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“Nice?” I demanded, the heat in my cheeks unrelenting. “They’re… they’re…New Modestypeople. Who the… the…”
I saw the warning look come over his face even more clearly. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes.
“…heck…” I continued, not at all sure why I had decided not to sayfuck. “Who the heck knows what he’s doing to her right now?”
Rick’s hand had descended a few inches as he had evidently realized I didn’t want him to stroke my cheek the way that almost always calmed me down when I was stressing about silly stuff like bridesmaids’ dresses. I watched his chest rise and fall as he took a deep sighing breath through his nose, and my heart turned over with love for him and the way he could control himself so effortlessly—even when I had decided, as I could pretty well recognize at that point, to go flying off the handle.
He changed the single-handed gesture to a double-armed invitation for a hug. My eyes fixed on his, I straightened up, realizing that my body had tensed so thoroughly I had hunched over a little. I felt my eyes narrow with the skepticism I felt toward my husband’s embrace, even as the reasonable part of my mind told me how ridiculously I had acted and spoken.
“Come here, Dee,” Rick said in a calm voice. “Let’s talk about this another time?”
I took my lower lip between my teeth, frowning at him. I understood what he wanted, beyond just soothing my ruffled feathers—Rick had come back to the room wanting a good deal more than a hug. I knew precisely what the little book my mother had given me had to say on the matter:Especially on your honeymoon, it’s important to show your new husband how accommodating you can be of his physical needs.
Could I just let him sweep the weirdness of Scott and April under the rug? More, could I stand to let him ‘make love’ to me again, in the words of the little book? The thought made me straighten up still further, and I found myself putting my hands up in front of my chest as if to defend myself from my wonderful husband’s offer of a simple hug.
What’s wrong with me?I asked myself desperately. Why had I reacted so strongly to other people’s business—especially when that business was so clearly consensual between them?
That was it: the acquiescent look in April’s eyes when Scott had said—I had this by heart as well, I realized to my distress—You know what you have coming. The idea that she accepted her husband’s ‘leadership’ that way.
And that, clearly, I couldn’t—even so much as letting him gather me into his strong arms to help me feel better.
Rick had dropped his arms. He started to shake his head slowly.
“Dee,” he said, confusion filling his voice, “what’s wrong? Does it still hurt too much? Should we find a doctor?”
My face crumpled into tears, remembering my lie of the night before. I shook my head. The hurt and confusion on the gorgeous face of the man I loved struck my heart so hard that a sob burst from my chest, and with it something in me gave way and I threw myself toward him in desperate search of the lost hug.
Rick barely had time to get his arms up and around me before I sagged to the floor, yearning for his support in that physical way. I buried my face in his broad chest, my cheek against the soft nap of his red fleece. He held me very tightly, his right hand between my shoulder blades and his left on the small of my back. He kissed the top of my head tenderly.
“It’s just… it’s… it’s so new,” I stammered, hardly knowing what I said, and definitely not thinking about much more deeply I had started to dig myself into my untruth. “Can you be patient with me, Ricky?”
* * *
Of course Rick could be patient. I did my best impression at dinner of a young bride so in love with her husband that inevitably—just as the little book said—she would give him all his conjugal rights when she had gotten used to her brand new understanding of what those rights involved. How could a loving husband be such a brute as to force the matter, when he had known so much better than his bride what would happen when he raised her nightgown and climbed atop her?
The husband, I reflected as I kept the sweet smile plastered onto my mouth, has no choice but to invade his wife, does he? It doesn’t hurthim, when he enters her for the first time. It doesn’t tear a part ofhimthat he’s had all his life. Why should a young woman have to dothat—undergothat—to be a loving wife, whatever the little book said?
We wanted kids, yes—but these days you didn’t actually have to have sex to have children, did you?
Rick could be patient, I knew. Maybe he could be patient forever? I knew enough from Wellness class to know that men could take care of their own physical needs without shame, and that they all did that before they got married. With their hands, girls whispered in the cafeteria—one of my friends had caught her older brother doing it in the shower. I blushed, thinking about it, looking down at my salad.
What would happen when we got back to the room? I definitely couldn’t expect that Rick wouldn’t bring it up again. Maybe I could say that it was alright with me if he went to the bathroom to take care of himself? That I wanted to cuddle, but only to cuddle, right now?
I caught Rick looking at me a little guardedly during dinner. He took my hand atop the table, but he didn’t try to kiss me, let alone make any other sort of advance like the night before.
When he thought I wanted him to make love to me—and now he knows I don’t.
Once or twice, for just a moment, I felt my loving smile slip, and the growing grief of the just-opened gap between us swell in my chest. I managed to gather my emotional will, out of sheer desperation, though, each time. I renewed the sweet expression, and I even snuggled up to Rick during dessert. He rewarded me with a radiant smile and a little peck on the lips.
I can do this,I thought.Can I do this?
CHAPTER4
Rick
By the time we got back to our room I thought everything would go fine. That just proves that I really didn’t get it. Not then, anyway, on the third day of our honeymoon—the third day of our wonderful new life together, me and Mandy.
I knew our wedding night hadn’t gone perfectly. I had tried to go slow and to be gentle, but I hadn’t felt like I understood at all what Mandy had expected. Every time I tried to talk about it with her, communicating the way everyone said you need to do in a healthy marriage, Mandy said something like, “Oh, we don’t really have totalkabout that, right?”
