family.”
“What if I told you that I’m not predisposed to very modern ways of thinking?”
“Then I will tell you to go find some enlightenment. Climb to the top of the mountain or something. Commune with nature. Eat a Twinkie. Do something to reach an elevated state of being.”
“What if I told you this doesn’t work for me?”
“I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, feeling like she was tearing strips off herself even while she talked, showing the ugly wounds she carried, showing her deepest self. She hated it. “I desperately don’t want to fight with you. Because my life has been a series of fights with everything that has happened to me, with everything that is going on in the world, with... My whole soul for two years now, and I am tired. I am just tired of the relentlessness of it. And I need this to not be hard.”
“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I think having a kid is hard. I think change on this level is hard.”
“I don’t want it to be,” she said, the words coming out choked. She just wanted something nice. Something good. She just really wanted to be happy. “I don’t want it to be. I think you’re a good guy. I do.”
“Why? You found me irritating all the times before, and we had one conversation and I gave you a couple of orgasms and now suddenly I’m a good guy?”
“You also cook me bacon,” she said, her voice small.
“You don’t really know me.”
And how did she tell him that she did? She knew the particular way the sun illuminated his hair and revealed wheat and gold and glory every time it did. How did she tell him that she knew the way that his eyes lit up when he saw a woman he wanted to take home, because she’d seen that happen more than once at a bar, and she had always been held captive by the dance between him and the woman that would never be her. How did she tell him that he had caused her pain on deep, deep levels? Shame. That he had made her question whether or not she was a good person. And yet she had still found a way to live her life and stay away from him, and some of that was because... She had admiration for him.
Some of it was because of him. Just like the other feelings were about him.
How did she tell him any of that?
She didn’t even like going over it to herself. Because the more she sat with it, the more she dwelled on it—which she had never done when she was married—the more she had to acknowledge that he had been a thing always.
“I’ve seen you around. For a lot of years. I just think that you are a decent guy. If I didn’t think that I would’ve handled all of this very differently. That’s the truth of it. But I think that we can do this, and I think that we can be happy and... I just really want that.”
She was begging him now. Pleading with him. “I really need to be happy.”
“Then I’m going to do what I can to make you happy.”