Chapter 5
Ana
We have both had our baths, and now we are seated on the couch in the parlour. Neither of us makes a sound. The silence stretches between us, thick with everything we have avoided saying for three years.
Finally, I break the quiet.
“You said you were going to talk.” I turn my head to look at him.
He is sitting rigid beside me, wearing a tight, dark compression shirt this time. His grey eyes are already locked on mine, searching my face, and then he gives a slow nod.
“You know I was married?” he asks, his voice low, matching the stillness of the room.
I take in a deep breath, keeping my posture steady. “Yes, I know you were. I was, too.”
He looks at me, his lips curving into an almost dead smile. The nervousness rolls off him in waves. He shifts his weight on the cushion, his fingers twisting together.
“We were both Christians from the same home church,” he starts, his gaze dropping to his lap. “And there was this belief... of too much of everything being a sin.”
I can almost see the path this conversation is traveling down.
“And so it was normal for us,” he continues, his throat clicking as he swallows. “We used to have, uh, regular, uh...”
“Sex,” I offer up the word for him, my tone firm but soft. It is high time we get used to saying words like this without the awkward hesitation, stripping away the discomfort that has kept us apart.
He turns his head sharply, staring at me. “Yes. Sex.”
I give a single nod. “Then what went wrong?”
He reaches down, his index finger pointing pointedly to the fabric of his shirt. “I showed her this.”
My mind immediately tracks back to the master bedroom, to the large, constant patch he wears over his skin all the time.
“What?”
I can see him visibly sweat now, small beads forming at his temples. He reaches out, his hand gripping my wrist with a sudden, desperate force. “Please promise me you won’t leave, Ana. Because she said she loved me, too. She said she wanted more of me.”
He looks at me, his grey eyes wide with a layer of vulnerability. I can see the source of his panic now; it is because I have said those exact same words to him.
“She said she wanted to touch me,” he whispers, his grip tightening a fraction. “She wanted the lights on. She said she didn’t want to be a non-participant in the intimacy we used to have. High on love, I pulled off my shirt.”
His focus goes distant, his eyes staring at the far wall as if he is looking through the years.
“And then I turned on the light. I was hopeful, Ana.” He lets out a rough, hollow huff. “I remember the initial shock and disgust on her face. It mirrored the look my mother gave me before she rolled her box out the door.”
He stops, his jaw locking before he forces the next memory past his teeth.
“After that, she brought out the timetable,” he says, the bitterness raw in his tone.
“And then she told me... I remember her exact words: It’s not that I hate you, Fred, but as children of God, or rather as an anointed man of God, I feel you should learn to exercise long-suffering and self-control. ”
I can read the deep, stinging pain in his eyes as the rejection echoes in the room. He looks down at his hands.
“Then I remember, even when I would look at the mirror, how fresh the wound would become,” he murmurs. “How my mother’s disgusted stare would burn in my memory. But I felt it was fine, as long as she still stayed with me.”
He shifts his head, looking back at me. “You know how she died?”
“An accident?” I ask, keeping my voice gentle. That was the story that had been spread through the church community.
“Yes. That.” He lets out a long sigh, running a hand through his dark hair. “I got home to meet the front door wide open.”
I give a slow nod, a cold knot forming in my stomach. The memory of this woman, Celeste, is about to be tainted forever in my mind.
“She was speaking with her colleague,” Fred says, bowing his head until his forehead nearly touches his knees.
He rubs his palms together over and over again.
“She said... she said that I had an ugly body. She told him that each time I came to her bed to sleep with her, she would vomit. That I had a horrible scar on my body that was disgusting to look at.”
He lifts his head, his gaze climbing to the white ceiling, but his face is a perfect mirror of the past. My heart aches for him, the weight of his silent suffering pressing against my own chest.
“She said she always wanted our lovemaking sessions to end quickly,” he whispers, a terrible, breathy laugh escaping his lips. “They had laughed at me, Ana.”
He looks at me, his eyes searching mine. “You know what I did?”
Do I even want to know? I ask myself the question, the answers terrifying me. “No.”
“I walked in and acted like I didn’t see her with my friend,” he confesses, the raw honesty stripping him bare.
“I was willing to overlook it. I was willing to act like I was blind, just so she wouldn't leave. But... she packed up her things anyway. It was on the exact day she left that her car crashed.”
Without him having to articulate the final sentence, the truth lays itself bare behind my eyes. He blames himself for her death. He sees his own body as ugly, as a disappointment, as something subpar that drove his first wife away.
“And so I’m going to show you my actual reason,” he says, his voice dropping into a rough whisper. “The reason why I can’t seem to be very intimate with you, even if that is the only thing I want.”
I nod my head, the tears already streaming down my cheeks, hot and silent.
He reaches for the hem of his compression shirt, his fingers catching the fabric, but then he pauses. He bows his head into his hands for a long second before looking back up at me. The look he gives me rips my heart apart.
“Please,” he begs, his voice shaking violently as he lets me see a side of him I never knew existed. “Please, don’t leave me. Because I have come to love you so much, Ana. I love you.”
The vulnerability catches in my throat. I don't offer a spoken answer. Instead, I move across the cushion, closing the distance between us, and I kiss him through the tears.
He responds instantly, his mouth capturing mine with a sudden, desperate hunger.
My mind automatically begins its usual ritual, counting down the seconds to predict his withdrawal.
One... I kiss him back. Two... His hands lift, his fingers framing my face, holding me against him.
I hold him back, refusing to let the old boundary rise.
He shifts his weight toward me, and I move with him, throwing my arms tightly around his neck.
A sudden surge of pure happiness jumps through my body, and the moisture flows faster over my cheeks. I pull away from the kiss, the numbers slipping from my head as I forget the count entirely.
“I love you,” I sniff, my voice cracking.
He reaches up, his thumbs gently wiping the wetness from my cheeks, before he rests his forehead flat against mine.
“And the verses I used to quote to you,” he murmurs against my skin, taking a shaky breath. “It’s a method I grew up with.” He pulls back just an inch, his eyes apologetic. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to delay the inevitable.” He points a finger toward his shirt.
A soft laugh escapes my lips. “I know.”
“So, uh... my dad, after my mom left, poured out all his frustration on me,” Fred confesses, his shoulders dropping. “He used to tell me that as a man of God, it was good to starve yourself of all forms of pleasure. I guess I just got used to that saying for a while.”
Suddenly, he stands up from the couch. He walks toward the center of the room, standing directly under the bright glare of the ceiling light. I watch him take one deep, steadying breath.
He reaches down and pulls off his shirt.
He moves slowly. Even as the dark fabric covers his eyes for a fraction of a second while he lifts it over his head, I can tell he is trying to track my expression.
The cloth drops to the floor.
The white patch is right there, adhered to the left side of his stomach. He reaches out, his fingers catching the corner of the adhesive, and rips it off in one motion.
A small yelp escapes my throat, and I instantly slap my palm over my mouth.
The crater is fully exposed under the light.
It is an indentation that looks like a deep hole, a hollow space stopping just short of his inner skin, the surrounding tissue puckered and marred by something that looks exactly like a bite.
The uneven skin holds that dark combination of purple and pink.
I look at the violent texture of the skin, my mind racing. "What happened?" I ask, my voice a soft breath in the quiet room.
Fred's teeth are crunched hard together, his jaw tightening until the bone stands out against his cheek. He tracks my eyes, moving his hands anxiously as if he is terrified of the judgment hanging in the air.
"I was bit by a dog," he says, the explanation rushing out of him too fast, laced with a raw fear that he cannot hide. "It got infected. I went for a surgery to clear it out, but then it got infected again. The doctors had to cut away the tissue. It just... it never healed right, Ana."
He stops talking, his chest heaving under the strain of his breath. He looks at me, completely still now, his shoulders tense as he waits for my response. He is terrified. I can read the panic in his posture, the absolute certainty in his mind that this is the moment I turn away.
I stand up from the sofa.
I walk across the parlour toward the window, reaching out to pull the curtains shut, blocking out the rest of the world.
Turning back around, I continue my trek across the room toward him.
Step by step, I close the gap until I am facing him.
This man. The love of my life. My husband, whom I still want to bed despite the marks on his skin.
Slowly, keeping my eyes locked on his grey ones, I reach down and lift the hem of my gown. Underneath, I wear nothing.