Out of the Woods

Chapter Four

Four

Caleb is taking a long enough shower that I know he’s either masturbating, avoiding me, or had turned the water on before realizing he needed to take a shit. Behold: the intimate knowledge held within marriage.

Because we’ve not had sex for almost two months, it’s reasonable to presume that he’s masturbating and avoiding me. He’s probably got his forehead pressed against the tile while he strokes himself, billows of steam surrounding him as hot water cascades between his shoulder blades and down his back, ass, and thighs—just as I’ve gotten to see countless times.

I love walking in on Caleb showering, propping myself up on the bathroom counter between our his-and-her sinks, and watching him get himself off. There’s something uniquely hot about the way the tendons in his forearms flex, his small grunts of pleasure as he releases, his sigh of relief once he comes, and the slow turn he does afterward toward the showerhead to rinse off that allows me the perfect view of his ass.

He’s told me that he doesn’t mind if I watch but doesn’t particularly understand why I want to. I am quick to point out the hypocrisy of such statements—because he loves to watch me play with myself, with my fingers or with toys. He’s begged to record it on his phone more than a dozen times, at least. And I mean truly begged. Like, fully pleading and whimpering while on his knees—usually as he’s positioned between mine for an up-close-and-personal private show.

The act of sex has never been our issue. Although our first few times were comically awkward in hindsight, as is the rite of passage. We were both virgins, after all. For a while Win and I referred to Caleb as “Oliver-Oil” because he was extra virgin. Meaning, I had also been his very first kiss. Turned out I’d be his first and only.

The thought has occurred to me that I could be terrible at kissing and Caleb would have no idea as he’s got nothing to compare me to. But I don’t think I am. I’d kissed a lot of boys—and a few girls—before Caleb and I shared our first kiss at fourteen and hadn’t received any complaints.

I had my first kiss at eleven, which I suppose is fairly young, but I was an early bloomer, according to my mom and Aunt June. Puberty hit me like a truck the summer before seventh grade. I went from not needing a bra to wearing a training bra to a full B-cup in the span of two months. My new boobs acted like a bat-signal to the boys in my class, some of whom came back that September different (i.e., taller) themselves. Regardless, I had their attention, and I loved it.

It was always just kissing until I was thirteen and one unremarkable boy asked if he could put his hand up my shirt after soccer practice behind the sport’s equipment shed. He gingerly placed his hand on the outside of my bra as Win kept watch around the corner for teachers and other students. I lied afterward and told her that it was awesome, but I purposefully never spoke to that boy again.

Then, I met Caleb. He’d made the bold decision to defy his parents’ wishes and transfer from private to public school because of our high school’s computer science lab donated by some well-to-do alumni.

We dated for over a year before we finally started doing more than kissing. He wanted to take things slow, and I respected that—though I did my fair share of crying to Win about whether he was into me or not. Fourteen-year-old-me mistook his chastity for indifference. After all, boys are supposed to be the ones doing the pressuring, right? At least, that’s what I believed at the time—confirmed by the afterschool specials my mother made us watch about the dangers of teenage boys and their hormones or teenage boys and their drugs or teenage boys and their alcohol or, well, just teenage boys in general.

The lesson was: Boys will pressure you, and you should just sayno!

Except Caleb never once pressured me and I definitely would have just said yes!

Eventually, Caleb got his learner’s permit and his Opa’s 1995 LeSabre as a sixteenth birthday present and we celebrated the occasion by ripping each other’s clothes off twenty minutes from my house in the dimly lit parking lot of an abandoned Zellers. That car really did get some mileage after that.

Caleb would never dare to have sex under his parents’ roof and my mom was very strict about having my bedroom door always open given how young she was when I came to be. The car’s backseat was all we had until Caleb moved out for his first year of university. To this day I still can’t drive past a Buick dealership without blushing.

For a while, our relationship was simple. Our biggest argument had been about Caleb opting to travel around Europe with his family during our summer breaks instead of staying home with me to…go to some local fair or, I don’t know, the used bookstore that hadn’t gotten any new stock since the late nineties. I was a teenage, lovesick idiot who’d not yet experienced Italian gelato so, truthfully, I didn’t know what I was asking him to give up.

Then, in the eleventh grade, Mom got her diagnosis. It had been a long, difficult process up until that point. She had undergone countless tests, seen dozens of specialists, coming up empty time and time again and I could see her exhaustion, even though she worked hard to disguise it. It would have been a relief to finally have an answer if that answer hadn’t been ALS.

When Mom and Aunt June sat Win and me down to tell us the news on what had otherwise been an average Friday evening, they didn’t ask Caleb to leave. Instead, they asked all three of us to sit together on our thrift-store couch as they sat across from us and delivered what felt like a death sentence to our lives as we’d known them. When all five of us hugged afterward, sniffling and teary-eyed, I realized that, at some indiscernible point in time, Caleb had become a part of our family.

From that day on, Caleb drove out of his way every morning to pick Win and me up for school and every afternoon to drop us off.

Sometimes the other girls at school would comment about how cute it was that Caleb drove us every day. And they weren’t wrong, it was. But that was the simplistic perspective of the young and carefree. In reality, those extra thirty minutes that I’d have otherwise wasted on the bus allowed me the time before school to make sure my mom was up, fed, and comfortable. I didn’t know how to tell them that Caleb and I weren’t just your average high school sweethearts desperate for every extra minute we could have together. How serious and grown-up it all felt to have a routine that served my family. How to convey the gratitude I felt to have someone take on a burden of their own to relieve one of mine.

Caleb wasn’t like their silly, fair-weather boyfriends. He was a provider. He was a caretaker. I convinced myself that we were practically adults. On the days that I just smiled and said, “Yeah, he’s the best,” in response to a girl’s sweet sentiments—I’d give Caleb head in his car during lunch period. I figured it was the least I could do to say thank you.

Regardless of the reason, those car rides each day that the three of us shared hold some of my most favorite memories.

Our mothers’ apartment was on the second floor and our rusted balcony sat just above the building’s main entrance. Every afternoon, Aunt June would be out there—smoking the one cigarette she’d allow herself per day after “quitting”—and taunt Caleb lovingly from her high perch. She’d often be in her scrubs, after just getting home from her shift at the retirement home, and her hair would be in a comical state of disarray.

Caleb took it all in his stride. After a few days of drop-offs, he started eagerly rolling down his window before we made the turn into the semicircle driveway. I loved that about him. That despite the echo chamber of polite society he’d grown up in, he accepted our household as it was. Chaotic, brash, messy, and teasing in our love.

He’d chat with Aunt June about her guy of the week as she forced him to help her fold laundry, or my mom about her appointments while she taught him to cook, because he’d never learned to do those things at home. And, after some time, it was hard to remember what life was like before Caleb or Mom’s diagnosis. They’d both always been there, it seemed.

God, I miss that shitty apartment. I miss crawling into my mother’s bed with her. I miss feeling like there was so much that was still to come, and not already passed. I miss the gratitude I felt to Caleb for taking care of me when I had someone to take care of too. When he was lightening my burden and I wasn’t the burden.

Blinking back to focus, I realize that our shower is still running. It has to have been at least thirty minutes since Caleb got in there. That amount of water usage alone would be enough to warrant a scathing David Attenborough documentary. Maybe Caleb slipped and fell? Do people in their thirties die from slipping in the shower?

Fuck…if Caleb is found dead in our shower there will certainly be people who point an accusatory finger at me after our little public spat at the fundraiser. Wealthy young entrepreneur found dead —the tabloids will read— his dumbass wife waited twenty minutes longer than a normal fucking person would before discovering him and calling for an ambulance.

I cannot afford to go to jail, I have a gluten sensitivity. Prison food would turn my gut into a tear-gas factory.

I throw my blankets off my bottom half, tiptoe over to our ensuite bathroom, and begin attempting to telepathically communicate with my husband as I slowly open the door.

I’m not peeking at your private time, okay? I know things are still weird between us. I’m just making sure that you’re okay. All right, maybe just a tiny peek too…

“Cay?” I call out softly, poking just my head in.

Caleb’s back straightens, lifting his head off the shower wall. He keeps his back to me as he drops his hands to his sides and clears his throat. “Uh hey,” he responds. His voice is raspy and echoes in the tiled room. “I’ll be out in a minute….”

I know what you were do-ing, I long to sing teasingly. Dirty, dirty boy! “Okay,” I say, instead.

“I don’t really want you to—”

“I was worried you fell,” I interrupt for the sake of my dignity. Or his. Or both?

“Oh, uh, no. All good.”

“Okay. Well, um…Enjoy.” As soon as the last word escapes my mouth, I feel the energy shift. Caleb’s shoulders tense and he wipes both hands through his hair, standing under the steady stream of water. I acknowledged what he was doing in there and that was enough to quell his arousal. That’s a new low.

With his head hung, Caleb shuts off the shower and forcefully slides open the glass door. I’m momentarily treated to the sight of his entirely naked, dripping wet body right before he wraps a towel around his hips and makes his way over to the bathroom sink in a way that can only be described as sulking.

I stand awkwardly in the doorway, unmoving. If I walk away from him now, when he’s visibly upset, I’d be sending a very clear-cut message. One that reads: I don’t give a shit. But alternatively, standing here gawking at him doesn’t exactly help matters.

God …I’ve popped zits in the mirror as this man takes a piss next to me too many times to count. Why is just being near him while he brushes his teeth suddenly so unsettling? I hate it.

“I was hoping we could talk,” I mumble as I aimlessly tug at the tied knot of my robe.

He looks over his shoulder, toothbrush buzzing in his mouth with a film of toothpaste coating his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I answer. “When you’re ready.”

Caleb spits into the sink then pulls the hand towel from the holder on the wall. The washcloth that had been folded neatly above it falls to the floor. I fight the urge to police which towels he should use for what and where they should go—not on the floor!—even though I desperately want to. Caleb drops the now toothpaste-covered towel onto the counter and turns, placing hiship against the basin’s frame as he stares at me expressionless.

My mind goes blank as to how to best bring up Win’s wilderness retreat idea. So, stupidly, I think of the other available topic for discussion in an effort to not bring up proper towel etiquette.

“Sorry I interrupted,” I offer, glancing toward the shower stall. “You looked…good.”

His bottom lip pouts as his eyebrows raise. But he still doesn’t speak.

“I—I know it’s been awhile. Since we—”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about? Our…hiatus?” he asks.

“Well, no. Partially, I guess. Our other hiatus, maybe.”

“Ah.”

“From…talking?”

“Right.” Caleb crosses his arms in front of his chest, then brings one hand up to his face where his thumb begins scratching the side of his nose. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“We haven’t had a real conversation since the night of the fundraiser. I feel all this…distance between us.”

He nods as he closes the distance between us with exaggerated, slow steps. “Better?” he asks, offering me a shy smile. I sigh softly, lowering my eyes from his face to the tile floor between us. “Not better,” he whispers, in lieu of an answer from me.

A few beats pass in lingering silence. I look at my slippered feet, trying to find the strength to admit to all that I’m feeling. Struggling to figure out how to express this unnerving sense of being lost within myself and needing to go searching elsewhere. Every part of my psyche is flooded with worry that he won’t want to take that journey with me. That this—I—will be the end of us. What would that even look like? A life without him…

Caleb clears his throat again, capturing my attention. I watch him rub his lips together before he opens his mouth to speak. “I’ve been wrestling with my feelings since the fundraiser, and I’ve not really landed on how to talk about them just yet. I thought that approaching you before I sorted myself out would just cause another fight and, honestly, I’ve just got a lot on my plate at work right now. When I get home, I want to relax. The last thing I want to do is fight and end up sleeping on the couch.”

I scoff. I shouldn’t, but I do.

I don’t have time to regret it before Caleb jumps back in, his tone defensive. “I know that’s perhaps not what you’d like to hear, Sarah, but that’s the truth.”

“Sleeping on the couch?” I ask, my eyebrows rising as I tilt up to face him. “When we have multiple guest bedrooms?”

“It was a figure of speech.”

“So, you’re saying that you’ve been avoiding me for the sake of your peace—which…yeah, you’re right, sucks to hear. But did it ever occur to you that maybe this wouldn’t end up with us in a fight? That maybe we could discuss our hurt feelings like grown-ass adults?” It’s not lost on me that the attitude I leveled onto that last question doesn’t help my argument.

Caleb straightens before rocking back onto his heels, slowly narrowing his eyes on the center of my forehead as if he’s attempting to search my mind. “No, not really. A fight seemed unavoidable since I wasn’t ready to back down yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He smirks, eyes glancing up to the ceiling. “Just that our arguments typically end one of two ways.” He lifts a finger, his expression more playful than I’d like. I want him to take me seriously. To take this seriously. “One…I back down, apologize, and askfor forgiveness or two,” he lifts a second finger, “Win tells you that you were in the wrong, you stomp around for a few extra days, and then eventually you admit defeat and extend a peace offering.”

I scoff again, crossing my arms. “Okay. Sure…. ”

His eyebrows rise in a taunt, a dry laugh making his throat flex. “Am I wrong?”

“I apologize when I need to, Caleb.”

“In your own way; I guess.”

I stare at him expectantly. If he’s going to make accusations, he better be ready to present examples.

He crosses his arms and rubs his biceps with his left hand. “Okay, then. For starters, you’ll text me at work about what movie you want to watch when I’m home that I know for a fact you do not want to watch. I can recall Back to the Future, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, off the top of my head.”

Oh. “Who said I didn’t want to watch those?”

“You, on several occasions. Then there are times I’ll come home to find that you’d ordered Poncetti’s for dinner because it’s my favorite even though you think their pizza tastes like feet. Or when you’ve stopped by the office midday to drop off baked goods for me and my team. Or, my personal favorite, when you climb onto my lap in nothing but your robe the second my ass hits the couch.” His eyes glance down my body, a little too lewdly for the conversation we’re supposed to be having.

I notice myself unconsciously pull my robe tighter across my chest. As he steps closer, I can feel the heat from his shower wafting off his body along with the intoxicating scent of his mandarin and bergamot body wash. His smell attempts to overwhelm my other senses and, apparently, my better judgment.

We could talk after sex, right? Maybe that’s all this is…distance caused by our lack of intimacy recently. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe with a few orgasms everything would just sort itself out…

“And, given that Win was over tonight”—he tilts his head arrogantly—“and you’re in my favorite of your robes”—his hand finds my hip, forcing me to arch my back to see his face—“and you so boldly walked in on me in the shower…” He begins lowering his face toward mine.

“I want to go hiking,” I blurt out, his lips mere seconds from making contact. “Sorry, I, uh, that’s what I wanted to talk about. Hiking.”

“Hiking,” Caleb repeats slowly, his eyes narrowing on my parted lips as he pulls back slightly. “You and me…the two of us… in nature?”

I nod, swallowing. “It was Win’s suggestion.”

“Well, I could’ve told you that; but why?”

“I was talking to Win about us and I, uh, she…” I look up to the ceiling, trying to find the right words. “Her boss from Westcliff, Helen, and her wife, Yvonne, run this camping excursion thing. For couples. To help them reconnect.”

“Reconnect?”

“Yeah,” I reply dryly. “Yvonne is a relationship therapist.”

Caleb steps back, his hand moving from my hip to rub his chest as if he’s been struck. I watch silently as he kneads the center of his chest with the heel of his palm—moving back and forth over the same spot. “Th-therapy, huh?” he says, voice breaking before he swallows air.

“Mm-hmm,” I mumble, raising my chin slowly until our eyes meet. Caleb’s eyes have lost the darkened, lust-filled appearance that they had only moments ago. Now, they’re watching me keenly as if I’m an uncaged bird.

Caleb nods, three times too many for it to be played off as anything but unsure. “We can do that…if—but do we have to camp?”

I look over my shoulder to our bedroom beyond the half-opened bathroom door. “Could we maybe go sit?” I don’t know if the steam from his shower, the topic of conversation, my husband’s naked proximity, or all of it combined is making me dizzy—but I need to sit down.

“Do you—do we…” Caleb stammers, running a hand through his wet hair. “I’m sorry I shut you out, baby, but—”

“C’mon,” I say gently. “I’ll show you.” I open the bathroom door without turning my back to him and tilt my head, gesturing for him to follow. I grab my laptop from my nightstand, open it, and place it in the middle of our bed. Caleb emerges from the bathroom in his robe, fastening the tie around his waist as he drops down next to me on the mattress.

“This is it?” he asks, a little breathless. I nod. Caleb swallows tightly, his Adam’s apple jutting out as his eyes scan the screen and he moves to control the trackpad and read further. “So it’s a week-long thing?”

I wince. “Yeah, it is.”

“Seven days of hiking and sleeping in tents…”

“Seems that way.”

“No real showers or toilets,” he says, scrolling, “or beds,” he adds, his eyes darting over to his phone on the nightstand as it begins vibrating with a slew of notifications. The familiar doorbell-like sound for incoming emails that he refuses to turn off at any time of night or day chime repeatedly back-to-back.

“Or phones,” I add pointedly. “Or work,” I mumble as his phone begins to ring. Caleb’s shoulders tense as he looks over and reads the caller ID. “It’s late,” I say. What I mean is, don’t pick it up. Not now. Please.

Caleb hesitates, looking between me and his nightstand.

“Please,” I whisper, disheartened.

He sighs, just as it goes to voicemail. Leaning toward the laptop, Caleb explores Reignite’s website further. “Is this…is this really what you want? I mean, if you want us to get counseling, we could start nearby.” He winces. “Maybe an office where we could sit on a couch instead?” he adds, half serious. “Do you—do we— really need something so drastic?” He turns to me.

The desperate, anxious look on his face reminds me so much of that sweet teenage boy I once knew that it nearly stops me in my tracks. It’s the same expression I remember catching glimpses of when his dad didn’t make our high school graduation—despite Caleb being valedictorian—as he’d gone on yet another last-minute business trip. Or when, years later, we found out his mother’s father, Caleb’s sweet Opa, passed away two days shy of our long-awaited visit that Caleb had postponed three times because of his own busy work schedule. It’s the face that matched mine as we cried in the parking lot of the funeral home before my mother’s service.

Grief, helplessness, and heartache all rolled into one and aging him in reverse.

Immediately, everything inside me wants to set him at ease. To push that singular piece of damp hair away from his forehead and kiss the spot it had occupied. I want to say: No, you’re right, let’s try something else first. Something easier. Something safe.

We could start tomorrow by finding a therapist who comes highly recommended. And sure, they’ll have a full roster of patients, so we won’t be able to start seeing them for another month or two…. But they’ll have a cushy office downtown with a welcoming receptionist who will bring us artfully crafted lattes before each session. Then, we’ll talk to them for about an hour each time.

Well, maybe more like forty minutes given the amount of time it’ll take for either of us to settle in enough to properly address anything remotely important. But we’ll get there eventually. Then, when we leave, we’ll endure an unpleasantly silent car ride home, having left with unresolved arguments, unfinished conversations, and unanswered questions that we won’t have the guts to discuss until our next appointment.

But it could work, right? We could make it work….

No, a voice in my head whispers, softly letting me down.

I can’t fully explain why this all feels so suddenly urgent, though I wish I could. I don’t know why these feelings I’ve sat with have come to the surface, demanding immediate attention when they’ve been dormant for so long. But that is the truth of it.

It doesn’t feel like enough to be here, day in and day out, living the same daily routines and monotony with some therapy-lite sprinkled in. I need bold, decisive action. I need Caleb and me out of this house and routine and into something that I hope shakes us out of the familiar and the pleasant and the comfortable. I feel the urge to get out vibrating under my skin, a sensation impossible to ignore that refuses to remain silent any longer.

I turn my attention toward my husband, and coil that damp, stray piece of hair around my finger before releasing it to rest my palm on his cheek. “I think we do,” I tell him, so quietly it may as well have been telepathic. “I really think we have to do this.”

Caleb’s frown deepens as his eyes scan the computer. He leans his cheek into my hold, as if his head is too heavy for him to hold up on his own. “Okay,” he says, voice determined yet faint, as his lips caress the edge of my wrist, his breath warming my pulse point. “Then…we’ll go.”