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Sylvie stopped her with a hand. “We don’t need details, Alice. We can all imagine.”
Doris blushed red. “Oh, Lord. I don’t want to imagine those things.”
“Don’t be a prude, Doris,” Alice countered back. “We know that cowboy of yours is no slouch in the sack after hearing about your hooties.”
Her crimson deepened. “Well, that’s true, but what Sylvie said is right. Even though he’s so darn handsome, and yes, things are” —she paused and cleared her throat— “good in that department, sometimes I’m not in the mood. Doesn’t matter how great he looks. I’m just tired. It seems to happen more and more these days.”
“Same here,” Sylvie agreed. “I think Tom is the most gorgeous man on the planet, but sometimes I’m tired or I’m just not in the mood. But if I push through that, I’m always surprised how much I end up enjoying it when I wasn’t that into it to begin with. I don’t want our passion to die, though, so I always try to keep things going even when we’re being lazy, and it takes more work to get going than it did when we first met.
My heart lifted at their words. “So ... this is normal? It’s not just me? I’m not doomed to a life of platonic relationships?”
“No!” Sylvie answered. “It’s normal, and it’s every relationship everywhere! You absolutely cannot find a long-term married couple who doesn’t have to work hard to keep the spice up. And not only the sex. Romance, too. Making each other feel loved and needed. That’s work in and of itself. Sometimes we forget to show it after we’ve been together for a while.”
“So ... she still loves me?” I almost choked back a tear uttering the words I’d started to question.
“Of course, she still loves you!” Doris said. “I see how she looks at you.”
“I’d ... I’d started to doubt we had romantic love anymore. That we were just becoming friends. And I don’t want that.”
“You can have that again,” Sylvie said, tipping her head softly. “You two got lazy about working on romance like so many of us do. What you had with Percy is very different than what you have with Roxie. You two started with attraction. That doesn’t go away completely. But you do have to find ways to remind yourself of that heat and spark you used to have. Every couple has to make an effort to keep the fire going.”
“It can come back?” I perked up. “You mean the romance isn’t over for us?”
“Of course, it can! Marriage takes work to keep the spark going. And now that Roxie is home so much, that can definitely make it easier to fall into a rut.”
Alice leaned back on her elbows. “I don’t care how hot and heavy you start. Every marriage fizzles out if you don’t work on keeping those home fires burning. Alejandro and I still go at it like rabbits, but part of that is because we work to keep that passion alive. Marge, you’ve built fires from a couple of sticks in the dirt before. Once you got the flames going, it didn’t keep burning by itself, right? No. We had to keep adding things to keep the flames crackling. And when they started to go out, as they will if we don’t tend them, we had to blow gently on the embers to get the flames rising once more. You and Roxie let the flames get too low. Now you need to start blowing on the embers again. Needing to fan the flames is normal, darling. And sometimes they burn brighter than other times.” She paused. “Well, for other people, not for me. I know how to keep that baby burning like hellfire itself.”
My heart lifted at their words. “This is really normal for a relationship?”
Sylvie chuckled. “I forget you’ve never been in a romantic relationship before. Yes. It’s normal. There isn’t a couple in the world who doesn’t go through this. I mean, do you still love her?”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” I answered quickly.
“And you’re still attracted to her?” Alice asked.
I blew out a breath. “I still can’t believe someone like her is with someone like me.”
“And do you still feel like she loves you?” Doris asked.
I paused, then answered confidently. “Yes. I do. I can still feel she loves me, but I thought she didn’t love me romantically anymore. You ladies are convincing me that’s not the case. But I miss all the stuff we had before. The passion. The kissing. The sexytime. That’s gone. And I don’t want it to be. I miss her. I know we’re older, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have the romance, right?”
Alice scoffed. “Nonsense. I’m the oldest widow here, and I bet I have the hottest romantic life. Age has nothing to do with it. As long as you still have the love, the rest can be fixed. It’s just gonna take a little work.”
A huge weight lifted off my shoulders at her words. “Holy cripes. I thought I was doomed to another platonic relationship. I loved what I had with Percy, a best friend for life, but I don’t want that again. I want heat. Romance. Sex! I want what everyone else has, and then it happened. I finally had it. But since Roxie retired and started staying home, we arealwaystogether. It’s like that excitement I used to get when we’d get back together after spending the whole day apart is gone. I mean, I love spending time with her, but I also miss missing her. You know? Ice cream is great, but I don’t want to eat ice cream all day, all the time. Then it’s not a treat anymore!”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Sylvie said. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder is a saying for a reason. It’s true. When you’re together all the time, it can make keeping that excitement alive harder.”
“Oh, yes,” Doris answered. “When Axel has to be gone for a few days at a time out on rides in the summer, I can barely stand it! I feel like a giddy schoolgirl when he comes home.”
“I try to make myself sparse regularly to keep Alejandro missing me.” Alice looked at her nails and then smirked. “If I feel things slipping, I tell him I have important business somewhere and leave for a night or two. By the time I get home, he’s all over me again.”
“So, I need to make time away from her?”
“That helps for sure,” Sylvie said. “But you also need to actively work to keep the spark alive. Take her on dates. Special dinners. Candles. Music. Romance! If you only sit in front of the TV every night, passion is gonna pack up and leave! You’ve got to woo her. And she needs to step it up and woo you too.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. My love hadn’t died. Roxie and I were only in a rut. They were right. This time it wasn’t the same as it was with Percy. He and I had loved each other, but always just like friends. Roxie and I had romantic love, and Ihadgotten lazy. We didn’t do dates. I never lit candles or put on music. Every night we curled up on the couch together and watched marathons of our favorite shows just like I had with Percy all those years. By the time the shows were over, we were yawning and crawling to bed. It was the only way I knew how to be in a long-term relationship. But Roxie wasn’t Percy, and finally, I realizedIhad to be different if I wanted a different outcome.
“Well, hot damn!” I clenched a fist and pumped it in the air. “When this trip is over, I’m gonna step things up! I’m gonna woo that girl of mine, and I’m not going into the friend zone without a fight!”
