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Then, I’d stumbled down the street.
Karen had only just poured me coffee and we hadn’t even been in each other’s presence for longer than ten minutes. I had planned to tell her once I was caffeinated and the events had sunken in a little more.
I sipped my coffee while I contemplated how to answer her question. How was the sex? Were there enough words to describe how the sex was? Did any words even exist to do so?
I was pretty sure there weren’t, and I flunked English in high school, so I didn’t have it in me to even try and articulate what Lance had done to me. What I’d, in turn, done to him.
“We had sex on the floor of the living room,” I said.
Karen raised her brows and then waited.
“And?” she demanded after I took another sip of my coffee instead of expanding.
“Twice,” I said. “We had sex on the floor twice.”
She grinned knowingly. “How many orgasms?”
I grinned back. “More than two.”
She whistled. “Not that I can say I’m surprised, despite how firmly I am in the lesbian camp, that there is a man who just looks like he can fuck.”
I nodded in agreement. “Oh, he lives up to that. He fucks like a man just let out of prison.”
That was as best description as I could give it. For one, it wasn’t making love with Lance, any of the five times we did it. It was fucking. Carnal, wild, mind-blowing fucking. And I was totally okay with that. Thinking back to how much I’d been okay with that made tender parts of me ache for more.
“So,” she said, interrupting me from my thoughts. “You decided he’s worth the pain.”
I thought about it. About everything with Lance. About his cruelty. His coldness. His demons. About the way he moved inside me. The way he touched me. Looked at me. Protected me. How he took my son fishing. Helped him with his homework. Drove him to school.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s worth the pain.”
“Why do you do it?” Lance asked.
I looked up from where I was stitching Nathan’s costume for the school play. He was a tree. As lively, funny and intelligent as my kid was, he was a crappy actor. Hence him being a tree. Thankfully he was very excited about that, because he knew how important the trees were to the world.
“Do what?” I asked. “Sew his costume? Because I don’t do anything else for the school, including bake sales where I used box cake mix that contains gluten and that makes me a villain in the eyes of everyone there. I’ve gotta save face somehow. Even if I’m really crappy at sewing.” I frowned down at the mess of fabric in my lap.
Well, this would be a tree from the future, a mutant, ravaged by global warming or the radiation of a bomb dropped by some crazy dictator.
Something ticked in Lance’s jaw, his version of a smile, as I was coming to understand. A warmth spread through me. At being able to recognize that. At the fact I was sitting on the sofa, sewing my son’s costume and he was returning from doing the dishes—despite the fact he’d also cooked and refused to let me even look at the sink—beer in his hands, wearing only socks, jeans, and a tee. We were far from being figured out. From being anything resembling a normal couple.
I still didn’t know a thing about his past, his guards were still way up with me, and there was the tiny issue of my ex-husband trying to burn my house down and getting away with it, but I decided to ignore all of this and just enjoy the simplicity of this moment. Of it feeling almost domestic, knowing what Lance’s jaw tick meant. Knowing that he’d be going to bed with me tonight, giving me one of the most intense orgasms of my life and holding me in his arms until he woke me in the morning with yet another intense orgasm.
“No, though gluten is the shit and those bitches are crazy,” he said blandly.
I grinned at him, despite him calling women ‘bitches.’ Though he wasn’t wrong, the women who gave me judgmental brow raises and whispered to each other whenever I delivered my gluten-laden box brownies to the bake sale were total bitches.
“Church,” he continued, not moving to sit by me on the sofa as I so longed him to, he leaned on the doorjamb.
“Your life has been one big example of why God doesn’t exist,” he said, eyes on me with an intensity that I would never get used to. I hope I got the chance to never get used to it. “You deserved a life of ease. No way would a god on this earth or another let that shit happen to one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.” His eyes went far away. “I’ve known the ugliest of shit in the world. Everything I’ve experienced has served as proof there is no higher being. Suffering that is needless and cruel. Most of which you’ve endured and yet you still put on a beautiful dress and take you and your son to church every Sunday.” He paused. “Why?”
