A Reason to Wake Up Pt. 03

To say that Annette Marie Perette and I had drifted apart is an easy way to say neither of us was to blame for the separation that had formed between us. A wall of spite, anger, resentment and loneliness and begun to form in our first year of marriage and despite a week or two here and there where we managed to bond around some sort of common ground we had lived essentially separate lives for twenty years.

That said it worked for us. Anne had little to no ambition for anything and married to me I allowed her to live a life of almost complete isolation. She did what needed to be done to raise our sons but essentially nothing else. The isolation I felt during the twelve hours each night and two hours each afternoon she spent asleep and led me to seek intimacy where I could, typically from an innocent but willing woman who either had never found the right man or had, much like Anne, simply chosen poorly.

Anne had only called me on my indiscretions twice. She had caught me with my first, a young silly little thing with a button nose and curly hair who giggled too freely. Our relationship, the curly headed brunette and I, had never progressed beyond flirtation and love notes but Anne had caught us and exploded in a fury I never expected from her. Eventually she seemed to accept my explanation and even for a time reached out to me. The changes didn't last though and we soon found ourselves back in old routines strangers passing in the kitchen each morning as we made our coffee. Anne and I seldom even eat together.

She caught me again, years later, not because she was clever or looking. I firmly believe she very intently looks away from suspicious activity to protect herself. She caught me because I wanted to get caught. I was tired of the whole thing and at 36 felt I had one last chance at long lasting love that would see me cherished and appreciated in old age.

Her reaction was even more unexpected as she settled in, dug her ground, and fought for me. We sought out counseling and talked late into the night chewing through cigarettes. I let the young woman go and enjoyed my wife both emotionally and physically until time and our very natures pushed us back to where we had always belonged.

Anne, I am certain is not blameless but she is not responsible. The responsibility for my life long loneliness, womanizing, degenerate ways lies solely on my own shoulders. I do not blame anyone. I could have married better to begin with. I could have left. I could have, and this is the hardest one for me to believe, been more the man she wanted and less the man I am. This is the hardest to accept because it is quite simply put the one thing I asked of her and the thing she never attempted to do for me.

Twenty-one years married, sharing a house and a bed if not our lives, we had found ourselves in a kind of detent. Never considering her the most self-aware woman she surprised me when she came to me one evening and asked me to take her out. She wanted to talk and she didn't want to do it at the house. I of course agreed, it was a simple enough request and besides I owed her. I had spent the better part of the afternoon not in my office but holed up in a hotel room watching porn and drinking beer with my new barely of age mistress. We went to the French restaurant in old town knowing it was quiet, the food was good and the wine was plentiful. We drove in silence and I began to write up my defense for having taken up with young woman. I presumed that's what it was all about. I considered of course that she was going to simply ask me for a divorce but that was a long shot. She would make out fine at first but she couldn't live the rest of her life on half of what we had saved up to this point.

She remained quiet if not silent until the young woman had taken our order. I had selected a bottle of Bordeaux I knew to be perfectly acceptable. It was also early enough in the evening that it was almost half price.

As we waited on the wine I waited on her. It was a struggle to stay silent for me, especially as I waited for the impending doom she was about to deliver. The bread arrived first and I took to slicing it. I had served us each a buttered hunk of break when the wine arrived, was poured, sampled, and approved. I think she waited for me to have my mouth full intentionally.

"I've been thinking. I've been watching you and thinking. It's never good when I think, I know. I am stupid. But I have been thinking and you are acting old. You know you aren't old, right. You are only forty-five. I was thinking about your birthday and how you were turning fifty and that I need to do something special for you but you aren't. Dave, you are only forty-five. What's wrong?"

I chewed as fast as I could but not fast enough and it left too long a pause.

"Do you know how long it's been? I mean, I know I don't do much for you. I never have. I understand that. You told me once I am like fucking a pillow. I get that. I'm not very good at it. But do you know how long it's been.

"A couple of weeks?" That was always the right answer. From time to time we had gone longer but it was always a couple of weeks.

"It's been five months. It was a week before our anniversary."

"I'm sure we made love on our anniversary." I knew we hadn't. She wasn't feeling well. I had persisted and we had tried but looking down on the pained expression on her face I couldn't muster the slightest bit of an erection. I had rolled over and resolved I wouldn't even try again.

I wasn't being mean. I was protecting myself. The rejection was too much to bear. She was right. It had been five months.

"If you'd like, we can try tonight."

"I thought at first you had someone else but you don't do you. I've watched you roam around the house like a zombie all year. David. I made an appointment for you."

"What kind of appointment?"

"At the doctor."

"I just went, like a month ago."

"To the dermatologist. I am taking you to the real doctor."

This was all insane. "Why don't we order up too big a dinner, a second bottle of wine, too much desert, a third bottle of wine and then go home and get frisky." I honestly thought it was a hell of an idea. Anne is, despite what I might feel about her, strikingly beautiful with large deep dark eyes, dark hair so black it is almost blue, large breasts, long legs, and olive skin I simply want to wrap around me like a blanket.

"It's not that simple."

I looked at her for a good long time and when I felt it had been long enough I took a slow sip of wine stretching the moment even longer. Before I said it I wanted to believe it. "Yes, Honey. It is."

"Will you go to the doctor for me?"

"Yes." I said. I refilled my glass. We would be leaving my car in old town. I was going to get drunk.

"You're mad." She said quietly.

"Not really, Annette. I am a long ways past mad." I finished off my glass of wine and poured a third. It nearly killed the bottle; I poured the end into her glass.

"No more for me. It looks like I have to drive home."

"I will be taking a cab. You can sit there and scowl at me and extend your list of all the ways I am not like your father and drive home by yourself or you can join me, we can cab home, and we might even have a little fun."

"Fuck you." It was a sore spot. "Bringing up my father. Like I compare you. I hated my father. Fuck you." She said it all under her breath. Had I been on glass number four I wouldn't have heard any of it.

"And yet you sit there looking at me pissed off because I am emotional. Because I expect intimacy, and lovemaking, and cuddling on the couch. Kissing. Kissing would be good. Fuck I miss kissing. You can go ahead and go. I don't see us having any fun anyway."

"You've kissed plenty of women. I don't think I ever got in the way of you kissing whoever the fuck you wanted to." I didn't like the way she was holding her glass I expected to be wearing it soon."

"Not you though." I prepared for it. Instead she starting drinking it and didn't stop till it was over. "And stop calling yourself stupid."

A waiter, not our waitress passed the table and she grabbed him by the arm. "Can you get us another bottle of wine please?"

"Certainly. I'll send Melanie right over. What were you drinking?"

"Does it look like it fucking matters?" she said with a broad smile. He laughed along with her and we set about getting drunk enough to sleep with each other.

The argument was over by the end of the second bottle and we ordered Crème Brule. The third bottle went down as we shared the dessert. We ordered a car and stood outside of the restaurant close together. I wrapped my arm around her and it was welcomed. I kissed her, and despite being met by her firm unwelcoming lips she gripped me about my waist. Anne is a curvy thing, her large breasts were pressed to my chest and the idea that I would bury myself in her soon was exciting.

Dropped at the house she darted inside and I paid the driver a ridiculous about of money to drive us a short distance. I was still grumbling about it when I reached the bedroom. I had my jacket in my arm and was working to unbutton my shirt. She laid waiting for me in the center of our bed. She had undressed and I gazed wantonly at the hills and valley of her curvaceous body. It is true that there is something to be said for youth. It is true that a woman excited to roll about in bed with me is exciting, but there is something about Anne I could never resist. The large rise of her chest, the gentle slope of her belly, her soft smooth thighs inspired me always. When she accentuated her physical presence with willingness and a gentle smile she was too much. My heart raced and my mouth watered and fully clothed I went to her. My oral fixation guided me as I slid my lips and chin over her soft flesh. I delighted in the feel of her thighs against my cheeks and when I was able to taste her, to please her as I had learned she appreciated over our twenty-one years together I was quite simply in heaven. I listened to her gentle sighs and lost myself in the moment.

When finally she pushed me away I stood over her. Her hair draped casually over the pillow. "Do me." she mewed. She spread her thighs wide, lifting her knees and I undressed quickly.

Making love was sweet and slow. I enjoyed looking down on her; her lips parted gently, her eyes pressed closed. She sighed with each stroke and moaned when I moved just right. I breathed deeply. It was remorseless, it was guiltless, and it was wonderful and homely. It was natural. The minute her orgasm began and her body shook beneath me I joined her and we climaxed together, our bodies shaking. I continued moving slowly inside of her. Her arms wrapped around me, her head raised from the pillow and her legs gripped my thighs. I groaned at the feeling of the soft woman wrapped around me and the sensation of moving inside of her.

We kissed briefly when I stopped moving, our bodies, slightly sweaty, clung together. When she released me she rolled over and I pressed myself up against her back my cock pressed to her ass pulsed with the feel of her.

"I love you, Anne." I said.

"Do you?" she questioned me quietly.

"Desperately." I answered without thinking. I did. I always had.

We lay pressed together silently for too long and the fact that she hadn't responded in kind pressed on my heart and soul.

"Do you still love me?" I finally had to ask.

Although she may have been asleep already I believed I felt her breath deeply in my arms as if stifling an admission she didn't want to make.

I held her some twenty minutes or more before the ache in my back forced me to roll back onto my back.

My mind drifted drunkenly between my various exploits of the last week. Making love to Anne led me to once again question why I did what I did. What weakness was so pervasive in my constitution that I could not control myself, didn't even try to control myself.

But she hadn't answered me. The longer I thought about it the more sure I was she didn't just not answer but actively repressed her response. As I finally drifted to sleep it was thinking of Anne on the floor of a cottage in the woods. We had been married only a few weeks. We had made love for hours the way you can when you are young and still honeymooning. I had been struck by the romance of it all and began to whisper sweetly in her ear how truly lucky I was to find her, what a remarkable woman she was, and how I loved her more than I thought was possible. "Stop. She had answered back. I hate that. I need you to be a man when we have sex."

I was certain I had dreamt of that night as well because I woke up, curled cowering on my side of the bed as far from her as I could get. She was still asleep and it allowed me to sneak away. If I was lucky I could get dressed and out of the house before she was awake.