After the Future is Gone Pt. 02

"The day... the day you found us, we had gone to lunch. I hadn't intended to do anything that day. It was just lunch. I picked him up, and we drove to a restaurant. We had wine. I spilled it on my shirt. I didn't want it to stain, so I came home and he tagged along. I took my shirt off to throw it in the wash and he... he..." She stopped, looking at me, waiting for my assent to inflict this deepest pain. I curtly nodded.

"We hadn't... I promise, we had never done that before. Never in our home. I wouldn't do that to you... I mean. I... I never intended to. We finished, and I felt so guilty. He did, too, once he was actually thinking.

"We stripped the bedsheets and jumped in the shower. I wanted to get the house cleaned, needed to..." She sighed. "...needed to never have done that to you. But I couldn't, so I was just going to try to hide it, like I had been everything else. I was starting to panic. He made a joke to get my mind off of it. I don't remember what. But he took me in his arms, and told me it was going to be okay. And then you opened the door."

Suddenly curious, she hesitantly asked, "Why were you home early that day? Were you sick?"

My voice was a monotone. "I got the promotion. I had come home to surprise you with dinner. I saw your car there and thought we could make dinner together. Maybe make love. I knew things were wrong between us, but I was ready to start making them right."

There was nothing but shock and horror on her face then. "Oh god. Oh god!" She started to sob again, body heaving with grief. She knew then, finally. Four months. Four months, and maybe we could have bridged the chasm between us. If she hadn't given up on us. If she hadn't fallen in love with him.

I let her cry. I thought to comfort her, but I was too drained. There was still a part of me that loved her, but it wasn't nearly enough to overcome the new grief I was feeling. Not yet.

I knew now how things ended. I knew how complicit I'd been in it: my distance, my focus on work, my inability to see her pain or help her with her struggle. She had cheated on me, but I made our marriage a place where she felt no comfort. That didn't make what she did right. But maybe if I had just paid attention to what was important, I could have stopped the disintegration of our life together. Maybe not. I needed to think about it more, but that was for me to do, not something I needed to hash out with Lisa.

I was almost done here.

I started to nod to myself. I knew. I knew what I had to do.

"Lisa."

She kept sobbing, insensate.

"Lisa. LISA."

She looked at me then, mid-sob, makeup running, face blotchy and red.

"I forgive you."

She choked out, "What?"

I spoke softly. "I forgive you, Lisa. What you did was wrong, and it hurt me. But I forgive you. I won't let it hurt me anymore. And I'm sorry that I wasn't the husband I should have been for you."

Lisa looked at me, unbelieving. Then she began to sob again, almost wailing in the intensity of her sorrow. I got up, found a box of tissue, and brought it over to her. Silently, I sat and waited for her to collect herself. It was a long wait. Finally, her sobs turned to sniffles, then to silence.

She croaked out, "How?"

I tilted my head. "How what?"

My ex-wife was almost vibrating with anger. "How can you be like this? How can you hear that I cheated on you, that I lied to you for months about the cheating, lied to you for years about how I felt in our marriage, and then just say 'oh, I forgive you!?'"

My mouth fell slightly open, but then it struck me: she wasn't angry at me. Not really. But I hadn't stuck to the script. She had played this out in her head dozens of times, hundreds maybe, as she prepared herself for this eventual confrontation. She expected to get through her speech and then be a target for my fury. Maybe not even that; maybe I'd be so angry that I screamed at her before she could even start.

In her mind, my reaction would be the fury of a scorned husband. She had prepared herself for that, but it hadn't happened. I hadn't given her what she needed. She had needed me to excoriate her, to make her a martyr to my rage. But I hadn't given that to her. I wouldn't. I was done giving her the things she needed at the expense of my happiness.

I lowered my head. "Because I can't be consumed by hatred and jealousy anymore. I don't deserve to feel that pain." I looked Lisa in the eyes. "And neither does Emily. I love her. I'm going to be for her the man that I should have been for you. So thank you, from both of us, for letting me know what happened before. I mean that sincerely. I don't know that I could have moved past it without knowing."

Lisa's eyes teared up again. "Oh, god, Mike. I'm so sorry. I--"

I patted her shoulder. "Don't start that again. I can forgive you; I've done that. I can forgive myself; still working on that one, but what you told me has helped. But I can't make you forgive yourself."

She nodded, starting to square the response she imagined with the one she got. "I'm glad..." She smiled, trying to push through. "I'm glad you've found someone. You deserve to be happy." She chewed her lip. "Can I... do you have a picture of her?"

I considered whether I wanted to allow her even this far back in. It was a trivial gesture, but I was reluctant. Then I thought, 'Why not?' There was no malice there, only curiosity. I unlocked my phone and showed her my home screen. It was a picture of Emily dressed up for a dinner date we'd had a few weeks before.

"Oh. Oh, wow. She's gorgeous, Mike." She looked up from my phone, a little concerned. "She's... she's a little young, isn't she?" She could see immediately that she'd overstepped her bounds. I'd forgiven her. I was indulging her curiosity. That wasn't an invitation to comment on my life. "I'm sorry, I-- "

I was stern but quiet. "She is younger than me. Almost ten years. But Em talks to me. Tells me how she feels. Tells me when she needs my help and when she wants to do things on her own. She does everything she can to make sure we work as a couple, and so do I. She's worth putting myself through your confession so I can make peace with what you did. So, yeah. Maybe Emily's young. But she's everything I want and everything I need."

Suddenly ashamed, Lisa rose shakily to her feet. "I should go."

"I'll walk you to your car." I took her arm to steady her. She was collected by the time we reached her car, able to function again.

She unlocked it. "Thank you again. For reaching out to me. For forgiving me. For what it's worth, I forgive you, too. Maybe you should have seen that I was struggling, but I tried my hardest to keep it from you. Please don't blame yourself for that." She started to kiss my cheek, but I stepped back. She looked hurt, but then nodded sadly. "Good luck, Mike. I hope you have a happy life. I'm sorry I can't be a part of it anymore." I nodded, wished her well, and waved goodbye as my ex-wife left my life for good.

I went back to the cafe and sat down, thinking about what I'd learned. Most of it, the stuff with Pete, I'd guessed. The timeline, at least. But all of the other stuff... I needed to be better than that. She was hurting, and I didn't see it. For someone whose whole job is finding and solving problems, I'd missed the biggest one in my life. Yeah, she'd hidden it from me, but still.

Wait, no. No. Not "but still." Lisa hid it from me, flat out hid her problems from me. She hid them from me for literal years. She didn't give me the chance to help her. She didn't tell me what was going on. She didn't trust me to support her in the ways she needed. Yeah, I fucked up in that last year, but even then, she was still hiding things from me. She went to someone else to get the support she wanted. We were supposed to be a team. I thought I'd forgotten that, and maybe I had, but she had too.

I felt lighter. I had blamed myself for missing so much. But I didn't miss it. Some of it, yeah, sure; there were signs I should have picked up on. But for most of what I missed, it was the difference between not being able to find your car keys because you left them in the wrong place and not being able to find your car keys because someone took them and hid them under the couch. Lisa eliminated any chance to get us back to where we should have been because of her stupid pride. She stopped even trying to be my partner.

Emily didn't do that to me. She told me how she felt, and she told me when she wanted my help. Told me when she didn't, too, and why. We had a partnership, a real one. It was time to acknowledge that.

I stood up and left the cafe, deep in thought. As I drove to Emily's place, I considered what I wanted to say to her. What I wanted to ask.

I ran up the steps to her apartment and unlocked the door. Em had been waiting for me. She hugged me tightly, and we moved to the couch to talk.

Emily was on tenterhooks. "So?"

"It went well. Really well." I gave her the outline of what I'd learned, both of their affair and all of the things that had led to that point. She listened sympathetically, but I found that, while there was a little sadness, no tears came. It felt like it had happened to someone else, someone I had now left in the past.

She smiled encouragingly when I finished. "So... how are you?"

I breathed out a sigh of relief. "Good. Great, really. Learning that I had missed all of the problems that Lisa was having felt bad, but she was hiding them from me, you know? She didn't talk to me. Didn't trust me."

I shook my head. "But I don't want to talk about her anymore. She's my past."

I looked my love straight in the eyes. "You're my future. I know this is the wrong way to do it, and I'm sorry. But I can't hide how I feel from you. I've never been able to." I slid to one knee in front of her as her hands came up to her mouth. "Emily, will you--"

"Yes!" She threw her arms around my head and squeezed so tight I thought she might smother me. It would have been a good way to go. "God, yes, Mike! I love you! I love you so much!"

I let out a muffled, "Ow."

When Emily was done crushing my skull, we sat together, talking, laughing and kissing. I apologized for not having a ring and promised we'd go shopping first thing in the morning. When she asked, "Why not now?" I just grinned and picked her up.

We spent the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon making love in her bed, then moved into the shower to continue. We kissed under the water when we finished, then spent our time cleaning each other. Mostly. When we went out into public to get a late lunch, she giggled as we talked, making sure to use the word "fiancé" as many times as possible. "I have the most handsome fiancé in the world." "I wonder where my fiancé and I should go ring shopping." "Yes, thank you, my fiancé would like a refill."

I laughed, "Stooooop."

Emily just grinned. "No way, mister. I don't even have a ring yet. How are people going to know that I'm not some trollop out with a man who hasn't made his intentions known?"

I took her hands. "Are you mad that I didn't...?"

She laughed. "No, idiot. God, I'm so in love with you. If you had never asked, I would still have stayed with you forever. I still would have had your children." She leaned in close and whispered, "I still would have opened my legs for you every night of our lives and begged you to fuck me until I screamed." Then she leaned back and laughed at the look on my face.

I smirked. "Ok, so no ring then? I guess-- "

A fierce look on Em's face. "Don't you dare! There better be a fucking rock on my finger this time next week, my fiancé." My impish little pixie looked around to see if there was anyone listening. "But don't worry. You can still have my ass whenever you want until then; I know you're good for it."

We talked about details: how long we'd wait to get married (not long at all), when we'd have kids (she wanted to wait five years, I wanted to have them sooner, we compromised on two or three years), dogs or cats (both), where we'd live (I had saved plenty of money for a down payment on a house), and all of the other minutiae. The talk of concrete plans really brought it home for me: this was real. And I couldn't be happier.

After the bill was paid, we headed for our weekly game at Rowena's. The door hadn't even closed behind us when Emily shouted out, "We're getting married!" Adam turned to Rowena and deadpanned, "That's ten you owe me now." Rowena ran to us and grabbed us both in a big bearhug, then said, "The ring! Let's see the ring!" I tried to look anywhere else but at our friends as Emily said, "We're going to get one tomorrow." Gordon leaned out from the kitchen and yelled, "Dude, you didn't even get her a ring yet? What the fuck?"

We decided on a small, intimate wedding. Emily had no friends from before she moved here for her job, and I had almost none from before my divorce. Family, close friends, and that would be it. Perhaps a couple dozen people in all. We decided to spend the money we saved on a honeymoon. The Bahamas seemed a good choice: sun, sand, surf, and the love of my life in a tiny bikini for two weeks.

About a month before the wedding, while we were laying in bed in post-coital bliss, she asked for a peculiar wedding gift.

"Mike, I... I have a favor to ask."

My curiosity was piqued. "Okay..."

She got up on her elbows and kissed me, then got a serious look on her face. "It's not bad, but it's kind of weird."

I made the "get on with it" gesture.

She rushed through it all in one breath. "Iwanttoabstainuntilthewedding."

That... I couldn't have heard that right. "Come again?"

She closed her eyes and said it more slowly. "I want to abstain until the wedding."

We hadn't gone without some form of sex for more than a day since we got together. Even when one of us traveled, we sexted and had Skype sex. For goodness sake, when she wanted to try orgasm denial, she lasted about half an hour before she safeworded out and then came as soon as the word "Okay" was on my lips.

I was, needless to say, alarmed. "Why? Is something wrong? Are you-- "

She kissed me lovingly. "No. No, my wonderful, sexy fiancé. There's nothing wrong. I was just..." She breathed a deep sigh. "I was just remembering that first night we were together. It was magical. The way you desired me, the way my body opened so slowly for you, even though I needed it so much, the pure, raw need as you fucked me. I want that again."

"Have I not been-- "

"No! God no! Oh my god, the idea of being without you inside me for a month is so painful I want to cry. You make me feel alive when we're together."

"So-- "

"So I want to drive us both wild. We didn't know what we had in each other before, the way we fulfilled each other's needs. We do now, and that will make the longing so much more acute. I think... I think it's going to be agony, to be honest. But at the end..." Her eyes glazed slightly as she imagined. "... at the end, my husband will have me for the first time as his wife, and he will be as ravenous for my body as he's ever been. Starved. I want that. I want that for my wedding gift."

I thought. This would be hard. And I frankly didn't know if we would be able to make it that long. "Are we... like, can you masturbate? Can I?"

She rolled the idea around in her head. "I think... yeah, I think that's fine. Not together, obviously; I think we both know that if the clothes come off, we're not going to make it. But we did that before we were together. We fantasized about each other then, too." She flashed a devious little smile. "I seem to remember a very clear illustration of how that looked on our first Sunday morning together, when you started poking me on the couch." She laughed as she saw the reminiscence flash across my face.

I pondered. "I'm going to see you naked every day, though, and you're going to see me. This apartment is too small for us to not see each other in at least our underwear."

My Tinkerbell frowned, disappointed. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess... shit, I really wanted this."

This was all she'd asked for. The only wedding gift she wanted. "I have an idea."

She smiled. "Yeah?"

"When we started dating, we didn't really start dating. We went from friends to basically living together over a day or two. We never actually went on dates without sharing a home. I still have my apartment, even if it's covered in a fine layer of dust now. What if... what if we lived separately until the wedding?"

Emily gasped. "No! I-- I can't sleep without you now. I need to see you every day! I can't do that."

"Well, hold on. Hear me out. You'll still see me. We'll go to the gym together. We have our D&D game. I don't think we can go over to each other's apartments to watch TV or hang out alone, but we can still go out on dates: dinner, movies, hanging out at the bar. We kind of missed out on a lot of that. And at night, we can talk on the phone together until we fall asleep."

She laughed. "So we fucked, moved in together, got engaged, and now we're going to date?"

"Yeah. Yeah, something like that. What do you think?"

A slow nod. "I like it. I think it sounds really sweet."

"So when do you want to start? Tomorrow?"

Emily took a deep breath. "Yeah. Yeah, let's start then. But for tonight..." She rubbed my cock, bringing it to life. "I think we need to prepare." She laughed loudly. "Oh, prepare me all night, lover. Prepare me until I can't walk!" And we did. We fucked in every position, in every orifice, ravaging each other with tongues and cock and fingers with all the vigor we could until dawn. We were like animals getting ready for winter, finding and storing all of the carnal memories that we could in our hearts to tide us over for the coming deprivation.

By morning, my little blonde squirrel had collected a whole tree's worth of of nuts.

I packed slowly the next day, wanting to savor this last time we'd be in the same private, shared space for a month. Em was down. We both were. But this is what she wanted, and I would do whatever it took to make sure she got it. I kissed her and knew immediately that I shouldn't have. A chaste goodbye kiss started to turn into something more, and I almost threw her onto the couch to extract more pleasure from her body before getting control of myself again. I took a deep breath and let it out. "I love you, Em. See you at the gym tonight?" She nodded, knowing I had to leave, now, before she wavered.

The first day wasn't too bad. I went to work, then went to the gym afterwards, where Emily and I worked out together, laughed, talked, all the usual things we did. We had coffee and then dinner after. But then... then, it was time to part. It was very hard for me, and even moreso for her. She had chosen this, but I think it was starting to dawn on her how much harder it was going to be than she expected. I went home, watched a movie, and called her as I laid down.

She sounded so lonely. "I don't know if I can do this, Mike. I want it so bad, but I don't know if-- "

"Em, if you really need to stop, we can. If it becomes completely unbearable, call me, say your safeword, and I'll be out the door before you can hang up. But I know we can do this. I want to do it. For you. For both of us." I was putting up a front, and I knew it. I think she did, too. Part of me wanted her to tap out, but I didn't want to be the reason she did. I really did want to give this to her if it was what she wanted.

I heard a deep sigh. "Okay, Mike. Okay. Thank you. Can we... I miss having you here so much. Can we talk for a while?"

We chatted for an hour. I could hear the telltale hints in her voice that she was going to fall asleep soon, and steered the conversation to things that wouldn't require her attention. Just little nothings, spoken between two people that loved each other, words to hear voices. I heard her drop off in the middle of a sentence, and knew my love was finally going to get some rest. I hung up the phone and said, "Good night, my beautiful fiancée. I love you."