Chapter 19
19
Tom had always been a giver. Patient. Open-minded. Devoted to the ideal of orgasm parity. Rose had never talked about their sex life with anyone else, but even in the politely repressed community of Boston College, she’d heard enough complaints about other men to know that this attitude wasn’t something to take for granted. She’d known she was really lucky that the first person she’d ever slept with—the person she thought would be the only person she’d ever sleep with—put in a lot of effort.
Still, Rose couldn’t imagine that with her encouragement to do whatever he wanted tonight, the absolute top items on Tom’s priority list were kissing his way along the line of her high-top stockings, followed by twenty to twenty-five minutes of oral sex.
It wasn’t like Tom had ever had a routine or anything that basic, but on occasions when he felt like extra effort was called for—her birthday, their anniversary, midterms—there was a certain way he’d begin, and she’d think to herself, Oh, Tom’s feeling romantic tonight . That’s how things were going. But Rose was caught in a muddle of familiar arousal and heart-piercing confusion.
“This isn’t make-up sex,” she told him as he covered her breast with one big careful hand.
“If you say so,” he murmured, letting his lips just graze the lace edges of her bustier. He was propped up over her in the bed, supporting almost all of his weight on his forearms. All he’d done was run his hands over her body—big, sweeping caresses and gentle kisses—even though she could feel him still hard as a rock through the denim of his jeans.
“Because it feels like you’re trying to have make-up sex,” she said. “And you don’t have to do that.”
She should have given Tom the script in advance. Or at least the artwork. He was undoing the clasps of her garters one by one, fingers soothing the little red marks where the metal clasps had dug into her thighs, and Rose felt like she was going to jump out of her skin.
She took a deep breath. “I’m sure you can tell it’s been a while for me,” she said, trying to understand where he was coming from, “but it would actually help me get out of my head if you’d act a little less like my confusingly besotted ex, and a little more like a guy I just dragged home from a bar.”
“What’s confusing?” Tom asked, lifting his head from her skin. His fingers swept up her inner thigh but lingered just outside of the lace borders of her underwear. If he was thinking of edging her, they were really not on the same wavelength.
“I thought this would go a little different,” she said, still trying to sound encouraging. “Like, faster.”
Tom finally brushed a knuckle across her core, a mildly skeptical expression on his face.
“Babe, you’re vibrating like a tuning fork. I assume the losers you drag home from bars don’t care about that, but—”
“How do you know they’re losers?” Rose grumbled, even though she’d never brought someone home from a bar in her life, and he was right about how tense she was.
“Well, because I’m here with you now, aren’t I?” he said, sounding pretty smug for someone with his pants still on.
That’s why I am confused. This? This was exactly what she’d had to offer before. Sure, she hadn’t owned nice lingerie, and she’d never been part of some collective fantasy on the Internet. But any night of their marriage, he could have come home and had exactly this.
This couldn’t be what he wanted.
Rose decided to take matters into her own hands, and she tried to put a hand on his matters, but he shifted his hips back and out of reach.
When she wrinkled her nose at him, Tom finally grunted and undid the fly on his jeans. He took out his wallet and produced a condom from the otherwise empty billfold. Noticing her disapproving look, he flipped it over it for her inspection.
“Not latex,” he promised.
Rose’s relationship with condoms was just as long but even more complicated than her relationship with Tom.
“Do you get tested? I finally found a pill that doesn’t make me sick,” she said, hoping to cut short what was usually a longer talk.
“I get tested all the time,” he said. “But I don’t mind wearing a condom.”
“I believe you,” Rose said, trying to flick it off the bed. He caught it.
“What, did someone else screw up and buy the wrong ones?” he said, managing a small smirk.
Yes, someone had, even though I’m allergic to everything was one of the first things anyone learned about her.
“Which is why I’m on the pill,” Rose said. This conversation had not previously involved so much persuasive effort on her part. She used her foot to shimmy out of her stockings. She began unhooking the rest.
Tom screwed his mouth to the side. “Babe, I’ve done it raw like five times in my entire life, all of which you should remember , and I’m a little keyed up right now. Do you want to have thirty seconds of sex?”
Rose growled in aggravation. It seemed increasingly unlikely they’d be having any sex at all.
“I just—please, Tom. Let’s do something different. I thought it would be different.”
“Different how?” he asked, letting a little of his own worry into his voice. It was a reasonable question, but Rose’s interior swirl of frustrated desire and fear couldn’t articulate that she wished they were two different people entirely.
So instead, she said, “I don’t know, maybe the mean billionaire thing. Pull my hair. Call me names. Jesus, I don’t know. You haven’t done that at least once?”
“Are you seriously into the rough stuff now?” Tom asked, and although his tone was light, there was an edge of skepticism that made Rose stiffen her shoulders because she could have been , maybe, for all he knew, she had fifty different floggers back at her apartment and a Saint Andrew’s cross in her breakfast nook.
“Act like I am,” she said, trying to sound like she was confident in that request. “I mean it. Rail me so hard I see sound and taste colors.”
She rolled onto her stomach, even though the position left her feeling even more bare and exposed. It got the point across, she thought.
Tom put one hand on the back of her thigh and waited. Probably for her to say she was kidding.
“If you say so.” His tone wasn’t convinced, but he pulled her underwear over her hips and tossed them away. Her body felt like a taut wire, one filled with enough current to spark and ignite. Something was going to snap tonight, she was sure of it.
Tom put a palm against the hollow of her back and swept it down a few inches, but the movement was more soothing than authoritative. When he took a step closer and leaned over her, she thought he’d gotten on board with the idea, but then she felt his lips press tenderly against her shoulder as he curled his body around hers.
“Tom,” she warned him, heart aching.
“Don’t you want me to go down on you or something first?” he asked against her skin, letting her feel just the edge of his top teeth against the muscle in her neck. His hard cock pressed against the back of her thigh through his jeans, a lot more eager than the rest of him to do what she was asking.
“No,” she said, thinking that a little burn, a little imperfection, a little pain might trick her brain into thinking this wasn’t the same person she’d slept with hundreds of times. She risked a look back over her shoulder, saw that Tom’s expression was growing even more uncertain.
Tom’s lower lip pressed against his teeth as he slowly slid his hand up her back to tangle in the hair at her nape. He caught a handful of her curls in his fingers. Rose closed her eyes when he closed his fist, but her breath caught involuntarily at a firmer pull of his hand. He let go.
When she opened her eyes, Tom was half a step farther away. He shoved both hands into his pockets.
“I would pull your hair and spit in your mouth if you thought that was hot,” he said with shadowed eyes. “If I thought you actually wanted that, I’d do it. But if you’re asking me to pretend like I’m not in love with you, I don’t think I’m that good of an actor.”
Rose covered her face with her hands and curled her knees up to one side. This had been the worst idea she’d ever had. Why had she thought she could get away with this? This wasn’t her.
The mattress bounced as Tom lay down next to her, fingers gently trying to pry her hands away from her face.
“It just feels a little unhealthy,” he told her. He interwove his hands with hers, holding them tense between their bodies. “Different proposal. How about tonight we just do the things I know you enjoy? I call you nothing but nice words, I’m allowed to kiss you whenever I feel like it, we both come, we both cry…and if you still want me to bruise your ass afterward, we do that tomorrow?”
“It won’t work,” Rose mumbled.
“Why not?” Tom laughed, the sound forced. “Babe, I know how it works . I remember real well how it works .”
“You can’t think we are going to have frilly, floofy, emotional sex. Like, we look into each other’s eyes and declare our undying love for each other from the missionary position? That sounds like a performance. Who are we trying to convince?”
“I mean, it doesn’t have to be cheesy or anything,” he said in a mildly incredulous tone. “But I think I could make you feel very loved, in the right position.”
Rose made an unhappy noise in the back of her throat. Telling him felt much more exposing than bending over the mattress and asking for him to make it hurt a little, because it felt like asking for everything he hadn’t given her and could never go back in time and give her.
“I want you not to have been in love with me,” she said. “You weren’t. You aren’t. Stop saying you are.”
“That sounds like a real bad game, Rosie,” he said cautiously.
“I’m not trying to play a game. I don’t get it. Why you want to act like it was all flowers and romance. Or why you’re interested in that now. I’m not saying there was none of that ever, but we ended with you walking out of my life like it meant nothing to you.”
His dark eyes widened in surprise. “I didn’t walk. You threw me out —”
“We had one fight, and after that you never came home again. You couldn’t treat someone you loved like that.”
Her body felt tight and trembly, because all the adrenaline and desire and anger were mixed up together with no outlet. She could have clawed the sheets or his shoulders, but he wouldn’t do just this one thing she’d asked of him.
“We don’t have to have been in love,” she said. “It’s fine that we weren’t. That’s why we got divorced. But that means we aren’t now either.”
She looked up at the ceiling, because the plan had been to get spectacularly laid, not to cry, and she didn’t want to deviate from the plan any more than necessary.
She heard Tom’s reluctant exhale as he propped himself up on an elbow. She flinched away from that and made a first move to roll over and start looking for her clothes. His hand on her shoulder pulled her back.
“No. You can’t go. Because here’s the thing, Rosie—I’m in love with you. I was always in love with you. We were in love. And I wish that meant we couldn’t ever hurt each other, but I think you know it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that for anyone. So, yeah. I treated you badly. But I always loved you.”
She tried to squirm away, but Tom kept his gentle grip on her wrists. Oh, now he was comfortable holding her down.
“That’s not what love means,” Rose insisted. “If you were in love with me, you would have tried to fix things then , not now.”
Tom adjusted his hands on her skin, checking that he wasn’t putting more pressure than necessary to keep her from getting away. Apparently satisfied, he leaned in. Rose tilted her chin away under the impression he was trying to kiss her, but he wasn’t.
“I should’ve,” he admitted from only a couple of inches away. “And I didn’t. I’ve got a dozen explanations and excuses—I was angry, I was embarrassed, and you’d always made all the decisions, so I thought you’d just call and tell me when I could come home—but I don’t think the why of it really matters at this point.” He pressed his forehead hard against hers and smooshed the tips of their noses together, ignoring Rose’s pained grimace.
“We were only twenty-two. We were young and stupid, and we didn’t know what we were doing.” He held her gaze from so close that she couldn’t even focus.
“We are just going to have to forgive each other,” he said directly into her face.
After that announcement, Tom released her and sat all the way back on his heels, relaxing his shoulders and nodding as though he’d delivered a great and important truth. That was it?
Rose sputtered. “What?”
“Yep,” he said, brushing his tangled hair back out of his face. “You’re just going to have to forgive me. And yourself too, Rosie. For everything you said. You told me you hated me! I never really thought you meant it, but I did wonder for a decade if I had ruined your life. You can’t feel good about having said that, so you’re going to have to forgive yourself while you’re forgiving me too.”
She had to blink hard as she worked through that, not sure if she needed to be outraged.
“Why do I have to?” she said as her first response, instinctively objecting to any commands.
“Well, most urgently because, Jesus, look at us. We are so hot. We could be fucking right now,” Tom said, forcing a smile to his mouth, even though it didn’t reach his eyes. “But more importantly, because I think you want to.”
He held the position, let her look at him. There was space for her to respond if she wanted to, but she could tell he didn’t expect an immediate answer. She licked her lips, unsure whether she ought to test his commitment to either proposition.
She must have waited too long to speak, because Tom wrinkled his nose as he slid his legs off the bed. “Be right back.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Rose demanded. Running away in the middle of the conversation was hardly persuasive if he wanted her to think he’d meant what he said.
“I’m going to take a cold shower,” he said. He gestured at his lap, and when Rose did the math on how long he’d been hard, she did actually feel bad for him.
Tom ruined it when he put his feet on the ladder and dramatically frowned to himself. “Actually, you know what? I didn’t do anything wrong tonight. I’m going to take a hot shower. I’m going to jerk off.”
Rose’s shocked intake of breath turned into an involuntary snort, making Tom laugh at her. She looked for something to toss at him, but he ducked out of view.
“I’m going to imagine we’re doing it respectfully ,” he taunted her. “Emotionally.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Rose moaned, grabbing a pillow too late to catch him before he made it to the floor. She threw it after him anyway.
“That’s the idea,” he agreed. “Baby, you are going to be so sweet to me in my head. See you in a few.”
I hate you. She opened her mouth to say it, but he was right: she’d never meant it, she wished she’d never said it, and she couldn’t say it now. So she didn’t say anything. Instead, she grabbed another pillow and pulled it over her own head. She yelled into it, which did make her feel a little better, but not as much as the exotic, cathartic sex she’d spent all day thinking about would have.
After a minute, she heard the shower turn on, then the rattle of the glass stall door closing. No singing this time, even though she leaned out of bed to listen for it. Knowing Tom, at least half of what he’d said was bluster, and he had the shakes now.
And look, so did she. Her hands were trembling. It was that fight-or-flight system, she guessed. Telling her to do something when she was still just curled up naked in bed. Run away. Go down and yell at Tom for leaving her in a lurch. Go down and get in the shower with him.
Most of her clothes were on the living room floor, but her underwear was up here at least. Putting it back on didn’t feel like she was making a choice, not the way going downstairs would be.
After this long, she ought to know what the right choice was. She wasn’t twenty-two anymore. She ought to be able to decide what she wanted. But she remembered being twenty-two so clearly: miserable and alone in their bed, wishing Tom would come home—just not enough to call him and ask. It was ridiculous, she thought from the benefit of distance, how the thing she’d wanted most in the world was for Tom to come home without having to ask him. That wasn’t the right thing to want most .
She wanted to forgive herself the way people forgave children: because they didn’t know any better. She wanted to be sure that she did know better now, but she wasn’t sure. So she just curled up again, stuck in the quicksand of her emotions, waiting for Tom.
Possibly he’d get out of the shower and sit down to watch some TV, she thought with dread. Then she’d have to either lurk alone in the loft like Mr. Rochester’s attic wife or climb down the ladder in her underwear. She felt nearly nauseous at the thought of doing either. What if he just went to sleep afterward? What would she do then?
This time, though, Tom did come back. After his standard half-hour shower, he got out, toweled off in an unhurried way, and found a clean pair of boxers in his duffel bag. He checked the locks and turned off the bathroom light. Then he climbed back up the ladder as though he’d faced no similar crisis of decision.
“Oh, Rosie,” he said when he spotted her in her defensive ball, attitude deflating. She put her pillow over her head and turned her back to him, defiant. “C’mere,” he coaxed her.
He crawled across the bed to her and wormed his body under the covers, still damp from the shower. He kissed her shoulder again, then her jaw, just under her ear. She clenched into a tighter ball in response.
“I forgot to say the other part of it,” he said, wrapping both arms around her so that she was half lying on his chest. He pulled at her knees and elbows until she unfurled like a nervous hedgehog, limbs still tense. “There’s more.”
“More? If you had a bunch of shit figured out, you should have shared it with me,” she said unevenly.
“I always forget you don’t know everything,” he said into her skin. “But I think it’s important you hear this. Just psyching myself up. Ready? Okay. Here it goes. I won’t do it again.”
Rose hadn’t expected any specific words, but the short declaration still took her by surprise. “Do what?”
Tom exhaled against her neck, voice emerging rough and gravely. “I thought I won’t do it again before I even knew what. I just knew that whatever I’d done, I’d stop if it meant you’d take me back. But I get it now. I know I wasn’t there for you, and I should have been. If you let me, I will be. I promise.”
Her sinuses burned, because that might have been enough if he’d said it eleven years ago. If she’d thought he meant it. It might have been as easy as that.
But now she knew not just that they were capable of hurting each other but that they were capable of not speaking to each other for ten years. Now she had to forgive not just twenty-two-year-old them but the two of them that existed before the first of the year: two people who could have fixed things but hadn’t.
“Okay.” She couldn’t get any more words out.
But she meant, Okay, I’ll try to forgive us both.
Okay, I believe you mean it.
Okay, everyone was right, and I am thinking about getting back together with you.
“Okay?” Tom confirmed, wrapping an arm over her stomach.
She tucked her chin into her chest and nodded, her body still electrified and unsteady.
“What’s wrong?” Tom said when she didn’t relax.
She didn’t answer, but she squirmed. She was still in her underwear and bits of lingerie, and she needed to get changed and possibly take a hot shower of her own. She’d spent the entire day telling herself she was going to wipe all conflicted feelings about Tom from her mind by having elaborate sex with him, and now she wished she’d just taken him up on the straightforward orgasms and crying.
“Oh,” Tom said, finally realizing her exact emotional state. His arms wrapped her tighter against him. He trailed his lips from her neck down to her shoulder, then left them there as the hand he’d clasped over his own forearm brushed down over her hip.
His palm, pressed against her thigh, fingers pointed in at the seam of her body, was a silent offer.
Rose shifted to lean back against his chest and part her legs in silent acceptance, and he sighed again, finding a more permanent spot to rest his mouth as his fingertips ran once down her thigh in a soothing gesture before moving to the elastic of her underwear.
He didn’t take them off, just slipped his big, warm hand inside to cup her intimately. She didn’t know if this was meant as a compromise or an olive branch, but she didn’t plan to reject the gesture either way. Not after she was certain he’d done exactly as he threatened and jerked off in the shower—probably imagining her sobbing into his neck while she ground down on his lap. Or the kind of half-asleep morning sex you only ever had with someone you woke up with frequently. Tom had especially liked that, the mornings when Rose would tug his heavy, warm body on top of hers before she even had her eyes open then gasp good morning after he’d pressed inside her.
Tonight he barely moved the fingers that lay against her core until she rocked against them, desperate for friction. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d been tentative, or even if he’d decided to play it a little cute, but as soon as she moved, he moved, sliding two fingertips in a delicate circle.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, lower lip hot against her neck. Rose relaxed at the implicit command, rolling her face into the warm muscle of his bicep where his arm supported her head. Nobody else would ever know her body as well as he did, because nobody else would have spent so many hours learning it alongside her. He knew how to touch her. He knew the exact tiny motions of his hand to have her arching her feet and whining within moments. He knew the precise moment to slip his fingers inside her body and stroke her tense and aching, the sound among all other sounds she made that meant he should still his wrist and hold her tight until the electric buzz of her orgasm had blurred into softness.
Rose closed her eyes hard against Tom’s arm, willing the moment not to be over even as he slowly slid his hand over her inner thigh before replacing it on her chest. He let out a shaky breath—he must have been worried things worked differently now, especially with all the bullshit she’d been saying about pulling her hair.
“Can I stay?” he said into her ear, sooner than she’d have liked.
And that was the question, wasn’t it? Could he stay? Would he?
“All these blankets are mine,” she deflected.
“I remember,” Tom said, making himself comfortable. “But since I just made you come, seems like I should get, like, a short-term sublease on them at least?”
He didn’t wait for explicit permission, just grabbed a pillow and stuck it between his chest and her back. This was how sleeping next to Tom worked: he put his elbow on the pillow so that his arm didn’t squish her boobs, and she put her feet against his shins so that her toes didn’t get cold. If he was holding on to her tighter than he ever had before, she couldn’t blame him for that.
“Okay,” she said one more time. He relaxed.
“Good night, Rosie. I love you,” he said softly.
She wrapped her hands over his and wished this had been every night.