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“I’m sorry I’m putting you through so much.”
Her gaze cuts to me and she looks surprised. “Trust me, Aden. You don’t owe me an apology for that.
“Where are we going?” I ask her, only just realizing that she’s heading us back to the reception area of the motel.
“To your room,” she answers, still avoiding my face.
“My room?”
“Yeah. I mean under the circumstances... You’re staying in room seven,” she says—still avoiding looking at me.
“If we’re married, shouldn’t we be sleeping in the same room.”
“Aden, you don’t even know me.”
“Well, I doubt me sleeping away from you, away from my home will help,” I grumble and I don’t really know why I’m annoyed. I was just wanting time alone earlier today. Plus, she’s right. I don’t know her. Still, the fact that she unilaterally pushed me into one of the motel rooms pisses me off—and if I want to be a hundred percent honest, does some damage to my pride.
“Aden, don’t…well, I mean, this is where you slept before the accident,” she says and I stop walking. I reach out and pull her hand so that she stops walking too.
“Are you saying we don’t share a bed?”
“We haven’t for quite a while,” she answers.
“Why the fuck not?”
“You have a deviated septum,” she says after a moment and I blink.
“A deviated—”
“Septum,” she finishes. “You snore, Aden.”
“Hell woman, I’m sure a lot of men snore. It’s not a reason for a husband and wife to sleep in separate rooms.”
“You don’t just snore. You are so loud you scare Jack.”
“I…scare Jack?”
“Yeah. You’re really loud. It terrifies Jack. In fact, you’re the one who agreed to start sleeping in another room.”
“Let me get this straight. I have no fucking job, I can’t get my dick up without medicine, I don’t sleep with my wife, and I snore so loud that I terrify my son?”
“Well—”
“How the hell did we even have a child, if I can’t get my dick hard?”
“You uh…work fine if you take Viagra.”
“Motherfucker.”
“Though you don’t do that anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Not since the incident,” she says, and she starts walking, so I follow her out into the cool, Idaho air. I follow alongside her and we make our way to the far end of the motel. Apparently she wants to make sure I’m really far away from Jack. Almost afraid to find out, I push the conversation forward.
“What incident?” I ask, just as we stop at the door to the room. Room seven… Irony has never been my strong point—at least I don’t think it is. But, somehow, the fact that I’m staying in a room that is supposed to be a lucky number is almost hilarious—if I wasn’t terrified to hear what bombshell Hope will drop on me next.
“The incident with the Viagra…” she hedges.
“What fucking incident, Hope?” I growl, my patience gone.
Her back goes stiff and for the first time since Jack came running into the room, she looks me in the face. Her face is flushed and she’s pissed, I can see that clearly in her eyes and in the way she telegraphs the emotions as she looks at me.
“You never listen Aden.”
“I…what?”
“You never listen. You never try to understand anyone else. It’s always what you want and when you want it. Patience is a virtue you know, and you do not have it.”
“I…Do you have a point to this little sermon?”
“It was our anniversary.”
“Wait…I thought you said we just got married?”
“I…” she stops talking for a minute and that little wrinkle in her forehead popping back out, before she continues. “We did! But you don’t have to be married to be together and it was that anniversary you wanted to celebrate.”
“How many years?” I ask her.
“How many years, what?” she huffs, her whole body moving as she releases a frustrated breath.
“How many years were we together that I wanted to celebrate?”
“Three!”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“You took one of the pills the doctor prescribed and we got in bed and…”
“And what?”
“And nothing…nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened?”
“Nope. It was like you didn’t even take a pill. I told you it was okay, but as usual, you wouldn’t listen to what I wanted and you took matters into your own hands.”
“I masturbated?”
“What? Ew! No!”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?”
“You took another pill—even though the bottle clearly said not to do that, and even though I begged you to just let it go. You wouldn’t listen.”
“So then we had sex.”
“Well we might have, except…”
“Except what,” I sigh out, suddenly very tired.
“You know those commercials where they tell you the side effects?”
“No.”
“Oh…sorry I forget there are things you can’t remember. Well anyway, one of the side effects is an erection that lasts longer than four hours.”
“No offense, Hope, but that sounds like a good thing, considering the problem you say I have.”
“Well maybe, at first we were both happy. You even cried.”
