Tear You Apart Read online

  “What’s going on, Kittykat?”

  At least I’ve made her laugh, even though I know she hates the nickname. “Nothing. Just thinking about things, like what I’m going to do when I’m finished with school. Life stuff.”

  “Ah. Life stuff.” Silence for a few breaths. “Anything you need to talk about?”

  “Not really.” She sighs. “I’m okay, Mom. Just a lot to think about.”

  “And you’re my thinker.” We both laugh. She starts to tell me about a video link Jac sent her, and the conversation leaves serious behind.

  We disconnect and I spend another hour or so going from link to link on the internet, laughing at the Wrong Number Texts and Damn You Autocorrect blogs until my stomach hurts. It’s been a while since I spent the day doing nothing of importance, and it feels lazy and indulgent, but also somehow necessary. Relaxed, humming, I sort the piles of magazines and mail that never seem to be filed.

  I find the envelope Will sent me, and the song I was singing lightly under my breath eases into a sigh. I let my fingers trace the letters of my name in the address, seeing the soft shades of gold and brown and orange my name has always evoked. The picture needs a frame, and it will need a place to hang, and right now I have neither, so the envelope gets wrapped up carefully and tucked into the basket I’ll fill with clean clothes and carry upstairs.

  I’ve left the laundry go too long in the dryer. Most of our clothes get hung, but there are a few things, T-shirts and pajamas mostly, that get folded. In our bedroom, I press my face to the still-warm and wrinkled clothes I’ve tossed onto the bed. They smell fresh, they smell clean, but it’s nothing like clothes that have been hung on a line to dry in the sunshine. When I was growing up, my mother always hung the laundry in the backyard. All the neighbors did. The worst trouble we kids ever got in was when we played “maze” in the back-and-forth lines of hanging sheets on laundry day, marking the clean fabric with streaks from our Popsicle-stained fingers. The smell of sun-dried laundry is irrevocably tied to the sound of my mother’s muffled voice singing her favorite Simon and Garfunkel or Bob Dylan songs around the clothespins in her mouth.

  Will’s envelope rests on my plum-colored bedspread until I pick it up and think of where to put it until I can frame it. Or to keep it safe if I decide never to look at it again. I can’t stop myself from opening it once more, sliding the photo out carefully, with the tips of my fingers against the thin white border.

  It’s not the heart-shaped rock or the black-and-white scheme or even the touches of swirling color that make me smell the ocean. It’s the thought of Will. His name. His eyes. I close mine, rocked suddenly by the rush and whoosh of waves and the spray of foam on my cheeks. Tactile, sensual memory that has become somehow irrevocably linked to no longer just the sound of his voice, but the thought of him.

  “I’m home,” Ross says from the doorway.

  Embarrassed, still touching the picture, I turn as I slide it back into its manila prison.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh. Something one of Naveen’s artists sent me.” I hold up the envelope as though I’m offering to show him, because I know my husband. He doesn’t care. Won’t look. Mention art to him and his eyes glaze over. I put the envelope carefully into the top drawer of my dresser, where I keep other important papers I never look at. “How was golf?”

  I don’t care about golf any more than he wants to talk about art, but he talks anyway, rattling off something about par and birdies, details I’m not paying attention to. Still talking, he heads for the shower. Minutes later he’s out, towel around his waist, hair dripping. Still talking.

  I am overcome with the need to touch him, to somehow anchor myself to this man. We have made children together. We have spent years building a life, a very good life, and I do not want to lose it.

  “Come here,” I say in a voice not much like my own. “Kiss me.”

  Ross looks faintly surprised and doesn’t move from his place at the dresser, where he’s rooting around for a pair of briefs. “What?”

  “Come and kiss me.” I crook my finger and walk backward toward the bed. A little hair toss, a bit of a grin, a sparkle. I make myself shiny for him.

  I remember when we’d spend an hour kissing and touching before we got down to fucking, but that doesn’t happen today. My husband kisses me roughly, too much tongue, his hands groping and squeezing too hard. His cock rises while water still beads on his skin.

  I want him to undress me, spend some time. I want him to kiss my mouth and throat and work his fingers between my legs until I can’t stand it anymore. That doesn’t happen, either.

  Ross gestures. “Take your clothes off.”

  It’s easy enough to do, though not very sexy, since I’m wearing comfy around-the-house clothes. Naked, I lie back on the bed next to the pile of unfolded laundry as he crawls toward me. I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he reaches over me to pull open the drawer on my nightstand.

  “Use your toy.” He presses my vibrator into my hand. “It’s faster.”

  It’s small and smooth and curved to fit my palm. It could be exciting and erotic to use my vibrator while we fuck—because let’s be honest, I think, as Ross kneels in front of me, jerking his cock to get it hard enough to fit inside me, we’re not about to make anything like love. It could be sexy, but he wants me to use it so he doesn’t have to work as hard to get me off.

  I’ve been feeding myself sex thoughts all day long, so it wouldn’t be that hard for me to come. But of course, Ross doesn’t know that. I press the button on the vibe and slide it against my clit. The buzz is almost too strong; it makes my hips buck. When Ross moves over me, ready to push inside, I put a hand on his chest to hold him back.

  “Wait.” I was ready before, ready all day long, thinking about another man, but now I need more time.

  I can remember how watching Ross stroke himself used to turn me on, but it’s not working now. He’s paying attention to his dick, not to me. He keeps looking at the clock.

  I get on my knees, cheek pressed to the mattress so I can hold the vibe on my clit as Ross pushes inside me from behind. I’m wet, and yet he still sticks and stretches before he’s all the way in. I don’t complain. I push back against him, wanting him to fuck harder. A little faster. I want to be in sync with him the way we used to be, when we spent hours making love, and it didn’t have to be a gymnastics show.

  My orgasm is fragile and elusive, slipping away. I’m not going to come, not even with the vibrator, and while there have been plenty of times Ross and I have had sex that I didn’t have an orgasm, I’ve never felt this desperate about it. He thrusts faster. He’s getting closer; I know him so well I can hear it in the shift of his breathing and the way he groans, by how tight his fingers are gripping my hips. Usually these signs trigger my own pleasure, but not today. Nothing is working today.

  “Wait,” I breathe again.

  He slows, but it’s not enough for me, and I guess it’s too much for him, because he lasts at that pace only for a few seconds before moving faster again. The vibe slides against me, and it feels good, but not good enough. I turn it off and push up on my hands, relieved to get the pressure off my neck from my face pressing into the mattress.

  I thought he was going to finish, but he keeps going. We move together. And finally, gradually, the pleasure builds again. I relax into it, both of us working toward the finish.

  And then Ross presses his thumb on my asshole.

  It could be a mistake, except that he does it again a second later, this time pushing harder. No more orgasm for me, not even close. I jerk at the intrusion, breaking the rhythm.

  Surely he should know better, right? Certainly he should remember all the other times he’s tried to shove something up my ass, and I said I didn’t like it? He couldn’t possibly have forgotten the times—more than once, beca