Even if every blessed muscle in my body aches.
Last night was incredible.
He carried me to bed, undressed me, laid me down on the mattress, and with a surprising gentleness, showered my breasts, neck, and lips with kisses.
Then, he made love to me.
You never know someone completely, do you? They dress in a certain style or move in a familiar fashion. Act in ways you grow accustomed to and sometimes, intentionally, say things to evoke a reaction. You label everything to derive meaning; husband, boyfriend, lover, or gullible, naive, innocent. Life is orderly that way, with no space for shades of grey.
But do you truly know them?
Because life is shrouded by greyness. And often, you don’t realize it exists until it’s too late.
Just consider my father’s perfect fiancée. So popular and pretty. So young, too—a few years older than me. Yet look what she did. Look at the life she took and the one she destroyed. Look at the woman she devastated.
I shake off the last thought. What I’m learning—whathe’staught me—is when you live a life without pain, you’ll never truly know pleasure.
“Good girl.” “Look how well my greedy girl takes my cock.” “Come for me, Riley.”He was gentle after weeks of aggressive fucking.I gave myself to him completely, and never felt so alive. But I’m not alone in sensing the shift in our relationship or how the bliss from one sweet comment could offset his typical filthy sex-talk.
“You feel like home.”
Did he really say it, or was it a dream?
I roll toward the sunlight but don’t notice him right away. He’s seated in a chair pulled up next to the bed, hunched forward with elbows on thighs while he studies me.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I sit up and secure the bedsheet around me.
He shakes his head.
Whatever was bothering him still plagues him, doesn’t it? “What’s wrong?”
“Tell me a secret no one else knows.”
This is what he’s been contemplating all this time? “Like what?”
“Something you’re not proud of. A dirty little secret.”
I stiffen as his request knocks the wind out of me. Weeks of carefully piecing my heart back together only to be asked to voice the impossible. “Will you tell me your name first?” I demand, deflecting. Because, beforeIreveal the darkest corner in my life, he should offer me the simplest pieces of himself—his full name. “Al is an abbreviation. Is your name Albert? Alex? Allen?”
“Al is all you need to know.”
“You feel like home,”Albert, Alex, or Allen had grunted in my ear. Or was it my imagination, desperate to move our relationship forward?
I stare at him. So cold to the eye. So proud and confident. So distrustful … suspicious, even. Like I’d ever betray him. “You can trust me, you know.”
“Trust isn’t the problem.”
I wait for him to elaborate, and then give up. It’s clearly up to me to deepen our connection, as hard as it may be. “My dirty little secret is my father’s fiancée shot him and then herself over a Gucci bag. She was upset about a canceled credit card. She spent so much money, more than my father could afford. The newspaper headlines called her ‘The Baby-Faced Murderess.’It made national news.” Even to my ears, my admission sounds clinical and cavalier, like I’m discussing a balance sheet that doesn’t add up.
“Cazzo!” he exclaims, with more expression than I’ve ever witnessed from him. He straightens, prepared to battle. To defend me. Except the war’s already over, and I ended up on the losing side.
He waits for me to continue, but I pause. This kind of hurt can only be addressed in spurts and is better said like I’m listing facts off paper. “Stephanie shot my father in the head. He died. I was left with my grandparents.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“It does. I found them. Pieces of their brains were splattered across the white tile entryway. It was dark when I entered the house, and I slipped and fell, not understanding at first what caused me to lose footing…”
“Jesus Christ. Come here, baby.”
