Page 4 of If I Didn’t Have You

My life was swirling the drain, and soon, there would be nothing left of the woman I once knew.

2

BEN

My knees creaked as I got out of bed, and my back ached from sleeping on the same damn mattress for the past fifteen years. We kept saying we were going to get a new one, but that seemed more like a pipe dream than an actual project on the to-do list.

The smell of bacon and eggs wafted up the stairs, so I quickly got in the shower, knowing I didn’t have long before Clara would be calling me down. As I stepped into the warmth of the water, I stroked my cock, wishing Clara was in here to take care of it for me. I hated using my hand, but she was always downstairs at this time of the morning. At my age, it was easier to get it up first thing in the morning, and more of a challenge any other time of the day.

To say our sex life had taken a bit of a dive in the last five years would be an understatement. When she was going through menopause, things were really tough, and now I was aging—something I didn’t want to admit—and it was just as hard for me to feel the same desire I had in my twenties and thirties.

It also took me twice as long to get off, which only pissed me off.

The end result this morning was hardly satisfying, but I quickly washed off and pretended that getting old didn’t suck. Compared to a couple hundred years ago, I was only middle aged, though the ladies at the diner thought it was hilarious to ask me if I wanted the senior citizen discount. I laughed along with them, but what I really wanted to do was throw hot coffee on them.

After dressing, I headed downstairs, the steps creaking from age. I remembered building this house with my old man when I was just a kid. I took great pride in being able to use a hammer and nails. When the old man passed at just sixty-five, it was like a piece of me died with him. And now, the ranch that he passed down to me was failing.

No, it wasn’t failing.

It was no longer a ranch.

Stretching, I headed into the kitchen, walking up behind my wife and wrapping her in my arms. “Something smells good.”

“Same as every morning,” she snapped. “You’re going to burn yourself on the bacon grease.”

She shoved out of my arms, grabbing plates from the cabinet. Clearly, she woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. It wasn’t often that she was in a bad mood, but when she was, holy hell, it was bad. Knowing when to walk away, I grabbed a glass and poured myself some orange juice.

“So, what’s for dinner tonight?”

She turned and practically tossed the dishes on the table, then sat down with a huff. “Stew.”

“Hmm. That sounds good,” I answered cheerfully, hoping to diffuse whatever situation we had this morning.

“Don’t say it like that. You know, after all the years that I’ve slaved away in the kitchen, you would think that you’d know when to shut up.”

My eyes bugged out at her attitude. What the hell had I done? “All I said was, That sounds good.”

Again, she huffed out a laugh. “I’m not even hungry,” she muttered, tossing down her napkin and storming out of the room.

Staring at the food on my plate, I really had no idea what I had done or how to fix the current state of her mood. It couldn’t be PMS. She was long past that. But something had her pissed off this morning, and until she was over her little snit, staying inside was not advisable.

I quickly scarfed down my breakfast, then placed the dish in the sink and headed outside. With any luck, there would be something to keep me occupied for the day.

But as luck would have it, Jeff had already cleaned out the stalls. Michael had taken care of shoeing the horses last week. And Liam was already busy securing a tenant for our most recent housing addition.

I didn’t like how many houses were being added to the property. It was starting to feel stifling, and the number of cars that came and went from the main road was getting to be a little much. The damn tourists treated the property like their very own house, with no clue how much they were tearing up the gravel road. It was already filled with potholes, and every time I filled them in, a storm came and created new ones.

Winters were especially hard on the roads around here, and I was getting damn tired of paying for everything to be fixed. But since there was currently nothing to do, I headed back inside and snuck into the den.

Taking a seat in my recliner, I turned on the television and flipped the channels until I settled on reruns of Gilligan’s Island. I’d become addicted to old television shows over the past six months. If I wasn’t watching M.A.S.H. or The Andy Griffith Show, I was searching for something else to entertain me.

I stayed in my recliner, only getting up to use the bathroom and grab a snack from the kitchen. Thankfully, I avoided Clara throughout the whole day. I briefly wondered what she was up to, but since the poisoning, she’d been pulling further away from me.

I tried not to take it personally, but she had always been the rock I could count on, and now it was like she didn’t want to be around me.

I was struggling, and I needed my wife back.

At some point during the day, I dozed off, only waking when the sound of a truck honking outside jolted me from sleep and made me spill my Coke all over my jeans.