The First Ninety Days Ch. 11

He kissed her forehead. "Yeah, but, what would you have done if I'd tried to go all the way?"

She smiled. "Told you to put your pants back on. Politely, of course." She reached up to stroke his face. "And that's one reason Iam glad we waited—so that I never had to tell you that."

He smiled back, and kissed the palm of her hand. "How come you never ask me for backrubs anymore?" he asked.

It was a jump, but evidently her thoughts were in the same place his were, because she followed it. "I dunno. I don't need them as much, I guess." She smiled. "You relax me."

"And besides, your mother isn't around to stiffen you up."

"That too. I'm also not practicing the harp as much. That's eighty pounds balancing on my right shoulder—it's a lot of stress."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I dunno, just wondering. I hadn't done it in a while and I like doing it."

"Even with all the other stuff you get to do to me?"

"Even with all that. Caitlyn, I love you. Every part of you is wonderful to me."

She smiled and kissed him again. "Every now and then, you remind me of why I married you."

She lay on her stomach on the couch, as she had so many times before, and Jon straddled her hips. Her skin was warm to his touch; they had always joked about his poor circulation, but Caitlyn didn't have that problem, and even during the first dates there had been some "heat redistribution" from her to him. He gave her a preliminary once-over with his hands and then began working his way up her spine in deep, firm strokes, kneading the tension from her muscles. His thumbs were strong by now, but he remembered when a prolonged session would leave him sore. Of course, Caitlyn was also a lot more stressed out back then; now her muscles felt like butter, pliant and not requiring much work. Where once he had had to battle knots of tension, today they just seemed to melt away.

"Mmm," she said, a verbal smile.

Backrubs had been one of his few excuses to touch her bare skin, though she'd never allowed her shirt to get rucked up very far. Once, it had been a big deal; today, if he asked her to take her shirt off entirely, she probably would. He decided not to. There was something to be said for innocence.

"Never mind the bedroom stuff," Caitlyn said. "You're doing this to me every night."

"I would love to," he said.

"Mmm... And I might even have some ways to reward you."

He heard the promise implicit in her voice, and deliberately ignored it. He didn't need any thanks for loving her; it was what he had been made for. "Whatever you want is fine with me."

He had never been allowed to massage her legs before—too much potential for sexual content—and once he had finished with her shoulders he began working down them for the first time. There were jeans in the way, there was not much to see; and Caitlyn was quiescent under his hands, not displeased but clearly not excited either. This was new territory, and there were things he would need to learn.

She finally spoke when he got down to her feet. "Where areyou going?"

"Just... Exploring. Are your feet ticklish?"

"I dunno."

"Do you like foot massages?"

"I dunno."

"Hence the exploring."

"Okay."

He helped her out of her socks, sitting cross-legged at the other end of the couch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her turn over so that she was lying on her back, looking up at him.

Hers were the first feet he had ever paid attention to. Her skin was pale and soft (as ever it was), and her toes small but well-shaped. He noticed immediately that her smallest toenails were somewhat misformed, almost rectangular in shape like his were—was this a human-wide thing, or just them? Her feet were a little cooler than the rest of her, but dry, and without smell. They were beautiful to him—small and somewhat delicate, but not without strength.

When he looked up, she wiggled her toes at him with an amused smile on her face. "Finding anything interesting?"

"Well, I found these feet," he said. "Also, some toes. I'm still investigating."

"Oh? You think there may be more to find?"

"Quite possibly," he said with a smile. Hands were sensitive; he knew that from first-hand experience. And, considering the evolutionary etymology of feet, he didn't see any reason why they should be any different.

He began to knead the musculature of her foot—the long muscles along the inner arch, the broader ones along the flat. He wasn't as familiar with the anatomy of her foot; actually, he wasn't very skilled at massage in general: all he had to go on was a few Internet articles and some hands-on experience with Caitlyn. The end result was that he was condemned to a lot of fumbling around at first.

When her feet seemed as relaxed as they were going to get, he shifted gears to his fingers and fingernails. If the skin was really as sensitive, then liberal application should yield something nice... And indeed, she seemed pleased with the attention.

And yet... "Jon, are you... Are you going to spend a lot of time down there?"

"Why?"

"Well, it... It just seems... Sort of... Weird."

"Why, do you not like it?"

She shrugged. "It's not... There's nothing wrong with it. It's just... Are you supposed to like my feet?"

"...Am Inot supposed to?"

"Well... It's not exactly what I imagined."

"What do you mean?"

"I just... Do you remember what Pastor Pendleton said, about good things sometimes leading us astray?"

He sighed.Not this again. "Caitlyn, is there anything in Scripture that says that I'm not allowed to like your feet?"

"Well, no, but—"

They were saved from this morass by the ringing of Caitlyn's cellphone, buried somewhere in her backpack. Wordlessly Jon stood up and found it for her. The tag on the little screen sent a stab of ice through him:Mom.

Caitlyn stared at the screen for maybe two seconds before answering.

"Hello?... Yes... Yes, hi, Mom. Umm. Hi. ...What's going on?"

Jon sat back down on the couch, a feeling of dread in his gut. As far as he was concerned, Linda Delaney's presence never heralded anything good.

"Yes... Yes... Well, I have a wedding to play that weekend, so it has to end before... Okay... Okay, that's fine... Well, if they want me back— Hold on." She took the phone away from her mouth and turned to face her husband. "Yes?"

"You don't have to say Yes," he said.

"Jon, they're asking me—"

"I know they're asking you. If they asked you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?"

She gave him a look of affection and exasperation mixed. "I hardly think playing at a church service is jumping off a bridge. Mom says they miss me."

"That's all well and good, but you have to think of yourself. You know how hard it is for you to say No."

"Yes, but is this the place to start? This is my church, Jon. We've barely gone to church since we got married. This is important to me. And besides... This is my gift. This is what God blessed me with. He didn't give me these talents just so I could please myself; He gave them to me so that I could share them with others."

He said nothing. After all, didn't he feel the same way? That, if someone needed him, he should be there for them, and never count the cost? It was the other thing that bound him to Caitlyn, to Brandon and Meredith and Zach and Christa and all those other outsiders: the idea that some things, some needs, were more important than his own happiness.Way more important.

"Then I'll be there," Caitlyn said. "But only for that, all right? If there's something else they want me to do, I want to hear about it by next Monday. You're lucky my friend is getting married on Saturday, or we wouldn't be able to come at all." Jon smiled at her; this was a definite shift in tone from the somewhat-limp assertions of personhood she had used to make. "And if there's something elseyou want to do, I want to hear about it by next— Oh. Okay. Okay... Umm. Well. Hold on."

She turned to Jon again. "She wants us to come to dinner on Friday."

Jon covered his face with his hands. "Didn't we have this fight already?"

"Jon, she's my mother. She says she misses me. She says she wants to make peace between us."

The ache in her voice pierced him, but he made himself ignore it.Would she sound the same about me? "She wants touse you, Caitlyn. You're not a person to her, you're just a thing she uses to feel better about herself. And if you don't let her, she'll just beat you up until you fall in line. What did we get married for, if not to get you free of her?"

"We got married because we love each other," she shot back. "And because we want to share our lives together. Because we want the same thing from our lives, and the best way to get those things is together."

"Okay," he said. "Okay."

"And one of the things I want in my life is my mother's presence," Caitlyn said.

"I understand that."

"Do you? Jon, if I asked you to cut loose from your mother, to just never speak to her again... How would that make you feel?"

She had asked him this before. He had no intention of rehashing it now. "Look, Cait, I'm just worried, okay? I don't think your mother respects you. I don't think she cares about anything except her own feelings. I think—no, Iknow—that she's willing to hurt you to make herself feel better. And, with that in mind, I can't help but think that it's better to stay away from her."

"Better," she said, "but not good."

Jon was silent.

"Jon, please," she said. "This is who I want to be. This is the life I want to live. Weren't you just saying that I should be willing to turn the other cheek—to give people a second chance? Well, how can that apply to me but not to my mother?"

And just like that, he was caught. Because, after all, that was the truth of it: if he loved her, he would support her; he would be at her side even when she did things he thought were a bad idea. If he loved her, it was not his place to judge—to have opinions of his own, certainly, and to express them if need be, but not to judge. If he loved her, his place was to support her, as unconditionally as he could.

And besides, he couldn't argue this one without sounding like a hypocrite.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. But let the record show that I am opposed to this. That I think it's a pretty bad idea."

"Jon, I'm not sure it's a good idea myself," she said. "But I have to try." Her eyes were clear, and steady on his. They were the perfect shade of blue: dark but not lusterless, and lit now with a calm, unblinking shine.

He sighed. Then he leaned over to kiss her.

"Mom? What time? Seven-thirty? Okay, we'll be there. See you then. Bye."

She closed the phone. Jon felt its flip-snap lid like jaws closing around him, crushing him into place, locking him to this course.

Caitlyn stared down at the phone for a moment, her eyes somewhere else. "Well," she said. "I guess that's that."

"I guess it is," Jon said. He couldn't accurately describe the feeling in his gut, a dropping sensation like all doom descending upon him at once. But at the center of it gleamed a single hard nugget of truth: that, if shewere to ask him to cut loose from his mother, he actually would.

"Jon... Thank you," she said. "For... For being you."

He looked up at her. Her eyes were still steady, but they swam now with hope and anxiety and fear and a dozen other things he couldn't name.

"I couldn't do this without you," she said. "I couldn't... Go back. Not and have any hope of keeping myself. They'd... They'd take me. They'd take away my... Myme. Who I am. Everything I am. They'd just... They'd turn me into a shell, someone who, who can't evenbreathe without their say-so. And the only reason I've been saved from that is... You."

"The only reason you can go back safely, you mean."

"Yeah."

He felt a mirthless smile crack his lips. "I wish I wasn't so good at what I do. Then you'd stay here safe. With me."

She gave him a sad smile and came into his arms. But for the first time in his life, holding her gave him no warmth.

"Well..." she said. "We were... Doing some interesting things before my mother called. Shall we, umm... Shall we get back to that?" Her smile, and the promise implicit behind it. "I believe you had earned yourself a reward..."

The mood was broken; he didn't see any way to replace it. "No, it... It's getting kind of late, I should think about bed soon. And you wanted me to look up that stuff for the reception..."

"Yeah," she said, her face downcast. "And I guess I should... Well, I've got stuff to do too." She stepped away from his arms.

In the end, Jon reflected, there were some things you could never get back.

Day 50

On Monday morning, there was something delightful in the bed when Caitlyn awoke. It was her husband.

The noise was the alarm, doing its buzz-buzz-buzz; the sensation was Jon, rolling away to snap it off. She had gotten so used to this over the last six-or-seven weeks that she could just roll over and go back to sleep with nary a flutter of an eyelid. But today there was muted winter sunlight and the twittering of birds from outside; it was morning, not dead-o'clock, and Jon was starting at his new job today.

The one that let him sleep until 8 AM so that they could actually wake up together.

She rolled over to face him and kissed him soundly. "Good morning, my love."

"Hey," he said. "You know, you don't have to wake up."

"Well, I might as well," she said. "My first class is at 9:35. And besides..." She smiled. "This is one of the best times to get, umm, close to you."

"Oh," he said.

He didn't seem especially enthusiastic, but then theyhad just woken up. And besides, it had been a fairly trying weekend: dinner with her parents on Friday, and then seeing them again in church on Sunday morning. Jon had barely said anything the entire time; Caitlyn herself had been torn between the joy of being back where she belonged—back in that comfortable space she had inhabited with her parents—and sheer dread that somebody was going to say something nasty and blow the whole dream out of the water. Fortunately, no one had; but she could see that Jon was tense-jawed throughout the entire thing. He simply didn't understand that her parents could be loving and caring too. She guessed she didn't blame him; he'd never seen them be anything but cold and domineering, and he had always had a hard time believing in what he could not see. He was thorough; he wanted to be sure of as much as he could before he made decisions. It was one of the reasons she loved him.

She had been hoping they could "get close" over the weekend, but things had come up almost like clockwork: homework assignments, harp practice, a dinner invitation from Jon's family, the wedding reception on March 9th creeping steadily closer. Today it felt vastly distant, but in a mere three days it would be February and the date would seem much closer. The long and the short of it was that there had been too much to do for them to spare any time for "getting close." The funny part was thatJon had taken a sudden interest in the reception, prompting her with things she'd forgotten or overlooked whenever they showed sign of slowing down. She didn't for a second believe any of it was truly important to him—men just weren't concerned with questions of hors d'oeurve or the appropriate combinations of napkins and cutlery—but he could be incredibly thoughtful when he wanted. It was one of the reasons she loved him.

"Jon," she said. "I know that... I'm not always one of the easiest people to live with." That was an understatement; she was a dreadful perfectionist and hated it when other people slacked off. A lot of perfectly good group projects had been ruined this way. "And I know that you don't always agree with my decisions. But, even then, you keep supporting me. You don't give up on me. And that means so much to me. I've never... I've never had anyone who didn't give up on me. I would've married you for that alone."

He was silent for a moment; but then a smile, a real true smile, bloomed on his face. "Then it's a good thing youdid marry me."

"Jon, I know that... Sometimes you disagree with what I do. God only knows that sometimesI disagree with whatyou do. But..." She sidled closer to him, entwining her arm around him, letting him feel her naked breasts against his skin. "Never doubt that I love you.Never doubt that. Even if... Even after I'm dead, when my bones have long turned to dust... I will still love you." Now it was her seeking his refuge, her sheltering in his arms. She pressed her face against his shoulder. "Always.Always. No matter what."

"Well, good," he whispered, "because even when you do stupid things, I feel the same way. I don't think there's anything you could do that would make me love you less."

She saw her opening. They hadn't done anything since a hurried and somewhat-unsatisfactory session on Wednesday night, and the gap worried her. "Is there anything I can do to make you love memore?" Not to mention that, well, she wanted it.I'm a married woman. I'm allowed to want it.

She pulled back to watch his face and saw the smile grow. "I dunno. Should there be?"

They entwined on the bed, kissing, their arms around each other, hands between each other's legs. He was soon at full staff—she felt a ping of triumph, that she had been able to bring him to arousal so quickly—and he gently removed her hand, whispering for her to enjoy what he was doing to her. Both arms went around him, and she drew him to her, gasping into his shoulder as his fingers did their magic work, rubbing against the outside of her opening, one finger to either side of her clit. As he bent his mouth to her breasts, she felt her wetness grow and knew she would soon be ready.

But when he moved to ease one leg over his hip, she stopped him and rolled to her back, drawing him up over her. "I want you on top." She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, kissed at his neck, and opened her legs.

They had experimented with a lot of different ways of making love over the short course of their marriage; by far the most common ones were face-to-face on their sides, not always comfortable but workable, or spooning, because by far the most common times for them to make love was just before going to bed or when waking up together on a weekend morning. She had ridden him a couple times, and he had ridden her a couple of times, and had both loved the fullness of his penetration, but athletic, sensation-focused sex wasn't really their thing. And in the end, she still liked this the best, what Jon called the "missionary" position because supposedly it was the only Christian-approved way of getting it on: she on her back, her legs flanking him, her arms caressing his back and hair; he on his elbows, his forearms enshrining her face, the weight of his body pressing her to the bed, and his cock inside her, as far as it would go. The penetration was not as deep as some of the other positions; nor were the sensations as intense as they had been the one time he'd taken her with her legs closed. But nonetheless, she loved it here.

It was everything she wanted from their loving; here she could watch his face as he gasped and shuddered with the pleasure of her body, and feel his eyes on her as she did the same. Here they could kiss, and moan, and whisper to each other—talking dirty was beyond her, and this was hardly the time to have a conversation, but whatever whispered endearments he or she might murmur were near to hand her. Here she could draw him down until he lay on her entirely, and hear his breath rushing through her hair, and know that he could hear the same. Here she could feel his heart beat against his chest, and know that he could feel the same. Here, they were as close as they would ever get to truly becoming a single one person.