Funeral Dirge for a Fairytale

I was in the hospital for a few more days, and Tim was there with me the whole time. Dad and Andrea visited, of course. He was overjoyed with his little granddaughter, and Andrea, who had no children from her marriage, fell in love with Ameila instantly. A good thing, too; we found out later that Don had proposed to Andrea during the missionary trip, but they were keeping it quiet for a little while, until they figured out exactly what was going to happen with us and what the living arrangements were going to be.

We were trying to figure that out, too. We had been, all the way up until we were in the hospital. At first, the plan would be that we’d stay married for a little while so that I could stay on Tim’s insurance. I’d stay with my dad and he could come over to visit whenever he wanted, and then once she was old enough, we’d split her time between our places.

That plan lasted all the way up until Tim saw his daughter’s pretty blue eyes. The new, modified plan was that I’d continue to stay with Tim until Amelia was old enough to safely go back and forth, which we figured would be about three months, after which we’d go back to the original plan. I had hopes that we’d modify the plan again, but I was just going to treat each day with all three of us under the same roof as a gift.

Our sleeping arrangements changed once home. Home. It was nice to think of it that way. Dangerous to my long term emotional health, maybe, but nice. Tim got his bed back. I slept in the nursery on the twin bed. The baby didn’t sleep. At all. I have never slept less in my whole life. My nipples were sore from feeding; the little titty parasite tried to drain me dry every two hours. I had to put lanolin on them after every time I put her down to ease the pain. I tried not to flash Tim during this process, but, well, it was hard.

Even though the baby wasn’t in any way mobile, the apartment suddenly seemed so much smaller. Part of that was because Tim was still working from home during the day, albeit on a much abbreviated schedule for the first couple of months. I had to try to keep her quiet, of course, but he also wanted to see her as much as he could. Which meant he saw more of me than he had intended, too.

Amelia wasn’t a very heavy sleeper, but she wasn’t a light one, either. We had to try to be quiet when moving around, when we weren’t trying to nap while she napped. Cooking, bathroom time, entertainment, showering, everything: we were underfoot with each other all the time while also trying to be as silent as possible.

One might think that frustration would increase the distance between us. Instead, it forged us closer together. We both did everything we could to make the household run smoothly, and the fact that we were both so all-in on our parenting made us intimate in ways that we neither expected nor understood as they were happening. We argued occasionally, as one might expect, but always towards what was best for Ameila and, therefore, for us as a unit.

We became more physically intimate without meaning to as a side effect of the shrinking of the apartment. I was able to actually help out again over the next few months the way I’d wanted to since I moved in: cooking, cleaning, organizing, and all of the other homemaking that I’d done before I blew up our lives. But I had to take care of the baby, too, which meant Tim and I would team up here and there. Without meaning to, there was a lot more physical contact: unintentional brushes of the hand, touching one another to indicate which way we should move, trying to squeeze past in small spaces, all of the little ways two people in close quarters connect without meaning to.

I got horny, too. I mean really, really horny. Part of the bed rest meant that I couldn’t do anything sexual for three months, and then I was recuperating for another couple of months from childbirth. I know Tim had been able to release some of his urges during the time I was pregnant, but in the two months after Amelia came home, alone time for either of us became a precious commodity. The physical contact with him, even unintentionally, was starting to really drive me nuts, and there was no way I was going to masturbate while my daughter was sleeping in the crib in the same room. I managed to find some time in the shower, as I assume he did, but I was about to burst by the beginning of the third month.

One afternoon, after putting Amelia down for a nap, I thought I heard the shower turn off. Score! Plenty of time to grab a quick shower now that Tim was out. I was half awake, because newborn, so after wrapping myself in a towel, I wandered into the bathroom for a quick shower and a little “me time.”

Except that Tim hadn’t been turning the shower off, he’d been turning it on. I was too tired from the disruption of my sleep schedule to notice the sound of the shower as I came down the hallway to the bathroom. And now he had just turned it off and was stepping out.

He clearly had not had any “me time” of his own by the way he reacted upon seeing me in a towel. His eyes bugged out for a moment when he quietly cried out, “Ellie!” But then, the surprise faded and was replaced by pure, undisguised lust.

Part of me knew that I shouldn’t encourage it, that I should honor his request for distance. But that wasn’t the part that controlled my hand as it tugged at my towel. It wasn’t the part that shifted my body just slightly to present the best view to him. And it certainly wasn’t the part that bit my lip and quietly moaned, “Please.”

Tim was on me in a second. He was not gentle at all; no kisses, no foreplay, no preparation. It didn’t matter. I had been anticipating a nice solo session in the shower and was moist before I entered the room. When I saw his cock harden at the sight of me, I got so wet that my juices started to run down my leg. By the time he bent me over the counter and lined that gorgeous thick cock up at my entrance, I was as ready for him as I’d ever been.

He entered me, and we groaned in unison, a perverted little duet. His dick slid all the way into me almost in one stroke, and I whined and moaned under the invasion. Tim didn’t make love to me. He didn’t even give me the nice, hard fuck that I’d asked for with that one little pleading word. He hatefucked me, plain and simple. This wasn’t an outpouring of affection; it was an act of retribution.

And it was glorious.

I needed him. I had needed him for months. It had been almost a year since I had felt my husband inside me, and I would have taken it any way he’d given it to me. And holy shit, did he give it to me.

His voice was a litany of rage as he slammed into me. “Stupid fucking cunt hate you cheating bitch who fucking owns this cunt you’re mine love you stupid whore goddamned slut show you how a real man fucks make you scream beg beg you fucking whore.” It was a stream of consciousness assault on my ears as his cock assaulted my cunt. My husband held me down as he took me, but he needn’t have bothered; I was unable to move, overcome from the sensation.

By the time he emptied his balls into me, I had cum twice. His seed felt so hot as he filled me. I could barely think straight; tears were rolling down my face, tears of joy at having my husband inside me again, even if it was only ever this once. When he finished, he stepped back, panting.

I heard him quietly say, “I’m sorry.” What? What the fuck for?

My eyes opened, and I saw his reflection look at me in horror. Then I saw myself in the mirror, tears streaming down my face, a face that was contorted with emotion. I could feel his cum dripping from me; I must have looked quite the sight. And Tim, sweet man that he is, thought… no. No, he needed to know.

I pushed myself unsteadily off of the counter, looking his reflection in the eyes. “Fucking… fucking loved it. Needed you so– so bad.” I turned to face him. “I– I deserved everything you said. Not just for… before, but I said I wouldn’t push you. Would– would keep my distance. But I can’t.”

I stepped to him and put my arms around him. “I love you, Tim. I’ll be anything you want me to be; if you never want this again, I understand. If you want to hatefuck me every night until you get a girlfriend, then just raise Amelia together, fine. But please, I can’t– I need you, Tim. I’m here and I love you and I need you. I’ll be your best friend if you’ll have me. I’ll be your fucking whore and I’ll beg, if that’s what you need.” I held him tight. “Just please, please, let me be something to you.” I was crying now, really crying.

I felt his arms encircle me, holding me close. A kiss on the top of my head. Then he pulled away. “I don’t want any of those things, Ellie.” He sighed. “I just want my wife back.”

“Wha– what?”

His lips descended on mine as a million questions whizzed through my head. Then they were gone, as the best man in the world kissed me. Time passed, but I don’t know how much. What I do know is that when he broke away from me, I needed more. I opened the door and all but dragged him to his… to OUR bedroom, where I spent the next two hours showing my husband the depths of my gratitude for letting me back into his life.

We were interrupted by Amelia, because of course we were. She needed her feeding. I scrambled to find something to wear, but at least I didn’t have to worry about flashing my tits at Tim anymore. We talked while she nursed.

“So… your wife. Like, really your wife? Like, ‘hello everyone, this is Ellie, my wife?’”

He chuckled. “Something like that, yes. There are…” he looked away. “What you did was… a lot of people think it’s unforgivable. Our friends– my friends now, I guess– are going to react poorly to this. A lot of them flat out hate you.”

I winced but nodded. “They fucking should.”

“And I– I need to be clear. I haven’t forgiven you yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever really be able to. But I don’t believe you’re going to do it again. And I’m not going to deny myself something I want out of fear that you might.” His eyes locked onto mine again. “But if you ever, ever– “

“No!” I almost shouted. “No. Never. Ever. I can’t… god, you’ve just given me a second chance at the life I’ve always wanted. I’m– I’ve been an awful, stupid bitch, but I’m never going to let you go again. I promise, you will never have reason to doubt me.”

He slowly nodded. “Okay, El. Okay.” He stroked our daughter’s hair. “She’s so pretty. Just like her mommy.” He kissed her forehead, then sat up and kissed me. “I love you, Ellie. I’m… I’m going to trust you. Please don’t make me regret that.”

When Amelia was down again, I gathered up all of my devices: phone, tablet, laptop, everything I could think of. Then I dumped them on his desk, along with a post-it note. “These are my phone’s pin, passwords, social media account names, everything. I want you to put trackers on my phone and tablet, and a keylogger on my laptop.” Tim raised an eyebrow. “You are never going to have a reason to doubt me. We’re going to start here. If you call me or text me, I will answer as quickly as I can. If I can’t pick up immediately, I’ll FaceTime you to show why once I can.”

“El, I appreciate that you’re trying to–”

“I’m not doing this just for you. I need it to– I need to know that I can show you this. It’s not accountability, exactly; I’m never going to do this shit to you again. But I need to know that I can point to all these digital trails at any point and say ‘I was here, I was doing this.’ I just need it. Please.”

He sighed. “Okay, Ellie. Okay. Thank you.”

That was the beginning. We went to couples counseling together. We went to solo therapy, too. Tim was worried about the way he handled his anger; not the big blowups he had with Derek and me, which were frankly kind of understandable. But he didn’t want to be like his father. I didn’t want to be like my mother, but it was a deeper set of issues than that for me, a nasty stew of childhood issues mixed with a strange, unearned sense of entitlement. Let’s just say that I was in solo therapy a lot longer than Tim.

His prediction about our social life was correct. To call it “reacting poorly” was a huge understatement. Most of them eventually came around, but it was almost always with an eye towards keeping an eye on that cheating slut Tim married, at least for the first few years. Some friends would have nothing to do with us at all, so angry on Tim’s behalf that they couldn’t stand to be around me. Loyalty is expressed in weird ways sometimes.

Things were strained between Tim and I occasionally. He didn’t want to punish himself for my mistakes anymore, as he said. He wanted his wife back in his life and his bed. He wanted us to not have this weird limbo existence that we had before. But what I had done to him still hurt. If I was late, he’d be irritated; I started to send him texts if I expected to be delayed for any reason, including pictures of where I was. Then he felt angry at himself for being overbearing, even though I told him I was happy to do it. It was a tightrope.

The worst moments were when we’d be out and hear one of Derek’s songs. I remembered what Tim had said. I could see it going through his head: “Did he fuck my wife to write this song?” There was no way to fix that; even complete honesty would just hurt him worse. Thank god he never questioned me as to which songs required my assistance, because the answer would have been pretty much just “Yes.” Like I said, Derek didn’t write much of anything that was decent on his own. I grew to hate the songs more than Tim did.

There were a few times we struggled through for extended periods. I realized that a couple of times in the first year, Tim got unaccountably tense and distant for a month or two at a time. It took me a little while to realize what it was: he had been following Derek’s tour schedule, and the tense times were when he was in town. I never let him know that I knew; he had every right to it. But I did make sure to be absolutely steady-on during those times.

At another point, I became uncomfortable, almost hollow, for a few days. It felt almost like the urge to create had struck again, that I was beginning to feel a gnawing hunger that I hadn’t in some time. I was frantic to not show it; I overcorrected, which made Tim suspicious. I told him what was going on, that I didn’t know why, but that I was afraid. He handled it with kindness and love. He was afraid, too, but he did his best not to show it. It passed, and a few weeks later, I realized what it was: the fifteenth anniversary of Gloria’s passing. Thanks, G. Still fucking up my life. My therapist had a field day with that one.

On the flip side, our happiest and best times were when we were at home with Amelia. Tim was such a good dad to her. The hours he spent trying to coax her into rolling over onto her tummy are some of my favorite memories of that time; it was just so silly and sweet. I still have the videos on my phone and watch them from time to time.

There were other fun times, of course, just for the two of us. To try to get back into shape, I took to doing yoga in the living room, following along with videos on YouTube. It worked pretty well; sometimes it worked very well, since I made sure to practice when I knew Tim was working on the most boring tasks he had at work. The occasions that downward dog turned into a fast, hard fuck from behind with my amazing husband were some of my other favorite memories from that time.

We found our path through. I loved our life, even if I knew there was still something missing. There was a trust that it felt like I’d never get back, that I’d thrown away for the rest of my life. Tim couldn’t commit all the way to me; I understood, even if it hurt.. I grieved for that loss, but I spent my time focusing on how much I still had.

Time passed, as it does. A month after our daughter turned one, Don and Andrea finally got married. Amelia was bundled off for an overnight stay with Tim’s aunt; she’d watched our little girl for us a few times when we went out on dates, but this was a big step for us and for her. We tried to not call every hour. We mostly succeeded.

It was a small ceremony; they were into their early fifties, and this was the second marriage for both of them. Tim was the best man. My Dad really did think of him as a son. It was a lovely ceremony, simple and sweet. The reception afterwards was fairly subdued, which suited both the bride and groom just fine.

Tim and I sat and held hands while we watched my father and his new wife dance their first dance together, then I danced with my dad while Tim danced with Andrea. Finally, we danced together. He kissed me sweetly and held me close as we slow danced through another three songs. I reflected on how much I loved him, and how lucky I was to be his wife.

After sending the newlyweds up to their room, we trundled off to our car and headed home. We had considered getting a room ourselves, but it seemed silly when we lived twenty minutes away. We’d just have to live with not having our daughter in the house for one night. Oh, whatever would we do?

We rode in silence most of the way there. I held his hand, just thinking. He broke the silence. “They really do seem happy together, don’t they?”

I smiled. “Yeah. He deserves that. They both do.”

“I watched them dancing; they looked so in love with each other. She looked at him like…” He trailed off for a moment, and I looked over to see him lost in thought.

He was quiet for a time. I could see him thinking, really thinking about something. Weighing it in his mind, like he did when he was solving a puzzle. Then, the look that says he’s figured it out, that he’s found the solution to the conundrum. And then, something unexpected: a small smile.

Quietly, he said, “I forgive you.”

I could only let out a nervous giggle. “Wh-what?”

“I forgive you, Ellie. You hurt me, but I love you. I…” He sighed. “The way you looked at me when we were dancing tonight. The way you always looked at me, even when things were at their worst. I realized…” A pause, as if he was thinking about how to say exactly what he meant. “Either you’ve always been in love with me, regardless of what you did; or you’ve never been in love with me, and you’ve always faked it, and you've faked it so well that I've never once caught you at it. I know I was naive, but I can’t live with that second possibility. So it has to be the first. You’ve always loved me, and that never changed.”

The tears streamed down my face. I never thought that we would get to his point. I never thought I’d earn… no, I hadn’t earned it. I could never earn it. But he’d granted me his forgiveness.

He continued. “I can’t… I know that I’ll still have problems sometimes. I can’t forget. But I’m not… I won’t beat you up for what you’ve done. I won’t beat myself up for it either, for not figuring it out. I want to go through our lives like that’s what they are: our lives. Our lives together.” He kissed my hand and I sobbed. He looked over at me for a second. “Hey now, hey, it’s okay El. I love you. I forgive you. We’re going to be okay.”

That night, when we made love, I no longer felt the absence that had been there before. My husband held nothing back from me. He committed himself fully to his love for me. My husband was mine again, entirely mine. It filled a void I had scarcely realized existed until it was made whole; but once it had, I realized how painful that emptiness had felt.

The next day, he asked for my devices to remove all the various trackers; I told him I’d be happy to leave them on, but he insisted. He loved me fearlessly, and I adored him all the more for it. As the months went on, our other safety nets slowly came down. He got rid of the bookmark for Derek’s touring schedule; I got more comfortable with being out by myself for longer. I still let him know where I was and when I was going, but I stopped feeling guilty when I texted him to let him know I was going to be late.